Kells strolled back, stood beside the table. He looked at a small watch on the inside of his left wrist, said: “You might get a wire to the track, Jakie, but you couldn’t reach your Eastern connections in time.” He smiled with gentle irony. “Anyway, you’ve got the smartest book on the Coast — the smartest book west of the Mississippi, by God! You wouldn’t want to take any chances with that big Beverly Hills clientele, would you?”
He turned and walked back to the davenport, sank wearily down and again folded his hands over his stomach. “What’s it all about? I pick two juicy winners in a row and you squawk. What the hell do you care how many I pick? — the Syndicate’s out, not you.”
He slid sideways on the davenport until his head reached the armrest, pulled one long leg up to plant his foot on the seat and sprawled the other across the floor. He intently regarded a noisily spinning electric fan on a shelf in one corner. “You didn’t get me out in this heat to talk about horses.”
Rose wore a lightweight black felt hat. He pushed it back over his high bronzed forehead, took a cigarette out of a thin case on the table and lighted it. He said: “I’m going to reopen the Joanna D. — Doc Haardt and I are going to run it together — his boat, my bankroll.”
Kells said: “Uh huh.” He stared steadily at the electric fan, without movement or change of expression.
Rose cleared his throat, went on: “The Joanna used to be the only gambling barge on the Coast, but Fay moved in with the Eaglet, and then Max Hesse promoted a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht and took the play away from both of them.” Rose paused to remove a fleck of cigarette paper from his lower lip. “About three months ago, Fay and Doc got together and chased Hesse. According to the story, one of the players left a box of candy on the Monte Carlo — that’s Hesse’s boat — and along about two in the morning it exploded. No one was hurt much, but it threw an awful scare into the customers and something was said about it being a bigger and better box next time, so Hesse took a powder up the coast. But maybe you’ve heard all this before.”
Kells looked at the fan, smiled slowly. He said: “Well — I heard it a little differently.”
“You would.” Rose mashed his cigarette out, went on: “Everything was okay for a couple weeks. The Joanna and Fay’s boat were anchored about four miles apart, and their launches were running to the same wharf; but they both had men at the gangways frisking everyone who went aboard — that wasn’t so good for business. Then somebody got past the protection on the Joanna and left another ticker. It damn near blew her in two; they beached, finally got into dry dock.”
Kells said: “Uh huh.”
“Tonight she goes out.” Rose took another cigarette from the thin case and rolled it gently between his hand and the green baize of the table.