The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Prick is a five-letter word,” she said, reminding me of the year I was living in.

  Then suddenly, the blond kid behind Scott got hostile. “Why do we talk to a pig like this? He talks about helping people. What’s he do besides beat their heads in, which he admits? What do you do in the ghettos of Watts for the black people?”

  Then a middle-aged guy in a clergyman’s collar and a black suit popped through the ring of young people. “I work in the eastside Chicano barrios,” he announced. “What do you do for the Mexicans except exploit them?”

  “What do you do?” I asked, getting uncomfortable at the sudden change of mood here, as several of the marchers joined the others and I was backed up against the car by fifteen or twenty people.

  “I fight for the Chicanos. For brown power,” said the clergyman.

  “You ain’t brown,” I observed, growing more nervous.

  “Inside I’m brown!”

  “Take an enema,” I mumbled, standing up straight, as I realized that things were wrong, all wrong.

  Then I caught a glimpse of the black cossack hat to the left behind two girls who were crowding in to see what the yelling was all about, and I saw a hand flip a peace button at me, good and hard. It hit me in the face, the pin scratching me right under the left eye. The black guy looked at me very cool as I spun around, mad enough to charge right through the crowd.

  “You try that again and I’ll ding your bells, man,” I said, loud enough for him to hear.

  “Who?” he said, with a big grin through the moustache and goatee.

  “Who, my ass,” I said. “You ain’t got feet that fit on a limb. I’m talking to you.”

  “You fat pig,” he sneered and turned to the crowd. “He wants to arrest me! You pick out a black, that the way you do it, Mister PO-lice?”

  “If anything goes down, I’m getting you first,” I whispered, putting my left hand on the handle of my stick.

  “He wants to arrest me,” he repeated, louder now. “What’s the charge? Being black? Don’t I have any rights?”

  “You’re gonna get your rites,” I muttered. “Your last rites.”

  “I should kill you,” he said. “There’s fifty braves here and we should kill you for all the brothers and sisters you pigs murdered.”

  “Get it on, sucker, anytime you’re ready,” I said with a show of bravado because I was really scared now.

  I figured that many people let loose could turn me into a doormat in about three minutes. My breath was coming hard. I tried to keep my jaw from trembling and my brain working. They weren’t going to get me down on the ground. Not without a gun in my hand. I decided it wouldn’t be that easy to kick my brains in. I made up my mind to start shooting to save myself, and I decided I’d blow up the two Black Russians, Geronimo, and Purple Legs, not necessarily in that order.

  Then a hand reached out and grabbed my necktie, but it was a breakaway tie, and I didn’t go with it when the hand pulled it into the crowd. At about the same time the engineering major grabbed my badge, and I instinctively brought up my right hand, holding his hand on my chest, backing up until his elbow was straight. Then I brought my left fist up hard just above his elbow and he yelped and drew back. Several other people also drew back at the unmistakable scream of pain.

  “Off the pig! Off the pig!” somebody yelled. “Rip him off!”

  I pulled my baton out and felt the black-and-white behind me now and they were all screaming and threatening, even the full-of-shit padre.

  I would’ve jumped in the car on the passenger side and locked the door but I couldn’t. I felt the handle and it was locked, and the window was rolled up, and I was afraid that if I fooled around unlocking it, somebody might get his ass up and charge me.

  Apparently the people inside the induction center didn’t know a cop was about to get his ticket cancelled, because nobody came out. I could see the cameraman fighting to get through the crowd which was spilling out on the street and I had a crazy wish that he’d make it. That’s the final vanity, I guess, but I kind of wanted him to film Bumper’s Last Stand.

  For a few seconds it could’ve gone either way and then the door to my car opened and hit me in the back, scaring the shit out of me.

  “Get your butt in here, Bumper,” said a familiar voice, which I obeyed. The second I closed the door something hit the window almost hard enough to break the glass and several people started kicking at the door and fender of my black-and-white.

