The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  He was puffing big on the smoke. His hands and arms were covered with the jailhouse tattoos made from pencil lead shavings which they mix with spit and jab into their arms with a million pinpricks. He probably did it when he was a youngster just coming up. Now he was an old head and had professional tattoos all over the places where he shoots junk, but nothing could hide those tracks.

  “I used to be a boss booster at one time, Bumper. Not just a cigarette thief. I did department stores for good clothes and expensive perfume, even jewelry counters which are pretty tough to do. I wore two-hundred-dollar suits in the days when only rich guys wore suits that good.”

  “Work alone?”

  “All alone, I swear. I didn’t need nobody. I looked different then. I was good looking, honest I was. I even talked better. I used to read a lot of magazines and books. I could walk through these department stores and spot these young kids and temporary sales help and have them give me their money. Give me their money, I tell you.”

  “How’d you work that scam?”

  “I’d tell them Mister Freeman, the retail manager, sent me to pick up their receipts. He didn’t want too much in the registers, I’d say, and I’d stick out my money bag and they’d fill it up for Mister Freeman.” Wimpy started to laugh and ended up wheezing and choking. He settled down after a minute.

  “I sure owe plenty to Mister Freeman. I gotta repay that sucker if I ever meet him. I used that name in maybe fifty department stores. That was my real father’s name. That’s really my real name, but when I was a kid I took the name of this bastard my old lady married. I always played like my real old man would’ve did something for us if he’d been around, so this way he did. Old Mister Freeman must’ve gave me ten grand. Tax free. More than most old men ever give their kids, hey, Bumper?”

  “More than mine, Wimpy,” I smiled.

  “I did real good on that till-tap. I looked so nice, carnation and all. I had another scam where I’d boost good stuff, expensive baby clothes, luggage, anything. Then I’d bring it back to the salesman in the store bag and tell him I didn’t have my receipt but would they please give me back my money on account of little Bobby wouldn’t be needing these things because he smothered in his crib last Tuesday. Or old Uncle Pete passed on just before he went on his trip that he saved and dreamed about for forty-eight years and I couldn’t bear to look at this luggage anymore. Honest, Bumper, they couldn’t give me the bread fast enough. I even made men cry. I had one woman beg me to take ten bucks from her own purse to help with the baby’s funeral. I took that ten bucks and bought a little ten-dollar bag of junk and all the time I was cutting open that balloon and cooking that stuff I thought, ‘Oh you baby. You really are my baby.’ I took that spike and dug a little grave in my flesh and when I shoved that thing in my arm and felt it going in, I said, ‘Thank you, lady, thank you, thank you, this is the best funeral my baby could have.’” Wimpy closed his eyes and lifted his face, smiling a little as he thought of his baby.

  “Doesn’t your P.O. ever give you a urinalysis or anything?” I still couldn’t get over an old head like him not having his arms or urine checked when he was on parole, even if he was paroled on a non-narcotics beef.

  “Hasn’t yet, Bumper. I ain’t worried if he does. I always been lucky with P.O.’s. When they put me on the urine program I came up with the squeeze-bottle trick. I just got this square friend of mine, old Homer Allen, to keep me supplied with a fresh bottle of piss, and I kept that little plastic squeeze bottle full and hanging from a string inside my belt. My dumb little P.O. used to think he was sneaky and he’d catch me at my job or at home at night sometimes and ask for a urine sample and I’d just go to the john with him right behind me watching, and I’d reach in my fly and fill his little glass bottle full of Homer’s piss. He thought he was real slick, but he never could catch me. He was such a square. I really liked him. I felt like a father to that kid.”

  The girl came to the phone and read me Wimpy’s record, telling me there were no wants.

  “Well, you’re not running,” I said, hanging up the phone, closing the metal call box door, and hanging the brass key back on my belt.

  “Told you, Bumper. I just saw my P.O. last week. I been reporting regular.”

  “Okay, Wimpy, let’s talk business,” I said.

  “I been thinking, Bumper, there’s this dog motherfucker that did me bad one time. I wouldn’t mind you popping him.”

