Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

were off, but bootlegging made up for it with the added bonus of no taxes to pay. Neither did he have payoffs because protection was part of his own operation. Never had there been more drinking in Los Angeles than when it was illegal to drink. It took a year for Prohibition to end across the nation, a year that gave Eddie and his associates time to make the transition from bootlegging to gambling, or “gaming” as they preferred to call it. They bought an old Ohio River collier, chugged down the Mississippi to Mobile for repairs and refurbishing and on through the Panama Canal. She was reincarnated in Santa Monica Bay as the Providence.

The ship was top-of-the-line stem to stern, two-decks appointed in the latest teak furnishings and salons equipped with the best gaming equipment—elegant craps and roulette tables and one hundred Mills slots from Chicago. There was a waiting list for slots: Nevada had legalized gambling as it, too, prepared for the end of Prohibition, but Eddie paid over list and got his slots before anyone. Because gambling was illegal in California, the ship was anchored three miles out, just beyond the reach of state law enforcement. The feds didn’t care.

Eddie had a full day ahead of him. Willie had turned his preacherly indignation against sin squarely on the Providence—never mind that the ship was outside city limits. Eddie learned of Willie’s campaign not from Willie’s radio broadcasts—he never listened—but from an editorial in the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, which Henry Callender showed him. “If we have offshore gambling, what will be next?” the newspaper asked. “Floating houses of prostitution?” The Outlook was insignificant, but Eddie didn’t want Willie launching a crusade that brought in the Times and Examiner. He’d have to reveal his ownership to his brother, but he would take that chance. Willie had his own reasons for keeping his brother’s name out of the headlines.

Willie turned down an invitation to visit the ship. Eddie wanted to show his brother that the Providence was not out to squeeze people, but to lift them up. The ship was fairer than any other games anywhere. They took a smaller house cut—1.4 percent—than any house in Las Vegas. The keno payoffs were higher and the faro table faster. They had dining and dancing on the lower deck, and the Evening Outlook’s food critic, apparently out of touch with the editorial page, had given the restaurant three stars. Eddie wanted to show him that the operation was exactly as the ship’s name implied: providential, providing a little honest entertainment in a world of Depression hardship.

But Willie wouldn’t come. One photo of him on that ship was all his enemies needed. Eddie told him he had a business proposition, and they agreed to meet at Mull Enterprises.

Willie brought Henry Callender with him. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have done it, but he believed that time and prayer had brought Henry to the point if not of forgiveness of Eddie at least of acceptance. The relationship between these two devout Christians was delicate, for how could Willie fully embrace a man who hated his brother? Clever with his hands, Henry had worked his way up to become the temple’s chief set-builder. The two men were friendly, and on Grandpa Otto’s Spanish chessboard kept a running game going, games that sometimes lasted for weeks. Each man kept a chessboard at home to duplicate the game, pondering his moves and likely counters of his opponent. They were roughly equal in ability—skilled but not expert players, men who shared a deep love for the game.

At home, Callender did not always play alone. He lived on Lemon Grove Avenue, one of those leafy lanes of neat little stucco bungalows spread out around Hollywood Cemetery just south of Santa Monica Boulevard. Since most of the people in the neighborhood were studio workers who didn’t earn that much, most of the bungalows were duplexes. Anyone who has ever lived in Hollywood or worked at the studios knows the kind of bungalow in which Henry lived. If it were a single house it would be two bedrooms and sixteen hundred square feet. As a duplex it was half that and suitable for one person or two at most, but no children.

The last thing you wanted if you were trying to get ahead at the studios was children. If you got a raise and got married and wanted children you could move into something larger in West or East Hollywood, but where Henry lived was just Hollywood, and Hollywood was duplexes and no children. In distance, Lemon Grove wasn’t that far from Willie on the top floor of the Sunset Tower, a mile at most, but in status it was a different world. Henry lived with his cat, a smart Siamese named Nyx, which in Greek means night. Nyx got the name because he was more black than tan, rare in a Siamese. Henry found him in a Hollywood pet store, the black sheep of the litter, and since Henry was also a black sheep, they were well suited. Henry liked cats and tried to have one whenever he had a fixed address, which wasn’t often. Gainfully employed, he’d found the cat, named him, neutered him and together they shared the duplex.

One reason Henry liked cats was that he talked to himself. Sourdoughs, prospectors, diggers, drifters, loners of every type accustomed to the solitude of the trail, often talk to themselves. In civilization, soliloquizing is viewed as unsocial, perhaps even pathological behavior except in cases where the soliloquist addresses an animal. As animals go, most people prefer dogs because they believe dogs listen, but Henry preferred cats. And Nyx listened.

The cat’s routine was to seat himself in the chair across from Henry’s coffee table to watch the game. His eyes followed the moves. Henry, seated on the sofa, would look into those deep blue cat eyes and know that the cat understood. He believed Nyx made him a better chess player,