  “Give me the keys,” said Stan Ludlow, who worked Intelligence Division. He was sitting behind the wheel, looking as dapper as always in a dark green suit and mint-colored necktie.

  I gave him the keys from my belt and he drove away from the curb as I heard something else clunk off the fender of the car. Four radio cars each containing three Metro officers pulled up at the induction center as we were leaving, and started dispersing the group.

  “You’re the ugliest rape victim I ever saw,” said Stan, turning on Ninth Street and parking behind a plainclothes police car where his partner was waiting.

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Had, man. You just been had.”

  “I had a feeling something wasn’t right,” I said, getting sick because I was afraid to hear what I figured he was going to say. “Did they set me up?”

  “Did they set you up? No, they didn’t have to. You set yourself up! Christ, Bumper, you should know better than to make speeches to groups like that. What the hell made you do it?”

  Stan had about fifteen years on the job and was a sergeant, but he was only about forty and except for his gray sideburns he looked lots younger. Still, I felt like a dumb little kid sitting there now. I felt like he was lots older and a damn sight wiser and took the assbite without looking at him.

  “How’d you know I was speechmaking, Stan?”

  “One of them is one of us,” said Stan. “We had one of those guys wired with a mike. We listened to the whole thing, Bumper. We called for the Metro teams because we knew what was going to happen. Damn near didn’t get to you quick enough though.”

  “Who were the leaders?” I was trying to save a grain or two of my pride. “The bitch in the yellow dress and the guru in the headband?”

  “Hell no,” said Stan, disgustedly. “Their names are John and Marie French. They’re a couple of lames trying to groove with the kids. They’re nothing. She’s a self-proclaimed revolutionary from San Pedro and he’s her husband. As a matter of fact he picked up our undercover man and drove him to the demonstration today when they were sent by the boss. French is mostly used as errand boy. He drives a VW bus and picks up everybody that needs a ride to all these peace marches. He’s nothing. Why, did you have them figured for the leaders?”

  “Sort of,” I mumbled.

  “You badmouthed them, didn’t you?”

  “Sort of. What about the two in the Russian hats?”

  “Nobody,” said Stan. “They hang around all the time with their Panther buttons and get lots of pussy, but they’re nobody. Just opportunists. Professional blacks.”

  “I guess the guy running the show was a tall nice-looking kid named Scott?” I said, as the lights slowly turned on.

  “Yeah, Scott Hairston. He’s from U.C.L.A. His sister Melba was the little blonde with the peachy ass who was hanging on his arm. She was the force behind subversive club chapters starting on her high school campus when she was still a bubblegummer. Their old man, Simon Hairston’s an attorney and a slippery bastard, and his brother Josh is an old-time activist.”

  “So the bright-eyed little baby was a goddamn viper, huh? I guess they’ve passed me by, Stan.”

  Stan smiled sympathetically and lit my cigar for me. “Look, Bumper, these kids’ve been weaned on this bullshit. You’re just a beginner. Don’t feel too bad. But for God’s sake, next time don’t start chipping with them. No speeches, please!”

  “I must’ve sounded like a boob,” I said, and I could feel myself flushing clear to my toes
.

  “It’s not that so much, Bumper, but that little bitch Melba put you on tape. She always solicits casual comments from cops. Sometimes she has a concealed hand mike with a wire running up her sleeve down to a box in her handbag. She carrying a big handbag today?”

  I didn’t have to answer. Stan saw it in the sick look on my face.

  “They’ll edit your remarks, Bumper. I heard some of them from the mike our guy was wearing. Christ, you talked about stick time and putting teeth marks on your baton and kicking ass and collecting names.”

  “But all that’s not how I meant it, Stan.”

  “That’s the way your comments’ll be presented-out of context. It’ll be printed that way in an underground newspaper or maybe even in a daily if Simon Hairston gets behind it.”

