The Blue Knight (13 page)
“Am I, Cruz?” I asked, chewing two tablets because a mailed fist was beating on my guts from the inside. “Is that why I feel so unsure of myself now that I’m leaving? Is that it?”
I could hear Socorro humming as she made lunches for the entire tribe. She would write each one’s name on his lunch sack and put it in the refrigerator.
“Remember when we were together in the old days? You and me and Socorro and the two kids? And how you hardly ever spoke about your previous life even when you were drunk? You only said a little about your brother Clem who was dead, and your wife who’d left you. But you really told us more, much more about your brother. Sometimes you called him in your sleep. But mostly you called someone else.”
I was rocking back now, holding my guts which were throbbing, and all the tablets in my pocket wouldn’t help.
“You never told us about your boy. I always felt bad that you never told
me
about him, because of how close we are. You only told me about him in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“You’d call ‘Billy,’ and you’d say things to him. Sometimes you’d cry, and I’d have to go in and pick up your covers and pillow from the floor and cover you up because you’d throw them clear off the bed.”
“I never dreamed about him, never!”
“How else would I know,
’mano
?” he said softly. “We used to talk a lot about it, Socorro and me, and we used to worry about a man who’d loved a brother and a son like you had. We wondered if you’d be afraid to love again. It happens. But when you get old, you’ve
got
to. You’ve got to.”
“But you’re safe if you
don’t
, Cruz!” I said, flinching from the pain. Cruz was looking at the floor, not used to talking to me like this, and he didn’t notice my agony.
“You’re safe, Bumper, in one way. But in the way that counts, you’re in danger. Your soul is in danger if you don’t love.”
“Did you believe that when Esteban was killed? Did you?”
Cruz looked up at me, and his eyes got even softer than normal and turned way down at the corners because he was being most serious. His heavy lashes blinked twice and he sighed, “Yes. Even after Esteban, and even though he was the oldest and you always feel a little something extra for the firstborn. Even after Esteban was killed I felt this to be the truth. After the grief, I knew it was God’s truth. I believed it, even then.”
“I think I’ll get a cup of coffee. I have a stomachache. Maybe something warm. . . .”
Cruz smiled, and leaned back in his chair. Socorro was finishing the last of the lunches and I chatted with her while we warmed up the coffee. The stomachache started to fade a little.
I drank the coffee and thought about what Cruz said which made sense, and yet, every time you get tied up to people something happens and that cord is cut, and I mean really cut with a bloody sword.
“Shall we go in and see how the old boy’s doing?”
“Oh sure, Sukie,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder. Cruz was stretched out on the couch snoring.
“That’s his drinking sleep. We’ll never wake him up,” she said. “Maybe I just better get his pillow and a blanket.”
“He shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch,” I said. “It’s drafty in this big living room.” I went over to him and knelt down.
“What’re you going to do?”
“Put him to bed,” I said, picking him up in my arms.
“Bumper, you’ll rupture yourself.”
“He’s light as a baby,” I said, and he
was
surprisingly light. “Why the hell don’t you make him eat more?” I said, following Socorro up the stairs.
“You know he doesn’t like to eat. Let me help you, Bumper.”
“Just lead the way, Mama. I can handle him just fine.”
When we got in their bedroom I wasn’t even breathing hard and I laid him on the bed, on the sheets. She had already pulled back the covers. Cruz was rattling and wheezing now and we both laughed.
“He snores awful,” she said as I looked at the little squirt.
“He’s the only
real
friend I ever made in twenty years. I know millions of people and I see them and eat with them and I’ll miss things about all of them, but it won’t be like something inside is gone, like with Cruz.”
“Now you’ll have Cassie. You’ll be ten times closer with her.” She held my hand then. Both her hands were tough and hard.
“You sound like your old man.”
“We talk about you a lot.”
“Good night,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “Cassie and me are coming by before we leave to say good-bye to all of you.”
“Good night, Bumper.”
“Good night, old shoe,” I said to Cruz in a loud voice and he snorted and blew and I chuckled and descended the stairs. I let myself out after turning out the hall light and locking the door.
