The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Yeah,” he nodded.

  “Did you hate it?” I asked, expecting that all young people hated it.

  “I didn’t like the war. It scared hell out of me, but I didn’t mind the army as much as I thought I would.”

  “That’s sort of how I felt,” I smiled. “I was in the Marine Corps for eight years.”

  “Korea?”

  “No, I’m even older than that,” I smiled. “I joined in forty-two, and got out in fifty, then came on the police department.”

  “You stayed in a long time,” he said.

  “Too long. The war scared me too, but sometimes peace is just as bad for a military man.”

  I didn’t tell him the truth because it might tune him out, and the truth was that it did scare me, the war, but I didn’t hate it. I didn’t exactly like it, but I didn’t hate it. It’s fashionable to hate war, I know, and I wanted to hate it, but I never did.

  “I swore when I left Vietnam I’d never fire another gun and here I am a cop. Figure that out,” said Wilson.

  I thought that was something, having him tell me that. Suddenly the age difference wasn’t there. He was telling me things he probably told his young partners during lonely hours after two a.m. when you’re fighting to keep awake or when you’re “in the hole” trying to hide your radio car, in some alley where you can doze uncomfortably for an hour, but you never really rest. There’s the fear of a sergeant catching you, or there’s the radio. What if you really fall asleep and a hot call comes out and you miss it?

  “Maybe you’ll make twenty years without ever firing your gun on duty,” I said.

  “Have you had to shoot?”

  “A few times,” I nodded, and he let it drop like he should. It was only civilians who ask you, “What’s it feel like to shoot someone?” and all that bullshit which is completely ridiculous, because if you do it in war or you do it as a cop, it doesn’t feel like anything. If you do what has to be done, why should you feel anything? I never have. After the fear for your own life is past, and the adrenalin slows, nothing. But people generally can’t stand truth. It makes a lousy story so I usually give them their clichés.

  “You gonna stay on the job after you finish law school?”

  “If I ever finish I might leave,” he laughed. “But I can’t really picture myself ever finishing.”

  “Maybe you won’t want to leave by then. This is a pretty strange kind of job. It’s… intense. Some guys wouldn’t leave if they had a million bucks.”

  “How about you?”

  “Oh, I’m pulling the pin,” I said. “I’m almost gone. But the job gets to you. The way you see everyone so exposed and vulnerable…And there’s nothing like rolling up a good felon if you really got the instinct.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then said, “Rogers and I got a good two-eleven suspect last month. They cleared five holdups on this guy. He had a seven-point-six-five-millimeter pistol shoved down the back of his waistband when we stopped him for a traffic ticket. We got hinky because he was sweating and dry-mouthed when he talked to us. It’s really something to get a guy like that, especially when you never know how close you came. I mean, he was just sitting there looking from Rogers to me, measuring, thinking about blowing us up. We realized it later, and it made the pinch that much more of a kick.”

  “That’s part of it. You feel more alive. Hey, you talk like you’re Bumperized and I didn’t even break you in.”

  “We worked together one night, remember?” said Wilson. “My first night out of the academy. I was more scared of you than I was the assholes on the street.”

  “That’s right, we did work together. I remember now,” I lied.

  “Well, I better get moving,” said Wilson, and I was disappointed. “Got to get to school. I’ve got two papers due next week and haven’t started them.”

  “Hang in there, Wilson. Hang tough,” I said, as I locked my locker.

  I walked to the parking lot and decided to tip a few at my neighborhood pub near Silverlake before going to Cruz’s house. The proprietor was an old pal of mine who used to own a decent bar on my beat downtown before he bought this one. He was no longer on my beat of course, but he still bounced for drinks, I guess out of habit. Most bar owners don’t pop for too many policemen, because they’ll take advantage of it, policemen will, and they’ll be so many at your watering hole you’ll have to close the goddamn doors. Harry only popped for me and a few detectives he knew real well.

