The Blue Knight

ONE

THE WHEEL HUMMED and Rollo mumbled Yiddish curses as he put rouge on the glistening bronze surface.

“There ain’t a single blemish on this badge,” he said.

“Sure there is, Rollo,” I said. “Look closer. Between the s in Los and the big A in Angeles. I scratched it on the door of my locker.”

“There ain’t a single blemish on this badge,” said Rollo, but he buffed, and in spite of his bitching I watched bronze change to gold, and chrome become silver. The blue enameled letters which said “Policeman,” and “4207,” jumped out at me.

“Okay, so now are you happy?” he sighed, leaning across the display case, handing me the badge.

“It’s not too bad,” I said, enjoying the heft of the heavy oval shield, polished to a luster that would reflect sunlight like a mirror.

“Business ain’t bad enough, I got to humor a crazy old cop like you.” Rollo scratched his scalp, and the hair, white and stiff, stood like ruffled chicken feathers.

“What’s the matter, you old gonif, afraid some of your burglar friends will see a bluesuit in here and take their hot jewelry to some other crook?”

“Ho, ho! Bob Hope should watch out. When you get through sponging off the taxpayers you’ll go after his job.”

“Well, I’ve gotta go crush some crime. What do I owe you for the lousy badge polishing?”

“Don’t make me laugh, I got a kidney infection. You been free-loading for twenty years, now all of a sudden you want to pay?”

“See you later, Rollo. I’m going over to Seymour’s for breakfast. He appreciates me.”

“Seymour too? I know Jews got to suffer in this world, but not all of us in one day.”

“Good-bye, old shoe.”

“Be careful, Bumper.”

I strolled outside into the burning smog that hung over Main Street. I started to sweat as I stopped to admire Rollo’s work. Most of the ridges had been rounded off long ago, and twenty years of rubbing gave it unbelievable brilliance. Turning the face of the shield to the white sun, I watched the gold and silver take the light. I pinned the badge to my shirt and looked at my reflection in the blue plastic that Rollo has over his front windows. The plastic was rippled and bubbled and my distorted reflection made me a freak. I looked at myself straight on, but still my stomach hung low and made me look like a blue kangaroo, and my ass was two nightsticks wide. My jowls hung to my chest in that awful reflection and my big rosy face and pink nose were a deep veiny blue like the color of my uniform which somehow didn’t change colors in the reflection. It was ugly, but what made me keep looking was the shield. The four-inch oval on my chest glittered and twinkled so that after a second or two I couldn’t even see the blue man behind it. I just stood there staring at that shield for maybe a full minute.

Seymour’s delicatessen is only a half block from Rollo’s jewelry store, but I decided to drive. My black-and-white was parked out front in Rollo’s no parking zone because this downtown traffic is so miserable. If it weren’t for those red curbs there’d be no place to park even a police car. I opened the white door and sat down carefully, the sunlight blasting through the windshield making the seat cushion hurt. I’d been driving the same black-and-white for six months and had worked a nice comfortable dip in the seat, so I rode cozy, like in a worn friendly saddle. It’s really not too hard to loosen up seat springs with two hundred and seventy-five pounds.

I drove to Seymour’s and when I pulled up in front I saw two guys across Fourth Street in the parking lot at the rear of the Pink Dragon. I watched for thirty seconds or so and it looked like they were setting something up, probably a narcotics buy. Even after twenty years I still get that thrill a cop gets at seeing things that are invisible to the square citizen. But what was the use? I could drive down Main Street anytime and see hugger-muggers, paddy hustlers, till-tappers, junkies, and then waste six or eight man-hours staking out on these small-timers and maybe end up with nothing. You only had time to grab the sure ones and just make mental notes of the rest.

The two in the parking lot interested me so I decided to watch them for a minute. They were dumb strung-out hypes. They should’ve made me by now. When I was younger I used to play the truth game. I hardly ever played it anymore. The object of the game is simple: I have to explain to an imaginary blackrobed square (His Honor) how Officer William A. Morgan knows that those men are committing a criminal act. If the judge finds that I didn’t have sufficient probable cause to stop, detain, and search my man, then I lose the game. Illegal search and seizure-case dismissed.

