The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  As I drove by Zoot, he waved at me and grinned and stood by the mailbox. I wondered if we could’ve got some help with the Post Office special agents to stop this flimflam, but it would’ve been awful hard and not worth the effort. You can’t tamper with someone’s mail very easy. Now, as I looked at his miserable face for the last time, my black mood got blacker and I thought, I’ll bet no other uniformed cop ever takes the trouble to shag him after I’m gone.

  Then I started thinking about bookmaking in general, and got even madder, because it was the kind of crime I couldn’t do anything about. I saw the profits reaped from it all around me, and I saw the people involved in it, and knew some of them, and yet I couldn’t do anything because they were so well organized and their weapons were so good and mine were so flimsy. The money was so unbelievably good that they could expand into semilegitimate businesses and drive out competition because they had the racket money to fall back on, and the legitimate businesses couldn’t compete. And also they were tougher and ruthless and knew other ways to discourage competition. I always wanted to get one of them good, someone like Red Scalotta, a big book, whose fortune they say can’t be guessed at. I thought all these things and how mad I get everytime I see a goddamn lovable Damon-Runyon-type bookmaker in a movie. I started thinking then about Angie Caputo, and got a dark kind of pleasure just picturing him and remembering how another old beat man, Sam Giraldi, had humbled him. Angie had never realized his potential as a hood after what Sam did to him.

  Sam Giraldi is dead now. He died last year just fourteen months after he retired at twenty years’ service. He was only forty-four when he had a fatal heart attack, which is particularly a policeman’s disease. In a job like this, sitting on your ass for long periods of time and then moving in bursts of heart-cracking action, you can expect heart attacks. Especially since lots of us get so damned fat when we get older.

  When he ruined Angie Caputo, Sam was thirty-seven years old but looked forty-seven in the face. He wasn’t very tall, but had tremendous shoulders, a meaty face, and hands bigger than mine, all covered with heavy veins. He was a good handball player and his body was hard as a spring-loaded sap. He’d been a vice officer for years and then went back to uniform. Sam walked Alvarado when I walked downtown, and sometimes he’d drive over to my beat or I’d come over to his. We’d eat dinner together and talk shop or talk about baseball, which I like and which he was fanatic about. Sometimes, if we ate at his favorite delicatessen on Alvarado, I’d walk with him for a while and once or twice we even made a pretty good pinch together like that. It was on a wonderful summer night when a breeze was blowing off the water in MacArthur Park that I met Angie Caputo.

  It seemed to be a sudden thing with Sam. It struck like a bullet, the look on his face, and he said, “See that guy? That’s Angie Caputo, the pimp and bookmaker’s agent.” And I said, “So what?” wondering what the hell was going on, because Sam looked like he was about to shoot the guy who was just coming out of a bar and getting ready to climb aboard a lavender Lincoln he had parked on Sixth Street. We got in Sam’s car, getting ready to drive over to catch the eight o’clock show at the burlesque house out there on his beat.

  “He hangs out further west, near Eighth Street,” said Sam. “That’s where he lives too. Not far from my pad, in fact. I been looking to see him for a few days now. I got it straight that he’s the one that busted the jaw of Mister Rovitch that owns the cleaners where I get my uniforms done.” Sam was talking in an unnaturally soft voice. He was a gentle guy and always talked low and quiet, but this was different.

  “What’d he do that for?”

  “Old guy was behind on interest payments to Harry Stapleton the loan shark. He had Angie do the job for him. Angie’s a big man now. He don’t have to do that kind of work no more, but he loves to do it sometimes. I hear he likes to use a pair of leather gloves with wrist pins in the palms.”

  “He get booked for it?”

  Sam shook his head. “The old man swears three niggers mugged him.”

  “You sure it was Caputo?”

  “I got a good snitch, Bumper.”

  And then Sam confessed to me that Caputo was from the same dirty town in Pennsylvania that he was from, and their families knew each other when they were kids, and they were even distant relatives. Then Sam turned the car around and drove back on Sixth Street and stopped at the corner.

  “Get in, Angie,” said Sam, as Caputo walked toward the car with a friendly smile.