  It was five o’clock when I parked my nineteen-fifty-one Ford in front of Harry’s. I’d bought the car new and was still driving it. Almost twenty years and I only had a hundred and thirty thousand miles on her, and the same engine. I never went anywhere except at vacation time or sometimes when I’d take a trip to the river to fish. Since I met Cassie I’ve used the car more than I ever had before, but even with Cassie I seldom went far. We usually went to the movies in Hollywood, or to the Music Center to see light opera, or to the Bowl for a concert which was Cassie’s favorite place to go, or to Dodger Stadium which was mine. Often we went out to the Strip to go dancing. Cassie was good. She had all the moves, but she couldn’t get the hang of letting her body do it all. With Cassie the mind was always there. One thing I decided I wouldn’t get rid of when I left L.A. was my Ford. I wanted to see just how long a car could live if you treated it right.

  Harry was alone when I walked in the little knotty-pine tavern which had a pool table, a few sad booths, and a dozen bar stools. The neighborhood business was never very good. It was quiet and cool and dark in there and I was glad.

  “Hi, Bumper,” he said, drawing a draft beer in a frosted glass for me.

  “Evening, Harry,” I said, grabbing a handful of pretzels from one of the dishes he had on the bar. Harry’s was one of the few joints left where you could actually get something free, like pretzels.

  “How’s business, Bumper?”

  “Mine’s always good, Harry,” I said, which is what policemen always answer to that question.

  “Anything exciting happen on your beat lately?” Harry was about seventy, an ugly little goblin with bony shoulder blades who hopped around behind the bar like a sparrow.

  “Let’s see,” I said, trying to think of some gossip. Since Harry used to own a bar downtown, he knew a lot of the people I knew. “Yeah, remember Frog LaRue?”

  “The little hype with the stooped-over walk?”

  “That one.”

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “I must’ve kicked that junkie out of my joint a million times after you said he was dealing dope. Never could figure out why he liked to set up deals in my bar.”

  “He got his ass shot,” I said.

  “What’d he do, try to sell somebody powdered sugar in place of stuff?”

  “No, a narco cop nailed him.”

  “Yeah? Why would anybody shoot Frog? He couldn’t hurt nobody but himself.”

  “Anybody can hurt somebody, Harry,” I said. “But in this case it was a mistake. Old Frog always kept a blade on the window sill in any hotel he stayed at. And the window’d be open even in the dead of winter. That was his M.O. If someone came to his door who he thought was cops, Frog’d slit the screen and throw his dope and his outfit right out the window. One night the narcs busted in the pad when they heard from a snitch that Frog was holding, and old Froggy dumped a spoon of junk out the window. He had to slit the screen to do it and when this narc came crashing through the door, his momentum carried him clear across this little room, practically onto Frog’s bed. Frog was crouched there with the blade still in his hand. The partner coming through second had his gun drawn and that was it, he put two almost in the ten ring of the goddamn bull’s-eye.” I put my fist on my chest just to the right of the heart to show where they hit him.

  “Hope the poor bastard didn’t suffer.”

  “Lived two days. He told about the knife bit to the detectives and swore how he never would’ve tried to stab a cop.”

  “Poor bastard,” said Harry. />
  “At least he died the way he lived. Armload of dope. I heard from one of the dicks that at the last they gave him a good stiff jolt of morphine. Said old Frog laying there with two big holes in his chest actually looked happy at the end.”

  “Why in the hell don’t the state just give dope to these poor bastards like Frog?” said Harry, disgustedly.

  “It’s the high they crave, not just feeling healthy. They build up such a tolerance you’d have to keep increasing the dose and increasing it until you’d have to give them a fix that’d make a pussycat out of King Kong. And heroin substitutes don’t work with a stone hype. He wants the real thing. Pretty soon you’d be giving him doses that’d kill him anyway.”

  “What the hell, he’d be better off. Some of them probably wouldn’t complain.”

  “Got to agree with you there,” I nodded. “Damn straight.”

  “Wish that bitch’d get here,” Harry mumbled, checking the bar clock.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Irma, the goofy barmaid I hired last week. You seen her yet?”

  “Don’t think so,” I said, sipping the beer, so cold it hurt my teeth.

