the middle of the room. Fruit jars of moonshine were being passed back and forth. Some of the
families had brought picnics and were wolfing down dinner, waiting for the tournament to start.
Smoke swirled around half a dozen green-shaded two-hundred-watt bulbs that hung from the ceiling
over the plywood rink.
Most of the crowd could have been dirt farmers living on food stamps—until the betting started.
That?s when the U.S. Grants and Ben Franklins appeared.
The place suddenly sounded like a tobacco auction. Graves? man stood in the ring and handled it with
the bored finesse of a maitre d?. A wizened, mean-looking little creep, with a flimsy white beard,
whom I took to be Uncle Jolly, stood behind him with a large roll of movie tickets over one wrist,
handing out chits as the bets were made, after scribbling what I assumed to be the size of the bet and
the number of the clog on the back.
A lot of money was going down, big money. And this was only the first fight. Clyde Barrow could
have knocked over this soiree and retired.
45
DOUBLE FEATURE
It had seen better days, the South Longbeach Cinema, a movie palace once long ago, when Garbo
and Taylor were the stars and glamour and double features eased the pain of the Depression. Its
flamingo-painted walls were chipped and faded now, and the art deco curves around its marquee
were terminally spattered by pigeons and sea birds.
It stood alone, consuming, with its adjacent parking lot, an entire block, facing a small park. Behind
it, looming up like some extinct prehistoric creature, was the tattered skeleton of a roller coaster,
stirring bleak memories of a time when the world was a little more innocent and South Longbeach
was the playground of the city?s middle class.
Now the theater was an ethnic showplace, specializing in foreign films shown in their original
language. It attracted enough trade to stay open, but not enough to be cared for properly. The park
across the street was rundown too. Its nests of palm trees dry and dusty, the small lake polluted, most
of its lights broken or burned out. At night nobody went near the place but drunks, hoboes, and
predators.
The ocean was hidden from the area by an abutment, the foot of one of the many towering dunes from
