Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

When it came to accepting things from people on my beat I did have one rule-no money. I felt that if I took money, which a lot of people tried to give me at Christmas time, I’d be getting bought. I never felt bought though if a guy gave me free meals or a case of booze, or a discounted sport coat, or if a dentist fixed my teeth at a special rate, or an optometrist bounced for a pair of sunglasses half price. These things weren’t money, and I wasn’t a hog about it. I never took more than I could personally use, or which I could give to people like Cruz Segovia or Cassie, who recently complained that her apartment was beginning to look like a distillery. Also I never took anything from someone I might end up having to arrest. For instance, before we started really hating each other, Marvin Heywood, the owner of the Pink Dragon, tried to lay a couple cases of scotch on me, and I mean the best, but I turned him down. I’d known from the first day he opened that place it would be a hangout for slimeballs. Every day was like a San Quentin convention in that cesspool. And the more I thought of it, the more I got burned up thinking that after I retired nobody would roust the Dragon as hard as I always did. I caused Marvin a sixty-day liquor license suspension twice, and I probably cost him two thousand a month in lost business since some of the hoods were afraid to come there because of me.

I jumped in my car and decided to cruise by the Dragon for one last shot at it. When I parked out back, a hype in the doorway saw me and ran down the steps to tell everybody inside the heat was coming. I took my baton, wrapped the thong around my hand which they teach you not to do now, but which I’ve been doing for twenty years, and I walked down the concrete stairway to this cellar bar, and through the draped doorway. The front is framed by a pink dragon head. The front doorway is the mouth of the beast, the back door is under the tail. It always made me mad just to see the big dumb-looking dragon-mouth door. I went in the back door, up the dragon’s ass, tapping my stick on the empty chairs and keeping my head on a swivel as I let my eyes get accustomed to the gloom. The pukepots were all sitting near the back. There were only about ten customers now in the early afternoon, and Marvin, all six feet six inches of him, was at the end of the bar grinning at a bad-looking bull dyke who was putting down a pretty well-built black stud in an arm wrestle.

Marvin was grinning, but he didn’t mean it, he knew I was there. It curdled his blood to see me tapping on the furniture with my stick. That’s why I did it. I always was as badge heavy and obnoxious as I could be when I was in there. I’d been in two brawls here and both times I knew Marvin was just wetting his shorts wishing he had the guts to jump in on me, but he thought better of it.

He weighed at least three hundred pounds and was damned tough. You had to be to own this joint, which catered to bookmakers, huggermugger whores, paddy hustlers, speed freaks, fruits and fruit hustlers, and ex-cons of both sexes and all ages. I’d never quite succeeded in provoking Marvin into attacking me, although it was common knowledge on the street that a shot fired at me one night from a passing car was some punk hired by Marvin. It was after that, even though nothing was ever proved, that I really began standing on the Dragon’s tail. For a couple of months his business dropped to nothing with me living on his doorstep, and he sent two lawyers to my captain and the police commission to get me off his back. I relented as much as I had to, but I still gave him fits.

If I wasn’t retiring there’d be hell to pay around here because once you get that twenty years’ service in, you don’t have to pussyfoot around so much. I mean no matter what kind of trouble you get into, nobody can ever take your pension away for any reason, even if they fire you. So if I were staying, I’d go right on. Screw the lawyers, screw the police commission. I’d land on that Dragon with both boon-dockers. And as I thought that, I looked down at my size thirteen triple E’s. They were beat officer shoes, high top, laces with eyelets, ankle supporting, clumsy, round toes, beat officer shoes. A few years ago they were actually popular with young black guys, and almost came into style again. They called them “old man comforts” and they were soft and comfortable, but ugly as hell, I guess, to most people. I’d probably always wear them. I’d sunk my old man comforts in too many deserving asses to part with them now.

Finally Marvin got tired of watching the arm wrestlers and pretending he didn’t see me.

“Whadda you want, Morgan,” he said. Even in the darkness I could see him getting red in the face, his big chin jutting.

“Just wondering how many scumbags were here today, Marvin,” I said in a loud voice which caused four or five of them to look up. These days we’re apt to get disciplinary action for making brutal remarks like that, even though these assholes would bust their guts laughing if I was courteous or even civil.

The bull dyke was the only righteous female in the place. In this dive you almost have to check everybody’s plumbing to know whether it’s interior or exterior. The two in dresses were drags, the others were fruit hustlers and flimflam guys. I recognized a sleazy bookmaker named Harold Wagner. One of the fruit hustlers was a youngster, maybe twenty-two or so. He was still young enough to be offended by my remark, especially since it was in front of the queen in the red mini who probably belonged to him. He mumbled something under his breath and Marvin told him to cool it since he didn’t want to give me an excuse to make another bust in the place. The guy looked high on pot like most everyone these days.

“He your new playmate, Roxie?” I said to the red dress queen, whose real name I knew was John Jeffrey Alton.

“Yes,” said the queen in a falsetto voice, and motioned to the kid to shut his mouth. He was a couple inches taller than me and big chested, probably shacking with Roxie now and they split what they get hustling. Roxie hustles the guys who want a queen, and the kid goes after the ones who want a jocker. This jocker would probably become a queen himself. I always felt sorry for queens because they’re so frantic, searching, looking. Sometimes I twist them for information, but otherwise I leave them alone.

I was in a rotten mood thinking nobody would roust the Dragon after I was gone. They were all glaring at me now, especially Marvin with his mean gray eyes and knife mouth.

One young guy, too young to know better, leaned back in his chair and made a couple of oinks and said, “I smell pig.”

I’d never seen him before. He looked like a college boy slumming. Maybe in some rah-rah campus crowd beer joint I’d just hee-haw and let him slide, but here in the Pink Dragon the beat cops rule by force and fear. If they stopped being afraid of me I was through, and the street would be a jungle, which it is anyway, but at least now you can walk through it watching for occasional cobras and rabid dogs. I figured if it weren’t for guys like me, there’d be no trails through the frigging forest.

“Oink, oink,” he said again, with more confidence this time, since I hadn’t responded. “I sure do smell pig.”

“And what do pigs like best?” I smiled, slipping the stick back in my baton ring. “Pigs like to clean up garbage, and I see a pile.” Still smiling I kicked the chair legs and he went down hard throwing a glass of beer on Roxie who forgot the falsetto and yelled, “Shithouse mouse!” in a pretty good baritone when the beer slid down his bra.

I had the guy in a wristlock before he knew what fell on him, and was on my way out the door, with him walking backwards, but not too fast in case someone else was ready.