the Blue Knight (1972)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "In all my years on the bench I've never had that happen. Not like that. I'd like to know why you did it."

  "I want to tell you the truth," I said and my mouth was leathery. I had trouble forming the words. My lips popped from the dryness every time I opened my mouth. I had seen nervous suspects like that thousands of times when I had them good and dirty, and they knew I had them.

  "Maybe I should advise you of your constitutional rights before you tell me anything," said the judge, and she took off her glasses and the bump on her nose was more prominent. She was a homely woman and looked smaller here in her office, but she looked stronger too, and aged.

  "The hell with my rights!" I said suddenly. "I don't give a damn about my rights, I want to tell you the truth."

  "But I intend to have the district attorney's office issue a perjury complaint against you. I'm going to have that hotel register brought in, and the phone company's repairman will be subpoenaed and so will Mister Downey of course, and I think you'll be convicted."

  "Don't you even care about what I've got to say?" I was getting mad now as well as scared, and I could feel the tears coming to my eyes, and I hadn't felt anything like this since I couldn't remember when.

  "What can you say? What can anyone say? I'm awfully disappointed. I'm sickened in fact." She rubbed her eyes at the corners for a second and I was busting and couldn't hold on.

  "You're disappointed?

  You're sickened? What the hell do you think I'm feeling at this minute? I feel like you got a blowtorch on the inside of my guts and you won't turn it off and it'll never be turned off, that's what I feel, Your Honor. Now can I tell the God's truth? Will you at least let me tell it?"

  "Go ahead," she said, and lit a cigarette and leaned back in the padded chair and watched me.

  "Well, I have this snitch, Your Honor. And I've got to protect my informants, you know that. For his own personal safety, and so he can continue to give me information. And the way things are going in court nowadays with everyone so nervous about the defendant's rights, I'm afraid to even mention confidential informants like I used to, and I'm afraid to try to get a search warrant because the judges are so damn hinky they call damn near every informant a material witness, even when he's not. So in recent years I've started . . . exploring ways around."

  "You've started lying."

  "Yes, I've started lying! What the hell, I'd hardly ever convict any of these crooks if I didn't lie at least a little bit. You know what the search and seizure and arrest rules are like nowadays."

  "Go on."

  Then I told her how the arrest went down, exactly how it went down, and how I later got the idea about the traffic warrant when I found out he had one. And when I was finished, she smoked for a good two minutes and didn't say a word. Her cheeks were eroded and looked like they were hacked out of a rocky cliff. She was a strong old woman from another century as she sat there and showed me her profile and finally she said, "I've seen witnesses lie thousands of times. I guess every defendant lies to a greater or lesser degree and most defense witnesses stretch hell out of the truth, and of course I've seen police officers lie about probable cause. There's the old hackneyed story about feeling what appeared to be an offensive weapon like a knife in the defendant's pocket and reaching inside to retrieve the knife and finding it to be a stick of marijuana. That one's been told so many times by so many cops it makes judges want to vomit. And of course there's the furtive movement like the defendant is shoving something under the seat of the car. That's always good probable cause for a search, and likewise that's overdone. Sure, I've heard officers lie before, but nothing is black and white in this world and there are degrees of truth and untruth, and like many other judges who feel police officers cannot possibly protect the public these days, I've given officers the benefit of the doubt in probable cause situations. I never really believed a Los Angeles policeman would completely falsify his entire testimony as you've done today. That's why I feel sickened by it."

  "I didn't falsify it all. He had the gun. It was under the mattress. He had the marijuana. I just lied about where I found it. Your Honor, he's an active bandit. The robbery dicks figure him for six robberies. He's beaten an old man and blinded him. He's . . ."

  She held up her hand and said, "I didn't figure he was using that gun to stir his soup with, Officer Morgan. He has the look of a dangerous man about him."

  "You could see it too!" I said. "Well . . ."

  "Nothing," she interrupted. "That means nothing. The higher courts have given us difficult law, but by God, it's the law!"