When I went to bed that night I started getting scared and didn’t know why. I wished Cassie was with me. After I went to sleep I slept very well and didn’t dream.
T
HE NEXT MORNING
I worked on my badge for five minutes, and my boondockers were glistening. I was kind of disappointed when Lieutenant Hilliard didn’t have an inspection, I was looking so good. Cruz looked awful. He sat at the front table with Lieutenant Hilliard and did a bad job of reading off the crimes. Once or twice he looked at me and rolled his eyes which were really sad this morning because he was so hung over. After rollcall I got a chance to talk to him for a minute.
“You look a little
crudo
,” I said, trying not to smile.
“What a bastard you are,” he moaned.
“It wasn’t the mescal. I think you swallowed the worm.”
“A complete bastard.”
“Can you meet me at noon? I wanna buy you lunch.”
“Don’t even talk about it,” he groaned, and I had to laugh.
“Okay, but save me your lunch hour tomorrow. And pick out the best, most expensive place in town. Someplace that doesn’t bounce for bluecoats. That’s where we’re going for my last meal as a cop.”
“You’re actually going to
pay
for a meal on duty?”
“It’ll be a first,” I grinned, and he smiled but he acted like it hurt to grin.
“Ahí te haucho,”
I said, heading for the car.
“Don’t forget you have court this afternoon,
’mano
,” he said, always nagging me.
Before getting in my black-and-white I looked it over. It’s always good to pull out the back seat before you leave, in case some innocent rookie on the nightwatch let one of his sneaky prisoners stash his gun down there, or a condom full of heroin, or a goddamn hand grenade. It takes so long to make a policeman out of some of these kids, nothing would surprise me. But then I reminded myself what it was like to be twenty-two. They’re right in the middle of growing up, these babies, and it’s awful tough growing up in that bluecoat as twenty-two-year-old Establishment symbols. Still, it chills my nuts the way they stumble around like civilians for five years or so, and let people flimflam them. Someday, I thought, I’ll probably find a dead midget jammed down there behind the friggin’ seat.
As soon as I hit the bricks and started cruising I began thinking about the case I had this afternoon. It was a preliminary hearing on a guy named Landry and the dicks had filed on him for being an ex-con with a gun, and also filed one count of possession of marijuana. I didn’t figure to have any problems with the case. I’d busted him in January after I’d gotten information on this gunsel from a snitch named Knobby Booker, who worked for me from time to time, and I went to a hotel room on East Sixth Street on some phony pretext I couldn’t completely remember until I reread the arrest report. I busted Landry in his room while he was taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon. He had about two lids of pot in a sandwich bag in a drawer by his bed to give him guts when he pulled a robbery, and a fully loaded U.S. Army forty-five automatic under his mattress. He damned near went for it when I came though the door, and I almost blew him up when he started for it. In fact, it was a Mexican standoff for a few seconds, him with his hand an inch or so under the mattress, and me crouching and coming to the bed, my six-inch Smith aimed at his upper lip, and warning about what I was going to do if he didn’t pull his hand out very very slow, and he did.
Landry had gotten out on five thousand dollars’ bail which some old broad put up for him. He’d been a half-assed bit actor on TV and movies a few years back, and was somewhat of a gigolo with old women. He jumped bail and was rearrested in Denver and extradited, and the arrest was now four months old. I didn’t remember all the details, but of course I would read the arrest report and be up on it before I testified. The main thing of course was to hold him to answer at the prelim without revealing my informant Knobby Booker, or without even letting anyone know I
had
an informant. It wasn’t too hard if you knew how.
It was getting hot and smoggy and I was already starting to sweat in the armpits. I glanced over at an old billboard on Olive Street which said, “Don’t start a boy on a life of crime by leaving your keys in the car,” and I snorted and farted a couple times in disgust. It’s the goddamn do-gooder P.R. men, who dream up slogans like that to make everybody but the criminals feel guilty, who’ll drive all real cops out of this business one of these days.
As I pulled to the curb opposite the Grand Central Market, a wino staggering down Broadway sucking on a short dog saw me, spun around, fell on his ass, dropped his bottle, and got up as though nothing happened. He started walking away from the short dog, which was rolling around on the sidewalk spilling sweet lucy all over the pavement.
