Joseph Wambaugh: The Blue Knight

“Come here, man,” I called and he came slinking my way like it was all over.

“Hello, Bumper.”

“Well, hello, Wimpy,” I said to the chalk-faced hype. “It took me a minute to recognize you. You’re older.”

“Went away for three years last time.”

“How come so long?”

“Armed robbery. Went to Q behind armed robbery. Violence don’t suit me. I shoulda stuck to boosting. San Quentin made me old, Bumper.”

“Too bad, Wimpy. Yeah, now I remember. You did a few gas stations, right?”

He was old. His sandy hair was streaked with gray and it was patchy. And his teeth were rotting and loose in his mouth. It was starting to come back to me like it always does: Herman (Wimpy) Brown, a lifelong hype and a pretty good snitch when he wanted to be. Couldn’t be more than forty but he looked a lot older than me.

“I wish I hadn’t never met that hangtough, Barty Mendez. Remember him, Bumper? A dope fiend shouldn’t never do violent crime. You just ain’t cut out for it. I coulda kept boosting cigarettes out of markets and made me a fair living for quite a while.”

“How much you boosting now, Wimpy?” I said, giving him a light. He was clammy and covered with gooseflesh. If he knew anything he’d tell me. He wanted a taste so bad right now, he’d snitch on his mother.

“I don’t boost anywhere near your beat, Bumper. I go out to the west side and lift maybe a couple dozen cartons of smokes a day outta those big markets. I don’t do nothing down here except look for guys holding.”

“You hang up your parole yet?”

“No, I ain’t running from my parole officer. You can call in and check.” He dragged hard on the cigarette but it wasn’t doing much good.

“Let’s see your arms, Wimpy,” I said, taking one bony arm and pushing up the sleeve.

“You ain’t gonna bust me on a chickenshit marks case, are you, Bumper?”

“I’m just curious,” I said, noticing the inner elbows were fairly clean. I’d have to put on my glasses to see the marks and I never took my glasses to work. They stayed in my apartment.

“Few marks, Bumper, not too bad,” he said, trying a black-toothed smile. “I shrink them with hemorrhoid ointment.”

I bent the elbow and looked at the back of the forearm. “Damn, the whole Union Pacific could run on those tracks!” I didn’t need glasses to see those swollen abscessed wounds.

“Don’t bust me, Bumper,” he whined. “I can work for you like I used to. I gave you some good things, remember? I turned the guy that juked that taxi dancer in the alley. The one that almost cut her tit off, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, as it came back to me. Wimpy did turn that one for me.

“Don’t these P.O.’s ever look at your arms?” I asked, sliding the sleeves back down.

“Some’re like cops, others’re social workers. I always been lucky about drawing a square P.O. or one who really digs numbers, like how many guys he’s rehabilitating. They don’t want to fail you, you know? Nowadays they give you dope and call it something else and say you’re cured. They show you statistics, but I think the ones they figure are clean are just dead, probably from an overdose.”

“Make sure you don’t O.D., Wimpy,” I said, leading him away from the arcade so we could talk in private while I was walking him to the corner call box to run a make.

“I liked it inside when I was on the program, Bumper. Honest to God. C.R.C. is a good place. I knew guys with no priors who shot phony needle holes in their arms so they could go there instead of to Q. And I heard Tehachapi is even better. Good food, and you don’t hardly work at all, and group therapy where you can shuck, and there’s these trade schools there where you can jive around. I could do a nickel in those places and I wouldn’t mind. In fact, last time I was sorta sorry they kicked me out after thirteen months. But three years in Q broke me, Bumper. You know you’re really in the joint when you’re in that place.”

“Still think about geezing when you’re inside?”

“Always think about that,” he said, trying to smile again as we stopped next to the call box. There were people walking by but nobody close. “I need to geez bad now, Bumper. Real bad.” He looked like he was going to cry.

“Well, don’t flip. I might not bust you if you can do me some good. Start thinking real hard, while I run a make to see if you hung it up.”

“My parole’s good as gold,” he said, already perking up now that he figured I wasn’t going to book him for marks. “You and me could work good, Bumper. I always trusted you. You got a rep for protecting your informants. Nobody never got a rat jacket behind your busts. I know you got an army of snitches, but nobody never got a snitch jacket. You take care of your people.”

“You won’t get a jacket either, Wimpy. Work with me and nobody knows. Nobody.”

Wimpy was sniffling and cotton-mouthed so I unlocked the call box and hurried up with the wants check. I gave the girl his name and birthdate, and lit his cigarette while we waited. He started looking around. He wasn’t afraid to be caught informing, he was just looking for a connection: a peddler, a junkie, anybody that might be holding a cap. I’d blow my brains out first, I thought.

“You living at a halfway house?” I asked.

“Not now,” he said. “You know, after being clean for three years I thought I could do it this time. Then I went and fixed the second day out, and I was feeling so bad about it I went to a kick pad over on the east side and asked them to sign me in. They did and I was clean three more days, left the kick pad, scored some junk, and had a spike in my arm ever since.”

“Ever fire when you were in the joint?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going until the information came back.

“I never did. Never had the chance. I heard of a few guys. I once saw two guys make an outfit. They were expecting half a piece from somewheres. I don’t know what they had planned, but they sure was making a fit.”

“How?”

“They bust open this light bulb and one of them held the filament with a piece of cardboard and a rag and the other just kept heating it up with matches, and those suckers stretched that thing out until it was a pretty good eyedropper. They stuck a hole in it with a pin and attached a plastic spray bottle to it and it wasn’t a bad fit. I’d a took a chance and stuck it in my arm if there was some dope in it.”

“Probably break off in your vein.”

“Worth the chance. I seen guys without a spike so strung out and hurting they cut their arm open with a razor and blow a mouthful of dope right in there.”

He was puffing big on the smoke. His hands and arms were covered with the jailhouse tattoos made from pencil lead shavings which they mix with spit and jab into their arms with a million pinpricks. He probably did it when he was a youngster just coming up. Now he was an old head and had professional tattoos all over the places where he shoots junk, but nothing could hide those tracks.

“I used to be a boss booster at one time, Bumper. Not just a cigarette thief. I did department stores for good clothes and expensive perfume, even jewelry counters which are pretty tough to do. I wore two-hundred-dollar suits in the days when only rich guys wore suits that good.”

“Work alone?”

“All alone, I swear. I didn’t need nobody. I looked different then. I was good looking, honest I was. I even talked better. I used to read a lot of magazines and books. I could walk through these department stores and spot these young kids and temporary sales help and have them give me their money. Give me their money, I tell you.”