I usually beat the game whether it’s imaginary or for real. My courtroom demeanor is very good, pretty articulate for an old-time copper, they say. And such a simple honest kisser. Big innocent blue eyes. Juries loved me. It’s very hard to explain the “know.” Some guys never master it. Let’s see, I begin, I know they are setting up a buy because of… the clothing. That’s a good start, the clothing. It’s a suffocating day, Your Honor, and the tall one is wearing a long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the cuff. To hide his hype marks, of course. One of them is still wearing his “county shoes.” That tells me he just got out of county jail, and the other one, yes, the other one-you only acquire that frantic pasty look in the joint: San Quentin, Folsom, maybe. He’s been away a long time. And I would find out they’d just been in the Pink Dragon and no one but a whore, hype, pill-head, or other hustler would hang out in that dive. And I’d explain all this to my judge too, but I’d be a little more subtle, and then I’d be stopped. I could explain to my imaginary jurist but never to a real one about the instinct-the stage in this business when, like an animal, you can feel you’ve got one, and it can’t be explained. You feel the truth, and you know. Try telling that to the judge, I thought. Try explaining that, sometime.

Just then a wino lurched across Main Street against the red light and a Lincoln jammed on the binders almost creaming him.

“Goddamnit, come over here,” I yelled when he reached the sidewalk.

“Hi, Bumper,” he croaked, holding the five-sizes-too-big pants around his bony hips, trying his best to look sober as he staggered sideways.

“You almost got killed, Noodles,” I said.

“What’s the difference?” he said, wiping the saliva from his chin with the grimy free hand. The other one gripped the pants so hard the big knuckles showed white through the dirt.

“I don’t care about you but I don’t want any wrecked Lincolns on my beat.”

“Okay, Bumper.”

“I’m gonna have to book you.”

“I’m not that drunk, am I?”

“No, but you’re dying.”

“No crime in that.” He coughed then and the spit that dribbled out the corner of his mouth was red and foamy.

“I’m booking you, Noodles,” I said, mechanically filling in the boxes on the pad of drunk arrest reports that I carried in my hip pocket like I was still walking my beat instead of driving a black-and-white.

“Let’s see, your real name is Ralph M. Milton, right?”

“Millard.”

“Millard,” I muttered, filling in the name. I must’ve busted Noodles a dozen times. I never used to forget names or faces.

“Let’s see, eyes bloodshot, gait staggering, attitude stuporous, address transient…”

“Got a cigarette?”

“I don’t use them, Noodles,” I said, tearing out the copies of the arrest report. “Wait a minute, the nightwatch left a half pack in the glove compartment. Go get them while I’m calling the wagon.”

The wino shuffled to the radio car while I walked fifty feet down the street to a call box, unlocked it with my big brass key, and asked for the B-wagon to come to Fourth and Main. It would’ve been easier to use my car radio to call the wagon, but I walked a beat too many years to learn new habits.

That was something my body did to me, made me lose my foot beat and put me in a black-and-white. An ankle I broke years ago when I was a slick-sleeved rookie chasing a purse snatcher, finally decided it can’t carry my big ass around anymore and swells up every time I’m on my feet a couple of hours. So I lost my foot beat and got a radio car. A one-man foot beat’s the best job in this or any police department. It always amuses policemen to see the movies where the big hood or crooked politician yells, “I’ll have you walking a beat, you dumb flatfoot,” when really it’s a sought-after job. You got to have whiskers to get a foot beat, and you have to be big and good. If only my legs would’ve held out. But even though I couldn’t travel it too much on foot, it was still my beat, all of it. Everyone knew it all belonged to me more than anyone.

“Okay, Noodles, give this arrest report to the cops in the wagon and don’t lose the copies.”

“You’re not coming with me?” He couldn’t shake a cigarette from the pack with one trembling hand.

“No, you just lope on over to the corner and flag ’em down when they drive by. Tell ’em you want to climb aboard.”

“First time I ever arrested myself,” he coughed, as I lit a cigarette for him, and put the rest of the pack and the arrest report in his shirt pocket.

