The Blue Knight (14 page)

“I am the Pretty Good Shepherd,” I said, puffing on my cigar and smiling at Cassie.

“Whatever that means,” said Cassie, shaking her head, putting down a load of books, and kissing me on the cheek much to the surprise of her friend.

“You must be Cassie’s fiancé,” the friend laughed as it suddenly hit her. “I’m Maggie Carson.”

“Pleased to meet you, Maggie. I’m Bumper Morgan,” I said, always happy to meet a woman, especially a young one, who shakes hands, and with a firm friendly grip.

“I’ve heard about Cassie’s policeman friend, but it surprised me, seeing that uniform so suddenly.”

“We’ve all got our skeletons rattling, Maggie,” I said. “Tell me, what’ve you done that makes you jump at the sight of the fuzz?”

“All right, Bumper,” Cassie smiled. I was standing now, and she had me by the arm.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Maggie, with a sly wink, just as she’d seen and heard it in a thousand corny love movies.

“Nice kid,” I said, after Maggie closed the door and I kissed Cassie four or five times.

“I missed you last night,” said Cassie, standing there pressed up against me, smelling good and looking good in her yellow sleeveless dress. Her arms were red tan, her hair down, touching her shoulders.

“Your dinner date tonight still on?”

“Afraid so,” she murmured.

“After tomorrow we’ll have all the time we want together.”

“Think we’ll ever have all the time we want?”

“You’ll get sick of seeing me hanging around the pad.”

“Never happen. Besides, you’ll be busy launching that new career.”

“I’m more worried about the other career.”

“Which one?”

“Being the kind of husband you think I’ll be. I wonder if I’ll be really good for you.”

“Bumper!” she said, stepping back and looking to see if I meant it, and I tried a lopsided grin.

I kissed her then, as tenderly as I could, and held her. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

“I know. I’m just a very insecure old dame.”

I could’ve kicked my ass for blurting out something that I knew would hurt her. It was like I wanted to hurt her a little for being the best thing that ever happened, for saving me from becoming a pitiful old man trying to do a young man’s work, and doing brass balls police work was definitely a young man’s work. I never could’ve been an inside man. Never a jailer, or a desk officer, or a supply man handing out weapons to guys doing the real police work. Cassie was saving me from that nightmare. I was getting out while I was still a man alive, with lots of good years ahead. And with somebody to care about. I got a vicious gas pain just then, and I wished I wasn’t standing there with Cassie so I could pop a bubble breaker.

“I guess
I’m
the silly one,” said Cassie.

“If you only knew how bad I want out, Cassie, you’d stop worrying.” I patted her back like I was burping her when really I was wishing I could burp myself. I could feel the bubble getting bigger and floating up in my stomach.

“All right, Bumper Morgan,” she said. “Now what day are we actually leaving Los Angeles? I mean actually? As man and wife. We’ve got a million things to do.”

“Wait till tomorrow night, me proud beauty,” I answered. “Tomorrow night when we have some time to talk and to celebrate. Tomorrow night we make all the plans while having a wonderful dinner somewhere.”

“In my apartment.”

“Okay.”

“With some wonderful champagne.”

“I’ll supply it.”

“Police discount?”

“Naturally. My last one.”

“And we celebrate tomorrow being the last day you’ll ever have to put on that uniform and risk your neck for a lot of people who don’t appreciate it.”

“Last day I risk my neck,” I nodded. “But I never did risk it for anyone but myself. I had some fun these twenty years, Cassie.”

“I know it.”

“Even though sometimes it’s a rotten job I wouldn’t wish on anyone, still, I had good times. And any risks were for Bumper Morgan.”

“Yes, love.”

“So get your heart-shaped fanny in gear and get your day’s work done. I still got almost two days of police work left to do.” I stepped away from her and picked up my hat and cigar.

“Coming by this afternoon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tonight,” she said. “I’ll get away before midnight. Come to my apartment at midnight.”

“Let’s get some sleep tonight, baby. Tomorrow’s the last day for us both on our jobs. Let’s make it a good one.”

“I don’t like my job as well since you charged into my life, do you know that?”

“Whadda you mean?”

“The academic life. I was one of the students who never left school. I loved waddling around with a gaggle of eggheads, and then
you
had to come along so, so . . . I don’t know. And now nothing seems the same.”

