There were two other men at the sushi bar, both Japanese, and Mako who worked the sushi bar smiled at me but looked a little grim at the challenge. He once told Mama that serving Boom-pah alone was like serving a sushi bar full of sumos. I couldn’t help it, I loved those delicate little rice balls, molded by hand and wrapped in strips of pink salmon and octopus, abalone, tuna and shrimp. I loved the little hidden pockets of horseradish that surprised you and made your eyes water. And I loved a bowl of soup, especially soybean and seaweed, and to drink it from the bowl Japanese style. I put it away faster than Mako could lay it out and I guess I looked like a buffalo at the sushi bar. Much as I tried to control myself and use a little Japanese self-discipline, I kept throwing the chow down and emptying the little dishes while Mako grinned and sweated and put them up. I knew it was no way to behave at the sushi bar in a nice restaurant, this was for gourmets, the refined eaters of Japanese cuisine, and I attacked like a blue locust, but God, eating sushi is being in heaven. In fact, I’d settle for that, and become a Buddhist if heaven was a sushi bar.
There was only one thing that saved me from looking too bad to a Japanese-I could handle chopsticks like one of them. I first learned in Japan right after the war, and I’ve been coming to the Geisha Doll and every other restaurant here in J-town for twenty years so it was no wonder. Even without the bluesuit, they could look at me click those sticks and know I was no tourist passing through. Sometimes though, when I didn’t think about it, I ate with both hands. I just couldn’t devour it fast enough.
In cooler weather I always drank rice wine or hot sake with my meal, today, ice water. After I’d finished what two or three good-sized Japanese would consume, I quit and started drinking tea while Mama and Sumi made several trips over to make sure I had enough and to see that my tea was hot enough and to try to feed me some tempura, and the tender fried shrimp looked so good I ate a half dozen. If Sumi wasn’t twenty years too young I’d have been awful tempted to try her too. But she was so delicate and beautiful and so young, I lost confidence even thinking about it. And then too, she was one of the people on my beat, and there’s that thing, the way they think about me. Still, it always helped my appetite to eat in a place where there were pretty women. But until I was at least half full, I have to say I didn’t notice women or anything else. The world disappears for me when I’m eating something I love.
The thing that always got to me about Mama was how much she thanked me for eating up half her kitchen. Naturally she would never let me pay for my food, but she always thanked me about ten times before I got out the door. Even for an Oriental she really overdid it. It made me feel guilty, and when I came here I sometimes wished I could violate the custom and pay her. But she’d fed cops before I came along and she’d feed them after, and that was the way things were. I didn’t tell Mama that Friday was going to be my last day, and I didn’t start thinking about it because with a barrel of sushi in my stomach I couldn’t afford indigestion.
Sumi came over to me before I left and held the little teacup to my lips while I sipped it and she said, “Okay, Bumper, tell me an exciting cops-and-robbers story.” She did this often, and I’m sure she was aware how she affected me up close there feeling her sweet breath, looking at those chocolate-brown eyes and soft skin.
“All right, my little lotus blossom,” I said, like W. C. Fields, and she giggled. “One spine tingler, coming up.”
Then I reverted to my normal voice and told her about the guy I stopped for blowing a red light at Second and San Pedro one day and how he’d been here a year from Japan and had a California license and all, but didn’t speak English, or pretended not to so he could try to get out of the ticket. I decided to go ahead and hang one on him because he almost wiped out a guy in the crosswalk, and when I got it written he refused to sign it, telling me in pidgin, “Not gear-tee, not gear-tee,” and I tried for five minutes to explain that the signature was just a promise to appear and he could have a jury trial if he wanted one and if he didn’t sign I’d have to book him. He just kept shaking his head like he didn’t savvy and finally I turned that ticket book over and drew a picture on the back. Then I drew the same picture for Sumi. It was a little jail window with a stick figure hanging on the bars. He had a sad turned-down mouth and slant eyes. I’d showed him the picture and said, “You sign now, maybe?” and he wrote his name so fast and hard he broke my pencil lead.