  “Sexy little twist,” said Harry, “but a kook, you know? She’ll steal your eyes out if you let her. But a good body. I’d like to break her open like a shotgun and horsefuck her.”

  “Thought you told me you were getting too old for that,” I said, licking the foam off my upper lip, and finishing the glass, which Harry hurried to refill.

  “I am, God knows, but once in a while I get this terrible urge, know what I mean? Sometimes when I’m closing up and I’m alone with her…I ain’t stirred the old lady for a couple years, but I swear when I’m with Irma I get the urge like a young stallion. I’m not that old, you know. Not by a long shot. But you know how my health’s always been. Lately there’s been this prostate problem. Still, when I’m around this Irma I’m awful randy. I feel like I could screw anything from a burro to a cowboy boot.”

  “I’ll have to see this wench,” I smiled.

  “You won’t take her away from me, will you, Bumper?”

  I thought at first he was kidding and then I saw the desperate look on his face. “No, of course not, Harry.”

  “I really think I could make it with her, Bumper. I been depressed lately, especially with this prostate, but I could be a man again with Irma”

  “Sure, Harry.” I’d noticed the change coming over him gradually for the past year. He sometimes forgot to pick up bar money, which was very unusual for him. He mixed up customers’ names and sometimes told you things he’d told you the last time he saw you. Mostly that, repeating things. A few of the other regular customers mentioned it when we played pool out of earshot. Harry was getting senile and it was not only sad, it was scary. It made my skin crawl. I wondered how much longer he’d be able to run the joint. I laid a quarter on the bar, and sure enough, he absently picked it up. The first time I ever bought my own drink in Harry’s place.

  “My old lady can’t last much longer, Bumper. I ever tell you that the doctors only give her a year?”

  “Yeah, you told me.”

  “Guy my age can’t be alone. This prostate thing, you know I got to stand there and coax for twenty minutes before I can take a leak. And you don’t know how lovely it is to be able to sit down and take a nice easy crap. You know, Bumper, a nice easy crap is a thing of beauty.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I could do all right with a dame like Irma. Make me young again, Irma could.” Sure.

  “You try to go it alone when you get old and you’ll be rotting out a coffin liner before you know it. You got to have somebody to keep you alive. If you don’t, you might die without even knowing it. Get what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was so depressing being here with Harry that I decided to split, but one of the local cronies came in.

  “Hello, Freddie,” I said, as he squinted through six ounces of eyeglasses into the cool darkness.

  “Hi, Bumper,” said Freddie, recognizing my voice before he got close enough to make me through his half-inch horn-rims. Nobody could ever mistake his twangy voice which could get on your nerves after a bit. Freddie limped over and laid both arthritic hands on the bar knowing I’d bounce for a couple drinks.

  “A cold one for Freddie,” I said, suddenly afraid that Harry wouldn’t even know him. But that was ridiculous, I thought, putting a dollar on the bar, Harry’s deterioration was only beginning. I usually bought for the bar when there were enough people in there to make Harry a little coin, trouble is, there were seldom more than three or four customers in Harry’s at any one time anymore. I guess everyone runs from a man when he starts to die.

  “How’s business, Bumper?” asked Freddie, holding the mug in both his hands, fingers like crooked twigs.

  “My business’s always good, Freddie.”

  Freddie snuffled and laughed. I stared at Freddie for a few seconds while he drank. My stomach was burning and Harry had me spooked. Freddie suddenly looked ancient too. Christ, he probably was at least sixty-five. I’d never thought about Freddie as an older guy, but suddenly he was. Little old men they were. I had nothing in common with them now.

  “Girls keeping you busy lately, Bumper?” Harry winked. He didn’t know about Cassie or that I stopped chasing around after I met her.

  “Been slowing down a little in that department, Harry,” I said.

  “Keep at it, Bumper,” said Harry, cocking his head to one side and nodding like a bird. “The art of fornication is something you lose if you don’t practice it. The eye muscles relax, you get bifocals like Freddie. The love muscles relax, whatta you got?”

