A single pillar, about as big around as a small redwood, stood in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t supporting the ceiling. I’d seen pillars like this in Vegas and Reno. The pillar had an eye-level series of dark mirrors running around it. Inside the pillar was at least one man with a gun, probably a very big gun. There was no real attempt to hide the purpose of the pillar. The door was clearly outlined and was surely locked on the inside. If the man with the gun had a heart attack, it would probably take dynamite to get to him. I had the feeling that dynamite might not be too far away either. The pillar was a warning to youthful, ambitious punks who might want to take on the power. It was also a reassurance to the honest patrons and an extra eye on the possibly dishonest ones.
A platinum blonde moved away from a pair of youngish women at the bar and headed for me. She wore a black dress that glittered in the soft brown light. She was about forty, maybe a little too skinny, with a good smile and a voice that suggested a touch of state college.
“Companionship, or action?” she said.
Our eyes met. I wondered how long and deep someone would have to scratch, and with what, to get through her first three lines of defense. From the way she looked at me, I could see that I didn’t have the tools for the job. Maybe it was my running nose and rheumy eyes.
“I’m here from out of town,” I said, trying to look the part. My red nose probably helped the Mortimer Snerd image. “I’d like to try my luck at that roulette table.”
I rubbed my hands together, not hard enough to start a fire but enough to show I was hot to lose the few bucks I had saved in a sock in the old chicken coop.
“Oh brother,” she said, grinning and taking my arm. My first level of disguise had certainly been penetrated. I had been taken for a clown instead of an idiot.
She guided me around black jack and poker tables to the roulette wheel in the far left corner.
“We work in chips,” she whispered. “Fives, tens, twenties and fifties. You pay me, and I give the chips. You turn in what you have, if anything, when you leave. I usually get a tip.”
“I’ll start with fifty bucks in fives,” I said. I counted out fifty-five and shook the last five indicating it was a tip. Her mask grin stayed put. Instead of sitting at the table, I watched her walk to the bartender, who took the cash and handed her the chips. The barkeep immediately took my money through the door behind the bar.
The blonde came back, gave me ten white chips, patted my shoulder and said, “Find me if you need more chips. The guys in red are the waiters. Just call them if you want to order a drink. You can pay them in cash or chips.”
There were seven or eight players at the roulette table. The first thing I noticed was the croupier, who never smiled and whose voice never changed. He was a thin guy with a tux and a little mustache. As the night wore on, his French accent disappeared.
I squeezed in next to a tall, lean guy in his early thirties, wearing a perfectly tailored suit with a neat white monogrammed handkerchief in the pocket. He smoked his cigarette in a pearl holder and seemed slightly amused by the table, which didn’t look in the least funny to me.
“How you doing?” I said, pushing a white chip on the black.
The lean guy looked at me with a raised eyebrow and answered with an upper crust English accent that seemed somehow wrong for Cicero.
“I’m losing,” he said, “but through my losses I’m developing a plan. All it takes is money and a great deal of patience.”
He lost his red chip and I lost my white one.
“You have enough money and patience?” I sniffled.
“A reasonable supply of the former and an almost infinite supply of the latter. Fortunately, I’m obsessed with the Romantic fantasy that I will someday break the bank and save the British Empire.”
We both lost again. He didn’t appear to mind. I decided he was imitating George Sanders playing a cad, or maybe George Sanders imitated this guy when he played a cad. English’s superior sneer seemed permanently fixed under a once broken nose, which added a soldier-of-fortune air to his good looking long face.
My next monumental sneeze raised a grumble from a be-ringed matron on my right. I blew my nose and lost five bucks more in atonement. English raised his right hand elegantly, and a waiter who had been stuffed into a maroon jacket two sizes too small galloped over on the dark tile floor. The slot machines provided his musical accompaniment.
“Have you a halfway decent wine?” English asked him, making clear what he expected the answer to be by the doubting arch of his brow.
“Yeah,” said the waiter, confirming his assumption.
English handed the waiter a white chip and told him to bring a glass of wine, preferably something French from the Loire, with a glass of orange juice and a raw egg.
The waiter said, “Right,” and walked away. English leaned over to me.
“He’ll come back with Chianti,” he said, losing ten bucks more on number seven.
I skipped a couple of spins and looked around the room for someone who might be Gino or for Nitti’s men. If Gino was there, I decided, he was behind that door on the other side of the bar. Even if I could make it past the enormous barkeep, I had a feeling things were behind that door that could cause me grief.
The wine, juice, and egg arrived. English held the dark glass to his nose and frowned.
“California, no more than a year old,” he sighed. “But it will have to do. Actually it has to be swallowed quickly, so it doesn’t matter if there’s nothing to savor.”
With all eyes on him including that of the croupier, he cracked the egg into the juice. Instead of drinking the contents of the two glasses, he handed them to me.
“Gulp it down like a good lad,” he said around his cigarette holder. “Then bolt down the wine.”
I raised a hand to protest, and hit the matron, who countered with a sharp push on my back. English guided the drinks into my hand. I drank them. What the hell. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did.
“Five minutes, you’ll be able to take on an orangutan,” he said, returning to his bet.
“I may have to,” I replied, wiping orange juice from my mouth with a table napkin.
He looked at me archly, and after ordering a Bourbon and branch water went on with his determined march to bankruptcy.
In five minutes I felt much better and had lost my fifty bucks in chips. I waved to the blonde, who walked over to me, lighting the way with her capped teeth. When she leaned, I gave her another fifty, wondering how I’d get the money back from Louis B. Mayer.
“I’d like to talk to Gino,” I whispered.
“Gino who?”
“Gino Servi.”
“Who are you?” she said.
“Tell him a friend of Chico’s.”
“I’ll see if this Gino is around.” She never lost her smile.
English regarded me with exaggerated new respect. I was about ten years older than he was, but he made me feel like a kid.
“That was very nice,” he said, pulling in his first win since I had sat down. “Sounded a little like something out of Little Caesar.”
“More like Dead End,” I answered, pushing a chip forward on the red. For the next twenty minutes, I began to lose more slowly, which I considered a major moral triumph. The platinum lady came back and whispered to me.
“Gino will see you at closing time. Three o’clock, if you want to stick around.”
I said I would. My watch told me I had a couple hours to kill, and my wallet told me I’d never make it at the present rate. I started to spend my money on wine, eggs, and juice, drank the wine more slowly, and managed to lose a hundred and fifty bucks while I learned some things about English. We were quite a pair. He was upper class with a few generations of a lot of money. My old man had been a small Glendale grocer who left my brother and me a pile of debts when he died. English had been educated in Europe. I had missed finishing my second year in junior college when I joined the Glendale cops. He knew his way around the world. I knew Los Angeles County and about a hundred miles around it.