The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “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 reading 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.

  “Don’t think of leaving us, Bumper,” she said and stared me in the eye.

  “Here’s a few bucks for Sissy,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for a ten.

  “I don’t have any information this time,” she said, shaking her head, but I tucked it inside her G-string and she grinned.

  “It’s for the kid.”

  There were some things I’d intended asking her about some gunsel I’d heard was hanging out in the skin houses and taxi-dance joints, but I couldn’t trust myself alone with her for another minute. “See you later, kid,” I said weakly.

  “Bye, Bumper,” she said as I picked my way through the darkness to the stage door. Aside from the fact that Cassie gave me all I could handle, there was another reason I tore myself away from her like that. Any cop knows you can’t afford to get too tight with your informant. You try screwing a snitch and you’ll be the one that ends up getting screwed.

  TWO

  AFTER LEAVING GLENDA it actually seemed cool on the street. Glenda never did anything like that before. Everyone was acting a little ding-a-ling when I mentioned my retirement. I didn’t feel like climbing back inside that machine and listening to the noisy chatter on the radio.

  It was still morning now and I was pretty happy, twirling my stick as I strolled along. I guess I swaggered along. Most beat officers swagger. People expect you to. It shows the hangtoughs you’re not afraid, and people expect it. Also they expect an older cop to cock his hat a little so I always do that too.

  I still wore the traditional eight-pointed hat and used a leather thong on my stick. The Department went to more modern round hats, like Air Force hats, and we all have to change over. I’d wear the eight-pointed police hat to the end, I thought. Then I thought about Friday as being the end and I started a fancy stick spin to keep my mind off it. I let the baton go bouncing off the sidewalk back up into my hand. Three shoe shine kids were watching me, two Mexican, one Negro. The baton trick impressed the hell out of them. I strung it out like a Yo-Yo, did some back twirls and dropped it back in the ring in one smooth motion.

  “Want a choo chine, Bumper?” said one of the Mexican kids.

  “Thanks pal, but I don’t need one.”

  “It’s free to you,” he said, tagging along beside me for a minute.

  “I’m
buying juice today, pal,” I said, flipping two quarters up in the air which one of them jumped up and caught. He ran to the orange juice parlor three doors away with the other two chasing him. The shoe shine boxes hung around their necks with ropes and thudded against their legs as they ran.

  These little kids probably never saw a beat officer twirl a stick before. The Department ordered us to remove the leather thongs a couple years ago, but I never did and all the sergeants pretend not to notice as long as I borrow a regulation baton for inspections.

  The stick is held in the ring now by a big rubber washer like the one that goes over the pipe in the back of your toilet. We’ve learned new ways to use the stick from some young Japanese cops who are karate and aikido experts. We use the blunt end of the stick more and I have to admit it beats hell out of the old caveman swing. I must’ve shattered six sticks over guys’ heads, arms and legs in my time. Now I’ve learned from these Nisei kids how to swing that baton in a big arc and put my whole ass behind it. I could damn near drive it through a guy if I wanted to, and never hurt the stick. It’s very graceful stuff too. I feel I can do twice as well in a brawl now. The only bad thing is, they convinced the Department brass that the leather thong was worthless. You see, these kids were never real beat men. Neither were the brass. They don’t understand what the cop twirling his stick really means to people who see him stroll down a quiet street throwing that big shadow in an eight-pointed hat. Anyway, I’d never take off the leather thong. It made me sick to think of a toilet washer on a police weapon.

  I stopped by the arcade and saw a big muscle-bound fruit hustler standing there. I just looked hard at him for a second, and he fell apart and slithered away. Then I saw two con guys leaning up against a wall flipping a quarter, hoping to get a square in a coin smack. I stared at them and they got nervous and skulked around to the parking lot and disappeared.

  The arcade was almost deserted. I remember when the slimeballs used to be packed in there solid, asshole to belly button, waiting to look at the skin show in the viewer. That was a big thing then. The most daring thing around. The vice squad used to bust guys all the time for masturbating. There were pecker prints all over the walls in front of the viewer. Now you can walk in any bar or movie house down here and see live skin shows, or animal flicks, and I don’t mean Walt Disney stuff. It’s women and dogs, dykes and donkeys, dildos and whips, fags, chickens, and ducks. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who or what is doing what to who or what.

  Then I started thinking about the camera club that used to be next door to the arcade when nudity was still a big thing. It cost fifteen bucks to join and five bucks for every camera session. You got to take all the pictures of a naked girl you wanted, as long as you didn’t get closer than two feet and as long as you didn’t touch. Of course, most of the “photographers” didn’t even have film in their cameras, but the management knew it and never bothered putting in real camera lights and nobody complained. It was really so innocent.

  I was about to head back to my car when I noticed another junkie watching me. He was trying to decide whether to rabbit or freeze. He froze finally, his eyes roaming around too casually, hitting on everything but me, hoping he could melt into the jungle. I hardly ever bust hypes for marks anymore, and he looked too sick to be holding, but I thought I recognized him.

  “Come here, man,” I called and he came slinking my way like it was all over.

  “Hello, Bumper.”

  “Well, hello, Wimpy,” I said to the chalk-faced hype. “It took me a minute to recognize you. You’re older.”

  “Went away for three years last time.”

  “How come so long?”

  “Armed robbery. Went to Q behind armed robbery. Violence don’t suit me. I shoulda stuck to boosting. San Quentin made me old, Bumper.”