“Come on down, kid, I like your earthy side better.”

“I want you to come tonight,” she said, looking me dead in the eye.

“I’d rather be with you tonight than with anyone in the world, you know that, but I really ought to go by Abd’s Harem and say good-bye to my friends there. And there’re a few other places.”

“You mustn’t disappoint people,” she smiled.

“You should try not to,” I said, heating up from the way she looked me in the eye just then.

“It’s getting tough to make love to you lately.”

“A couple more days.”

“See you tomorrow,” she sighed. “I think I’ll jump you here in my office when I get my hands on you.”

“On duty?” I frowned, and put my hat on, tipping it at a jaunty angle because, let’s face it, you feel pretty good when a woman like Cassie’s quivering to get you in bed.

“Good-bye, Bumper,” she smiled sadly.

“Later, kid. See you later.”

As soon as I cleared after leaving Cassie I got a radio call.

“One-X-L-Forty-five, One-X-L-Forty-five,” said the female communications operator, “see the man at the hotel, four-twenty-five South Main, about a possible d.b.”

“One-X-L-Forty-five, roger,” I said, thinking this will be my last dead body call.

An old one-legged guy with all the earmarks of a reformed alky was standing in the doorway of the fleabag hotel.

“You called?” I said, after parking the black-and-white in front and taking the stick from the holder on the door and slipping it through the ring on my belt.

“Yeah. I’m Poochie the elevator boy,” said the old man. “I think a guy might be dead upstairs.”

“What the hell made you think so?” I said sarcastically, as we started up the stairs and I smelled the d.b. from here. The floorboards were torn up and I could see the ground underneath.

The old guy hopped up the stairs pretty quick on his one crutch without ever stopping to rest. There were about twenty steps up to the second floor where the smell could drop you and would, except that most of the tenants were bums and winos whose senses, all of them, had been killed or numbed. I almost expected the second story to have a dirt floor, the place was so crummy.

“I ain’t seen this guy in number two-twelve for oh, maybe a week,” said Poochie, who had a face like an ax, with a toothless puckered mouth.

“Can’t you smell him?”

“No,” he said, looking at me with surprise. “Can you?”

“Never mind,” I said, turning right in the hallway. “Don’t bother telling me where two-twelve is, I could find it with my eyes closed. Get me some coffee.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“No, I mean dry coffee, right out of the can. And a frying pan.”

“Okay,” he said, without asking dumb questions, conditioned by fifty years of being bossed around by cops. I held a handkerchief over my nose, and opened a window in the hallway which led out on the fire escape in the alley. I stuck my head out but it didn’t help, I could still smell him.

After a long two minutes Poochie came hopping back on his crutch with a frying pan and the coffee.

“Hope there’s a hot plate in here,” I said, suddenly thinking there might not be, though lots of the transient hotels had them, especially in the rooms used by the semipermanent boarders.

“He’s got one,” nodded Poochie, handing me the passkey. The key turned but the door wouldn’t budge.

“I coulda told you it wouldn’t open. That’s why I called you. Scared old man, Herky is. He keeps a bolt on the door whenever he’s inside. I already tried to get in.”

“Move back.”

“Going to break it?”

“Got any other suggestions?” I said, the handkerchief over my face, breathing through my mouth.

“No, I think I can smell him now.”

I booted the door right beside the lock and it crashed open, ripping the jamb loose. One rusty hinge tore free and the door dangled there by the bottom hinge.

“Yeah, he’s dead,” said Poochie, looking at Herky who had been dead for maybe five days, swollen and steamy in this unventilated room which not only had a hot plate, but a small gas heater that was raging on an eighty-five degree day.

“Can I look at him?” said Poochie, standing next to the bed, examining Herky’s bloated stomach and rotting face. His eyelids were gone and the eyes stared silver and dull at the elevator boy who grinned toothlessly and clucked at the maggots on Herky’s face and swollen sex organs.

I ran across the room and banged on the frame until I got the window open. Flies were crawling all over the glass, leaving wet tracks in the condensation. Then I ran to the hot plate, lit it, and threw the frying pan on the burner. I dumped the whole can of coffee on the frying pan, but the elevator boy was enjoying himself so much he didn’t seem to mind my extravagance with his coffee. In a few minutes the coffee was burning, and a pungent smoky odor was filling the room, almost neutralizing the odor of Herky.