  “Okay,” I said, giving him a chance to rationalize his snitching, which all informants have to do when they start out, or like Wimpy, when they haven’t snitched for a long time.

  “He deserves to march,” said Wimpy. “Everybody knows he’s no good. He burned me on a buy one time. I bring him a guy to score some pot. It’s not on consignment or nothing, and he sells the guy catnip and I told him I knew the guy good. The guy kicked my ass when he found out it was catnip.”

  “Okay, let’s do him,” I said. “But I ain’t interested in some two- or three-lid punk.”

  “I know, Bumper. He’s a pretty big dealer. We’ll set him up good. I’ll tell him I got a guy with real bread and he should bring three kilos and meet me in a certain place and then maybe you just happen by or something when we’re getting it out of the car and we both start to run but you go after him, naturally, and you get a three-key bust.”

  “No good. I can’t run anymore. We’ll work out something else.”

  “Any way you want, Bumper. I’ll turn anybody for you. I’ll roll over on anybody if you give me a break.”

  “Except your best connection.”

  “That’s God you’re talking about. But I think right this minute I’d even turn my connection for a fix.”

  “Where’s this pot dealer live? Near my beat?”

  “Yeah, not far. East Sixth. We can take him at his hotel. That might be the best way. You can kick down the pad and let me get out the window. At heart he’s just a punk. They call him Little Rudy. He makes roach holders out of chicken bones and folded-up matchbooks and all that punk-ass bullshit. Only thing is, don’t let me get a jacket. See, he knows this boss dyke, a real mean bull dagger. Her pad’s a shooting gallery for some of us. If she knows you finked, she’ll sneak battery acid in your spoon and laugh while you mainline it home. She’s a dog motherfucker.”

  “Okay, Wimpy, when can you set it up?”

  “Saturday, Bumper, we can do it Saturday.”

  “No good,” I said quickly, a gas pain slicing across my stomach. “Friday’s the latest for anything.”

  “Christ, Bumper. He’s out of town. I know for sure. I think he’s gone to the border to score.”

  “I can’t wait past Friday. Think of somebody else then.”

  “Shit, lemme think,” he said, rapping his skinny fingers against his temple. “Oh yeah, I got something. A guy in the Rainbow Hotel. A tall dude, maybe forty, forty-five, blondish hair. He’s in the first apartment to the left on the second floor. I just heard last night he’s a half-ass fence. Buys most anything you steal. Cheap, I hear. Pays less than a dime on the dollar. A righteous dog. He deserves to fall. I hear these dope fiends bring radios and stuff like that, usually in the early morning.”

  “Okay, maybe I’ll try him tomorrow,” I said, not really very interested.

  “Sure, he might have lots of loot in the pad. You could clear up all kinds of burglaries.”

  “Okay, Wimpy, you can make it now. But I want to see you regular. At least three times a week.”

  “Bumper, could you please loan me a little in advance?”

  “You gotta be kidding, Wimpy! Pay a junkie in advance?”

  “I’m in awful bad shape today, Bumper,” he said with a cracked whispery voice, like a prayer. He looked as bad as any I’d ever seen. Then I remembered I’d never see him again. After Friday I’d never see any of them again. He couldn’t do me any good and it was unbelievably stupid, but I gave him a ten, which was just like folding up a saw-buck and sticking it in his arm. He’d be in the same sha
pe twelve hours from now. He stared at the bill like he didn’t believe it at first. I left him there and walked back to the car.

  “We’ll get that pothead for you,” he said. “He’s sloppy. You’ll find seeds between the carpet and the molding outside the door in the hall. I’ll get you lots of probable cause to kick over the pad.”

  “I know how to take down a dope pad, Wimpy,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Later, Bumper, see you later,” he yelled, breaking into a coughing spasm.

  THREE

  I ALWAYS TRY to learn something from the people on my beat, and as I drove away I tried to think if I learned anything from all Wimpy’s chatter. I’d heard this kind of bullshit from a thousand hypes. Then I thought of the hemorrhoid ointment for shrinking hype marks. That was something new. I’d never heard that one before. I always try to teach the rookies to keep their mouths shut and learn to listen. They usually give more information than they get when they’re interrogating somebody. Even a guy like Wimpy could teach you something if you just give him a chance.

