Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“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. She 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.

There were two other men at the sushi bar, both Japanese, and Mako who worked the sushi bar smiled at me but looked a little grim at the challenge. He once told Mama that serving Boom-pah alone was like serving a sushi bar full of sumos . I couldn’t help it, I loved those delicate little rice balls, molded by hand and wrapped in strips of pink salmon and octopus, abalone, tuna and shrimp. I loved the little hidden pockets of horseradish that surprised you and made your eyes water. And I loved a bowl of soup, especially soybean and seaweed, and to drink it from the bowl Japanese style. I put it away faster than Mako could lay it out and I guess I looked like a buffalo at the sushi bar. Much as I tried to control myself and use a little Japanese self-discipline, I kept throwing the chow down and emptying the little dishes while Mako grinned and sweated and put them up. I knew it was no way to behave at the sushi bar in a nice restaurant, this was for gourmets, the refined eaters of Japanese cuisine, and I attacked like a blue locust, but God, eating sushi is being in heaven. In fact, I’d settle for that, and become a Buddhist if heaven was a sushi bar.

There was only one thing that saved me from looking too bad to a Japanese-I could handle chopsticks like one of them. I first learned in Japan right after the war, and I’ve been coming to the Geisha Doll and every other restaurant here in J-town for twenty years so it was no wonder. Even without the bluesuit, they could look at me click those sticks and know I was no tourist passing through. Sometimes though, when I didn’t think about it, I ate with both hands. I just couldn’t devour it fast enough.

In cooler weather I always drank rice wine or hot sake with my meal, today, ice water. After I’d finished what two or three good-sized Japanese would consume, I quit and started drinking tea while Mama and Sumi made several trips over to make sure I had enough and to see that my tea was hot enough and to try to feed me some tempura, and the tender fried shrimp looked so good I ate a half dozen. If Sumi wasn’t twenty years too young I’d have been awful tempted to try her too. But she was so delicate and beautiful and so young , I lost confidence even thinking about it. And then too, she was one of the people on my beat, and there’s that thing, the way they think about me. Still, it always helped my appetite to eat in a place where there were pretty women. But until I was at least half full, I have to say I didn’t notice women or anything else. The world disappears for me when I’m eating something I love.

The thing that always got to me about Mama was how much she thanked me for eating up half her kitchen. Naturally she would never let me pay for my food, but she always thanked me about ten times before I got out the door. Even for an Oriental she really overdid it. It made me feel guilty, and when I came here I sometimes wished I could violate the custom and pay her. But she’d fed cops before I came along and she’d feed them after, and that was the way things were. I didn’t tell Mama that Friday was going to be my last day, and I didn’t start thinking about it because with a barrel of sushi in my stomach I couldn’t afford indigestion.

Sumi came over to me before I left and held the little teacup to my lips while I sipped it and she said, “Okay, Bumper, tell me an exciting cops-and-robbers story.” She did this often, and I’m sure she was aware how she affected me up close there feeling her sweet breath, looking at those chocolate-brown eyes and soft skin.

“All right, my little lotus blossom,” I said, like W. C. Fields, and she giggled. “One spine tingler, coming up.”

Then I reverted to my normal voice and told her about the guy I stopped for blowing a red light at Second and San Pedro one day and how he’d been here a year from Japan and had a California license and all, but didn’t speak English, or pretended not to so he could try to get out of the ticket. I decided to go ahead and hang one on him because he almost wiped out a guy in the crosswalk, and when I got it written he refused to sign it, telling me in pidgin, “Not gear-tee, not gear-tee,” and I tried for five minutes to explain that the signature was just a promise to appear and he could have a jury trial if he wanted one and if he didn’t sign I’d have to book him. He just kept shaking his head like he didn’t savvy and finally I turned that ticket book over and drew a picture on the back. Then I drew the same picture for Sumi. It was a little jail window with a stick figure hanging on the bars. He had a sad turned-down mouth and slant eyes. I’d showed him the picture and said, “You sign now, maybe?” and he wrote his name so fast and hard he broke my pencil lead.

Sumi laughed and repeated it in Japanese for Mama. When I left after tipping Mako they all thanked me again until I really did feel guilty. That was the only thing I didn’t like about J-town. I wished to hell I could pay for my meal there, though I confess I never had that wish anywhere else.

Frankly, there was practically nothing to spend my money on. I ate three meals on my beat. I could buy booze, clothes, jewelry, and everything else you could think of at wholesale or less. In fact, somebody was always giving me something like that as a gift. I had my bread stop and a dairy that supplied me with gallons of free ice cream, milk, cottage cheese, all I wanted. My apartment was very nice and rent-free, even including utilities, because I helped the manager run the thirty-two units. At least he thought I helped him. He’d call me when he had a loud party or something, and I’d go up, join the party, and persuade them to quiet down a little, while I drank their booze and ate their canapes. Once in awhile I’d catch a peeping tom or something, and since the manager was such a mouse, he thought I was indispensable. Except for girlfriends and my informants it was always hard to find anything to spend my money on. Sometimes I actually went a week hardly spending a dime except for tips. I’m a big tipper, not like most policemen.