"Ponk-ass bastard," said Nate, remembering the punch that put him out for almost five minutes. "He come in the other day. I recognized him right off, and I tol' him to git his ass out or I'd call Bumper. He musta 'membered the name, 'cause he got his ass out wif oney a few cuss words."
"He remembered me, huh?" I grinned as Odell set down a cold glass of water, and poured me a cup of coffee without asking. They knew of course that I didn't work Newton Street Station and they only bounced for the Newton Street patrol car in the area, but after that Sneed fight, they always fed me free too, and in fact, always tried to get me to come more often. But I didn't like to take advantage. Before that, I used to come and pay half price like any uniformed cop could do.
"Here come the noonday rush," said Nate, and I heard car doors slam and a dozen black people talking and laughing came in and took the large booths in the front. I figured them for teachers. There was a high school and two grade schools close by and the place was pretty full by the time Nate put my plate in front of me. Only it wasn't a plate, it was a platter. It was always the same. I'd ask for ribs, and I'd get ribs, a double portion, and a heap of beef, oozing with bar-b-que sauce, and some delicious fresh bread that was made next door, and an ice-cream scoop of whipped butter. I'd sop the bread in the bar-b-que and either Nate or Odell would ladle fresh hot bar-b-que on the platter all during the meal. With it I had a huge cold mound of delicious slaw, and only a few fries because there wasn't much room for anything else. There just was no fat on Odell's beef. He was too proud to permit it, because he was almost sixty years old and hadn't learned the new ways of cutting corners and chiseling.
After I got over the first joy of remembering exactly how delicious the beef was, one of the waitresses started helping at the counter because Odell and Nate were swamped. She was a buxom girl, maybe thirty-five, a little bronzer than Nate, with a modest natural hairdo, which I like, not a way-out phony Afro. Her waist was very small for her size and the boobs soared out over a flat stomach. She knew I was admiring her and didn't seem to mind, and as always, a good-looking woman close by made the meal perfect.
"Her name's Trudy," said Odell, winking at me, when the waitress went to the far end of the counter. His wink and grin meant she was fair game and not married or anything. I used to date another of his waitresses once in a while, a plump, dusky girl named Wilma who was a thirty-two year old grandmother. She finally left Odell's and got married for the fourth time. I really enjoyed being with her. I taught her the swim and the jerk and the boogaloo when they first came out. I learned them from my Madeleine Carroll girlfriend.
"Thanks, Odell," I said. "Maybe next time I come in I'll take a table in her section."
"Anythin' funny happen lately, Bumper?" asked Nate after he passed some orders through to the kitchen.
"Not lately. . . . Let's see, did I ever tell you about the big dude I stopped for busting a stop sign out front of your place?"
"Naw, tell us," said Odell, stopping with a plate in his hand.
"Well, like I say, this guy blew the stop sign and I chased him and brought him down at Forty-first. He's a giant, six-feet-seven maybe, heavier than me. All muscle. I ran a make on him over the radio while I'm writing a ticket. Turns out there's a traffic warrant for his arrest."
"Damn," said Nate, all ears now. "You had to fight him?"
"When I tell him there's this warrant he says, `Too bad, man, I just ain't going to jail.' Just that cool he said it. Then he steps back like he's ready."
"Guddamn," said Odell.
"So then it just comes to me, this idea. I walk over to the police car and pick up the radio and say in a loud voice, `One-X-L-Forty-five requesting an ambulance at Forty-first and Avalon.' The big dude, he looks around and says, `What's the ambulance for?' I say, `That's for you, asshole, if you don't get in that car.'
"So he gets in the car and halfway to jail he starts chuckling, then pretty soon he really busts up. `Man,' he says, `You really flimflammed my ass. This is the first time I ever laughed my way to jail.'"
"Gud-damn, Bumper," said Odell. "You're somethin' else. Guddamn." Then they both went off laughing to wait on customers.
I finished the rest of the meat, picked the bones, and sopped up the last of the bread, but I wasn't happy now. In fact, it was depressing there with a crowd of people and the waitresses rushing around and dishes clattering, so I said good-bye to Nate and Odell. Naturally, I couldn't tip them even though they personally served me, so I gave two bucks to Nate and said, "Give it to Trudy. Tell her it's an advance tip for the good service she's gonna give me next time when I take a table in her section."