  “Oooooh,” I said, tilting my hat over my eyes and slumping down in my seat.

  “Don’t have a coronary on me, Bumper,” said Stan. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “All right? I’ll be the laughingstock of the Department!”

  “Don’t worry, Melba’s tapes’re going to disappear.”

  “The undercover man?”

  Stan nodded.

  “Bless him,” I breathed. “Which one was he? Not the kid whose arm I almost broke?”

  “No,” Stan laughed, “the tall black kid. I’m only telling you because we’re going to have to use him as a material witness in a few days anyway, and we’ll have to disclose his identity. We got secret indictments on four guys who make pretty good explosives in the basement of a North Hollywood apartment building. He’s been working for me since he joined the Department thirteen months ago. We have him enrolled in college. Nice kid. Hell of a basketball player. He can’t wait to wear a bluesuit and work a radio car. He’s sick of mingling with all these revolutionaries.”

  “How do you know he can get the tape?”

  “He’s been practically living in Melba’s skivvies for at least six months now. He’ll sleep with her tonight and that’ll be it.”

  “Some job,” I said.

  “He doesn’t mind that part of it,” Stan chuckled. “He’s anxious to see how all his friends react when they find out he’s the heat. Says he’s been using them as whipping boys and playing the outraged black man role for so long, they probably won’t believe it till they actually see him in the blue uniform with that big hateful shield on his chest. And wait’ll Melba finds out she’s been balling a cop. You can bet she’ll keep that a secret.”

  “Nobody’s gonna hear about me then, huh, Stan?”

  “I’ll erase the tape, Bumper,” said Stan, getting out of the car. “You know, in a way it worked out okay. Scott Hairston was expecting a hundred marchers in the next few hours. He didn’t want trouble yet. You wrecked his game today.”

  “See you later, Stan,” I said, trying to sound casual, like I wasn’t totally humiliated. “Have a cigar, old shoe.”

  I was wrung out after that caper and even though it was getting late in the afternoon, I jumped on the Harbor Freeway and started driving south, as fast as traffic would permit, with some kind of half-baked idea about looking at the ocean. I was trying to do something which I usually do quite well, controlling my thoughts. It wouldn’t do any good at all to stew over what happened, so I was trying to think about something else, maybe food, or Cassie, or how Glenda’s jugs looked today-something good. But I was in a dark mood, and nothing good would come, so I decided to think of absolutely nothing which I can also do quite well.

  I wheeled back to my beat and called the lieutenant, telling him about the ruckus at the induction center, leaving out all the details of course, and he told me the marchers dispersed very fast and there were only a few cars still at the scene. I knew there’d hardly be any mention of this one, a few TV shots on the six o’clock news and that’d be it. I hung up and got back in my car, hoping the cameraman hadn’t caught me smoking the cigar. That’s another silly rule, no smoking in public, as if a cop is a Buckingham Palace guard.

  SEVEN

  I DROVE AROUND SOME MORE, cooling off, looking at my watch every few seconds, wanting this day to end. The noisy chatter on the radio was driving me nuts so I turned it off. Screw the radio, I thought, I never made a good pinch from a radio call. The good busts come from doing what I do best, walking and looking and talking to people.

  I had a hell of an attack of indigestion going. I took four antacid tablets from the glove compartment and popped them all but I was still restless, squirming around on the seat. Cassie’s three o’clock class would be finished now so I drove up Vermont to Los Angeles City College and parked out front in the red zone even though when I do that I always get a few digs from the kids or from teachers like, “You can do it but we get tickets for it.” Today there was nobody in front and I didn’t get any bullshit which I don’t particularly mind anyway, since nobody including myself really likes authority symbols. I’m always one of the first to get my ass up when the brass tries to restrict my freedom with some idiotic rules.

