Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

Harry was alone when I walked in the little knotty-pine tavern which had a pool table, a few sad booths, and a dozen bar stools. The neighborhood business was never very good. It was quiet and cool and dark in there and I was glad.

“Hi, Bumper,” he said, drawing a draft beer in a frosted glass for me.

“Evening, Harry,” I said, grabbing a handful of pretzels from one of the dishes he had on the bar. Harry’s was one of the few joints left where you could actually get something free, like pretzels.

“How’s business, Bumper?”

“Mine’s always good, Harry,” I said, which is what policemen always answer to that question.

“Anything exciting happen on your beat lately?” Harry was about seventy, an ugly little goblin with bony shoulder blades who hopped around behind the bar like a sparrow.

“Let’s see,” I said, trying to think of some gossip. Since Harry used to own a bar downtown, he knew a lot of the people I knew. “Yeah, remember Frog LaRue?”

“The little hype with the stooped-over walk?”

“That one.”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “I must’ve kicked that junkie out of my joint a million times after you said he was dealing dope. Never could figure out why he liked to set up deals in my bar.”

“He got his ass shot,” I said.

“What’d he do, try to sell somebody powdered sugar in place of stuff?”

“No, a narco cop nailed him.”

“Yeah? Why would anybody shoot Frog? He couldn’t hurt nobody but himself.”

“Anybody can hurt somebody, Harry,” I said. “But in this case it was a mistake. Old Frog always kept a blade on the window sill in any hotel he stayed at. And the window’d be open even in the dead of winter. That was his M.O. If someone came to his door who he thought was cops, Frog’d slit the screen and throw his dope and his outfit right out the window. One night the narcs busted in the pad when they heard from a snitch that Frog was holding, and old Froggy dumped a spoon of junk out the window. He had to slit the screen to do it and when this narc came crashing through the door, his momentum carried him clear across this little room, practically onto Frog’s bed. Frog was crouched there with the blade still in his hand. The partner coming through second had his gun drawn and that was it, he put two almost in the ten ring of the goddamn bull’s-eye.” I put my fist on my chest just to the right of the heart to show where they hit him.

“Hope the poor bastard didn’t suffer.”

“Lived two days. He told about the knife bit to the detectives and swore how he never would’ve tried to stab a cop.”

“Poor bastard,” said Harry.

“At least he died the way he lived. Armload of dope. I heard from one of the dicks that at the last they gave him a good stiff jolt of morphine. Said old Frog laying there with two big holes in his chest actually looked happy at the end.”

“Why in the hell don’t the state just give dope to these poor bastards like Frog?” said Harry, disgustedly.

“It’s the high they crave, not just feeling healthy. They build up such a tolerance you’d have to keep increasing the dose and increasing it until you’d have to give them a fix that’d make a pussycat out of King Kong. And heroin substitutes don’t work with a stone hype. He wants the real thing. Pretty soon you’d be giving him doses that’d kill him anyway.”

“What the hell, he’d be better off. Some of them probably wouldn’t complain.”

“Got to agree with you there,” I nodded. “Damn straight.”

“Wish that bitch’d get here,” Harry mumbled, checking the bar clock.

“Who’s that?”

“Irma, the goofy barmaid I hired last week. You seen her yet?”

“Don’t think so,” I said, sipping the beer, so cold it hurt my teeth.

“Sexy little twist,” said Harry, “but a kook, you know? She’ll steal your eyes out if you let her. But a good body. I’d like to break her open like a shotgun and horsefuck her.”

“Thought you told me you were getting too old for that,” I said, licking the foam off my upper lip, and finishing the glass, which Harry hurried to refill.

“I am, God knows, but once in a while I get this terrible urge, know what I mean? Sometimes when I’m closing up and I’m alone with her…I ain’t stirred the old lady for a couple years, but I swear when I’m with Irma I get the urge like a young stallion. I’m not that old, you know. Not by a long shot. But you know how my health’s always been. Lately there’s been this prostate problem. Still, when I’m around this Irma I’m awful randy. I feel like I could screw anything from a burro to a cowboy boot.”

“I’ll have to see this wench,” I smiled.

“You won’t take her away from me, will you, Bumper?”

I thought at first he was kidding and then I saw the desperate look on his face. “No, of course not, Harry.”

“I really think I could make it with her, Bumper. I been depressed lately, especially with this prostate, but I could be a man again with Irma”

“Sure, Harry.” I’d noticed the change coming over him gradually for the past year. He sometimes forgot to pick up bar money, which was very unusual for him. He mixed up customers’ names and sometimes told you things he’d told you the last time he saw you. Mostly that, repeating things. A few of the other regular customers mentioned it when we played pool out of earshot. Harry was getting senile and it was not only sad, it was scary. It made my skin crawl. I wondered how much longer he’d be able to run the joint. I laid a quarter on the bar, and sure enough, he absently picked it up. The first time I ever bought my own drink in Harry’s place.

“My old lady can’t last much longer, Bumper. I ever tell you that the doctors only give her a year?”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“Guy my age can’t be alone. This prostate thing, you know I got to stand there and coax for twenty minutes before I can take a leak. And you don’t know how lovely it is to be able to sit down and take a nice easy crap. You know, Bumper, a nice easy crap is a thing of beauty.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I could do all right with a dame like Irma. Make me young again, Irma could.” Sure.

“You try to go it alone when you get old and you’ll be rotting out a coffin liner before you know it. You got to have somebody to keep you alive. If you don’t, you might die without even knowing it. Get what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

It was so depressing being here with Harry that I decided to split, but one of the local cronies came in.

“Hello, Freddie,” I said, as he squinted through six ounces of eyeglasses into the cool darkness.

“Hi, Bumper,” said Freddie, recognizing my voice before he got close enough to make me through his half-inch horn-rims. Nobody could ever mistake his twangy voice which could get on your nerves after a bit. Freddie limped over and laid both arthritic hands on the bar knowing I’d bounce for a couple drinks.

“A cold one for Freddie,” I said, suddenly afraid that Harry wouldn’t even know him. But that was ridiculous, I thought, putting a dollar on the bar, Harry’s deterioration was only beginning. I usually bought for the bar when there were enough people in there to make Harry a little coin, trouble is, there were seldom more than three or four customers in Harry’s at any one time anymore. I guess everyone runs from a man when he starts to die.

“How’s business, Bumper?” asked Freddie, holding the mug in both his hands, fingers like crooked twigs.

“My business’s always good, Freddie.”

Freddie snuffled and laughed. I stared at Freddie for a few seconds while he drank. My stomach was burning and Harry had me spooked. Freddie suddenly looked ancient too. Christ, he probably was at least sixty-five. I’d never thought about Freddie as an older guy, but suddenly he was. Little old men they were. I had nothing in common with them now.