The Blue Knight Read online

  “I’m waiting, Bumper,” she said, hands on those curvy hips.

  “Another funny thing happened while I was directing traffic,” I said, to change the subject. “There I was, blowing my whistle and waving at cars with one hand, and I had my other hand out palm up, and some little eighty-year-old lady comes up and drops a big fat letter on my palm. ‘Could you please tell me the postage for this, Officer?’ she says. Here I am with traffic backed up clear to Olive, both arms out and this letter on my palm. So, what the hell, I just put my feet together, arms out, and rock back and forth like a scale balancing, and say, ‘That’ll be twenty-one cents, ma’am, if you want it to go airmail.’ ‘Oh thank you, Officer,’ she says.”

  Seymour hooted again and Ruthie laughed, but things quieted down when my food came, and I loosened my Sam Browne for the joy of eating. It annoyed me though when my belly pressed against the edge of the yellow Formica counter.

  Seymour had a flurry of orders to go which he took care of and nobody bothered me for ten minutes or so except for Ruthie who wanted to make sure I had enough to eat, and that my eggs were fluffy enough, and also to rub a hip or something up against me so that I had trouble thinking about the third bagel.

  The other counter customer finished his second cup of coffee and Seymour shuffled over.

  “More coffee, Mister Parker?”

  “No, I’ve had plenty.”

  I’d never seen this man before but I admired his clothes. He was stouter than me, soft fat, but his suit, not bought off the rack, hid most of it.

  “You ever met Officer Bumper Morgan, Mister Parker?” asked Seymour.

  We smiled, both too bloated and lazy to stand up and shake hands across two stools.

  “I’ve heard of you, Officer,” said Parker. “I recently opened a suite in the Roxman Building. Fine watches. Stop around anytime for a special discount.” He put his card on the counter and pushed it halfway toward me. Seymour shoved it the rest of the way.

  “Everyone around here’s heard of Bumper,” Seymour said proudly.

  “I thought you’d be a bigger man, Officer,” said Parker. “About six foot seven and three hundred pounds, from some of the stories I’ve heard.”

  “You just about got the weight right,” said Seymour.

  I was used to people saying I’m not as tall as they expected, or as I first appeared to be. A beat cop has to be big or he’ll be fighting all the time. Sometimes a tough, feisty little cop resents it because he can’t walk a foot beat, but the fact is that most people don’t fear a little guy and a little guy’d just have to prove himself all the time, and sooner or later somebody’d take that nightstick off him and shove it up his ass. Of course I was in a radio car now, but as I said before, I was still a beat cop, more or less.

  The problem with my size was that my frame was made for a guy six feet five or six instead of a guy barely six feet. My bones are big and heavy, especially my hands and feet. If I’d just have grown as tall as I was meant to, I wouldn’t have the goddamn weight problem. My appetite was meant for a giant, and I finally convinced those police doctors who used to send “fat man letters” to my captain ordering me to cut down to two hundred and twenty pounds.

  “Bumper’s a one-man gang,” said Seymour. “I tell you he’s fought wars out there.” Seymour waved at the street to indicate the “out there.”

  “Come on, Seymour,” I said, but it was no use. This kind of talk shriveled my balls, but it did please me that a newcomer like Parker had heard of me. I wondered how special the “special discount” would be. My old watch was about finished.

  “How long ago did you get this beat, Bumper?” asked Seymour, but didn’t allow me to answer. “Well, it was almost twenty years. I know that, because when Bumper was a rookie, I was a young fella myself, working for my father right here. It was real bad then. We had B-girls and zoot-suiters and lots of crooks. In those days there was plenty of guys that would try the cop on the beat.”

  I looked over at Ruthie, who was smiling.

  “Years ago, when Ruthie worked here the first time, Bumper saved her life when some guy jumped her at the bus stop on Second Street. He saved you, didn’t he, Ruthie?”

  “He sure did. He’s my hero,” she said, pouring me a cup of coffee.

