The Blue Knight

by Joseph Wambaugh

  The only uniformed officer was Lieutenant Hilliard and it seemed like I ran for fifteen minutes to cover the eighty feet to the pharmacy counter where Cruz Segovia lay dead.

  “What the hell…” said a red-faced detective I could barely see through a watery mist as I knelt beside Cruz, who looked like a very young boy sprawled there on his back, his hat and gun on the floor beside him and a frothy blood puddle like a scarlet halo fanning out around him from a through-and-through head shot. There was one red glistening bullet hole to the left of his nose and one in his chest which was surrounded by wine-purple bloodstains on the blue uniform. His eyes were open and he was looking right at me. The corneas were not yet dull or cloudy and the eyes were turned down at the corners, those large eyes more serious and sad than ever I’d seen them, and I knelt beside him in his blood and whispered, “’Mano! ’Mano! ’Mano! Oh, Cruz!”

  “Bumper, get the hell out of there,” said the bald detective, grabbing my arm, and I looked up at him, seeing a very familiar face, but still I couldn’t recognize him.

  “Let him go, Leecher. We got enough pictures,” said another plainclothesman, older, who was talking to Lieutenant Hilliard. He was one I should know too, I thought. It was so strange. I couldn’t remember any of their names, except my lieutenant, who was in uniform.

  Cruz looked at me so serious I couldn’t bear it. And I reached in his pocket for the little leather pouch with the beads.

  “You mustn’t take anything from him,” Lieutenant Hilliard said in my ear with his hand on my shoulder. “Only the coroner can do that, Bumper.”

  “His beads,” I muttered. “He won them because he was the only one who could spell English words. I don’t want them to know he carries beads like a nun.”

  “Okay, Bumper, okay,” said Lieutenant Hilliard, patting my shoulder, and I took the pouch. Then I saw the box of cheap cigars spilled on the floor by his hand. And there was a ten-dollar bill there on the floor.

  “Give me that blanket,” I said to a young ambulance attendant who was standing there beside his stretcher, white in the face, smoking a cigarette.

  He looked at me and then at the detectives.

  “Give me that goddamn blanket,” I said, and he handed the folded-up blanket to me, which I covered Cruz with after I closed his eyes so he couldn’t look at me like that. “Ahí te huacho,” I whispered. “I’ll be watching for you, ’mano.” Then I was on my feet and heading toward the door, gulping for breath.

  “Bumper,” Lieutenant Hilliard called, running painfully on his bad right leg and holding his hip.

  I stopped before I got to the door.

  “Will you go tell his wife?”

  “He came in here to buy me a going-away present,” I said, feeling a suffocating pressure in my chest.

  “You were his best friend. You should tell her.”

  “He wanted to buy me a box of cigars,” I said, grabbing him by the bony shoulder. “Damn him, I’d never smoke those cheap cigars. Damn him!”

  “All right, Bumper. Go to the station. Don’t try to work anymore today. You go on home. We’ll take care of the notification. You take care of yourself.”

  I nodded and hurried out the door, looking at Clarence Evans but not understanding what he said to me. I got in the car and drove up Main Street, tearing my collar open to breathe, and thought about Cruz lying frail and naked and unprotected there in the morgue and thinking how they’d desecrate him, how they’d stick that turkey skewer in him for the liver temperature, and how they’d put a metal rod in the hole in his face for the bullet angle, and I was so damned glad I’d closed his eyes so he wouldn’t be watching all that.

  “You see, Cruz,” I said, driving over Fourth Street with no idea where I was going. “You see? You almost had me convinced, but you were all wrong. I was right.”

  “You shouldn’t be afraid to love, ’mano,” Cruz answered, and I slammed on my brakes when I heard him and I almost slid through the red light. Someone leaned on his horn and yelled at me.

  “You’re safe, Bumper, in one way,” said Cruz in his gentle voice, “but in the way that counts, you’re in danger. Your soul is in danger if you don’t love.”

  I started when the light was green but I could hardly see.

  “Did you believe that when Esteban was killed? Did you?”

  “Yes, I knew it was the God’s truth,” he said, and his sad eyes turned down at the corners and this time I did blow a red light and I heard tires squeal and I turned right going the wrong way on Main Street and everyone was honking horns at me but I kept going to the next block and then turned left with the flow of traffic.