  “You busting me, Sam?” said Caputo, the smile widening, and I could hardly believe he was as old as Sam. His wavy hair was blue-black without a trace of gray, and his handsome profile was smooth, and his gray suit was beautiful. I turned around when Caputo held out a hand and smiled at me.

  “Angie’s my name,” he said as we shook hands. “Where we going?”

  “I understand you’re the one that worked over the old man,” said Sam in a much softer voice than before.

  “You gotta be kidding, Sam. I got other things going. Your finks got the wrong boy for this one.”

  “I been looking for you.”

  “What for, Sam, you gonna bust me?”

  “I can’t bust you. I ain’t been able to bust you since I knew you, even though I’d give my soul to do it.”

  “This guy’s a comic,” said Caputo, laughing as he lit a cigarette. “I can depend on old Sam to talk to me at least once a month about how he’d like to send me to the joint. He’s a comic. Whadda you hear from the folks back in Aliquippa, Sam? How’s Liz and Dolly? How’s Dolly’s kids?”

  “Before this, you never really hurt nobody I knew personally,” said Sam, still in the strange soft voice. “I knew the old man real good, you know.”

  “He one of your informers, Sam?” asked Caputo. “Too bad. Finks’re hard to come by these days.”

  “Old guy like that. Bones might never heal.”

  “Okay, that’s a shame. Now tell me where we’re going. Is this some kind of roust? I wanna know.”

  “Here’s where we’re going. We’re here,” said Sam, driving the car under the ramp onto the lonely, dark, dirt road by the new freeway construction.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” asked Caputo, for the first time not smiling.

  “Stay in the car, Bumper,” said Sam. “I wanna talk with Angie alone.”

  “Be careful, fratello,” said Caputo. “I ain’t a punk you can scare. Be careful.”

  “Don’t say fratello to me,” Sam whispered. “You’re a dog’s brother. You beat old men. You beat women and live off them. You live off weak people’s blood.”

  “I’ll have your job, you dumb dago,” said Caputo, and I jumped out of the car when I heard the slapping thud of Sam’s big fist and Caputo’s cry of surprise. Sam was holding Caputo around the head and already I could see the blood as Sam hammered at his face. Then Caputo was on his back and he tried to hold off the blows of the big fist which drew back slowly and drove forward with speed and force. Caputo was hardly resisting now and didn’t yell when Sam pulled out the heavy six-inch Smith and Wesson. Sam knelt on the arms of Caputo and cracked the gun muzzle through his teeth and into his mouth. Caputo’s head kept jerking off the ground as he gagged on the gun muzzle twisting and digging in his throat but Sam pinned him there on the end of the barrel, whispering to him in Italian. Then Sam was on his feet and Caputo flopped on his stomach heaving bloody, pulpy tissue.

  Sam and me drove back alone without talking. Sam was breathing hard and occasionally opened a window to spit a wad of phlegm. When Sam finally decided to talk he said, “You don’t have to worry, Bumper, Angie’ll keep his mouth shut. He didn’t even open it when I beat him, did he?”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “He won’t say nothing,” said Sam. “And things’ll be better on the street. They won’t laugh at us and they won’t be so bold. They’ll be scared. And Angie’ll never really be respected again. It’ll be better out here on the street.”

  “I’m just af
raid he’ll kill you, Sam.”

  “He won’t. He’ll fear me. He’ll be afraid that I’ll kill him. And I will if he tries anything.”

  “Christ, Sam, it’s not worth getting so personally tied up to these assholes like this.”

  “Look, Bumper, I worked bookmaking in Ad Vice and here in Central. I busted bookmakers and organized hoodlums for over eight years. I worked as much as six months on one bookmaker. Six months! I put together an investigation and gathered evidence that no gang lawyer could beat and I took back offices where I seized records that could prove, prove the guy was a millionaire book. And I convicted them and saw them get pitiful fines time after time and I never saw a bookmaker go to state prison even though it’s a felony. Let somebody else work bookmaking I finally decided, and I came back to uniform. But Angie’s different. I know him. All my life I knew him, and I live right up Serrano there, in the apartments. That’s my neighborhood. I use that cleaners where the old man works. Sure he was my snitch but I liked him. I never paid him. He just told me things. He got a kid’s a schoolteacher, the old man does. The books’ll be scared now for a little while after what I done. They’ll respect us for a little while.”