  “Maybe he is getting old, Harry,” said Freddie, dropping his empty glass on its side as he tried to hand it to Harry with those twisted hands.

  “Old? You kidding?” I said.

  “How about you, Freddie?” said Harry. “You ain’t got arthritis of the cock, have you? When was the last time you had a piece of ass?”

  “About the last time you did,” said Freddie sharply.

  “Shit, before my Flossie got sick, I used to tear off a chunk every night. Right up till when she got sick, and I was sixty-eight years old then.”

  “Haw!” said Freddie, spilling some beer over the gnarled fingers. “You ain’t been able to do anything but lick it for the past twenty years.”

  “Yeah?” said Harry, nodding fast now, like a starving little bird at a feed tray. “You know what I did to Irma here one night? Know what?”

  “What?”

  “I laid her right over the table there. What do you think of that, wise guy?”

  “Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie who had been a little bit fried when he came in and was really feeling it now.

  “All you can do is read about it in those dirty books,” said Harry. “Me, I don’t read about it, I do it! I threw old Irma right over that bar there and poured her the salami for a half hour!”

  “Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie. “It’d take you that long to find that shriveled up old cricket dick. Haw. Haw. Haw.”

  “What’s the sense of starting a beef?” I muttered to both of them. I was getting a headache. “Gimme a couple aspirin will you, Harry?” I said, and he shot the grinning Freddie a pissed-off look, and muttering under his breath, brought me a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water.

  I shook out three pills and pushed the water away, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of beer. “One more beer,” I said, “and then I gotta make it.”

  “Where you going, Bump? Out to hump?” Harry leered, and winked at Freddie, forgetting he was supposed to be mad as hell.

  “Going to a friend’s house for dinner.”

  “Nice slice of tail waiting, huh?” said Harry, nodding again.

  “Not tonight. Just having a quiet dinner.”

  “Quiet dinner,” said Freddie. “Haw. Haw. Haw.”

  “Screw you, Freddie,” I said, getting mad for a second as he giggl
ed in his beer. Then I thought, Jesus, I’m getting loony too.

  The phone rang and Harry went to the back of the bar to answer it. In a few seconds he was bitching at somebody, and Freddie looked at me, shaking his head.

  “Harry’s going downhill real fast, Bumper.”

  “I know he is, so why get him pissed off?”

  “I don’t mean to,” said Freddie. “I just lose my temper with him sometimes, he acts so damned nasty. I heard the doctors’re just waiting for Flossie to die. Any day now.”

  I thought of how she was ten years ago, a fat, tough old broad, full of hell and jokes. She fixed such good cold-cut sandwiches I used to make a dinner out of them at least once a week.

  “Harry can’t make it without her,” said Freddie. “Ever since she went away to the hospital last year he’s been getting more and more childish, you noticed?”

  I finished my beer and thought, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

  “It happens only to people like Harry and me. When you love somebody and need them so much especially when you’re old, and then lose them, that’s when it happens to you. It’s the most godawful thing that ever could happen to you, when your mind rots like Harry’s. Better your body goes like Flossie’s. Flossie’s the lucky one, you know. You’re lucky too. You don’t love nobody and you ain’t married to nothing but that badge. Nothing can ever touch you, Bumper.”

  “Yeah, but how about when you get too old to do the job, Freddie? How about then?”

  “Well, I never thought about that, Bumper.” Freddie tipped the mug and dribbled on his chin. He licked some foam off one knotted knuckle. “Never thought about that, but I’d say you don’t have to worry about it. You get a little older and charge around the way you do and somebody’s bound to bump you off. It might sound cold, but what the hell, Bumper, look at that crazy old bastard.” He waved a twisted claw toward Harry still yelling in the phone. “Screwing everything with his imagination and a piece of dead skin. Look at me. What the hell, dying on your beat wouldn’t be the worst way to go, would it?”

  “Know why I come to this place, Freddie? It’s just the most cheerful goddamn drinking establishment in Los Angeles. Yeah, the conversation is stimulating and the atmosphere is very jolly and all.”