  I got back in my car and looked at my watch because I was starting to get hungry. Of course I’m always hungry, or rather, I always want to eat. But I don’t eat between meals and I eat my meals at regular times unless the job prevents it. I believe in routine. If you have rules for little things, rules you make up yourself, and if you obey these rules, your life will be in order. I only alter routines when I have to.

  One of the cats on the daywatch, a youngster named Wilson, drove by in his black-and-white but didn’t notice me because he was eyeballing some hype that was hotfooting it across Broadway to reach the crowded Grand Central Market, probably to score. The doper was moving fast like a hype with some gold in his jeans. Wilson was a good young copper, but sometimes when I looked at him like this, in profile when he was looking somewhere else, that cowlick of his and that kid nose, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on, made me think of someone. For a while it bothered me and then one night last week when I was thinking so hard about getting married, and about Cassie, it came to me-he reminded me of Billy a little bit, but I pushed it out of my mind because I don’t think of dead children or any dead people, that’s another rule of mine. But I did start thinking of Billy’s mother and how bad my first marriage had been and whether it could have been good if Billy had lived, and I had to admit that it could have been good, and it would have lasted if Billy had lived.

  Then I wondered how many bad marriages that started during the war years had turned out all right. But it wasn’t just that, there was the other thing, the dying. I almost told Cruz Segovia about it one time when we used to be partners and we were working a lonely morning watch at three a.m., about how my parents died, and how my brother raised me and how he died, and how my son died, and how I admired Cruz because he had his wife and all those kids and gave himself away to them fearlessly. But I never told him, and when Esteban, his oldest son, died in Vietnam, I watched Cruz with the others, and after the crushing grief he still gave himself away to them, completely. But I couldn’t admire him for it anymore. I could marvel at it, but I couldn’t admire it. I don’t know what I felt about it after that.

  Thinking all these foolish things made a gas bubble start, and I could imagine the bubble getting bigger and bigger. Then I took a bubble buster, chewed it up and swallowed it, made up my mind to start thinking about women or food or something good, raised up, farted, said “Good morning, Your Honor,” and felt a whole lot better.

  FOUR

  IT ALWAYS MADE ME FEEL GOOD just to drive around without thinking, so I turned off my radio and did just that. Pretty soon, without looking at my watch, I knew it was time to eat. I couldn’t decide whether to hit Chinatown or Little Tokyo today. I didn’t want Mexican food, because I promised Cruz Segovia I’d come to his pad for dinner tonight and I’d get enough Mexican food to last me a week. His wife Socorro knew how I loved chile relleno and she’d fix a dozen just for me.

  A few burgers sounded good and there’s a place in Hollywood that has the greatest burgers in town. Every time I go to Hollywood I think about Myrna, a broad I used to fool around with a couple years ago. She was an unreal Hollywood type, but she had a good executive job in a network television studio and whenever we went anywhere she’d end up spending more bread than I would. She loved to waste money, but the thing she really had going as far as I was concerned is that she looked just like Madeleine Carroll whose pictures we had all over our barracks during the war. It wasn’t just that Myrna had style and elegant, springy tits, it’s that she really looked like a woman and acted like one, except that she was a stone pothead and liked to improvise too much sexually. I’m game for anything reasonable, but sometimes Myrna was a little too freaky about things, and she also insisted on turning me on, and finally I tried smoking pot one time with her, but I didn’t feel good high like on fine scotch. On her coffee table she had at least half a key and that’s a pound of pot and that’s trouble. I could just picture me and her getting hauled off to jail in a nark ark. So it was a bummer, and I don’t know if it’s the overall depressant effect of pot or what, but I crashed afterwards, down, down, down, until I felt mean enough to kick the hell out of her. But then, come to think of it, I guess Myrna liked that best of all anyway. So, Madeleine Carroll or not, I finally shined her on and she gave up calling me after a couple weeks, probably having found herself a trained gorilla or something.

