Hooligans

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

which the city had taken its name. The road that wound around it to the beach was pockmarked by

weather and strewn with broken bottles and beer cans.

A long black limousine was parked in the “no stand‟ zone in front of the theater. The double feature

was Roma and La Strada. Stizano and his bunch had come only for the last feature, La Strada.

Stizano, an inveterate movie buff, had dropped his wife off, and come back to the movies with his

number one button and two other gunsels. It was his way of relaxing.

They were still dressed in black. First came the shooters, both of whom looked like beach bums in

mourning, their necks bulging over tight collars. They studied the street, then one of them stepped

back and opened the theater doors and the number one button exited, a thin, sickly-looking man, the

color of wet cement. He shrugged and summoned his boss.

Stizano was portly, with white hair that flowed down over his ears, and looked more like the town

poet than a mobster. He walked with an ebony cane, his fingers glittering with rings.

The chauffeur walked around the back of the car to open the door.

Suddenly they were marionettes, dancing to the tune of a silent drummer. Tufts flew from their

clothes; popcorn boxes were tossed in the air.

The only sound was the thunk of bullets tearing into the five of them, then the shattering of glass as

bullets ripped into the show windows of the theater and an explosion of shards as the box office was

obliterated, then the popping of the bulbs in the marquee.

Poppoppoppop. . . poppoppoppop...

Poppoppoppoppoppop...

Broken bulbs showered down on the street.

Five people lay in the outer lobby, on the sidewalk, in the gutter.

It had happened so fast there were n screams.

Nor the sound of gunfire.

Nor the flash from a weapon.

Nothing.

Nothing but five puppets dancing on the string of death.

Then, just like that, it was all over. Silence descended over the park.

There was only the wind, rattling the dried-out palms.

A bird crying.

Somewhere, far on the other side of the park, a car driving lazily past on the way to the beach.

And the sizzling wires dangling in front of the theater.

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