Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“From you? Don’t be silly, Officer Morgan,” said the pencil-necked old man, and refused the money. I made a little small talk in way of payment, listened to a gripe or two about business, and left, forgetting to pick up a paper. I almost went back in, but I never make anyone bounce for two things in one day. I decided to get a late paper across the street from Frankie the dwarf. He had his Dodger’s baseball cap tilted forward and pretended not to see me until I was almost behind him, then he turned fast and punched me in the thigh with a deformed little fist.

“Take that, you big slob. You might scare everybody else on the street, but I’ll get a fat lock on you and break your kneecap.”

“What’s happening, Frankie?” I said, while he slipped a folded paper under my arm without me asking.

“No happenings, Killer. How you standing up under this heat?”

“Okay, I guess.” I turned to the sports page while Frankie smoked a king-sized cigarette in a fancy silver holder half as long as his arm. His tiny face was pinched and ancient but he was only thirty years old.

A woman and a little boy about four years old were standing next to me, waiting for the red light to change.

“See that man,” she said. “That’s a policeman. He’ll come and get you and put you in jail if you’re bad.” She gave me a sweet smile, very smug because she thought I was impressed with her good citizenship.

Frankie, who was only a half head taller than the kid, took a step toward them and said, “That’s real clever, lady. Make him scared of the law. Then he’ll grow up hating cops because you scared him to death.”

“Easy, Frankie,” I said, a little surprised.

The woman lifted the child and the second the light changed she ran from the angry dwarf.

“Sorry, Bumper,” Frankie smiled. “Lord knows I’m not a cop lover.”

“Thanks for the paper, old shoe,” I said, keeping in the shade, nodding to several of the local characters and creeps who gave me a “Hi, Bumper.”

I sauntered along toward Broadway to see what the crowds looked like today and to scare off any pickpockets that might be working the shoppers. I fired up one of those fifty-centers which are okay when I’m out of good hand-rolled custom-mades. As I rounded the corner on Broadway I saw six of the Krishna cult performing in their favorite place on the west sidewalk. They were all kids, the oldest being maybe twenty-five, boys and girls, shaved heads, a single long pigtail, bare feet with little bells on their ankles, pale orange saris, tambourines, flutes and guitars. They chanted and danced and put on a hell of a show there almost every day, and there was no way old Herman the Devil-drummer could compete with them. You could see his jaw flopping and knew he was screaming but you couldn’t hear a word he said after they started their act.

Up until recently, this had been Herman’s corner, and even before I came on the job Herman put in a ten-hour day right here passing out tracts and yelling about demons and damnation, collecting maybe twelve bucks a day from people who felt sorry for him. He used to be a lively guy, but now he looked old, bloodless, and dusty. His shiny black suit was threadbare and his frayed white collar was gray and dirty and he didn’t seem to care anymore. I thought about trying to persuade him one more time to move down Broadway a few blocks where he wouldn’t have to compete with these kids and all their color and music. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Herman had been on his beat too long. I walked to my car thinking about him, poor old Devil-drummer.

As I was getting back in my saddle seat I got a burning pain in the gut and had to drop a couple acid eaters. I carried pockets full of white tablets. Acid eaters in the right pocket and bubble breakers in the left pocket. The acid eaters are just antacid pills and the bubble breakers are for gas and I’m cursed with both problems, more or less all the time. I sucked an acid eater and the fire died. Then I thought about Cassie because that sometimes settled my stomach. The decision to retire at twenty years had been made several weeks ago, and Cassie had lots of plans, but what she didn’t know was that I’d decided last night to make Friday my last day on duty. Today, tomorrow, and Friday would be it. I could string my vacation days together and run them until the end of the month when my time was officially up.

Friday was also to be her last day at L.A. City College. She’d already prepared her final exams and had permission to leave school now, while a substitute instructor took over her classes. She had a good offer, a “wonderful opportunity” she called it, to join the faculty of an expensive girls’ school in northern California, near San Francisco. They wanted her up there now, before they closed for the summer, so she could get an idea how things were done. She planned on leaving Monday, and at the end of the month when I retired, coming back to Los Angeles where we’d get married, then we’d go back to the apartment she’d have all fixed up and ready. But I’d decided to leave Friday and go with her. No sense fooling around any longer, I thought. It would be better to get it over with and I knew Cruz would be happy about it.

Cruz Segovia was my sergeant, and for twenty years he’d been the person closest to me. He was always afraid something would happen and he made me promise him I wouldn’t blow this, the best deal of my life. And Cassie was the best deal, no doubt about it. A teacher, a divorced woman with no kids, a woman with real education, not just a couple college degrees. She was young-looking, forty-four years old, and had it all.

So I started making inquiries about what there was for a retired cop around the Bay area and damned if I didn’t luck out and get steered into a good job with a large industrial security outfit that was owned by an ex-L.A.P.D. inspector I knew from the old days. I got the job of security chief at an electronics firm that has a solid government contract, and I’d have my own office and car, a secretary, and be making a hundred more a month than I was as a cop. The reason he picked me instead of one of the other applicants who were retired captains and inspectors is that he said he had enough administrators working for him and he wanted one real iron-nutted street cop. So this was maybe the first time I ever got rewarded for doing police work and I was pretty excited about starting something new and seeing if real police techniques and ideas couldn’t do something for industrial security which was usually pretty pitiful at best.

The thirtieth of May, the day I’d officially retire, was also my fiftieth birthday. It was hard to believe I’d been around half a century, but it was harder to believe I’d lived in this world thirty years before I got my beat. I was sworn in as a cop on my thirtieth birthday, the second oldest guy in my academy class, the oldest being Cruz Segovia, who had tried three times to join the Department but couldn’t pass the oral exam. It was probably because he was so shy and had such a heavy Spanish accent, being an El Paso Mexican. But his grammar was beautiful if you just bothered to listen past the accent, and finally he got an oral board that was smart enough to bother.

I was driving through Elysian Park as I was thinking these things and I spotted two motor cops in front of me, heading toward the police academy. The motor cop in front was a kid named Lefler, one of the hundred or so I’ve broken in. He’d recently transferred to Motors from Central and was riding tall in his new shiny boots, white helmet, and striped riding britches. His partner breaking him in on the motor beat was a leather-faced old fart named Crandall. He’s the type that’ll get hot at a traffic violator and screw up your public relations program by pulling up beside him and yelling, “Grab a piece of the curb, asshole.”