  There was one thing about Myrna that I’d never forget-she was a great dancer, not a good dancer, a great dancer, because Myrna could completely stop thinking when she danced. I think that’s the secret. She could dig hard rock and she was a real snake. When she moved on a dance floor, often as not, everyone would stop and watch. Of course they laughed at me-at first. Then they’d see there were two dancers out there. It’s funny about dancing, it’s like food or sex, it’s something you do and you can just forget you have a brain. It’s all body and deep in your guts, especially the hard rock. And hard rock’s the best thing to happen to music. When Myrna and me were really moving, maybe at some kid place on the Sunset Strip, our bodies joined. It wasn’t just a sex thing, but there was that too, it was like our bodies really made it together and you didn’t even have to think anymore.

  I used to always experiment by doing the funky chicken when we first started out. I know it’s getting old now, but I’d do it and they’d all laugh, because of the way my belly jumped and swayed around. Then I’d always do it again right near the end of the song, and nobody laughed. They smiled, but nobody laughed, because they could see by then how graceful I really am, despite the way I’m built. Nobody’s chicken was as funky as mine, so I always stood there flapping my elbows and bowing my knees just to test them. And despite the raw animal moves of Myrna, people also looked at me. They watched both of us dance. That’s one thing I miss about Myrna.

  I didn’t feel like roaming so far from my beat today so I decided on beef teriyaki and headed for J-town. The Japanese have the commercial area around First and Second Streets between Los Angeles Street and Central Avenue. There are lots of colorful shops and restaurants and professional buildings. They also have their share of banks and lots of money to go in them. When I walked in the Geisha Doll on First Street, the lunch hour rush was just about over and the mama-san shuffled over with her little graceful steps like she was still twenty instead of sixty-five. She always wore a silk slit-skirted dress and she really didn’t look too bad for an old girl. I always kidded her about a Japanese wearing a Chinese dress and she would laugh and say, “Make moah China ting in Tokyo than all China. And bettah, goddam betcha.” The place was plush and dark, lots of bamboo, beaded curtains, hanging lanterns.

  “Boom-pah san, wheah you been hide?” she said as I stepped through the beads.

  “Hello, Mother,” I said, lifting her straight up under the arms and kissing her on the cheek. She only weighed about ninety pounds and seemed almost brittle, but once I didn’t do this little trick and she got mad. Sh
e expected it and all the customers got a kick out of watching me perform. The cooks and all the pretty waitresses and Sumi, the hostess, dressed in a flaming orange kimono, expected it too. I saw Sumi tap a Japanese customer on the shoulder when I walked in.

  I usually held the mama-san up like this for a good minute or so and snuggled her a little bit and joked around until everyone in the place was giggling, especially the mama-san, and then I put her down and let her tell anyone in shouting distance how “stlong is owah Boom-pah.” My arms are good even though my legs are gone, but she was like a paper doll, no weight at all. She always said “owah Boom-pah,” and I always took it to mean I belonged to J-town too and I liked the idea. Los Angeles policemen are very partial to Buddha heads because sometimes they seem like the only ones left in the world who really appreciate discipline, cleanliness, and hard work. I’ve even seen motor cops who’d hang a ticket on a one-legged leper, let a Nip go on a good traffic violation because they contribute practically nothing to the crime rate even though they’re notoriously bad drivers. I’ve been noticing in recent years though that Orientals have been showing up as suspects on crime reports. If they degenerate like everyone else there’ll be no group to look up to, just individuals.

  “We have a nice table for you, Bumper,” said Sumi with a smile that could almost make you forget food-almost. I started smelling things: tempura, rice wine, teriyaki steak. I have a sensitive nose and can pick out individual smells. It’s really only individual things that count in this world. When you lump everything together you get goulash or chop suey or a greasy stew pot. I hated food like that.

  “I think I’ll sit at the sushi bar,” I said to Sumi, who once confessed to me her real name was Gloria. People expected a geisha doll to have a Japanese name, so Gloria, a third generation American, obliged them. I agreed with her logic. There’s no sense disappointing people.