The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “How old a guy is he?”

  “I don’t know, fifty, fifty-five.”

  “Think they’ll hurt him?”

  “Why should they? He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. They can see that. They just fucked up, that’s all. Why should they hurt a dummy?”

  “Because they’re slimeballs.”

  “Well, you never know,” Charlie shrugged. “They might. Anyway, we got the warrant, Bumper. By God, I kept my promise to you.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. Nobody could’ve done better. You got anybody staked on the place?”

  “Milburn. He works in our office. We’ll just end up busting the broad, Terry. According to the dummy she’s the only one ever comes in there except once in a while a man comes in, he said. He couldn’t remember what the man looked like. This is Thursday. Should be a lot of paper in that back office. If we get enough of the records we can hurt them, Bumper.”

  “A two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fine?” I sniffed.

  “If we get the right records we can put Internal Revenue on them. They can tax ten percent of gross for the year. And they can go back as far as five years. That hurts, Bumper. That hurts even a guy as big as Red Scalotta, but it’s tough to pull it off.”

  “How’re you going in?”

  “We first decided to use Bobby. We can use subterfuge to get in if we can convince the court that we have information that this organization will attempt to destroy records. Hell, they all do that. Fuzzy thought about using Bobby to bang on the lower door to the inside stairway and call Terry and have Terry open the door which she can buzz open. We could tell Bobby it’s a game or something, but Nick and Milburn voted us down. They thought when we charged through the door and up the steps through the office door and got Terry by the ass, old Bobby might decide to end the game. If he stopped playing I imagine he’d be no more dangerous than a brahma bull. Anyway, Nick and Milburn were afraid we’d have to hurt the dummy so they voted us down.”

  “So how’ll you do it?”

  “We borrowed a black policewoman from Southwest Detectives. We got her in a blue dungaree apron suit like the black babes that work pressing downstairs. She’s going to knock on the downstairs door and start yelling something unintelligible in a way-out suede dialect, and hope Terry buzzes her in. Then she’s going to walk up the steps and blab something about a fire in the basement and get as close to Terry as she can, and we hope she can get right inside and get her down on the floor and sit on her because me and Nick’ll be charging up that door right behind her. The Administrative Vice team’ll follow in a few minutes and help us out since they’re the experts on a back-office operation. You know, I only took one back office before so this’ll be something for me too.”

  “Where’ll I be?”

  “Well, we got to hide you with your bluesuit, naturally, so you can hang around out back, near the alley behind the solid wood fence on the west side. After we take the place I’ll open the back window and call you and you can come on in and see the fruits of your labor with Zoot Lafferty.”

  “What’ll you do about getting by your star witness?”

  “The dummy? Oh, Fuzzy got stuck with that job since he’s Bobby’s best pal,” Charlie chuckled. “Before any of us even get in position Fuzzy’s going in to get Bobby and walk him down the street to the drugstore for an ice cream sundae.”

  “One-Victor-One to Two, come in,” said a voice over frequency six.

  “That’s Milburn at the back office,” said Charlie, hurrying to the radio.

  “Go, Lem,” said Charlie over the mike.

  “Listen, Charlie,” said Milburn. “A guy just went in that doorway outside. It’s possible he could’ve turned left into the laundry, I couldn’t tell, but I think he made a right to the office stairway.”

  “What’s he look like, Lem?” asked Charlie.

  “Caucasian, fifty-five to sixty, five-six, hundred fifty, bald, moustache, glasses. Dressed good. I think he parked one block north and walked down because I saw a white Cad circle the block twice and there was a bald guy driving and looking around like maybe for heat.”

  “Okay, Lem, we’ll be there pretty quick,” said Charlie, hanging up the mike, red-faced and nodding at me without saying anything.

  “Fishman,” I said.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Charlie. “Son of a bitch. He’s there!”

  Then Charlie got on the mike and called Nick and the others, having trouble keeping his voice low and modulated in his excitement, and it was affecting me and my heart started beating. Charlie told them to hurry it up and asked their estimated time of arrival.