"I'll tell her, Bumper," Nate grinned as I waved and burped and walked out the door.
As I was trying to read the temperature again over a savings and loan office, the time flashed on the marquee. It was one-thirty, which is the time afternoon court always convenes. It dawned on me that I'd forgotten I had to be at a preliminary hearing this afternoon!
I cursed and stomped on it, heading for the new municipal court annex on Sunset, near the Old Mission Plaza, and then I slowed down and thought, what the hell, this is the last time I'll ever go to court on duty. I may get called back to testify after I'm retired, but this'll be the last time on duty as a working cop, and I'd never been late to court in twenty years. So what the hell, I slowed down and cruised leisurely to the court building.
I passed one of the Indian bars on Main Street, and saw two drunken braves about to duke it out as they headed for the alley in back, pushing and yelling at each other. I knew lots of Payutes and Apaches and others from a dozen Southwest tribes, because so many of them ended up downtown here on my beat. But it was depressing being with them. They were so defeated, those that ended up on Main Street, and I was glad to see them in a fistfight once in a while. At least that proved they could strike back a little bit, at something, even if it was at another drunken tribal brother. Once they hit my beat they were usually finished, or maybe long before they arrived here. They'd become winos, and many of the women, fat five-dollar whores. You wanted to pick them up, shake them out, send them somewhere, in some direction, but there didn't seem to be anywhere an Indian wanted to go. They were hopeless, forlorn people. One old beat cop told me they could break your heart if you let them.
I saw a Gypsy family walking to a rusty old Pontiac in a parking lot near Third and Main. The mother was a stooped-over hag, filthy, with dangling earrings, a peasant blouse, and a full red skirt hanging lopsided below her knees. The man walked in front of her. He was four inches shorter and skinny, about my age. A very dark unshaven face turned my way, and I recognized him. He used to hang around downtown and work with a Gypsy dame on pigeon drops and once in a while a Jamaican switch. The broad was probably his old lady, but I couldn't remember the face just now. There were three kids following: a dirty, beautiful teenage girl dressed like her mother, a ragtag little boy of ten or so, and a curly-haired little doll of four who was dressed like mama also.
I wondered what kind of scam they were working on now, and I tried to think of his name and couldn't, and I wondered if he'd remember me. As late as I was for court, I pulled to the curb.
"Hey, just a minute," I called.
"What, what, what?" said the man. "Officer, what's the problem? What's the problem? Gypsy boy. I'm just a Gypsy boy. You know me don't you, Officer? I talked with you before, ain't I? We was just shopping, Officer. Me and my babies and my babies' mother."
"Where're your packages?" I asked, and he squinted from the bright sunshine and peered into the car from the passenger side. His family all stood like a row of quail, and watched me.
"We didn't see nothing we liked, Officer. We ain't got much money. Got to shop careful." He talked with his hands, hips, all his muscles, especially those dozen or so that moved the mobile face, in expressions of hope and despair and honesty. Oh, what honesty.
"What's your name?"
"Marcos. Ben Marcos."
"Related to George Adams?"
; "Sure. He was my cousin, God rest him."
I laughed out loud then, because every Gypsy I'd ever talked to in twenty years claimed he was cousin to the late Gypsy king.
"I know you don't I, Officer?" he asked, smiling then, because I had laughed, and I didn't want to leave because I enjoyed hearing the peculiar Hit to the Gypsy speech, and I enjoyed looking at his unwashed children who were exceptionally beautiful, and I wondered for the hundredth time whether a Gypsy could ever be honest after centuries of living under a code which praised deceit and trickery and theft from all but other Gypsies. Then I was sad because I'd always wanted to really know the Gypsies. That would be the hardest friendship I would ever make, but I had it on my list of things to accomplish before I die. I knew a clan leader named Frank Serna, and once I went to his home in Lincoln Heights and ate dinner with a houseful of his relatives, but of course they didn't talk about things they usually talked about, and I could tell by all the nervous jokes that having an outsider and especially a cop in the house was a very strange thing for the clan. Still, Frank asked me back, and when I had time I was going to work on breaking into the inner circle and making them trust me a little because there were Gypsy secrets I wanted to know. But I could never hope to do it without being a cop, because they'd only let me know them if they first thought I could do them some good, because all Gypsies lived in constant running warfare with cops. It was too late now, because I would not be a cop, and I would never get to learn the Gypsy secrets.
