Jim Heimann Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir, Chronicle Books: San Francisco, CA, 1999, 159 pp., 1930s
" . . . The kingpin of police corruption was chief of police Ed "Two Gun" Davis. He and his city hall cronies made sure L.A. remained safe for bribes and graft, which escalated in the twenties and thirties to a wholesale spoils system. Their regime culminated in 1938 with the car bombing of private investigator Harry Raymond, an ex-LAPD detective who was in the process of exposing the corruption. The bombers were traced back to the LAPD's Intelligence Squad, and the ensuing public outrage ousted Mayor Frank Shaw while Chief Davis, along with twenty-three of his fellow officers, was forced into resigning.
"One of L.A.'s important contributions to the regular rackets lay three miles off its coast. The first gambling ship arrived in 1928 to entertain and unload the pockets of residents and rubes. The various barges that anchored off the coast for the next decade were a lucrative trust for the local syndicate. Flaunting legal jurisdiction, they operated openly until the late thirties, when a series of raids finally grounded them. Ships such as the Rex, the Montfalcone, the Tango, and the Monte Carlo were memorably drafted onto the pages of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep."
" . . . "
pp. 130, 131["Top. The Rex, Santa Monica Bay's most renowed gambling ship, awaits the Sheriff's Department men approaching the barge for a raid, ca., 1938. Bottom. The operation. Gaming tables and slot machines, ready for the evening's "squirrels" to arrive. Cops and Robbers. Another raid on the Rex with owner and operator, Tony Cornero (on the left) showing off his playing equipment to Johnny Klein, D.A. investigator; George Contreas, Captain of the Sheriff's Department; and Charles Dice, Chief of the Santa Monica Police, May, 1936."]
""The Royal Crown seemed to ride as steady as a pier on its four hawsers. Its landing stage was lit up like a theater marquee. Then all this faded into remoteness and another, older smaller boat began to sneak out into the night toward us. It was not much to look at. A converted sea-going freighter with scummed and rusted plates, the superstructure cut down to the boatdeck level, and above that two stumpy masts just high enough for a radio antenna. There was a light on the Montecito also, and music floated across the wet dark sea."-Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely.
pp. 132, 133 ["Top Aboard the Rex, cops detain patrons while the ship gets the once over, ca. 1939. Bottom. Slot machines from the gambling ship Lux are given the heave-ho onto a waiting barge for the trip back to the mainland, February 1941. Opposite. The Rex under assault. During the "Battle of Santa Monica Bay," Tony Cornero's "associates" keep the Sheriff's Department at bay by hosing their speedboats, August 1939."]