  “Our E.T.A. is five minutes,” said Nick over the radio.

  “Jesus, Bumper, we got a chance to take the office and Aaron Fishman at the same time! That weaselly little cocksucker hasn’t been busted since the depression days!”

  I was still happy as hell for Charlie, but looking at it realistically, what the hell was there to scream about? They had an idiot for an informant, and I didn’t want to throw cold water, but I knew damn well the search warrant stood a good chance of being traversed, especially if Bobby was brought into court as a material witness and they saw his I.Q. was less than par golf. And if it wasn’t traversed, and they convicted the clerk and Fishman, what the hell would happen to them, a two-hundred-fifty-dollar fine? Fishman probably had four times that much in his pants pocket right now. And I wasn’t any too thrilled about I.R.S. pulling off a big case and hitting them in the bankbook, but even if they did, what would it mean? That Scalotta couldn’t buy a new whip every time he had parties with sick little girls like Reba? Or maybe Aaron Fishman would have to drive his Cad for two years without getting a new one? I couldn’t see anything to get ecstatic about when I considered it all. In fact, I was feeling lower by the minute, and madder. I prayed Red Scalotta would show up there too and maybe try to resist arrest, even though my common sense told me nothing like that would ever happen, but if it did…

  “There should be something there to destroy the important records,” said Charlie, puffing on a cigarette and dancing around impatiently waiting for Nick and the others to drive up.

  “You mean like flash paper? I’ve heard of that,” I said.

  “They sometimes use that, but mostly in fronts,” said Charlie. “You touch a flame or a cigarette to it and it goes up in one big flash and leaves no residue. They also got this dissolving paper. You drop it in water and it dissolves with no residue you can put under a microscope. But sometimes in backs they have some type of small furnace they keep charged where they can throw the real important stuff. Where the hell is that Nick?”

  “Right here, Charlie,” I said, as the vice car sped across the parking lot. Nick and Fuzzy and the Negro policewoman were inside and another car was following with the two guys from Administrative Vice.

  Everybody was wetting their pants when they found out Aaron Fishman was in there, and I marveled at vice officers, how they can get excited about something that is so disappointing, and depressing, and meaningless, when you thought about it. And then Charlie hurriedly explained to the Ad Vice guys what a uniformed cop was doing there, saying it started out as my caper. I knew one of the Ad Vice officers from when he used to work Central Patrol and we jawed and made plans for another five minutes, and finally piled into the cars.

  We turned north on Catalina from Sixth Street before getting to Kenmore and then turned west and came down Kenmore from the north. The north side of Sixth Street is all apartment buildings and to the south is the Miracle Mile, Wilshire Boulevard. Sixth Street itself is mostly commercial buildings. Everybody parked to the north because the windows were painted on the top floor of the building on this side. It was the blind side, and after a few minutes everybody got ready when Fuzzy was seen through binoculars skipping down the sidewalk with Bobby, who even from this distance looked like Gargantua. With the giant gone the stronghold wasn’t quite so impregnable.

  In a few minutes they were all hustling down the side
walk and I circled around the block on foot and came in behind the wooden fence and I was alone and sweating in the sunshine, wondering why the hell I wanted this so bad, and how the organization would get back on its feet, and another of Red’s back offices would just take as much of the action as it could until a new back could be set up, and Aaron would get his new Cad in two years. And he and Red would be free to enjoy it all and maybe someone like me would be laying up in the county jail for perjury in the special tank where they keep policemen accused of crimes, because a policeman put in with the regular pukepots would live probably about one hour at best.

  This job didn’t make sense. How could I have told myself for twenty years that it made any sense at all? How could I charge around that beat, a big blue stupid clown, and pretend that anything made any sense at all? Judge Redford should’ve put me in jail, I thought. My brain was boiling in the sunshine, the sweat running in my eyes and burning. That would’ve been a consistent kind of lunacy at least. What the hell are we doing here like this?

