Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“Girls keeping you busy lately, Bumper?” Harry winked. He didn’t know about Cassie or that I stopped chasing around after I met her.

“Been slowing down a little in that department, Harry,” I said.

“Keep at it, Bumper,” said Harry, cocking his head to one side and nodding like a bird. “The art of fornication is something you lose if you don’t practice it. The eye muscles relax, you get bifocals like Freddie. The love muscles relax, whatta you got?”

“Maybe he is getting old, Harry,” said Freddie, dropping his empty glass on its side as he tried to hand it to Harry with those twisted hands.

“Old? You kidding?” I said.

“How about you, Freddie?” said Harry. “You ain’t got arthritis of the cock, have you? When was the last time you had a piece of ass?”

“About the last time you did,” said Freddie sharply.

“Shit, before my Flossie got sick, I used to tear off a chunk every night. Right up till when she got sick, and I was sixty-eight years old then.”

“Haw!” said Freddie, spilling some beer over the gnarled fingers. “You ain’t been able to do anything but lick it for the past twenty years.”

“Yeah?” said Harry, nodding fast now, like a starving little bird at a feed tray. “You know what I did to Irma here one night? Know what?”

“What?”

“I laid her right over the table there. What do you think of that, wise guy?”

“Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie who had been a little bit fried when he came in and was really feeling it now.

“All you can do is read about it in those dirty books,” said Harry. “Me, I don’t read about it, I do it! I threw old Irma right over that bar there and poured her the salami for a half hour!”

“Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie. “It’d take you that long to find that shriveled up old cricket dick. Haw. Haw. Haw.”

“What’s the sense of starting a beef?” I muttered to both of them. I was getting a headache. “Gimme a couple aspirin will you, Harry?” I said, and he shot the grinning Freddie a pissed-off look, and muttering under his breath, brought me a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water.

I shook out three pills and pushed the water away, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of beer. “One more beer,” I said, “and then I gotta make it.”

“Where you going, Bump? Out to hump?” Harry leered, and winked at Freddie, forgetting he was supposed to be mad as hell.

“Going to a friend’s house for dinner.”

“Nice slice of tail waiting, huh?” said Harry, nodding again.

“Not tonight. Just having a quiet dinner.”

“Quiet dinner,” said Freddie. “Haw. Haw. Haw.”

“Screw you, Freddie,” I said, getting mad for a second as he giggled in his beer. Then I thought, Jesus, I’m getting loony too.

The phone rang and Harry went to the back of the bar to answer it. In a few seconds he was bitching at somebody, and Freddie looked at me, shaking his head.

“Harry’s going downhill real fast, Bumper.”

“I know he is, so why get him pissed off?”

“I don’t mean to,” said Freddie. “I just lose my temper with him sometimes, he acts so damned nasty. I heard the doctors’re just waiting for Flossie to die. Any day now.”

I thought of how she was ten years ago, a fat, tough old broad, full of hell and jokes. She fixed such good cold-cut sandwiches I used to make a dinner out of them at least once a week.

“Harry can’t make it without her,” said Freddie. “Ever since she went away to the hospital last year he’s been getting more and more childish, you noticed?”

I finished my beer and thought, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

“It happens only to people like Harry and me. When you love somebody and need them so much especially when you’re old, and then lose them, that’s when it happens to you. It’s the most godawful thing that ever could happen to you, when your mind rots like Harry’s. Better your body goes like Flossie’s. Flossie’s the lucky one, you know. You’re lucky too. You don’t love nobody and you ain’t married to nothing but that badge. Nothing can ever touch you, Bumper.”

“Yeah, but how about when you get too old to do the job, Freddie? How about then?”

“Well, I never thought about that, Bumper.” Freddie tipped the mug and dribbled on his chin. He licked some foam off one knotted knuckle. “Never thought about that, but I’d say you don’t have to worry about it. You get a little older and charge around the way you do and somebody’s bound to bump you off. It might sound cold, but what the hell, Bumper, look at that crazy old bastard.” He waved a twisted claw toward Harry still yelling in the phone. “Screwing everything with his imagination and a piece of dead skin. Look at me. What the hell, dying on your beat wouldn’t be the worst way to go, would it?”

“Know why I come to this place, Freddie? It’s just the most cheerful goddamn drinking establishment in Los Angeles. Yeah, the conversation is stimulating and the atmosphere is very jolly and all.”

Harry came back before I could get away from the bar. “Know who that was, Bumper?” he said, his eyes glassy and his cheeks pale. He had acne as a young man and now his putty-colored cheeks looked corroded.

“Who was it,” I sighed, “Irma?”

“No, that was the hospital. I spent every cent I had, even with the hospital benefits, and now she’s been put in a big ward with a million other old, dying people. And still I got to pay money for one thing or another. You know, when Flossie finally dies there ain’t going to be nothing left to bury her. I had to cash in the insurance. How’ll I bury old Flossie, Bumper?”

I started to say something to soothe Harry, but I heard sobbing and realized Freddie had started blubbering. Then in a second or two Harry started, so I threw five bucks on the bar for Freddie and Harry to get bombed on, and I got the hell away from those two without even saying good-bye. I’ve never understood how people can work in mental hospitals and old people’s homes and places like that without going nuts. I felt about ready for the squirrel tank right now just being around those two guys for an hour.

TEN MINUTES LATER I was driving my Ford north on the Golden State Freeway and I started getting hungry for Socorro’s enchiladas. I got to Eagle Rock at dusk and parked in front of the big old two-story house with the neat lawn and flower gardens on the sides. I was wondering if Socorro planted vegetables in the back this year, when I saw Cruz in the living room standing by the front window. He opened the door and stepped out on the porch, wearing a brown sport shirt and old brown slacks and his house slippers. Cruz didn’t have to dress up for me, and I was glad to come here and see everyone comfortable, as though I belonged here, and in a way I did. Most bachelor cops have someplace like Cruz’s house to go to once in a while. Naturally, you can get a little ding-a-ling if you live on the beat and don’t ever spend some time with decent people. So you find a friend or a relative with a family and go there to get your supply of faith replenished,

I called Cruz my old roomie because when we first got out of the police academy twenty years ago, I moved into this big house with him and Socorro. Dolores was a baby, and Esteban a toddler. I took a room upstairs for over a year and helped them with their house payments until we were through paying for our uniforms and guns, and were both financially on our feet. That hadn’t been a bad year and I’d never forget Socorro’s cooking. She always said she’d rather cook for a man like me who appreciated her talent than a thin little guy like Cruz who never ate much and didn’t really appreciate good food. Socorro was a slender girl then, twelve years younger than Cruz, nineteen years old, with two kids already, and the heavy Spanish accent of El Paso which is like that of Mexico itself. They’d had a pretty good life I guess, until Esteban insisted on joining the army and was killed two years ago. They weren’t the same after that. They’d never be the same after that.