  “Bumpers always worked right here,” Seymour continued. “On foot beats and now in a patrol car since he can’t walk too good no more. His twenty-year anniversary is coming up, but we won’t let him retire. What would it be like around here without the champ?”

  Ruthie actually looked scared for a minute when Seymour said it, and this shook me.

  “When is your twentieth year up, Bumper?” she asked.

  “End of this month.”

  “You’re not even considering pulling the pin, are you Bumper?” asked Seymour, who knew all the police lingo from feeding the beat cops for years.

  “What do you think?” I asked, and Seymour seemed satisfied and started telling Parker a few more incidents from the Bumper Morgan legend. Ruthie kept watching me. Women are like cops, they sense things. When Seymour finally ran down, I promised to come back Friday for the Deluxe Businessman’s Plate, said my good-byes, and left six bits for Ruthie which she didn’t put in her tip dish under the counter. She looked me in the eye and dropped it right down her bra.

  I’d forgotten about the heat and when it hit me I decided to drive straight for Elysian Park, sit on the grass, and smoke a cigar with my radio turned up loud enough so I wouldn’t miss a call. I wanted to read about last night’s Dodger game, so before getting in the car I walked down to the smoke shop. I picked up half a dozen fifty-cent cigars, and since the store recently changed hands and I didn’t know the owner too well, I took a five out of my pocket.

  “From you? Don’t be silly, Officer Morgan,” said the pencil-necked old man, and refused the money. I made a little small talk in way of payment, listened to a gripe or two about business, and left, forgetting to pick up a paper. I almost went back in, but I never make anyone bounce for two things in one day. I decided to get a late paper across the street from Frankie the dwarf. He had his Dodger’s baseball cap tilted forward and pretended not to see me until I was almost behind him, then he turned fast and punched me in the thigh with a deformed little fist.

  “Take that, you big slob. You might scare everybody else on the street, but I’ll get a fat lock on you and break your kneecap.”

  “What’s happening, Frankie?” I said, while he slipped a folded paper under my arm without me asking.

  “No happenings, Killer. How you standing up under this heat?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I turned to the sports page while Frankie smoked a king-sized cigarette in a fancy silver holder half as long as his arm. His tiny face was pinched and ancient but he was only thirty years old.

  A woman and a little boy about four years old were standing next to me, waiting for the red light to change.

  “See that man,” she said. “That’s a policeman. He’ll come and get you and put you in jail if you’re bad.” She gave me a sweet smile, very smug because she thought I was impressed with her good citizenship.

  Frankie, who was only a half head taller than the kid, took a step toward them and said, “That’s real clever, lady. Make him scared of the law. Then he’ll grow up hating cops because you scared him to death.”

  “Easy, Frankie,” I said, a little surprised.

  The woman lifted the child and the second the light changed she ran from the angry dwarf.

  “Sorry, Bumper,” Frankie smiled. “Lord knows I’m not a cop lover.”

  “Thanks for the paper, old shoe,” I said, keeping in the shade, nodding to several of the local characters and creeps who gave me a “Hi, Bumper.”

  I sauntered along toward Broadway to see what the crowds looked like today and to scare off any pickpockets that might be working the shoppers. I fired up one of those fifty-centers which are okay when I’m out of good hand-rolled custom-mades. As I rounded the corner on Bro
adway I saw six of the Krishna cult performing in their favorite place on the west sidewalk. They were all kids, the oldest being maybe twenty-five, boys and girls, shaved heads, a single long pigtail, bare feet with little bells on their ankles, pale orange saris, tambourines, flutes and guitars. They chanted and danced and put on a hell of a show there almost every day, and there was no way old Herman the Devil-drummer could compete with them. You could see his jaw flopping and knew he was screaming but you couldn’t hear a word he said after they started their act.