  Then suddenly I couldn’t stand it there alone, my big ass only partly hidden by the fence, and I walked out in the alley and over to the fire escape of the old building. The iron ladder was chained up like an ancient fearsome drawbridge. A breach of fire regulation to chain it up, I thought, and I looked around for something to stand on, and spotted a trash can by the fence which I emptied and turned upside down under the ladder. And then in a minute I was dangling there like a fat sweaty baboon, tearing my pants on the concrete wall, scuffing my shoes, panting, and finally sobbing, because I couldn’t get my ass up there on a window ledge where I could then climb over the railing on the second floor.

  I fell back once, clear to the alley below. I fell hard on my shoulder, and thought if I’d been able to read that hotel register I’d never have been humiliated like that, and I thought of how I was of no value whatever to this operation which was in itself of no value because if I couldn’t catch Red Scalotta and Aaron Fishman by the rules, then they would put me in jail. And I sat on my ass there in the alley, panting, my hands red and sore and my shoulder hurting, and I thought then, if I go to the dungeon and Fishman goes free, then I’m the scumbag and he’s the Blue Knight, and I wondered how he would look in my uniform.

  Then I looked up at that ladder and vowed that I’d die here in this alley if I didn’t climb that fire escape. I got back on the trash can and jumped up, grabbing the metal ladder and feeling it drop a little until the chain caught it. Then I shinnied up the wall again, gasping and sobbing out loud, the sweat like vinegar in my eyes, and got one foot up and had to stop and try to breathe in the heat. I almost let go and thought how that would make sense too if I fell head first now onto the garbage can and broke my fat neck. Then I took a huge breath and knew if I didn’t make it now I never would make it, and I heaved my carcass up, up, and then I was sitting on the window ledge and surprisingly enough I still had my hat on and I hadn’t lost my gun. I was perched there on the ledge in a pile of birdshit, and a fat gray pigeon sat on the fire escape railing over me. He cooed and looked at me gasping and grimacing and wondered if I was dangerous.

  “Get outta here, you little prick,” I whispered, when he crapped on my shoulder. I swung my hat at him and he squawked and flew away.

  Then I dragged myself up carefully, keeping most of my weight on the window ledge, and I was on the railing and then I climbed over and was on the first landing of the fire escape where I had to rest for a minute because I was dizzy. I looked at my watch and saw that the policewoman should be about ready to try her flimflam now, so, dizzy or not, I climbed the second iron ladder.

  It was steep and long to the third floor, one of those almost vertical iron ladders like on a ship, with round iron hand railings. I climbed as quietly as I could, taking long deep breaths. Then I was at the top and was glad I wouldn’t have to make the steep descent back down. I should be walking out through the back office if everything went right. When Charlie opened the back door to call to me, I’d be standing right here watching the door instead of crouched in some alley. And if I heard any doors breaking, or any action at all, I’d kick in the back door here, and maybe I’d be the first one inside the place, and maybe I’d do something else that could land me in jail, but the way I felt this moment, maybe it would be worth it because twenty years didn’t mean a goddamn thing when Scalotta and Fishman could wear my uniform and I could wear jail denims with striped patch pockets and lay up there in the cop’s tank at the county jail.

  Then I heard a crash and I knew the scam hadn’t worked because this was a door breaking far away, way down below, which meant they’d had to break in that first door, run up those steps clear to the third floor and break in the other door, and then I found myself kicking on the back door which I didn’t know was steel reinforced with a heavy bar across it. It wouldn’t go, and at that moment I didn’t know how sturdy they had made it and I thought it was a regular door and I was almost crying as I kicked it because I couldn’t even take down a door anymore and I couldn’t do anything anymore. But I kicked, and kicked, and finally I went to the window on the left and kicked right through it, cutting my leg. I broke out the glass with my hands and I lost my hat and cut my forehead on the glass and was raging and yelling something I couldn’t remember when I stormed through that room and saw the terrified young woman and the trembling bald little man by the doorway, their arms full of boxes. They looked at me for a second and then the woman started screaming and the man went out the door, turned right and headed for the fire escape with me after him. He threw the bar off the steel door and was back out on the fire escape, a big cardboard box in his arms crammed with cards and papers, and he stopped on the landing and saw how steep that ladder was. He was holding tight to the heavy box and he turned his back to the ladder and gripped the box and was going to try to back down the iron stairs when I grabbed him with my bloody hands and he yelled at me as two pigeons flew in our faces with a whir and rattle of wings.

