Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

I always figured kind of vaguely that if somebody didn’t knock me off and I lasted say thirty years, I’d pull the pin then because I could never do my kind of police work past sixty. I really thought I could last that long though. I thought that if I cut down on the groceries and the drinking and the cigars, maybe I could last out here on the streets until I was sixty. Then I’d have learned almost all there was to learn here. I’d know all the secrets I always wanted to know and I’d hop a jet and go to the Valley of the Kings and look out there from a pink granite cliff and see where all civilization started, and maybe if I stayed there long enough and didn’t get drunk and fall off a pyramid, or get stomped to death by a runaway camel, or ventilated by a Yankee-hating Arab, maybe if I lasted there long enough, I’d find out the last thing I wanted to know: whether civilization was worth the candle after all.

Then I thought of what Cruz would say if I ever got drunk enough to tell him about this. He’d say, “’ Mano , let yourself love, and give yourself away. You’ll get your answer. You don’t need a sphinx or a pink granite cliff.’”

“Hi, Bumper,” a voice yelled, and I turned from the glare of the morning sun and saw Percy opening his pawnshop.

“Hi, Percy,” I yelled back, and slowed down to wave. He was a rare animal, an honest pawnbroker. He ran hypes and other thieves out of his shop if he even suspected they had something hot. And he always demanded good identification from a customer pawning something. He was an honest pawnbroker, a rare animal.

I remembered the time Percy gave me his traffic ticket to take care of because this was the first one he’d ever gotten. It was for jaywalking. He didn’t own a car. He hated them and took a bus to the shop every day. I just couldn’t disillusion old Percy by letting him know that I couldn’t fix a ticket, so I took it and paid it for him. It’s practically impossible to fix a ticket anymore in this town. You have to know the judge or the City Attorney. Lawyers take care of each other of course, but a cop can’t fix a ticket. Anyway, I paid it, and Percy thought I fixed it and wasn’t disappointed. He thought I was a hell of a big man.

Another black-and-white cruised past me going south. The cop driving, a curly-haired kid named Nelson, waved, and I nodded back. He almost rear-ended a car stopped at the red light because he was looking at some chick in hot pants going into an office building. He was a typical young cop, I thought. Thinking of pussy instead of police work. And just like all these cats, Nelson loved talking about it. I think they all love talking about it these days more than they love doing it. That gave me a royal pain in the ass. I guess I’ve had more than my share in my time. I’ve had some good stuff for an ugly guy, but by Maggie’s muff, I never talked about screwing a dame, not with anybody. In my day, a guy was unmanly if he did that. But your day is over after this day, I reminded myself, and swung south on Grand.

Then I heard a Central car get a report call at one of the big downtown hotels and I knew the hotel burglar had hit again. I’d give just about anything, I thought, to catch that guy today. That’d be like quitting after your last home run, like Ted Williams. A home run your last time up. That’d be something. I cruised around for twenty minutes and then drove to the hotel and parked behind the black-and-white that got the call. I sat there in my car smoking a cigar and waited another fifteen minutes until Clarence Evans came out. He was a fifteen-year cop, a tall stringbean who I used to play handball with before my ankles got so bad.

We had some good games. It’s especially fun to play when you’re working nightwatch and you get up to the academy about one a.m. after you finish work, and play three hard fast games and take a steam bath. Except Evans didn’t like the steam bath, being so skinny. We always took a half case of beer with us and drank it up after we showered. He was one of the first Negroes I worked with as a partner when L.A.P.D. became completely integrated several years ago. He was a good copper and he liked working with me even though he knew I always preferred working alone. On nightwatch it’s comforting sometimes to have someone riding shotgun or walking beside you. So I worked with him and lots of other guys even though I would’ve rather had a one-man beat or an “L” car that you work alone, “L” for lonesome. But I worked with him because I never could disappoint anyone that wanted to work with me that bad, and it made the handball playing more convenient.

Then I saw Clarence coming out of the hotel carrying his report notebook. He grinned at me, came walking light-footed over to my car, opened the door and sat down.

“What’s happening, Bumper?”

“Just curious if the hotel creeper hit again, Clarence.”

“Took three rooms on the fifth floor and two on the fourth floor,” he nodded.

“The people asleep?”

“In four of them. In the other one, they were down in the bar.”

“That means he hit before two a.m.”

“Right.”

“I can’t figure this guy,” I said, popping an antacid tablet. “Usually he works in the daytime but sometimes in the early evening. Now he’s hitting during the night when they’re in and when they’re not in. I never heard of a hotel burglar as squirrelly as this guy.”

“Maybe that’s it,” said Evans. “A squirrel. Didn’t he try to hurt a kid on one job?”

“A teddy bear. He stabbed the hell out of a big teddy bear. It was all covered up with a blanket and looked like a kid sleeping.”

“That cat’s a squirrel,” said Evans.

“That would explain why the other hotel burglars don’t know anything,” I said, puffing on the cigar and thinking. “I never did think he was a pro, just a lucky amateur.”

“A lucky looney,” said Evans. “You talked to all your snitches?” He knew my M.O. from working with me. He knew I had informants, but like everyone else he didn’t know how many, or that I paid the good ones.

“I talked to just about everyone I know. I talked to a hotel burglar who told me he’d already been approached by three detectives and that he’d tell us if he knew anything, because this guy is bringing so much heat on all the hotels he’d like to see us get him.”

“Well, Bumper, if anybody lucks onto the guy I’m betting you will,” said Evans, putting on his hat and getting out of the car.

“Police are baffled but an arrest is imminent,” I winked, and started the car. It was going to be a very hot day.

I was given a report call at Pershing Square, an injury report. Probably some pensioner fell off his soapbox and was trying to figure how he could say there was a crack in the sidewalk and sue the city. I ignored the call for a few minutes and let her assign it to another unit. I didn’t like to do that. I always believed you should handle the calls given to you, but damn it, I only had the rest of the day and that was it, and I thought about Oliver Horn and wondered why I hadn’t thought about him before. I couldn’t waste time on the report call so I let the other unit handle it and headed for the barbershop on Fourth Street.

Oliver was sitting on a chair on the sidewalk in front of the shop. His ever-present broom was across his lap, and he was dozing in the sunshine.

He was the last guy in the world you would ever want to die and come back looking like. Oliver was built like a walrus with one arm cut off above the elbow. It was done maybe forty years ago by probably the worst surgeon in the world. The skin just flapped over and hung there. He had orange hair and a big white belly covered with orange hair. He long ago gave up trying to keep his pants up, and usually they barely gripped him below the gut so that his belly button was always popping out at you. His shoelaces were untied and destroyed from stepping on them because it was too hard to tie them one-handed, and he had a huge lump on his chin. It looked like if you squeezed it, it’d break a window. But Oliver was surprisingly clever. He swept out the barbershop and two or three businesses on this part of Fourth Street, including a bar called Raymond’s where quite a few ex-cons hung out. It was close to the big hotels and a good place to scam on the rich tourists. Oliver didn’t miss anything and had given me some very good information over the years.