  I had to agree with everything Sam said, but I’d never seen a guy worked over that bad before, not by a cop anyway. It bothered me. I worried about us, Sam and me, about what would happen if Caputo complained to the Department, but Sam was right. Caputo kept his mouth shut and I admit I was never sorry for what Sam did. When it was over I felt something and couldn’t put my finger on it at first, and then one night laying in bed I figured it out. It was a feeling of something being right. For one of the few times on this job I saw an untouchable touched. I felt my thirst being slaked a little bit, and I was never sorry for what Sam did.

  But Sam was dead now and I was retiring, and I was sure there weren’t many other bluesuits in the division who could nail a bookmaker. I turned my car around and headed back toward Zoot Lafferty, still standing there in his pea green slack suit. I parked the black-and-white at the curb, got out, and very slow, with my sweaty uniform shirt sticking to my back, I walked over to Zoot who opened the package door on the red and blue mailbox and stuck his arm inside. I stopped fifteen feet away and stared at him.

  “Hello, Morgan,” he said, with a crooked phony grin that told me he wished he’d have slunk off long before now. He was a pale, nervous guy, about forty-five years old, with a bald freckled skull.

  “Hello, Zoot,” I said, putting my baton back inside the ring, and measuring the distance between us.

  “You got your rocks off once by busting me, Morgan. Why don’t you go back over to your beat, and get outta my face? I moved clear over here to Figueroa to get away from you and your fucking beat, what more do you want?”

  “How much action you got written down, Zoot?” I said, walking closer. “It’ll inconvenience the shit out of you to let it go in the box, won’t it?”

  “Goddamnit, Morgan,” said Zoot, blinking his eyes nervously, and scratching his scalp which looked loose and rubbery. “Why don’t you quit rousting people. You’re an old man, you know that? Why don’t you just fuck off outta here and start acting like one.”

  When the slimeball said that, the blackness I felt turned blood red, and I sprinted those ten feet as he let the letter slide down inside the box. But he didn’t get his hand out. I slammed the door hard and put my weight against it and the metal door bit into his wrist and he screamed.

  “Zoot, it’s time for you and me to have a talk.” I had my hand on the mailbox package door, all my weight leaning hard, as he jerked for a second and then froze in pain, bug-eyed.

  “Please, Morgan,” he whispered, and I looked around, seeing there was a lot of car traffic but not many pedestrians.

  “Zoot, before I retire I’d like to take a real good book, just one time. Not a sleazy little handbook like you but a real bookmaker, how about helping me?”

  Tears began running down Zoot’s cheeks and he showed his little yellow teeth and turned his face to the sun as he pulled another time on the arm. I pushed harder and he yelped loud, but there were noisy cars driving by.

  “For God’s sake, Morgan,” he begged. “I don’t know anything. Please let my arm out.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Zoot. I’ll settle for your phone spot. Who do you phone your action in to?”

  “They phone me,” he gasped, as I took a little weight off the door.

  “You’re a liar,” I said, leaning again.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll give you the number,” he said, and now he was blubbering outright and I got disgusted and then mad at him and at me and especially at the bookmaker I’d never have a chance to get, because he was too well protected and my weapons were too puny.

  “I’ll break your goddamn arm if you lie,” I said, with my face right up to his. A young, pretty woman walked by just then, looked at Zoot’s sweaty face and then at mine, and damn near ran across the street to get away from us.

  “It’s six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three,” he sobbed.

  “Repeat it.”

  “Six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three.”

  “One more time, and it better come out the same.”

  “Six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three. Oh, Christ!”

  “How do you say it when you phone in the action?”

  “Dandelion. I just say the word Dandelion and then I give the bets. I swear, Morgan.”

  “Wonder what Red Scalotta would say if he knew you gave me that information?” I smiled, and then I let him go when I saw by his eyes that I’d guessed right and he was involved with that particular bookmaker.

