Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

Then the excitement I’d felt for a moment began to fade and was replaced with a kind of fear that grew and almost smothered me until I got hold of myself. This was too much. This was all much too much. Cassie was one terrible responsibility, but I needed her. Cruz told me. Socorro told me. The elevator boy in the death room of the hotel told me. The old blubbering drunks in Harry’s bar told me. I needed her. Yes, maybe, but I didn’t need this other kind of responsibility. I didn’t need this kind of cross. Not me. I walked into the other room where the juvenile officer was sitting.

“Listen, pal,” I said. “This kid in here is waiting for his uncle. I explained the arrest to his sister and cited her back. I gotta meet a guy downtown and I’m late. How about taking care of him for me and I’ll finish my reports later.”

“Sure, Bumper. I’ll take care of it,” he said, and I wondered how calm I looked.

“Okay, kid, be seeing you,” I said, passing through the room where the boy sat. “Hang in there, now.”

“Where you going, Bumper?”

“Gotta hit the streets, kid,” I said, trying to grin. “There’s crime to crush.”

“Yeah? Here’s the phone number. I wrote it down on a piece of paper for you. Don’t forget to call us.”

“Yeah, well, I was thinking, my landlord is a cheap bastard. I don’t think he’d ever go for eight bucks. I think you’d be better off not doing his place anyway. He probably wouldn’t pay you on time or anything.”

“That’s okay. Give me your address, we’ll come by and give you a special price. Remember, I can kick back a couple bucks.”

“No, it wouldn’t work out. See you around, huh?”

“How ’bout us getting together for a ball game, Bumper? I’ll buy us a couple of box seats.”

“I don’t think so. I’m kind of giving up the Dodgers.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, jumping to his feet. “We’ll do your gardening for four dollars, Bumper. Imagine that! Four dollars! We’ll work maybe three hours. You can’t beat that.”

“Sorry, kid,” I said, scuttling for the door like a fat crab.

“Why did you ever mention it then? Why did you ever say ‘maybe’?”

I can’t help you, boy, I thought. I don’t have what you need.

“Goddamn you!” he yelled after me, and his voice broke. “You’re just a cop! Nothing but a goddamn cop!”

I got back in the car feeling like someone kicked me in the belly and I headed back downtown. I looked at my watch and groaned, wondering when this day would end.

At the corner of Pico and Figueroa I saw a blind man with a red-tipped cane getting ready to board a bus. Some do-gooder in a mod suit was grabbing the blind man’s elbow and aiming him, and finally the blind man said something to the meddler and made his own way.

“That’s telling him, Blinky,” I said under my breath. “You got to do for yourself in this world or they’ll beat you down. The gods are strong, lonesome bastards and you got to be too.”

AT ELEVEN-FIFTEEN I was parking in front of Seymour’s to meet Cruz. His car was there but I looked in the window and he wasn’t at the counter. I wondered where he could be. Then I looked down the block and saw three black-and-whites, two detective cars, and an ambulance.

Being off the air with the kid I hadn’t heard a call come out, and I walked down there and made my way through a crowd of people that was forming on the sidewalk around the drugstore. Just like everybody else, I was curious.

“What’s happening, Clarence?” I said to Evans, who was standing in front of the door.

“Didn’t you hear, Bumper?” said Evans, and he was sweating and looked sick, his coffee-brown face working nervously every-which way, and he kept looking around everywhere but at me.

“Hear what?”

“There was a holdup. A cop walked in and got shot,” said a humpbacked shine man in a sailor’s hat, looking up at me with an idiotic smile.

My heart dropped and I felt the sick feeling all policemen get when you hear that another policeman was shot.

“Who?” I asked, worrying that it might’ve been that young bookworm, Wilson.

“It was a sergeant,” said the hunchback.

I looked toward Seymour’s then and I felt the blood rush to my head.

“Let me in there, Clarence,” I said.

“Now, Bumper, No one’s allowed in there and you can’t do anything…”

I shoved Evans aside and pushed on the swinging aluminum doors, which were bolted.

“Bumper, please,” said Evans, but I pulled away from him and slammed my foot against the center of the two doors, driving the bolt out of the aluminum casing.

The doors flew open with a crash and I was inside and running through a checkstand toward the rear of the big drugstore. It seemed like the store was a mile long and I ran blind and light-headed, knocking a dozen hair spray cans off a shelf when I barreled around a row of display counters toward the popping flashbulbs and the dozen plainclothesmen who were huddled in groups at the back of the store.

The only uniformed officer was Lieutenant Hilliard and it seemed like I ran for fifteen minutes to cover the eighty feet to the pharmacy counter where Cruz Segovia lay dead.

“What the hell…” said a red-faced detective I could barely see through a watery mist as I knelt beside Cruz, who looked like a very young boy sprawled there on his back, his hat and gun on the floor beside him and a frothy blood puddle like a scarlet halo fanning out around him from a through-and-through head shot. There was one red glistening bullet hole to the left of his nose and one in his chest which was surrounded by wine-purple bloodstains on the blue uniform. His eyes were open and he was looking right at me. The corneas were not yet dull or cloudy and the eyes were turned down at the corners, those large eyes more serious and sad than ever I’d seen them, and I knelt beside him in his blood and whispered, “’Mano! ’Mano! ’Mano! Oh, Cruz!”

“Bumper, get the hell out of there,” said the bald detective, grabbing my arm, and I looked up at him, seeing a very familiar face, but still I couldn’t recognize him.

“Let him go, Leecher. We got enough pictures,” said another plainclothesman, older, who was talking to Lieutenant Hilliard. He was one I should know too, I thought. It was so strange. I couldn’t remember any of their names, except my lieutenant, who was in uniform.

Cruz looked at me so serious I couldn’t bear it. And I reached in his pocket for the little leather pouch with the beads.

“You mustn’t take anything from him,” Lieutenant Hilliard said in my ear with his hand on my shoulder. “Only the coroner can do that, Bumper.”

“His beads,” I muttered. “He won them because he was the only one who could spell English words. I don’t want them to know he carries beads like a nun.”

“Okay, Bumper, okay,” said Lieutenant Hilliard, patting my shoulder, and I took the pouch. Then I saw the box of cheap cigars spilled on the floor by his hand. And there was a ten-dollar bill there on the floor.

“Give me that blanket,” I said to a young ambulance attendant who was standing there beside his stretcher, white in the face, smoking a cigarette.

He looked at me and then at the detectives.

“Give me that goddamn blanket,” I said, and he handed the folded-up blanket to me, which I covered Cruz with after I closed his eyes so he couldn’t look at me like that. “Ahí te huacho,” I whispered. “I’ll be watching for you, ’mano .” Then I was on my feet and heading toward the door, gulping for breath.

“Bumper,” Lieutenant Hilliard called, running painfully on his bad right leg and holding his hip.