  "Your Honor," I said slowly. And then the tears filled my eyes and there was nothing I could do. "I'm not afraid of losing my pension. I've done nineteen years and over eleven months and I'm leaving the Department after tomorrow, and officially retiring in a few weeks, but I'm not afraid of losing the money. That's not why I'm asking, why I'm begging you to give me a chance. And it's not that I'm afraid to face a perjury charge and go to jail, because you can't be a crybaby in this world. But Judge, there are people, policemen, and other people, people on my beat who think I'm something special. I'm one of the ones they really look up to, you know? I'm not just a character, I'm a hell of a cop!"

  "I know you are," she said. "I've noticed you in my courtroom many times."

  "You have?" Of course I'd been in her courtroom as a witness before, but I figured all bluecoats looked the same to blackrobes. "Don't get down on us, Judge Bedford. Some coppers don't lie at all, and others only lie a little like you said. Only a few like me would do what I did."

  "Why?"

  "Because I care, Your Honor, goddamnit. Other cops put in their nine hours and go home to their families twenty miles from town and that's it, but guys like me, why I got nobody and I want nobody. I do my living on my beat. And I've got things inside me that make me do these things against my better judgment. That proves I'm dumber than the dumbest moron on my beat."

  "You're not dumb. You're a clever witness. A very clever witness."

  "I never lied that much before, Judge. I just thought I could get away with it. I just couldn't read that name right on that hotel register. If I could've read that name right on the register I never would've been able to pull off that traffic warrant story and I wouldn't've tried it. And I probably wouldn't be in this fix, and the reason I couldn't really see that name and only assumed it must've been Landry is because I'm fifty years old and farsighted, and too stubborn to wear my glasses, and kidding myself that I'm thirty and doing a young man's job when I can't cut it anymore. I'm going out though, Judge. This clinches it if I ever had any doubts. Tomorrow's my last day. A knight. Yesterday somebody called me a Blue Knight. Why do people say such things? They make you think you're really something and so you got to win a battle every time out. Why should I care if Landry walks out of here? What's it to me? Why do they call you a knight?"

  She looked at me then and put the cigarette out and I'd never in my life begged anyone for anything, and never licked anyone's boots. I was glad she was a woman because it wasn't quite so bad to be licking a woman's boots, not quite so bad, and my stomach wasn't only burning now, it was hurting in spasms, like a big fist was pounding inside in a jerky rhythm. I thought I'd double over from the pain in a few minutes.

  "Officer Morgan, you fully agree don't you that we can call off the whole damn game and crawl back in primeval muck if the orderers, the enforcers of the law, begin to operate outside it? You understand that there could be no civilization, don't you? You know, don't you, that I as well as many other judges am terribly aware of the overwhelming numbers of criminals on those streets whom you policemen must protect us from? You cannot always do it and there are times when you are handcuffed by court decisions that presume the goodness of people past all logical presumption. But don't you think there are judges, and yes, even defense attorneys, who sympathize with you? Can't you see that you, you policemen of all people, must be more than you are? You must be patient and above all, honest. Ca
n't you see if you go outside the law regardless of how absurd it seems, in the name of enforcing it, that we're all doomed? Can you see these things?"

  "Yes. Yes, I know, but old Knobby Booker doesn't know. And if I had to name him as my snitch he might get a rat jacket and somebody might rip him off. . . ." And now my voice was breaking and I could hardly see her because it was all over and I knew I'd be taken out of this courtroom and over to the county jail. "When you're alone out there on that beat, Your Honor, and everyone knows you're the Man. . . . The way they look at you . . . and how it feels when they say, `You're a champ, Bumper. You're a warlord. You're a Knight, a Blue Knight. . . .'" And then I could say no more and said no more that day to that woman.

  The silence was buzzing in my ears and finally she said, "Officer Morgan, I'm requesting that the deputy district attorney say nothing of your perjured testimony in his report to his office. I'm also going to request the public defender, the bailiff, the court reporter and the clerk, not to reveal what happened in there today. I want you to leave now so I can wonder if I've done the right thing. We'll never forget this, but we'll take no further action."

