Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

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 afraid 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.