Sumi laughed and repeated it in Japanese for Mama. When I left after tipping Mako they all thanked me again until I really did feel guilty. That was the only thing I didn’t like about J-town. I wished to hell I could pay for my meal there, though I confess I never had that wish anywhere else.
Frankly, there was practically nothing to spend my money on. I ate three meals on my beat. I could buy booze, clothes, jewelry, and everything else you could think of at wholesale or less. In fact, somebody was always giving me something like that as a gift. I had my bread stop and a dairy that supplied me with gallons of free ice cream, milk, cottage cheese, all I wanted. My apartment was very nice and rent-free, even including utilities, because I helped the manager run the thirty-two units. At least he thought I helped him. He’d call me when he had a loud party or something, and I’d go up, join the party, and persuade them to quiet down a little, while I drank their booze and ate their canapes. Once in awhile I’d catch a peeping tom or something, and since the manager was such a mouse, he thought I was indispensable. Except for girlfriends and my informants it was always hard to find anything to spend my money on. Sometimes I actually went a week hardly spending a dime except for tips. I’m a big tipper, not like most policemen.
When it came to accepting things from people on my beat I did have one rule-no money. I felt that if I took money, which a lot of people tried to give me at Christmas time, I’d be getting bought. I never felt bought though if a guy gave me free meals or a case of booze, or a discounted sport coat, or if a dentist fixed my teeth at a special rate, or an optometrist bounced for a pair of sunglasses half price. These things weren’t money, and I wasn’t a hog about it. I never took more than I could personally use, or which I could give to people like Cruz Segovia or Cassie, who recently complained that her apartment was beginning to look like a distillery. Also I never took anything from someone I might end up having to arrest. For instance, before we started really hating each other, Marvin Heywood, the owner of the Pink Dragon, tried to lay a couple cases of scotch on me, and I mean the best, but I turned him down. I’d known from the first day he opened that place it would be a hangout for slimeballs. Every day was like a San Quentin convention in that cesspool. And the more I thought of it, the more I got burned up thinking that after I retired nobody would roust the Dragon as hard as I always did. I caused Marvin a sixty-day liquor license suspension twice, and I probably cost him two thousand a month in lost business since some of the hoods were afraid to come there because of me.
I jumped in my car and decided to cruise by the Dragon for one last shot at it. When I parked out back, a hype in the doorway saw me and ran down the steps to tell everybody inside the heat was coming. I took my baton, wrapped the thong around my hand which they teach you not to do now, but which I’ve been doing for twenty years, and I walked down the concrete stairway to this cellar bar, and through the draped doorway. The front is framed by a pink dragon head. The front doorway is the mouth of the beast, the back door is under the tail. It always made me mad just to see the big dumb-looking dragon-mouth door. I went in the back door, up the dragon’s ass, tapping my stick on the empty chairs and keeping my head on a swivel as I let my eyes get accustomed to the gloom. The pukepots were all sitting near the back. There were only about ten customers now in the early afternoon, and Marvin, all six feet six inches of him, was at the end of the bar grinning at a bad-looking bull dyke who was putting down a pretty well-built black stud in an arm wrestle.
Marvin was grinning, but he didn’t mean it, he knew I was there. It curdled his blood to see me tapping on the furniture w
ith my stick. That’s why I did it. I always was as badge heavy and obnoxious as I could be when I was in there. I’d been in two brawls here and both times I knew Marvin was just wetting his shorts wishing he had the guts to jump in on me, but he thought better of it.
He weighed at least three hundred pounds and was damned tough. You had to be to own this joint, which catered to bookmakers, huggermugger whores, paddy hustlers, speed freaks, fruits and fruit hustlers, and ex-cons of both sexes and all ages. I’d never quite succeeded in provoking Marvin into attacking me, although it was common knowledge on the street that a shot fired at me one night from a passing car was some punk hired by Marvin. It was after that, even though nothing was ever proved, that I really began standing on the Dragon’s tail. For a couple of months his business dropped to nothing with me living on his doorstep, and he sent two lawyers to my captain and the police commission to get me off his back. I relented as much as I had to, but I still gave him fits.
