Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“Answer me a law question,” said Hawk, putting on some flared pants. We’re too GI to permit muttonchops or big moustaches or he’d surely have them. “If you commit suicide can you be prosecuted for murder?”

“Nobody ever has,” Wilson smiled, as Hawk giggled and slipped on a watermelon-colored velvet shirt.

“That’s only because of our permissive society,” I said, and Wilson glanced at me and grinned.

“What’s that book in your locker, Wilson?” I asked, nodding toward a big paperback on the top shelf.

“Guns of August.”

“Oh yeah, I read that,” I said. “I’ve read a hundred books about the First World War. Do you like it?”

“I do,” he said, looking at me like he discovered the missing link. “I’m reading it for a history course.”

“I read T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom when I was on my First World War kick. Every goddamn word. I had maps and books spread all over my pad. That little runt only weighed in at about a hundred thirty, but thirty pounds of that was brains and forty was balls. He was a boss warrior.”

“A loner,” Wilson nodded, really looking at me now.

“Right. That’s what I dig about him. I would’ve liked him even better if he hadn’t written it all so intimate for everyone to read. But then if he hadn’t done that, I’d never have appreciated him. Maybe a guy like that finally gets tired of just enjoying it and has to tell it all to figure it all out and see if it means anything in the end.”

“Maybe you should write your memoirs when you’re through, Bumper,” Wilson smiled. “You’re as well known around here as Lawrence ever was in Arabia.”

“Why don’t you major in history?” I said. “If I went to college that’d be my meat. I think after a few courses in criminal law the rest of law school’d be a real drag, torts and contracts and all that bullshit. I could never plow through the dust and cobwebs.”

“It’s exciting if you like it,” said Wilson, and Hawk looked a little ruffled that he was cut out of the conversation so he split.

“Maybe so,” I said. “You must’ve had a few years of college when you came on the Department.”

“Two years,” Wilson nodded. “Now I’m halfway through my junior year. It takes forever when you’re a full-time cop and a part-time student.”

“You can tough it out,” I said, lighting a cigar and sitting down on the bench, while part of my brain listened to the youngster and the other part was worrying about something else. I had the annoying feeling you get, that can sometimes be scary, that I’d been here with him before and we talked like this, or maybe it was somebody else, and then I thought, yes, that was it, maybe the cowlick in his hair reminded me of Billy, and I got an empty tremor in my stomach.

“How old’re you, Wilson?”

“Twenty-six,” he said, and a pain stabbed me and made me curse and rub my pot. Billy would’ve been twenty-six too!

“Hope your stomach holds out when you get my age. Were you in the service?”

“Army,” he nodded.

“Vietnam?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“Did you hate it?” I asked, expecting that all young people hated it.

“I didn’t like the war . It scared hell out of me, but I didn’t mind the army as much as I thought I would.”

“That’s sort of how I felt,” I smiled. “I was in the Marine Corps for eight years.”

“Korea?”

“No, I’m even older than that,” I smiled. “I joined in forty-two, and got out in fifty, then came on the police department.”

“You stayed in a long time,” he said.

“Too long. The war scared me too, but sometimes peace is just as bad for a military man.”

I didn’t tell him the truth because it might tune him out, and the truth was that it did scare me, the war, but I didn’t hate it. I didn’t exactly like it, but I didn’t hate it. It’s fashionable to hate war, I know, and I wanted to hate it, but I never did.

“I swore when I left Vietnam I’d never fire another gun and here I am a cop. Figure that out,” said Wilson.

I thought that was something, having him tell me that. Suddenly the age difference wasn’t there. He was telling me things he probably told his young partners during lonely hours after two a.m. when you’re fighting to keep awake or when you’re “in the hole” trying to hide your radio car, in some alley where you can doze uncomfortably for an hour, but you never really rest. There’s the fear of a sergeant catching you, or there’s the radio. What if you really fall asleep and a hot call comes out and you miss it?

“Maybe you’ll make twenty years without ever firing your gun on duty,” I said.

“Have you had to shoot?”

“A few times,” I nodded, and he let it drop like he should. It was only civilians who ask you, “What’s it feel like to shoot someone?” and all that bullshit which is completely ridiculous, because if you do it in war or you do it as a cop, it doesn’t feel like anything. If you do what has to be done, why should you feel anything? I never have. After the fear for your own life is past, and the adrenalin slows, nothing. But people generally can’t stand truth. It makes a lousy story so I usually give them their clichés.

“You gonna stay on the job after you finish law school?”

“If I ever finish I might leave,” he laughed. “But I can’t really picture myself ever finishing.”

“Maybe you won’t want to leave by then. This is a pretty strange kind of job. It’s… intense. Some guys wouldn’t leave if they had a million bucks.”

“How about you?”

“Oh, I’m pulling the pin,” I said. “I’m almost gone. But the job gets to you. The way you see everyone so exposed and vulnerable…And there’s nothing like rolling up a good felon if you really got the instinct.”

He looked at me for a moment and then said, “Rogers and I got a good two-eleven suspect last month. They cleared five holdups on this guy. He had a seven-point-six-five-millimeter pistol shoved down the back of his waistband when we stopped him for a traffic ticket. We got hinky because he was sweating and dry-mouthed when he talked to us. It’s really something to get a guy like that, especially when you never know how close you came. I mean, he was just sitting there looking from Rogers to me, measuring, thinking about blowing us up. We realized it later, and it made the pinch that much more of a kick.”

“That’s part of it. You feel more alive. Hey, you talk like you’re Bumperized and I didn’t even break you in.”

“We worked together one night, remember?” said Wilson. “My first night out of the academy. I was more scared of you than I was the assholes on the street.”

“That’s right, we did work together. I remember now,” I lied.

“Well, I better get moving,” said Wilson, and I was disappointed. “Got to get to school. I’ve got two papers due next week and haven’t started them.”

“Hang in there, Wilson. Hang tough,” I said, as I locked my locker.

I walked to the parking lot and decided to tip a few at my neighborhood pub near Silverlake before going to Cruz’s house. The proprietor was an old pal of mine who used to own a decent bar on my beat downtown before he bought this one. He was no longer on my beat of course, but he still bounced for drinks, I guess out of habit. Most bar owners don’t pop for too many policemen, because they’ll take advantage of it, policemen will, and they’ll be so many at your watering hole you’ll have to close the goddamn doors. Harry only popped for me and a few detectives he knew real well.

It was five o’clock when I parked my nineteen-fifty-one Ford in front of Harry’s. I’d bought the car new and was still driving it. Almost twenty years and I only had a hundred and thirty thousand miles on her, and the same engine. I never went anywhere except at vacation time or sometimes when I’d take a trip to the river to fish. Since I met Cassie I’ve used the car more than I ever had before, but even with Cassie I seldom went far. We usually went to the movies in Hollywood, or to the Music Center to see light opera, or to the Bowl for a concert which was Cassie’s favorite place to go, or to Dodger Stadium which was mine. Often we went out to the Strip to go dancing. Cassie was good. She had all the moves, but she couldn’t get the hang of letting her body do it all. With Cassie the mind was always there. One thing I decided I wouldn’t get rid of when I left L.A. was my Ford. I wanted to see just how long a car could live if you treated it right.