CRIME: Chance on the High Seas

Offshore from Santa Monica and Long Beach certain long, low rods of red light glowing steadily through the Pacific nights have marked the positions of California's "floating casinos," the gambling ships Rex, Texas, Showboat and Tango. Rows of scarlet neon lights picked them out from stem to stern. Largest and swankest was the Rex, an old, British-built square-rigger, formerly the collier Kenilworth. She was demasted, equipped with a 400-foot saloon on her main deck containing roulette wheels, crap boards, tables for chemin de fer, chuck-a-luck, anything else a gambler's heart might...

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