If I wasn’t retiring there’d be hell to pay around here because once you get that twenty years’ service in, you don’t have to pussyfoot around so much. I mean no matter what kind of trouble you get into, nobody can ever take your pension away for any reason, even if they fire you. So if I were staying, I’d go right on. Screw the lawyers, screw the police commission. I’d land on that Dragon with both boon-dockers. And as I thought that, I looked down at my size thirteen triple E’s. They were beat officer shoes, high top, laces with eyelets, ankle supporting, clumsy, round toes, beat officer shoes. A few years ago they were actually popular with young black guys, and almost came into style again. They called them “old man comforts” and they were soft and comfortable, but ugly as hell, I guess, to most people. I’d probably always wear them. I’d sunk my old man comforts in too many deserving asses to part with them now.
Finally Marvin got tired of watching the arm wrestlers and pretending he didn’t see me.
“Whadda you want, Morgan,” he said. Even in the darkness I could see him getting red in the face, his big chin jutting.
“Just wondering how many scumbags were here today, Marvin,” I said in a loud voice which caused four or five of them to look up. These days we’re apt to get disciplinary action for making brutal remarks like that, even though these assholes would bust their guts laughing if I was courteous or even civil.
The bull dyke was the only righteous female in the place. In this dive you almost have to check everybody’s plumbing to know whether it’s interior or exterior. The two in dresses were drags, the others were fruit hustlers and flimflam guys. I recognized a sleazy bookmaker named Harold Wagner. One of the fruit hustlers was a youngster, maybe twenty-two or so. He was still young enough to be offended by my remark, especially since it was in front of the queen in the red mini who probably belonged to him. He mumbled something under his breath and Marvin told him to cool it since he didn’t want to give me an excuse to make another bust in the place. The guy looked high on pot like most everyone these days.
“He your new playmate, Roxie?” I said to the red dress queen, whose real name I knew was John Jeffrey Alton.
“Yes,” said the queen in a falsetto voice, and motioned to the kid to shut his mouth. He was a couple inches taller than me and big chested, probably shacking with Roxie now and they split what they get hustling. Roxie hustles the guys who want a queen, and the kid goes after the ones who want a jocker. This jocker would probably become a queen himself. I always felt sorry for queens because they’re so frantic, searching, looking. Sometimes I twist them for information, but otherwise I leave them alone.
I was in a rotten mood thinking nobody would roust the Dragon after I was gone. They were all glaring at me now, especially Marvin with his mean gray eyes and knife mouth.
One young guy, too young to know better, leaned back in his chair and made a couple of oinks and said, “I smell pig.”
I’d never seen him before. He looked like a college boy slumming. Maybe in some rah-rah campus crowd beer joint I’d just hee-haw and let him slide, but here in the Pink Dragon the beat cops rule by force and fear. If they stopped being afraid of me I was through, and the street would be a jungle, which it is anyway, but at least now you can walk through it watching for occasional cobras and rabid dogs. I figured if it weren’t for guys like me, there’d be no trails through the frigging forest.
“Oink, oink,” he said again, with more confidence this time, since I hadn’t responded. “I sure do smell pig.”
“And what do pigs like best?” I smiled, slipping the stick back in my baton ring. “Pigs like to clean up garbage, and I see a pile.” Still smiling I kicked the chair legs and he went down hard throwing a glass of beer on Roxie who forgot the falsetto and yelled, “Shithouse mouse!” in a pretty good baritone when the beer slid down his bra.
I had the guy in a wristlock before he knew what fell on him, and was on my way out the door, with him walking backwards, but not too fast in case someone else was ready.
“You bastard!” Marvin sputtered. “You assaulted my customer. You bastard! I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Go right on, Marvin,” I said, while the tall kid screamed and tippy-toed to the door because the upward thrust of the wristlock was making him go as high as he could. The smell of pot was hanging on his clothes but the euphoria wasn’t dulling the pain of the wristlock. When you’ve got one that’s really loaded you can’t crank it on too hard because they don’t react to pain, and you might break a wrist trying to make them flinch. This guy felt it though, and he was docile, ow, ow, owing all the way out. Marvin came around the bar and followed us to the door.