“Pick up the dog, you jerk,” I called to him. “I ain’t gonna bust you.”
“Thanks, Bumper,” he said sheepishly and picked up the bottle. He waved, and hustled back down Broadway, a greasy black coat flapping around his skinny hips.
I tried to remember where I knew him from. Of course I knew him from the beat, but he wasn’t just a wino face. There was something else. Then I saw through the gauntness and grime and recognized him and smiled because these days it always felt good to remember and prove to yourself that your memory is as sharp as ever.
They called him Beans. The real name I couldn’t recall even though I’d had it printed up on a fancy certificate. He almost caused me to slug another policeman about ten years ago and I’d never come close to doing that before or since.
The policeman was Herb Slovin and he finally got his ass canned. Herb was fired for capping for a bail bondsman and had a nice thing going until they caught him. He was working vice and was telling everybody he busted to patronize Laswell Brothers Bail Bonds, and Slim Laswell was kicking back a few bucks to Herb for each one he sent. That’s considered to be as bad as stealing, and the Department bounced his ass in a hurry after he was caught. He would’ve gone behind something else though if it hadn’t been that. He was a hulking, cruel bastard and so horny he’d mount a cage if he thought there was a canary in there. I figured sooner or later he’d fall for broads or brutality.
It was Beans that almost caused me and Herb to tangle. Herb hated the drunk wagon. “Niggers and white garbage,” he’d repeat over and over when something made him mad which was most of the time. And he called the wagon job “the N.H.I. detail.” When you asked him what that stood for he’d say “No Humans Involved,” and then he let out with that donkey bray of his. We were working the wagon one night and got a call on Beans because he was spread-eagled prone across San Pedro Street blocking two lanes of traffic, out cold. He’d puked and wet all over himself and didn’t even wake up when we dragged him to the wagon and flipped him in on the floor. There was no problem. We both wore gloves like most wagon cops, and there were only two other winos inside. About ten minutes later when we were on East Sixth Street, we heard a ruckus in the back and had to stop the wagon and go back there and keep the other two winos from kicking hell out of Beans who woke up and was fighting mad for maybe the first time in his life. I’d busted him ten or twenty times for drunk and never had any trouble with him. You seldom have to hassle a stone wino like Beans.
They quieted down as soon as Herb opened the back door and threatened to tear their heads off, and I was just getting back in the wagon when Beans, sitting by the door, said, “Fuck you, you skin-headed jackass!” I cracked up laughing because Herb was bald, and with his long face and big yellow teeth and the way he brayed when he laughed, he
did
look like a skin-headed jackass.
Herb though, growled something, and snatched Beans right off the bench, out of the wagon into the street, and started belting him back and forth across the face with his big gloved hand. I realized from the thuds that they were sap gloves and Beans’s face was already busted open and bleeding before I could pull Herb away and push him back, causing him to fall on his ass.
“You son of a bitch,” he said, looking at me with a combination of surprise and bloodred anger. He almost said it like a question he was so surprised.
“He’s a wino, man,” I answered, and that should’ve been enough for any cop, especially a veteran like Herb who had twelve years on the job at that time and knew that you don’t beat up defenseless winos no matter what kind of trouble they give you. That was one of the first things we learned in the old days from the beat cops who broke us in. When a man takes a swing at you or actually hits you, you have the right to kick ass, that goes without saying. It doesn’t have to be tit for tat, and if some asshole gives you tit, you tat his goddamn teeth down his throat. That way, you’ll save some other cop from being slugged by the same pukepot if he learns his lesson from you.
But every real cop also knows you don’t beat up winos. Even if they swing at you or actually hit you. Chances are it’ll be a puny little swing and you can just handcuff him and throw him in jail. Cops know very well how many fellow policemen develop drinking problems themselves, and there’s always the thought in the back of your mind that there on the sidewalk, but for the gods, sleeps old Bumper Morgan.
Anyway, Herb had violated a cop’s code by beating up the wino and he knew it, which probably saved us a hell of a good go right there on East Sixth Street. And I’m not at all sure it might not’ve ended by me getting my chubby face changed around by those sap gloves because Herb was an ex-wrestler and a very tough bastard.