  He pulled his arm out and sat down on the curb, holding it like it was broken and cursing under his breath as he wiped the tears away.

  “How about talking with a vice cop about this?” I said, lighting a fresh cigar while he began rubbing his arm which was probably going numb.

  “You’re a psycho, Morgan!” he said, looking up. “You’re a real psycho if you think I’d fink on anybody.”

  “Look, Zoot, you talk to a vice cop like I say, and we’ll protect you. You won’t get a jacket. But if you don’t, I’ll personally see that Scalotta gets the word that you gave me the phone number and the code so we could stiff in a bet on the phone clerk. I’ll let it be known that you’re a paid snitch and when he finds out what you told me you know what? I bet he’ll believe it. You ever see what some gunsel like Betnie Zolitch can do to a fink?”

  “You’re the most rottenest bastard I ever seen,” said Zoot, standing up, very shaky, and white as paste.

  “Look at it this way, Zoot, you cooperate just this once, we’ll take one little pukepot sitting in some phone spot and that’ll be all there is to it. We’ll make sure we come up with a phony story about how we got the information like we always do to protect an informant, and nobody’ll be the wiser. You can go back to your slimy little business and I give you my word I’ll never roust you again. Not personally, that is. And you probably know I always keep my word. Course I can’t guarantee you some other cop won’t shag you sometime.”

  He hesitated for a second and then said, “I’ll settle for you not rousting me no more, Morgan. Those vice cops I can live with.”

  “Let’s take a ride. How’s your arm feeling?”

  “Fuck you, Morgan,” he said, and I chuckled to myself and felt a little better about everything. We drove to Central Vice and I found the guy I wanted sitting in the office.

  “Why aren’t you out taking down some handbook, Charlie?” I said to the young vice cop who was leaning dangerously back in a swivel chair with his crepe-soled sneak shoes up on a desk doping the horses on a scratch sheet.

  “Hi, Bumper,” he grinned, and then recognized Zoot who he himself probably busted a time or two.

  “Mr. Lafferty decide to give himself up?” said Charlie Bronski, a husky, square-faced guy with about five years on the Department. I broke him in when he was just out of the academy. I remembered him a
s a smart aggressive kid, but with humility. Just the kind I liked. You could teach that kind a little something. I wasn’t ashamed to say he was Bumperized.

  Charlie got up and put on a green striped, short-sleeved ivy-league shirt over the shoulder holster which he wore over a white T-shirt.

  “Old Zoot here just decided to repent his evil ways, Charlie,” I said, glancing at Zoot who looked as sad as anyone I’d ever seen.

  “Let’s get it over with, Morgan, for chrissake,” said Zoot. “And you got to swear you’ll keep it confidential.”

  “Swear, Charlie,” I said.

  “I swear,” said Charlie. “What’s this all about?”

  “Zoot wants to trade a phone spot to us.”

  “For what?” asked Charlie.

  “For nothing,” said Zoot, very impatient. “Just because I’m a good fucking citizen. Now you want the information or not?”

  “Okay,” Charlie said, and I could tell he was trying to guess how I squeezed Zoot. Having worked with me for a few months, Charlie was familiar with my M.O. I’d always tried to teach him and other young cops that you can’t be a varsity letterman when you deal with these barf-bags. Or rather, you could be, and you’d probably be the one who became a captain, or Chief of Police or something, but you can bet there’d always have to be the guys like me out on the street to make you look good up there in that ivory tower by keeping the assholes from taking over the city.

  “You wanna give us the relay, is that it?” said Charlie, and Zoot nodded, looking a little bit sick.

  “Is it a relay spot? Are you sure?” asked Charlie.

  “I’m not sure of a goddamn thing,” Zoot blubbered, rubbing his arm again. “I only came ’cause I can’t take this kind of heat. I can’t take being rousted and hurt.”

  Charlie looked at me, and I thought that if this lifelong handbook, this ex-con and slimeball started crying, I’d flip. I was filled with loathing for a pukepot like Zoot, not because he snitched, hell, everybody snitches when the twist is good enough. It was this crybaby sniveling stuff that I couldn’t take.