“There’s witnesses!” he boomed. “This time there’s witnesses to your dirty, filthy false arrest of my customer! What’s the charge? What’re you going to charge him with?”
“He’s drunk, Marvin,” I smiled, holding the wristlock with one hand, just in case Marvin was mad enough. I was up, high up, all alive, ready to fly.
“It’s a lie. He’s sober. He’s sober as you.”
“Why, Marvin,” I said, “he’s drunk in public view and unable to care for himself. I’m obliged to arrest him for his own protection. He has to be drunk to say what he did to me, don’t you agree? And if you’re not careful I might think you’re trying to interfere with my arrest. You wouldn’t like to try interfering with my arrest would you, Marvin?”
“We’ll get you, Morgan,” Marvin whispered helplessly. “We’ll get your job one of these days.”
“If you slimeballs could have my job I wouldn’t want it,” I said, let down because it was over.
The kid wasn’t as loaded as I thought when I got him out of there into the sunshine and more or less fresh Los Angeles air.
“I’m not drunk,” he repeated all the way to the Glass House, shaking his mop of blond hair out of his face since I had his hands cuffed behind his back. The Glass House is what the street people call our main police building because of all the windows.
“You talked your way into jail, boy,” I said, lighting a cigar.
“You can’t just put a sober man in jail for drunk because he calls you a pig,” said the kid, and by the way he talked and looked, I figured him for an upper-middle-class student hanging out downtown with the scumbags for a perverse kick, and also because he was at heart a scumbag himself.
“More guys talk themselves into jail than get there any other way,” I said.
“I demand an attorney,” he said.
“Call one soon as you’re booked.”
“I’ll bring those people to court. They’ll testify I was sober. I’ll sue you for false arrest.”
“You wouldn’t be getting a cherry, kid. Guys tried to sue me a dozen times. And you wouldn’t get those assholes in the Dragon to give you the time of day if they had a crate full of alarm clocks.”
“How can you book me for drunk? Are you prepared to swear before God that I was drunk?”
“There’s no God down here on the beat, and anyway He’d never show his face
in the Pink Dragon. The United States Supreme Court decisions don’t work too well down here either. So you see, kid, I been forced to write my own laws, and you violated one in there. I just have to find you guilty of contempt of cop.”
FIVE
AFTER I GOT THE GUY BOOKED I didn’t know what the hell to do. I had this empty feeling now that was making me depressed. I thought about the hotel burglar again, but I felt lazy. It was this empty feeling. I was in a black mood as I swung over toward Figueroa. I saw a mailbox handbook named Zoot Lafferty standing there near a public phone. He used to hang around Main and then Broadway and now Figueroa. If we could ever get him another block closer to the Harbor Freeway maybe we could push the bastard off the overpass sometime, I thought, in the mood for murder.
Lafferty always worked the businessmen in the area, taking the action and recording the bets inside a self-addressed stamped envelope. And he always hung around a mailbox and a public phone booth. If he saw someone that he figured was a vice cop, he’d run to the mailbox and deposit the letter. That way there’d be no evidence like betting markers or owe sheets the police could recover. He’d have the customers’ bets the next day when the mail came, and in time for collection and payment. Like all handbooks though, he was scared of plainclothes vice cops but completely ignored uniformed policemen.
So one day when I was riding by, I slammed on the binders, jumped out of the black-and-white, and fell on Zoot’s skinny ass before he could get to the mailbox. I caught him with the markers and they filed a felony bookmaking charge. I convicted him in Superior Court after I convinced the judge that I had a confidential reliable informant tell me all about Zoot’s operation, which was true, and that I hid behind a bush just behind the phone booth and overheard the bets being taken over the phone, which was a lie. But I convinced the judge and that’s all that matters. He had to pay a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fine and was given a year’s probation, and that same day, he moved over here to Figueroa away from my beat where there are no bushes anywhere near his phone booth.
The Blue Knight Page 5