“You don’t mind if I look at him?” asked Poochie again.

“Knock yourself out, pal,” I answered, going for the door.

“Been dead a while hasn’t he?”

“Little while longer and he’d have gone clear through the mattress.”

I walked to the pay phone at the end of the hall on the second floor. “Come with me, pal,” I called, figuring he’d roll old Herky soon as my back was turned. It’s bad enough getting rolled when you’re alive.

I put a dime in the pay phone and dialed operator. “Police department,” I said, then waited for my dime to return as she rang the station. The dime didn’t come. I looked hard at Poochie who turned away, very innocently.

“Someone stuffed the goddamn chute,” I said. “Some asshole’s gonna get my dime when he pulls the stuffing out later.”

“Bunch of thieves around here, Officer,” said Poochie, all puckered and a little chalkier than before.

I called the dicks and asked for one to come down and take the death report, then I hung up and lit a cigar, not that I really wanted one, but any smell would do at the moment.

“Is it true they explode like a bomb after a while?”

“What?”

“Stiffs. Like old Herky.”

“Yeah, he’d’ve been all over your wallpaper pretty soon.”

“Damn,” said the elevator boy, grinning big and showing lots of gums, upper and lower. “Some of these guys like Herky got lots of dough hidden around,” he said, winking at me.

“Yeah, well let’s let him keep it. He’s had it this long.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean we should take it.”

“Course not.”

“It’s just that these coroner guys, they get to steal anything they find laying around.”

“How long’s old Herky been living here?” I asked, not bothering to find out his whole name. I’d let the detective worry about the report.

“Off and on, over five years I know of. All alone. Never even had no friends. Nobody. Just laid up there in that room sucking up the sneaky pete. Used to drink a gallon a day. I think he lived off his social security. Pay his rent, eat a little, drink a little. I never could do it myself. That’s why I’m elevator boy. Can’t make it on that social security.”

“You ever talk to him?”

“Yeah, he never had nothing to say though. No family. Never been married. No relatives to speak of. Really alone, you know? I got me eight kids spread all over this damn country. I can go sponge off one of them ever’ once in a while. Never gonna see old Poochie like that.” He winked and tapped his chest with a bony thumb. “Guys like old Herky, they don’t care about nobody and nobody cares about them. They check out of this world grabbing their throat and staring around a lonely hotel room. Those’re the guys that swell up and pop all over your walls. Guys like old Herky.” The elevator boy thought about old Herky popping, and he broke out in a snuffling croupy laugh because that was just funny as hell.

I hung around the lobby waiting for the detective to arrive and relieve me of caring for the body. While I was waiting I started examining both sides of the staircase walls. It was the old kind with a scalloped molding about seven feet up, and at the first landing there were dirty finger streaks below the molding while the rest of the wall on both sides was uniformly dirty, but unsmudged. I walked to the landing and reached up on the ledge, feeling a toilet-paper-wrapped bundle. I opened it and found a complete outfit: eyedropper, hypodermic needle, a piece of heavy thread, burned spoon, and razor blade.

I broke the eye dropper, bent the needle, and threw the hype kit in the trash can behind the rickety desk in the lobby.

“What’s that?” asked the elevator boy.

“A fit.”

“A hype’s outfit?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you know it was there?”

“Elementary, my dear Poochie.”

“That’s pretty goddamn good.”

The detective came in carrying a clipboard full of death reports. He was one of the newer ones, a young collegiate-looking type. I didn’t know him. I talked to him for a few minutes and the elevator boy took him back to the body.

“Never catch old Poochie going it alone,” he called to me with his gums showing. “Never gonna catch old Poochie busting like a balloon and plastered to your wallpaper.”

“Good for you, Poochie,” I nodded, taking a big breath out on the sidewalk, thinking I could still smell the dead body. I imagined that his odor was clinging to my clothes and I goosed the black-and-white, ripping off some rubber in my hurry to get away from that room.

I drove around for a while and started wondering what I should work on. I thought about the hotel burglar again and wondered if I could find Link Owens, a good little hotel creeper, who might be able to tell me something about this guy that’d been hitting us so hard. All hotel burglars know each other. Sometimes you see so many of them hanging around the lobbies of the better hotels, it looks like a thieves’ convention. Then I got the code-two call to go to the station.