  Up until recently, this had been Herman’s corner, and even before I came on the job Herman put in a ten-hour day right here passing out tracts and yelling about demons and damnation, collecting maybe twelve bucks a day from people who felt sorry for him. He used to be a lively guy, but now he looked old, bloodless, and dusty. His shiny black suit was threadbare and his frayed white collar was gray and dirty and he didn’t seem to care anymore. I thought about trying to persuade him one more time to move down Broadway a few blocks where he wouldn’t have to compete with these kids and all their color and music. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Herman had been on his beat too long. I walked to my car thinking about him, poor old Devil-drummer.

  As I was getting back in my saddle seat I got a burning pain in the gut and had to drop a couple acid eaters. I carried pockets full of white tablets. Acid eaters in the right pocket and bubble breakers in the left pocket. The acid eaters are just antacid pills and the bubble breakers are for gas and I’m cursed with both problems, more or less all the time. I sucked an acid eater and the fire died. Then I thought about Cassie because that sometimes settled my stomach. The decision to retire at twenty years had been made several weeks ago, and Cassie had lots of plans, but what she didn’t know was that I’d decided last night to make Friday my last day on duty. Today, tomorrow, and Friday would be it. I could string my vacation days together and run them until the end of the month when my time was officially up.

  Friday was also to be her last day at L.A. City College. She’d already prepared her final exams and had permission to leave school now, while a substitute instructor took over her classes. She had a good offer, a “wonderful opportunity” she called it, to join the faculty of an expensive girls’ school in northern California, near San Francisco. They wanted her up there now, before they closed for the summer, so she could get an idea how things were done. She planned on leaving Monday, and at the end of the month when I retired, coming back to Los Angeles where we’d get married, then we’d go back to the apartment she’d have all fixed up and ready. But I’d decided to leave Friday and go with her. No sense fooling around any longer, I thought. It would be better to get it over with and I knew Cruz would be happy about it.

  Cruz Segovia was my sergeant, and for twenty years he’d been the person closest to me. He was always afraid something would happen and he made me promise him I wouldn’t blow this, the best deal of my life. And Cassie was the best deal, no doubt about it. A teacher, a divorced woman with no kids, a woman with real education, not just a couple college degrees. She was young-looking, forty-four years old, and had it all.

  So I started making inquiries about what there was for a retired cop around the Bay area and damned if I didn’t luck out and get steered into a good job with a large industrial security outfit that was owned by an ex-L.A.P.D. inspector I knew from the old days. I got the job of security chief at an electronics firm that has a solid government contract, and I’d have my own office and car, a secretary, and be making a hundred more a month than I was as a cop. The reason he picked me instead of one of the other applicants who were retired captains and inspectors is that he said he had enough administrators working for him and he wanted one real iron-nutted street cop. So this was maybe the first time I ever got rewarded for doing police work and I was pretty excited about starting something new and seeing if real police techniques and ideas couldn’t do something for industrial security which was usually pretty pitiful at best.

  The thirtieth of May, the day I’d officially retire, was also my fiftieth birthday. It was hard to believe I’d been around half a century, but it was harder to believe I’d lived in this world thirty years before I got my beat. I was sworn in as a cop on my thirtieth birthday, the second oldest guy in my academy class, the oldest being Cruz Segovia, who had tried three times to join the Department but couldn’t pass the oral exam. It was probably because he was so shy and had such a heavy Spanish accent, being an El Paso Mexican. But his grammar was beautiful if you just bothered to listen past the accent, and finally he got an oral board that was smart enough to bother.

  I was driving through Elysian Park as I was thinking these things and I spotted two motor cops in front of me, heading toward the police academy. The motor cop in front was a kid named Lefler, one of the hundred or so I’ve broken in. He’d recently transferred to Motors from Central and was riding tall in his new shiny boots, white helmet, and striped riding britches. His partner breaking him in on the motor beat was a leather-faced old fart named Crandall. He’s the type that’ll get hot at a traffic violator and screw up your public relations program by pulling up beside him and yelling, “Grab a piece of the curb, asshole.”

  Lefler’s helmet was dazzling white and tilted forward, the short bill pulled down to his nose. I drove up beside him and yelled, “That’s a gorgeous skid lid you got there, boy, but pull it up a little and lemme see those baby blues.”