"We can go now, Officer?" said the Gypsy, holding his hands clasped together, in a prayerful gesture. "It's very hot for my babies' mama here in the sun."
I looked at the Gypsy woman then, looked at her face and she was not a hag, and not as old as I first thought. She stood much taller now and glared at me because her man was licking my boots and I saw that she had once been as pretty as her daughter, and I thought of how I had so often been accused of seeing good things in all women, even ones who were ugly to my partners, and I guessed it was true, that I exaggerated the beauty of all women I knew or ever saw. I wondered about that, and I was wallowing in depression now.
"Please, sir. Can we go now?" he said, the sweat running down the creases in his face, and on his unwashed neck.
"Go your way, Gypsy," I said, and dug out from the curb, and in a few minutes I was parked and walking in the court building.
Chapter TWELVE
BEEN WAITING FOR YOU, Bumper," said the robbery detective, a wrinkled old-timer named Miles. He had been a robbery detective even before I came on the job and was one of the last to still wear a wide-brimmed felt hat. They used to be called the "hat squad," and the wide felt hat was their trademark, but of course in recent years no one in Los Angeles wore hats like that. Miles was a stubborn old bastard though, he still wore his, and a wide-shouldered, too-big suit coat with two six-inch guns, one on each hip, because he was an old robbery detective and the hat squad legend demanded it and other policemen expected it.
"Sorry I'm late, Miles," I said.
"That's okay, the case just got sent out to Division Forty-two. Can you handle this by yourself? I got another prelim in Forty-three and a couple of rookie arresting officers for witnesses. If I ain't in there to tell this young D. A. how to put on his case, we might lose it."
"Sure, I'll handle it. Am I the only witness?"
"You and the hotel manager."
"Got the evidence?"
"Yeah, here it is." Miles pulled a large manila envelope out of his cheap plastic briefcase and I recognized the evidence tag I had stuck on there months ago when I made the arrest.
"The gun's in there and the two clips."
"Too bad you couldn't file a robbery."
"Yeah, well like I explained to you right after that caper, we were lucky to get what we did."
"You filed an eleven-five-thirty too, didn't you?"
"Oh yeah. Here's the pot, I almost forgot." Miles reached back in the briefcase and pulled out an analyzed-evidence envelope with my seal on it that contained the marijuana with the chemist's written analysis on the package.
"How many jobs you figure this guy for?"
"I think I told you four, didn't I?"
"Yeah."
"Now we think he done six. Two in Rampart and four here in Central."
"It's a shame you couldn't make him on at least one robbery."
"You're telling me. I had him in a regular show-up and I had a few private mug-shot show-ups, and I talked and coaxed and damn near threatened my victims and witnesses and the closest I could ever come was one old broad that said he looked like the bandit."
"Scumbag really did a good job with makeup, huh?"
"Did a hell of a job," Miles nodded. "Remember, he was an actor for a while and he did a hell of a good job with paint and putty. But shit, the M. O. was identical, the way he took mom and dad markets. Always asked for a case of some kind of beer they were short of and when they went in the back for the beer, boom, he pulled the forty-five automatic and took the place down."
"He ever get violent?"
"Not in the jobs in Central. I found out later he pistol-whipped a guy in one of the Rampart jobs. Some seventy-year-old grocery clerk decided he was Wyatt Earp and tried to go for some fucked-up old thirty-two he had stashed under the counter. Landry really laid him open. Three times across the eyes with the forty-five. He blinded him. Old guy's still in the hospital."
"His P. O. going to violate him?"
"This asshole has a rabbit's foot. He finished his parole two weeks before you busted him. Ain't that something else? Two weeks!"
