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were . . .
    What were they?
    The seventies and eighties looked even more confused and even drunker. The nineties saw a bit of a return to the old order, at least a stab at it, more contained hair, better clothes, straighter lines, a serious, unblinking White look, particularly on the two or three Black members who’d made their way in.
    The current crowd in the latest pictures made no sense at all, like the rest of L.A. now, the only center being a lack of center. There were South Americans with ponytails like movie coke dealers shoulder to shoulder, drinks in hand, with USC frat boys and their old men, next to real life hippies in tie-dye next to leathery world-cruisers next to a lesbian couple all in white, she a little taller than she. Old salts, new salts, Russians, Armenians, Redondo car dealers, Indian ophthalmologists. And a dignified-looking Mexican man in a blue double-breasted jacket with gold buttons.
    And Ernest Borgnine.
    There was a picture labeled “Offic ers 1975-1976” but no Jack or Elaine Kantke.
    A white-haired man and his wife came through the bar, dressed up. Jimmy smiled. They smiled back. A second couple followed the first. The second man wore a pink sports coat, the woman a dress the color of poppies with shoes to match and a pair of sunglasses that remembered the arched-eyebrow tail of a 1959 Chevrolet.
    They said hello, too, and seemed to mean it.
    “Something going on?” Jimmy said.
    “Crabby Lewis,” the white-haired man said.
    Jimmy followed them into the banquet room.
    Up front was a three-foot-tall picture of a tanned ancient mariner in blazer and turtleneck and yacht cap. Jimmy hung around in back. There were only ten or twelve of them, with four waiters.
    When they’d finished their salmon and salads, the pink coat man got up and stood next to the picture.
    “I remember when my boy Spence went sailing with Crabby the first time,” the pink coat man began, his eyes on the big picture. “Spence was twelve or thirteen.”
    Everyone started nodding their heads. They knew the story. They weren’t unhappy. They were too old. Too much had happened. Too many sailors had sailed off to Happy Harbor.
    “When they were coming in, Crabby gave Spence a loose ten-foot coiled line, told him to stand in the bow, told him to get ready.” Here it was. “Twenty feet out from the dock, Crabby said, ‘OK . . . Jump! ’ Spence jumped in, still holding the loose line.”
    It got its laugh.
    “That was Crabby. If you jumped when he said to, you were all right.”
    The people nodded. That was Crabby.
    “Spence wouldn’t ever do what I said,” the pink coat man said. “Still won’t.”
    One of the women daubed at the corner of her eye, but she might have been crying about Spence. Or her own Spence.
    When it was over, Jimmy bought a round in the bar.
    “Everybody liked Jack and Elaine,” the pink coat man said.
    Everyone nodded.
    “His lawyer proved he was in Las Vegas,” the white-haired man said. “At the Rotary convention.” He and his wife were drinking tall club sodas. He’d sent the first ones back when they came without limes. “The prosecution had to admit there wasn’t enough time to drive there from Long Beach after the murders were committed.” He sounded like he was still mad about it. Or mad about something.
    “The desk clerk testifie d,” another man said. This one looked as if he’d literally stepped off the deck of a boat to be there, sawdust in his eyebrows and in the hair on the back of his hands. Teak. You could smell it on him. “There wasn’t enough time.”
    The pink coat man shook his head. They all shook their heads. Everybody knew all the same things.
    “Even with the time change,” the sawdust man added.
    “We’re in the same time zone as Vegas, Ted,” the white-h aired man said. He was still mad.
    “I don’t believe so,” the sawdust man said.
    “Yes. Same. All of Nevada,” the white-haired man said. “Including Las Vegas,” he added.
    “Well,