50s suburbs in search of a city that everybodyse calls l.a. but long beach is a brawny city unto a itself. half a million people. 52 square p miles. a busyqu airport. a big university. an oceanfront. a long beach. and its share of wealth and poverty and, of course, crime. lots of scope for a person who is no w shortage of work, yeah,f you cover crime. tracy manzer covered the police beat of the local paper, the long beach press-telegram. she was fair to the cops. they trustedth her. maybe that s why one november morning a contact in the police department came over to me in the midst of this sort of press conference and said you need to go to bixby now. and i was a little taken aback. ak taken aback because bixby s not a name you heard on the crime beat. so it was very clear to me