“Don’t you ever try that again,” he said to me, as we put Beans back inside and locked the door.
“I won’t, if you never beat up a drunk when you’re working with me,” I answered casually, but I was tense and coiled, ready to go, even thinking about unsnapping my holster because Herb looked damned dangerous at that moment, and you never know when an armed man might do something crazy. He was one of those creeps that carried an untraceable hideout gun and bragged how if he ever killed somebody he shouldn’t have, he’d plant the gun on the corpse and claim self-defense. The mood was interrupted by a radio call just then, and I rogered it and we finished the night in silence. The next night Herb asked to go back to a radio car because he and I had a “personality conflict.”
Shortly after that Herb went to vice and got fired, and I forgot all about that incident until about a year later on Main Street, when I ran into Beans again. That night I got into a battle with two guys I’d watched pull a pigeon drop on some old man. I’d stood inside a pawnshop and watched them through binoculars while they flimflammed him out of five hundred bucks.
They were bad young dudes, and the bigger of the two, a block-faced slob with an eighteen-inch neck was giving me a pretty good go, even though I’d already cracked two of his ribs with my stick. I couldn’t finish him because the other one kept jumping on my back, kicking and biting, until I ran backward and slammed into a car and a brick wall, with him between me and the object. I did this twice and he kept hanging on and then somebody from the crowd of about twenty assholes who were gathered around enjoying the fight barreled in and tackled the little one and held him on the sidewalk until I could finish the big one by slapping him across the Adam’s apple with the stick.
The other one gave up right then and I cuffed the two of them together and saw that my helper was old Beans the wino, sitting there throwing up, and bleeding from a cut eye where the little dude clawed him. I gave Beans a double sawbuck for that, and took him to a doctor, and I had the Captain’s adjutant print up a beautiful certificate commending Beans for his good citizenship. Of course, I lied and said Beans was some respectable businessman who saw the fight and came to my aid. I couldn’t tell them he was a down-and-out wino or they might not have done it. It was nicely framed and had Beans’s real name on it, which I couldn’t for the life of me remember now. I presented it to him the next time I found him bombed on East Sixth Street and he really seemed to like it.
As I remembered all this, I felt like calling him back and asking him if he still had it, but I figured he probably sold the frame for enough to buy a short dog, and used the certificate to plug the holes in his shoe. It’s always best not to ask too many questions of people or to get to know them too well. You save yourself disappointment that way. Anyway, Beans was half a block away now, staggering down the street cradling the wine bottle under his greasy coat.
I took down my sunglasses which I keep stashed behind the visor in my car and settled down to cruise and watch the streets and relax even though I was too restless to really relax. I decided not to wait, but to cruise over to the school and see Cassie, who would be coming in early like she always did on Thursdays. She’d feel like I did, like everything she did these last days at school would be for the last time. But at least she knew she’d be doing similar things in another school.
I parked out front and got a few raspberries from students for parking my black-and-white in the no parking zone, but I’d be damned if I’d walk clear from the faculty lot. Cassie wasn’t in her office when I got there, but it was unlocked so I sat at her desk and waited.
The desk was exactly like the woman who manned it: smart and tidy, interesting and feminine. She had an odd-shaped ceramic ashtray on one side of the desk which she’d picked up in some junk store in west L.A. There was a small, delicately painted oriental vase that held a bunch of dying violets which Cassie would replace first thing after she arrived. Under the plastic cover on the desk blotter Cassie had a screwy selection of pictures of people she admired, mostly French poets. Cassie was long on poetry and tried to get me going on haiku for a while, but I finally convinced her I don’t have the right kind of imagination for poetry. My reading is limited to history and to new ways of doing police work. I liked one poem Cassie showed me about wooly lambs and shepherds and wild killer dogs. I understood that one all right.
The door opened and Cassie and another teacher, a curvy little chicken in a hot pink mini, came giggling through the door.
“Oh!” said the young broad. “Who are you?” the blue uniform shocked her. I was sitting back in Cassie’s comfortable leather-padded desk chair.