"Well, I better get in there," I said. "Some of these deputy D. A.'s get panicky when you're not holding their hands. You get a special D. A. for this one?"
"No. It's a dead bang case. You got him cold. Shouldn't be any search and seizure problems at all. And even though we know this guy's a good robber, we ain't got nothing on him today but some low-grade felonies, ex-con with a gun and possession of pot."
"Can't we send him back to the joint with his record?"
"We're going to try. I'll stop in the courtroom soon as I can. If you finish before me, let me know if you held him to answer."
"You got doubts I'll hold him?" I grinned, and headed for the courtroom, feeling very strange as I had all day. The last time I wore a bluesuit into a courtroom, I thought.
This courtroom was almost empty. There were only three people in the audience, two older women, probably the kind that come downtown and watch criminal trials for fun, and a youngish guy in a business suit who was obviously a witness and looked disgusted as hell about being here. Since these courtrooms are for preliminary hearings only, there was no jury box, just the judge's bench and witness box, the counsel tables, the clerk's desk, and a small desk near the railing for the bailiff.
At least I'll be through hassling with this legal machinery, I thought, which cops tend to think is designed by a bunch of neurotics because it seems to go a hundred miles past the point where any sane man would've stopped. After a felony complaint is filed, the defendant is arraigned and then has a preliminary hearing which amounts to a trial. This takes the place of a grand jury indictment and it's held to see if there's good enough cause to bind him over to superior court for trial, and then he's arraigned again in superior court, and later has a trial. Except that in between there're a couple of hearings to set aside what you've done already. In capital cases there's a separate trial for guilt and another for penalty, so that's why celebrated California cases drag on for years until they cost so much that everybody gives up or lets the guy cop to a lesser included offense.
We have a very diligent bunch of young public defenders around here who, being on a monthly salary and not having to run from one good paying client to another, will drive you up a wall defending a chickenshit burglary like it was the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. The D. A.'s office has millions of very fine crimes to choose from and won't issue a felony complaint unless they're pretty damned sure they can get a convictio
n. But then, there aren't that many real felony convictions, because courts and prisons are so overcrowded. A misdemeanor plea is accepted lots of times even from guys with heavyweight priors.
All this would make Los Angeles a frustrating place to be a cop if it weren't for the fact that the West in general is not controlled by the political clubhouse, owing to the fact that our towns are so sprawling and young. This means that in my twenty years I could bust any deserving son of a bitch, and I never got bumrapped except once when I booked an obnoxious French diplomat for drunk driving after he badmouthed me. I later denied to my bosses that he told me of his diplomatic immunity.
But in spite of all the bitching by policemen there's one thing you can't deny: it's still the best system going, and even if it's rough on a cop, who the hell would want to walk a beat in Moscow or Madrid, or anywhere in between? We gripe for sympathy but most of us know that a cop's never going to be loved by people in general, and I say if you got to have lots of love, join the fire department.
I started listening a little bit to the preliminary hearing that was going on. The defendant was a tall, nice-looking guy named John Trafford, about twenty-seven years old, and his pretty woman, probably his wife, was in the courtroom. He kept turning and making courageous gestures in her direction which wasn't particularly impressing Judge Martha Bedford, a tough, severe-looking old girl who I had always found to be a fair judge, both to the people and the defense. There was a fag testifying that this clean-cut-looking young chap had picked him up in a gay bar and gone to the fag's pad, where after an undescribed sex act the young defendant, who the fag called Tommy, had damn near cut his head off with a kitchen knife. And then he ransacked the fruit's pad and stole three hundred blood-soaked dollars which were found in his pocket by two uniformed coppers who shagged him downtown at Fifth and Main where he later illegally parked his car.
The defense counsel was badgering the fruit, an effeminate little man about forty years old, who owned a photography studio, and the fruit wasn't without sympathy for the defendant as he glanced nervously at his friend "Tommy," and I thought this was darkly humorous and typical. Weak people need people so much they'd forgive anything. I didn't think the defense counsel was succeeding too well in trying to minimize the thing as just another fruitroll, since the hospital record showed massive transfusions and a hundred or so sutures needed to close up the neck wounds of the fruit.
the Blue Knight (1972) Page 17