  I couldn't believe it. I sat for a second, paralyzed, and then I stood up and wiped my eyes and walked toward the door and stopped and didn't even think to thank her, and looked around, but she was turned in her chair and watching the book stacks again. When I walked through the courtroom, the public defender and the district attorney were talking quietly and both of them glanced at me. I could feel them look at me, but I went straight for the door, holding my stomach, and waiting for the cramps to subside so I could think.

  I stepped into the hall and remembered vaguely that the gun and narcotics evidence were still in the courtroom, and then thought the hell with it, I had to get out in the car and drive with the breeze in my face before the blood surging through my skull blew the top of my head off.

  I went straight for Elysian Park around the back side, got out of the car, filled my pockets with acid eaters from the glove compartment, and climbed the hill behind the reservoir. I could smell eucalyptus, and the dirt was dry and loose under my shoes. The hill was steeper than I thought and I was sweating pretty good after just a few minutes of walking. Then I saw two park peepers. One had binoculars to see the show better. They were watching the road down below where couples sit in their cars at any hour of the day or night under the trees and make love.

  "Get outta my park, you barfbags," I said, and they turned around and saw me standing above them. They both were middle-aged guys. One of them, with fishbelly pale skin, wore orange checkered pants and a yellow turtleneck and had the binoculars up to his face. When I spoke he dropped them and bolted through the brush. The other guy looked indignant and started walking stiff-legged away like a cocky little terrier, but when I took a few steps toward him, cursing and growling, he started running too, and I picked up the binoculars and threw them at him, but missed and they bounced off a tree and fell in the brush. Then I climbed the hill clear to the top and even though it was smoggy, the view was pretty good. By the time I flopped on the grass and took off my Sam Browne and my hat, the stomach cramps were all but gone. I fell asleep almost right away and slept an hour there on the cool grass.

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  WHEN I WOKE UP, the world tasted horrible and I popped an acid eater just to freshen my mouth. I laid there on my back for a while and looked up at a blue-jay scampering around on a branch.

  "Did you shit in my mouth?" I said, and then wondered what I'd been dreaming about because I was sweaty even though it was fairly cool here. A breeze blowing over me felt wonderful. I saw by my watch it was after four and I hated to get up but of course I had to. I sat up, tucked in my shirt, strapped on the Sam Browne and combed back my hair which was tough to do, it was so wild and wiry. And I thought, I'll be glad when it all falls out and then I won't have to screw around with it anymore. It was hell sometimes when even your hair wouldn't obey you. When you had no control over anything, even your goddamn hair. Maybe I should use hair spray, I thought, like these pretty young cops nowadays. Maybe while I still had some hair I should get those fifteen-dollar haircuts and ride around in a radio car all day, spraying my hair instead of booking these scumbags, and then I could stay out of trouble, then no judge could throw me in jail for perjury, and disgrace me, and ruin everything I've done for twenty years, and ruin everything they all think about me, all of them, the people on the beat.

  One more day and it's over, thank Christ, I thought, and half stumbled down the hill to my car because I still wasn't completely awake.

  "One-X-L-Forty-five, One-X-L-Forty-five, come in," said the communications operator, a few seconds after I started the car. She sounded exasperated as hell, so I guess she'd been trying to get me. Probably a major crisis, like a stolen bicycle, I thought.

  "One-X-L-Forty-five, go," I said disgustedly into the mike.

  "One-X-L-Forty-five, meet the plainclothes officer at the southeast corner of Beverly and Vermont in Rampart Division. This call has been approved by your watch com-mander."

  I rogered the call and wondered what was going on and then despite how rotten I felt, how disgusted with everything and everybody, and mostly this miserable crummy job, despite all that, my heart started beating a little bit harder, and I got a sort of happy feeling bubbling around inside me because I knew it had to be Charlie Bronski. Charlie must have something, and next thing I knew I was driving huckety-buck over Temple, slicing through the heavy traffic and then bombing it down Vermont, and I spotted Charlie in a parking lot near a market. He was standing beside his car looking hot and tired and mad, but I knew he had something or he'd never call me out of my division like this.