  “Let me go!” he said, the little greenish sacs under his eyes bulging. “You ape, let me go!”

  And then I don’t know if I just let him go or if I put pressure against him. I honestly don’t know, but it doesn’t really make any difference, because pulling away from me like he was, and holding that box like Midas’s gold, I knew exactly what would happen if I just suddenly did what he was asking.

  So I don’t know for sure if I shoved him or if I just released him, but as I said, the result would’ve been the same, and at this moment in my life it was the only thing that made the slightest bit of sense, the only thing I could do for any of it to make any sense at all. He would never wear my bluesuit, never, if I only did what he was asking. My heart was thumping like the pigeon’s wing, and I just let go and dropped my bleeding hands to my sides.

  He pitched backward then, and the weight of the box against his chest made him fall head first, clattering down the iron ladder like an anchor being dropped. He was screaming and the box had broken open and markers and papers were flying and sailing and tumbling through the air. It did sound like an anchor chain feeding out, the way he clattered down. On the landing below where he stopped, I saw his dentures on the first rung of the ladder not broken, and his glasses on the landing, broken, and the cardboard box on top of him so you could hardly see the little man doubled over beneath it. He was quiet for a second and then started whimpering, and finally sounded like a pigeon cooing.

  “What happened, Bumper?” asked Charlie, running out on the fire escape, out of breath.

  “Did you get all the right records, Charlie?”

  “Oh my God, what happened?”

  “He fell.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t think so, Charlie. He’s making a lot of noises.”

  “I better call for an ambulance,” said Charlie. “You better stay here.”

  “I intend to,” I said, and stood there resting against the railing for five minutes watching Fishman. During that time, Nick
and Charlie went down and unfolded him and mopped at his face and bald head, which was broken with huge lacerations.

  Charlie and me left the others there and drove slowly in the wake of the screaming ambulance which was taking Fishman to Central Receiving Hospital.

  “How bad is your leg cut?” asked Charlie, seeing the blood, a purple wine color when it soaks through a policeman’s blue uniform.

  “Not bad, Charlie,” I said, dabbing at the cuts on my hands.

  “Your face doesn’t look bad. Little cut over your eye.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “There was a room across from the back office,” said Charlie. “We found a gas-fed burn oven in there. It was fired up and vented through the roof. They would’ve got to it if you hadn’t crashed through the window. I’m thankful you did it, Bumper. You saved everything for us.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  “Did Fishman try to fight you or anything?”

  “He struggled a little. He just fell.”

  “I hope the little asshole dies. I’m thinking what he means to the organization and what he is, and I hope the little asshole dies, so help me God. You know, I thought you pushed him for a minute. I thought you did it and I was glad.”

  “He just fell, Charlie.”

  “Here we are, let’s get you cleaned up,” said Charlie, parking on the Sixth Street side of Central Receiving where a doctor was going into the ambulance that carried Fishman. The doctor came out in a few seconds and waved them on to General Hospital where there are better surgical facilities.

  “How’s he look, doctor?” asked Charlie, as we walked through the emergency entrance.

  “Not good,” said the doctor.

  “Think he’ll die?” asked Charlie.

  “I don’t know. If he doesn’t, he may wish he had.”

  The cut on my leg took a few stitches but the ones on my hands and face weren’t bad and just took cleaning and a little germ killer. It was almost seven o’clock when I finished my reports telling how Fishman jerked out of my grasp and how I got cut.