Bolita

Bolita (Spanish for Little Ball) is a type of lottery which was popular in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries in Cuba and among Florida's working class Hispanic, Italian, and black population.

Bets were typically very small and sometimes sold well in advance, and the game could be rigged, by having extra balls of a given number or not including others at all.

[1] Today Bolita is played in the United States, among Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican groups.

During the late 1920s, a turf war began between Wall and Italian gangster Ignacio Antinori, who fought each other, as for control of the numbers rackets in the Tampa area.

Eddie Virella, "Tito's" former partner at the Lincoln Club, was shot down by gunmen little more than a year before, on 31 January 1937.