  “Don’t look at me with those goddamn turned-down eyes!” I yelled, my heart thudding like the pigeon’s wing. “You’re wrong, you foolish little man. Look at Socorro. Look at your children. Don’t you see now, you’re wrong? Damn those eyes!”

  Then I pulled into an alley west of Broadway and got out of the car because I suddenly couldn’t see at all now and I began to vomit. I threw it all up, all of it. Someone in a delivery truck stopped and said something but I waved him off and heaved and heaved it all away.

  Then I got back in the car and the shock was wearing off. I drove to a pay phone and called Cassie before she left her office. I crowded in that phone booth doubled over by stomach cramps and I don’t really know everything I said to her except that Cruz was dead and I wouldn’t be going with her. Not now, not ever. And then there was lots of crying on the other end of the line and talking back and forth that didn’t make any sense, and finally I heard myself say, “Yes, yes, Cassie. You go on. Yes, maybe I’ll feel different later. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You go on. Maybe I’ll see you there in San Francisco. Maybe someday I’ll feel different. Yes.”

  I was back in my car driving, and I knew I’d have to go to Socorro tonight and help her. I wanted to bury Cruz as soon as possible and I hoped she would want to. And now, gradually at first, and then more quickly, I felt as though a tremendous weight was lifted from my shoulders and there was no sense analyzing it, but there it was. I felt somehow light and free like when I first started on my beat. “There’s nothing left now but the puta. But she’s not a puta, ’mano, she’s not!” I said, lying to both of us for the last time, “You couldn’t tell a whore from a bewitching lady. I’ll keep her as long as I can, Cruz, and when I can’t keep her anymore she’ll go to somebody that can. You can’t blame her for that. That’s the way the world is made.” And Cruz didn’t answer my lie and I didn’t see his eyes. He was gone. He was like Herky now, nothing more.

  I began thinking of all the wandering people: Indians, Gypsies, Armenians, the Bedouin on that cliff where I’d never go, and now I knew the Bedouin saw nothing more than sand out there in that valley.

  And as I thought these things I turned to my left and I was staring into the mouth of the Pink Dragon. I passed the Dragon by and drove on toward the station, but the further I drove, the more the anger welled up in me, and the anger mixed with the freedom I felt, so that for a while I felt like the most vigorous and powerful man on earth, a real macho, Cruz would’ve said. I turned around and headed back to the Dragon. This was the day for the Dragon to die, I thought. I could make Marvin fight me, and the others would help him. But no one could stand up to me and at last I’d destroy the Dragon.

  Then I glanced down at my shield and saw that the smog had made the badge hideous. It was tarnished, and smeared with a drop of Cruz’s blood. I stopped in front of Rollo’s and went inside.

  “Give it a fast buff, Rollo. I’m in a hurry.”

  “You know there ain’t a single blemish on this badge,” Rollo sighed.

  “Just shine the goddamn badge.”

  He glanced up with his faded eyes, then at my trousers, at my wet bloody knees, and he bent silently over the wheel.

  “There you are, Bumper,” he said when he finished it.

  I held the badge by the pin and hurried outside.

  “Be careful, Bumper,” he called. “Ple
ase be careful.”

  Passing by Rollo’s store front I saw the distorted reflection in the folds of the plastic sun covering. I watched the reflection and had to laugh at the grotesque fat policeman who held the four-inch glittering shield in front of him as he lumbered to his car. The dark blue uniform was dripping sweat and the fat policeman opened the burning white door and squeezed his big stomach behind the wheel.

  He settled in his saddle seat and jammed the nightstick under the seat cushion next to him, pointed forward.

  Then he fastened his shield to his chest and urged the machine westward. The sun reflecting off the hood blinded him for a moment, but he flipped down the visor and drove west to the Pink Dragon.

  “Now I’ll kill the Dragon and drink its blood,” said the comic blue policeman. “In the front door, down the Dragon’s throat.”

  I laughed out loud at him because he was good for no more than this. He was disgusting and pathetic and he couldn’t help himself. He needed no one. He sickened me. He only needed glory.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOSEPH WAMBAUGH, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of eighteen prior works of fiction and nonfiction. In 2004, he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Southern California.

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