Flashing Money May Have Cost a Life : Crime: Watts poolroom owner is killed in robbery. Friends had warned him about showing off $50 bills.

Chester (Chelcy) Daniels thought nothing of carrying a roll of bills so thick they made his pocket bulge. And he did not mind pulling out a bunch of $50 bills in a crowd, friends and neighbors said Thursday.

They said his trusting nature may have led to his death Wednesday afternoon at his Watts pool hall--the Southside Social Club--where Daniels, 70, was robbed, beaten and left on the floor of the business, which also was his home.

“He had a bad habit of pulling up a bunch of bills,” said friend Carl Williams, who had known Daniels for 37 years and did odd jobs around the club. “We had warned him about that.”

Detective Dianne Burns of the Los Angeles Police Department’s South Bureau declined to discuss the case.

Daniels’ body was found by a club employee. “His legs had been tied; he was beaten,” said Williams’ wife, Ruthie. “It was just like execution-style, I guess.”

The pool hall has been a fixture in the neighborhood for more than 20 years. It was a place where men and women played cards and dominoes, as well as pool, while music blared from a jukebox.

“I usually bring my grandkids down here when the place isn’t too crowded,” said Williams, who added that Daniels often kept about $400 stuffed in one end of the single pool table. The money was missing when Daniels’ body was discovered, he said.

Attendance by the mostly elderly club patrons had waned after last year’s riots, but the one-room pool hall would still draw as many as 30 people on some nights as patrons lined the walls to watch a competitive game.

Victor Greenwood, a friend who came by the club Thursday to find out what had happened, said Daniels was “a heck of a guy.”

If something happened in the neighborhood, he was not afraid to tell the police what he saw, said Greenwood, who lives a few blocks from the poolroom.

“He’s going to be terribly missed,” he said, looking around the business. “All the old-timers used to come around and chew the fat and talk about old times.”

Longtime friend and club member Sylvia Gray, who had known Daniels for 43 years, said she would often caution him: “You carry too much money on you. You shouldn’t carry that kind of money.

“He’d say: ‘Aw Gray, that’s OK. Everybody around here knows me,’ ” she said. “(His death) has just taken all the run out of me.”

As the rain fell Thursday, Daniels’ shaggy black dog, Snowball, occasionally raised his head when a car passed by.

“He (Snowball) acted real sick,” said Ruthie Williams. “You know? How when you lose your master?”

The dog was so well-trained, she said, all Daniels had to say was: “ ‘Open the door for me Snowball,’ and he’d open it up. That’s just how much they loved one another.”