  “Too bad, Wimpy. Yeah, now I remember. You did a few gas stations, right?”

  He was old. His sandy hair was streaked with gray and it was patchy. And his teeth were rotting and loose in his mouth. It was starting to come back to me like it always does: Herman (Wimpy) Brown, a lifelong hype and a pretty good snitch when he wanted to be. Couldn’t be more than forty but he looked a lot older than me.

  “I wish I hadn’t never met that hangtough, Barty Mendez. Remember him, Bumper? A dope fiend shouldn’t never do violent crime. You just ain’t cut out for it. I coulda kept boosting cigarettes out of markets and made me a fair living for quite a while.”

  “How much you boosting now, Wimpy?” I said, giving him a light. He was clammy and covered with gooseflesh. If he knew anything he’d tell me. He wanted a taste so bad right now, he’d snitch on his mother.

  “I don’t boost anywhere near your beat, Bumper. I go out to the west side and lift maybe a couple dozen cartons of smokes a day outta those big markets. I don’t do nothing down here except look for guys holding.”

  “You hang up your parole yet?”

  “No, I ain’t running from my parole officer. You can call in and check.” He dragged hard on the cigarette but it wasn’t doing much good.

  “Let’s see your arms, Wimpy,” I said, taking one bony arm and pushing up the sleeve.

  “You ain’t gonna bust me on a chickenshit marks case, are you, Bumper?”

  “I’m just curious,” I said, noticing the inner elbows were fairly clean. I’d have to put on my glasses to see the marks and I never took my glasses to work. They stayed in my apartment.

  “Few marks, Bumper, not too bad,” he said, trying a black-toothed smile. “I shrink them with hemorrhoid ointment.”

  I bent the elbow and looked at the back of the forearm. “Damn, the whole Union Pacific could run on those tracks!” I didn’t need glasses to see those swollen abscessed wounds.

  “Don’t bust me, Bumper,” he whined. “I can work for you like I used to. I gave you some good things, remember? I turned the guy that juked that taxi dancer in the alley. The one that almost cut her tit off, remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said, as it came back to me. Wimpy did turn that one for me.

  “Don’t these P.O.’s ever look at your arms?” I asked, sliding the sleeves back down.

  “Some’re like cops, others’re social workers. I always been lucky about drawing a square P.O. or one who really digs numbers, like how many guys he’s rehabilitating. They don’t want to fail you, you know? Nowadays they give you dope and call it something else and say you’re cured. They show you statistics, but I think the ones they figure are clean are just dead, probably from an overdose.”

  “Make sure you don’t O.D., Wimpy,” I said, leading him away from the arcade so we could talk in private while I was walking him to the corner call box to run a make.

  “I liked it inside when I was on the program, Bumper. Honest to God. C.R.C. is a good place. I knew guys with no priors who shot phony needle holes in their arms so they could go there instead of to Q. And I heard Tehachapi is even better. Good food, and you don’t hardly work at all, and group therapy where you can shuck, and there’s these trade schools there where you can jive around. I could do a nickel in those places and I wouldn’t mind. In fact, last time I was sorta sorry they kicked me out after thirteen months. But three years in Q broke me, Bumper. You know you’re really in the joint when you’re in that place.”

  “Still think about geezing when you’re inside?”

  “Always think about that,” he said, trying to smile again as we stopped next to the call box. There were people walking by but nobody close. “I need to geez bad now, Bumper. Real bad.” He looked like he was going to cry.

  “Well, don’t flip. I might not bust you if you can do me some good. Start thinking real hard, while I run a make to see if you hung it up.”

  “My parole’s good as gold,” he said, already perking up now that he figured I wasn’t going to book him for marks. “You and me could work good, Bumper. I always trusted you. You got a rep for protecting your informants. Nobody never got a rat jacket behind your busts. I know you got a
n army of snitches, but nobody never got a snitch jacket. You take care of your people.”

  “You won’t get a jacket either, Wimpy. Work with me and nobody knows. Nobody.”

  Wimpy was sniffling and cotton-mouthed so I unlocked the call box and hurried up with the wants check. I gave the girl his name and birthdate, and lit his cigarette while we waited. He started looking around. He wasn’t afraid to be caught informing, he was just looking for a connection: a peddler, a junkie, anybody that might be holding a cap. I’d blow my brains out first, I thought.

  “You living at a halfway house?” I asked.

  “Not now,” he said. “You know, after being clean for three years I thought I could do it this time. Then I went and fixed the second day out, and I was feeling so bad about it I went to a kick pad over on the east side and asked them to sign me in. They did and I was clean three more days, left the kick pad, scored some junk, and had a spike in my arm ever since.”

  “Ever fire when you were in the joint?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going until the information came back.

  “I never did. Never had the chance. I heard of a few guys. I once saw two guys make an outfit. They were expecting half a piece from somewheres. I don’t know what they had planned, but they sure was making a fit.”

  “How?”

  “They bust open this light bulb and one of them held the filament with a piece of cardboard and a rag and the other just kept heating it up with matches, and those suckers stretched that thing out until it was a pretty good eyedropper. They stuck a hole in it with a pin and attached a plastic spray bottle to it and it wasn’t a bad fit. I’d a took a chance and stuck it in my arm if there was some dope in it.”

  “Probably break off in your vein.”

  “Worth the chance. I seen guys without a spike so strung out and hurting they cut their arm open with a razor and blow a mouthful of dope right in there.”