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 Broadway 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."
L
efler 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 figured 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.
"The cockroaches serve the popcorn in this joint. You don't want any, Bumper," said Glenda, who had stepped out of her dressing room and was watching me from the darkness.
"Hi, kid." I smiled and followed her voice through the dark to the dimly lit little dressing room.
She kissed me on the cheek like she always did, and I took off my hat and flopped down on the ragged overstuffed chair behind her makeup table.
"Hey, Saint Francis, where've all the birdies gone?" she said, tickling the bald spot on my crown. She always laid about a hundred old jokes on me every time we met.
Glenda was wearing net stockings with a hole in one leg and a sequined G-string. She was nude on top and didn't bother putting on a robe. I didn't blame her, it was so damn hot today, but she didn't usually go around like this in front of me and it made me a little nervous.
"Hot weather's here, baby," she said, sitting down and fixing her makeup. "When you going back on nights?"
Glenda knew my M. O. I work days in the winter, night-watch in the summer when the Los Angeles sun starts turning the heavy bluesuit into sackcloth.
"I'll never go back on nights, Glenda," I said casually. "I'm retiring."
She turned around in her chair and those heavy white melons bounced once or twice. Her hair was long and blond.
She always claimed she was a real blonde but I'd never know.
"You won't quit," she said. "You'll be here till they kick you out. Or till you die. Like me."
"We'll both leave here," I said, smiling because she was starting to look upset. "Some nice guy'll come along and . . ."
"Some nice guy took me out of here three times, Bumper. Trouble is I'm just not a nice girl. Too fucked up for any man. You're just kidding about retiring, aren't you?"
"How's Sissy?" I said, to change the subject.
Glenda answered by taking a package of snapshots out of her purse and handing them to me. I'm farsighted now and in the dimness I couldn't really see anything but the outline of a little girl holding a dog. I couldn't even say if the dog was real or stuffed.
"She's beautiful," I said, knowing she was. I'd last seen her several months ago when I drove Glenda home from work one night.
"Every dollar you ever gave me went into a bank account for her just like we agreed at first," said Glenda.
"I know that."
"I added to it on my own too."
"She'll have something someday."
"Bet your ass she will," said Glenda, lighting a cigarette.
I wondered how much I'd given Glenda over the past ten years. And I wondered how many really good arrests I'd made on information she gave me. She was one of my big secrets. The detectives had informants who they paid but the bluesuits weren't supposed to be involved in that kind of police work. Well, I had my paid informants too. But I didn't pay them from any Department money. I paid them from my pocket, and when I made the bust on the scam they gave me, I made it look like I lucked onto the arrest. Or I made up some other fanciful story for the arrest report. That way Glenda was protected and nobody could say Bumper Morgan was completely nuts for paying informants out of his own pocket. The first time, Glenda turned me a federal fugitive who was dating her and who carried a gun and pulled stickups. I tried to give her twenty bucks and she refused it, saying he was a no-good asshole and belonged in the joint and she was no snitch. I made her take it for Sissy who was a baby then, and who had no dad. Since then over the years I've probably laid a thousand on Glenda for Sissy. And I've probably made the best pinches of any cop in Central Division.
"She gonna be a blondie like momma?" I asked.
"Yeah," she smiled. "More blond than me though. And about ten times as smart. I think she's smarter already. I'm re
ading books like mad to keep up with her."
"Those private schools are tough," I nodded. "They teach them something."
"You notice this one, Bumper?" she smiled, coming over to me and sitting on the arm of the chair. She was smiling big and thinking about Sissy now. "The dog's pulling her hair. Look at the expression."
"Oh yeah," I said, seeing only a blur and feeling one of those heavy chi-chis resting on my shoulder. Hers were big and natural, not pumped full of plastic like so many these days.
"She's peeved in this one," said Glenda, leaning closer, and it was pressed against my cheek, and finally one tender doorbell went right in my ear.
"Damn it, Glenda!" I said, looking up.
"What?" she answered, moving back. She got it, and laughed her hard hoarse laugh. Then her laugh softened and she smiled and her big eyes went soft and I noticed the lashes were dark beneath the eyes and not from mascara. I thought Glenda was more attractive now than she ever was.
"I have a big feeling for you, Bumper," she said, and kissed me right on the mouth. "You and Sissy are the only ones. You're what's happening, baby."
Glenda was like Ruthie. She was one of the people who belonged to the beat. There were laws that I made for myself, but she was almost naked and to me she was still so beautiful.
"Now," she said, knowing I was about to explode. "Why not? You never have and I always wanted you to."
"Gotta get back to my car," I said, jumping up and crossing the room in three big steps. Then I mumbled something else about missing my radio calls, and Glenda told me to wait.
"You forgot your hat," she said, handing it to me.
"Thanks," I said, putting the lid on with one shaky hand. She held the other one and kissed my palm with a warm wet mouth.
the Blue Knight (1972) Page 2