  Lefler smiled and goosed his bike a little. He was even wearing expensive black leather gloves in this heat.

  “Hi, Bumper,” said Crandall, taking his hand from the bar for a minute. We rode slow side by side and I grinned at Lefler, who looked self-conscious.

  “How’s he doing, Crandall?” I asked. “I broke him in on the job. He’s Bumper-ized.”

  “Not bad for a baby,” Crandall shrugged.

  “I see you took his training wheels off,” I said, and Lefler giggled and goosed the Harley again.

  I could see the edge of the horseshoe cleats on his heels and I knew his soles were probably studded with iron.

  “Don’t go walking around my beat with those boots on, kid,” I yelled. “You’ll be kicking up sparks and starting fires.” I chuckled then as I remembered seeing a motor cop with two cups of coffee in his gloved hands go right on his ass one time because of those cleats.

  I waved at Lefler and pulled away. Young hotdogs, I thought. I was glad I was older when I came on the job. But then, I knew I would never have been a motor officer. Writing traffic tickets was the one part of police work I didn’t like. The only good thing about it was it gave you an excuse to stop some suspicious cars on the pretext of writing a ticket. More good arrests came from phony traffic stops than anything else. More policemen got blown up that way, too.

  I decided, what the hell, I was too jumpy to lay around the park reading the paper. I’d been like a cat ever since I’d decided about Friday. I hardly slept last night. I headed back toward the beat.

  I should be patrolling for the burglar, I thought. I really wanted him now that I only had a couple days left. He was a daytime hotel creeper and hitting maybe four to six hotel rooms in the best downtown hotels every time he went to work. The dicks talked to us at rollcall and said the M.O. run showed he preferred weekdays, especially Thursday and Friday, but a lot of jobs were showing up on Wednesdays. This guy would shim doors which isn’t too hard to do in any hotel since they usually have the world’s worst security, and he’d burgle the place whether the occupants were in or not. Of course he waited until they were in the shower or napping. I loved catching burglars. Most policemen call it fighting ghosts and give up trying to catch them, but I’d rather catch a hot prowl guy than a stickup man any day. And any burglar with balls enough to take a pad when the people are home is every bit as dangerous as a stickup man.

  I decided I’d patrol the hotels by the Harbor Freeway. I had a theory this guy was using some sort of repairman disguise since he’d eluded all stakeouts so far, and I fi
gured him for a repair or delivery truck. I envisioned him as an out-of-towner who used the convenient Harbor Freeway to come to his job. This burglar was doing ding-a-ling stuff on some of the jobs, cutting up clothing, usually women’s or kids’, tearing the crotch out of underwear, and on a recent job he stabbed the hell out of a big teddy bear that a little girl left on the bed covered up with a blanket. I was glad the people weren’t in when he hit that time. He was kinky, but a clever burglar, a lucky burglar. I thought about patrolling around the hotels, but first I’d go see Glenda. She’d be rehearsing now, and I might never see her again. She was one of the people I owed a good-bye to.

  I entered the side door of the run-down little theater. They mostly showed skin flicks now. They used to have a halfway decent burlesque house here, with some fair comics and good-looking girls. Glenda was something in those days. The “Gilded Girl” they called her. She’d come out in a gold sheath and peel to a golden G-string and gold pasties. She was tall and graceful, and a better-than-average dancer. She played some big-time clubs off and on, but she was thirty-eight years old now and after two or three husbands she was back down on Main Street competing with beaver movies between reels, and taxi dancing part-time down the street at the ballroom. She was maybe twenty pounds heavier, but she still looked good to me because I saw her like she used to be.

  I stood there in the shadows backstage and got accustomed to the dark and the quiet. They didn’t even have anyone on the door anymore. I guess even the weinie waggers and bustle rubbers gave up sneaking in the side door of this hole. The wallpaper was wet and rusty and curling off the walls like old scrolls. There were dirty costumes laying around on chairs. The popcorn machine, which they activated on weekend nights, was leaning against the wall, one leg broken.