The dealer dealt and handled the stakes with unruffled smoothness. There was no talk at the table except when a player ordered a ‘courtesy’ drink or cigarettes from one of the waitresses in black silk pyjamas who circulated in the central space inside the ring of tables. From this central space, the run of the play was watched over by two tough lynx-eyed pit-bosses with guns at their waists.
The game was quick and efficient and dull. It was as dull and mechanical as the slot machines. Bond watched for a while and then moved away towards the doors marked ‘Smoking Room” and ‘Powder Room’ on the far side of the Casino. On his way he passed four ‘Sheriffs’ in smart grey Western uniform. The legs of their trousers were tucked into half-Wellingtons. These men were standing about unobtrusively, looking at nothing but seeing everything. At each hip they carried a gun in an open holster and the polished brass of fifty cartridges shone at their belts.
Plenty of protection around, thought Bond, as he pushed his way through the swing door of the ‘Smoking Room’. Inside, on the tiled wall, was a notice which said, ‘Stand up Closer. It’s Shorter than you Think’. Western humour! Bond wondered if he dared include it in his next written report to M. He decided it would not appeal. He went out and walked back through the tables to the door beneath a neon sign which said ‘The Opal Room’.
The low circular restaurant in pink and white and grey was half full. The ‘Hostess’ swept over and piloted him to a corner table. She bent over to arrange the flowers in the middle of the table and to show him that her fine bosom was at least half real, gave him a gracious smile and went away. After ten minutes, a waitress with a tray appeared and put a roll on his plate and a square of butter. She also set down a dish containing olives and some celery lined with orange cheese. Then a second and older waitress bustled over and gave him the menu and said “Be right with you”.
Twenty minutes after he had sat down, Bond was able to order a dozen cherrystone clams and a steak, and, since he expected a further long pause, a second Vodka dry Martini. “The wine waiter will be right over,” said the waitress primly and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Long on courtesy and short on service’, reflected Bond, and resigned himself to the gracious ritual.
“During the excellent dinner that finally materialized, Bond wondered about the evening ahead and about how he could force the pace of his assignment. He was thoroughly bored with his role as a probationary crook who was about to be paid off for his first trial job and might then, if he found favour in the eyes of Mr Spang, be given regular work with the rest-of the teenage adults who made up the gang. It irked him not to have the initiative-to be ordered to Saratoga and then to this hideous sucker-trap at the say-so of a handful of big-time hoodlums. Here he was, eating their dinner and sleeping in their bed, while they watched him, James Bond, and weighed him up and debated whether his hand was steady enough, his appearance trustworthy enough and his health adequate to some sleazy job in one of their rackets.
Bond munched his steak as if it was Mr Seraffimo Spang’s fingers and cursed the day he had taken on this idiotic role. But then he paused and went on eating more calmly. What the hell was he worrying about? This was a big assignment which so far had gone well. And now he had penetrated right to the end of the pipeline, right into the parlour of Mr Seraffimo Spang who, with his brother in London, and with the mysterious ABC, ran the biggest smuggling operation in the world. What did Bond’s feelings matter? It was only a moment of self-disgust, a touch of nausea brought on by being a stranger who had spent too many days too close to these sordidly powerful American gangs, too close to the gunpowder-scented ‘gracious life’ of gangland aristocracy.