Johnny Cannata is a mobster who co-owns the Shelbourne Hotel in Miami with his long-time partner Frank Doss. Cannata and Doss got together around 1960 in Las Vegas where they teamed up with comedian Morty Price, and they moved on to Atlantic City, then to Miami, where Cannata and Doss are trying to get a legalized casino set up. They had been arrested several times for illegal gambling but never convicted, but Doss and Price continue to make bets on tally sheets, which were in Price's room the night he was killed by Dorothy Bain, a former cocktail waitress at the same hotel who Price was attempting to rape, and those tally sheets ended up in a bag she had placed her son in.