  I climbed the stairs leisurely, admiring the tits on some sun-tanned, athletic-looking, ponytailed gym teacher. She was in a hurry and took the stairs two at a time, still in her white shorts and sneakers and white jersey that showed all she had, and it was plenty. Some of the kids passing me in the halls made all the usual remarks, calling me Dick Tracy and Sheriff John, and there were a few giggles about Marlene somebody holding some pot and then Marlene squealed and giggled. We didn’t used to get snickers about pot, and that reminded me of the only argument concerning pot that made any sense to me. Grass, like booze, breaks the chain and frees the beast, but does it so much easier and quicker. I’ve seen it thousands of times.

  Cassie was in her office with the door opened talking to a stringy-haired bubblegummer in a micro-mini that showed her red-flowered pantygirdle when she sat down.

  “Hi,” said Cassie, when she saw me in the doorway. The girl looked at me and then back at Cassie, wondering what the fuzz was here for.

  “We’ll just be a minute,” said Cassie, still smiling her clean white smile, and I nodded and walked down the hall to the water fountain thinking how damn good she looked in that orange dress. It was one of the twenty or so that I’d bought her since we met, and she finally agreed with me that she looked better in hot colors, even though she thought it was part of any man’s M.O. to like his women in flaming oranges and reds.

  Her hair was drawn back today and either way, back or down, her hair was beautiful. It was thick brown, streaked with silver, not gray, but real untouched silver, and her figure was damn good for a girl her age. She was tanned and looked more like a gym teacher than a French teacher. She always wore a size twelve and sometimes could wear a ten in certain full styles. I wondered if she still looked so good because she played tennis and golf or because she didn’t have any kids when she was married, but then, Cruz’s wife Socorro had a whole squad of kids and though she was a little overweight she still looked almost as good as Cassie. Some people just keep it all, I guess, which almost made me self-conscious being with this classy-looking woman when we went places together. I always felt like everyone was thinking, “He must have bread or she’d never be with him.” But it was useless to question your luck, you just had to grab on when you had the chance, and I did. And then again, maybe I was one of those guys that’s ugly in an attractive sort of way.

  “Well?” said Cassie, and I turned my head and saw her standing in the doorway of her office, still smiling at me as I went over her with my eyes. The kid had left.

  “That’s the prettiest dress you have,” I said, and I really meant it. At that moment she’d never looked better, even though some heavy wisps of hair were hanging on her cheeks and her lipstick was almost all gone.

  “Why don’t you admire my mind instead of my body once in a while like I do yours?” she grinned.

  I followed her into the office and stepped close, intending to give her a kiss on the cheek. She surprised me by throwing her
arms around my neck and kissing me long and hot, causing me to drop my hat on the floor and get pretty aroused even though we were standing in an open doorway and any minute a hundred people would walk past. When she finally stopped, she had the lazy dazzling look of a passionate woman.

  “Shall we sweep everything off that damned desk?” she said in a husky voice, and for a minute or two I thought she would’ve. Then a bell rang and doors started opening and she laughed and sat down on her desk showing me some very shapely legs and you would never guess those wheels had been spinning for forty odd years. I plopped down in a leather chair, my mouth woolly dry from having that hot body up against me.

  “Are you sure you won’t come to the party tonight?” she said finally, lighting a cigarette.

  “You know how I feel about it, Cassie,” I said. “This is your night. Your friends and the students want to have you to themselves. I’ll have you forever after that.”

  “Think you can handle me?” she asked, with a grin, and I knew from her grin she meant sexually. We had joked before about how I awoke this in her, which she said had been dormant since her husband left her seven years ago and maybe even before that, from what I knew of the poor crazy guy. He was a teacher like Cassie, but his field was chemistry.

  We supposed that some of her nineteen-year-old students, as sex-obsessed as they are these days, might be making love more often than we did, but she didn’t see how they could. She said it had never been like this with her, and she never knew it could be so good. Me, I’ve always appreciated how good it was. As long as I can remember, I’ve been horny.