  "About time, Bumper," said Charlie, "I been trying to reach you on the radio for a half hour. They told me you left court a long time ago."

  "Been out for investigation, Charlie. Too big to talk about."

  "Wonder what that means," Charlie smiled, with his broken-toothed, Slavic, hard-looking grin. "I got something so good you won't believe it."

  "You busted Red Scalotta!"

  "No, no, you're dreaming," he laughed. "But I got the search warrant for the back that Reba told us about."

  "How'd you do it so fast?"

  "I don't actually have it yet. I'll have it in fifteen minutes when Nick and Fuzzy and the Administrative Vice team get here. Nick just talked to me on the radio. Him and Fuzzy just left the Hall of Justice. They got the warrant and the Ad Vice team is on the way to assist."

  "How the hell did you do it, Charlie?" I asked, and now I'd forgotten the judge, and the humiliation, and the misery, and Charlie and me were grinning at each other because we were both on the scent. And when a real cop gets on it, there's nothing else he can think about. Nothing.

  "After we left Reba I couldn't wait to get started on this thing. We went to that laundry over near Sixth and Kenmore. Actually, it's a modern dry cleaning and laundry establishment. They do the work on the premises and it's pretty damned big. The building's on the corner and takes in the whole ground floor, and I even saw employees going up to the second floor where they have storage or something. I watched from across the street with binoculars and Fuzzy prowled around the back alley and found the door Reba said Aaron was talking about."

  "Who in the hell is Aaron, Charlie?"

  "He's Scalotta's think man. Aaron Fishman. He's an accountant and a shrewd organizer and he's got everything it takes but guts, so he's a number two man to Scalotta. I never saw the guy, I only heard about him from Ad Vice and Intelligence. Soon as Reba described that little Jew I knew who she was talking about. He's Scalotta's link with the back offices. He protects Red's interests and hires the back clerks and keeps things moving. Dick Reemey at Intelligence says he doesn't think Red could operate without Aaron Fishman. Red's drifting away from the business more and more, getting in with the Hollywood crowd. Anyway, Fuzzy, who's a nosy bastard, went in the door to the laundry and found a stairway that was locked, a
nd a door down. He went down and found a basement and an old vented furnace and a trash box, and he started sifting through and found a few adding machine tapes all ending in fives and zeros, and he even found a few charred pieces of owe sheets and a half-burned scratch sheet. I'll bet Aaron would set fire to his clerk if he knew he was that careless."

  Charlie chuckled for a minute and I lit a cigar and looked at my watch.

  "Don't worry about the time, Bumper, the back office clerks don't leave until an hour or so past the last post. He's got to stay and figure his tops."

  "Tops?"

  "Top sheets. This shows each agent's code and lists his bettors and how much was won and lost."

  "Wonder how Zoot Lafferty did today?" I laughed.

  "Handbooks like Zoot get ten percent hot or cold, win or lose," said Charlie. "Anyway, Fuzzy found a little evidence to corroborate Reba, and then came the most unbelievable tremendous piece of luck I ever had in this job. He's crawling around down there in the basement like a rat, picking up burned residue, and next thing he sees is a big ugly guy standing stone still in the dark corner of the basement. Fuzzy almost shit his pants and he didn't have a gun or anything because you don't really need weapons when you're working books. Next thing, this guy comes toward him like the creature from the black lagoon and Fuzzy said the door was behind the guy and just as he's thinking about rushing him with his head down and trying to bowl him over on his ass, the giant starts talking in a little-boy voice and says, `Hello, my name is Bobby. Do you know how to fix electric trains?'

  "And next thing Fuzzy knows this guy leads him to a little room in the back where there's a bed and a table and Fuzzy has to find a track break in a little electric train set that Bobby's got on his table, and all the time the guy's standing there, his head damn near touching the top of the doorway he's so big, and making sure Fuzzy fixes it."

  "Well, what . . ."