“See you later.”

“I’ll get six months. The judge warned me last time.”

“I hope so, Noodles.”

“I’ll just start boozing again when they let me out. I’ll just get scared and start again. You don’t know what it’s like to be scared at night when you’re alone.”

“How do you know, Noodles?”

“I’ll just come back here and die in an alley. The cats and rats will eat me anyway, Bumper.”

“Get your ass moving or you’ll miss the wagon.” I watched him stagger down Main for a minute and I yelled, “Don’t you believe in miracles?”

He shook his head and I turned back to the guys in the parking lot again just as they disappeared inside the Pink Dragon. Someday, I thought, I’ll kill that dragon and drink its blood.

I was too hungry to do police work, so I went into Seymour’s. I usually like to eat breakfast right after rollcall and here it was ten o’clock and I was still screwing around.

Ruthie was bent over one of the tables scooping up a tip. She was very attractive from the rear and she must’ve caught me admiring her out of the corner of her eye. I suppose a blue man, dark blue in black leather, sets off signals in some people.

“Bumper,” she said, wheeling around. “Where you been all week?”

“Hi, Ruthie,” I said, always embarrassed by how glad she was to see me.

Seymour, a freckled redhead about my age, was putting together a pastrami sandwich behind the meat case. He heard Ruthie call my name and grinned.

“Well, look who’s here. The finest cop money can buy.”

“Just bring me a cold drink, you old shlimazel.”

“Sure, champ.” Seymour gave the pastrami to a takeout customer, made change, and put a cold beer and a frosted glass in front of me. He winked at the well-dressed man who sat at the counter to my left. The beer wasn’t opened.

“Whadda you want me to do, bite the cap off?” I said, going along with his joke. No one on my beat had ever seen me drink on duty.

Seymour bent over, chuckling. He took the beer away and filled my glass with buttermilk.

“Where you been all week, Bumper?”

“Out there. Making the streets safe for women and babies.”

“Bumper’s here!” he shouted to Henry in the back. That meant five scrambled eggs and twice the lox the paying customers get with an order. It also meant three onion bagels, toasted and oozing with butter and heaped with cream cheese. I don’t eat breakfast at Seymour’s more than once or twice a week, although I knew he’d feed me three free meals every day.

“Young Slagel told me he saw you directing traffic on Hill Street the other day,” said Seymour.

“Yeah, the regular guy got stomach cramps just as I was driving by. I took over for him until his sergeant got somebody else.”

“Directing traffic down there is a job for the young bucks,” said Seymour, winking again at the businessman who was smiling at me and biting off large hunks of a Seymour’s Special Corned Beef on Pumpernickel Sandwich.

“Meet any nice stuff down there, Bumper? An airline hostess, maybe? Or some of those office cuties?”

“I’m too old to interest them, Seymour. But let me tell you, watching all that young poon, I had to direct traffic like this.” With that I stood up and did an imitation of waving at cars, bent forward with my legs and feet crossed.

Seymour fell backward and out came his high-pitched hoot of a laugh. This brought Ruthie over to see what happened.

“Show her, Bumper, please,” Seymour gasped, wiping the tears away.

Ruthie waited with that promising smile of hers. She’s every bit of forty-five, but firm, and golden blond, and very fair-as sexy a wench as I’ve ever seen. And the way she acted always made me know it was there for me, but I’d never taken it. She’s one of the regular people on my beat and it’s because of the way they feel about me, all of them, the people on my beat. Some of the smartest bluecoats I know have lots of broads but won’t even cop a feel on their beats. Long ago I decided to admire her big buns from afar.

“I’m waiting, Bumper,” she said, hands on those curvy hips.

“Another funny thing happened while I was directing traffic,” I said, to change the subject. “There I was, blowing my whistle and waving at cars with one hand, and I had my other hand out palm up, and some little eighty-year-old lady comes up and drops a big fat letter on my palm. ‘Could you please tell me the postage for this, Officer?’ she says. Here I am with traffic backed up clear to Olive, both arms out and this letter on my palm. So, what the hell, I just put my feet together, arms out, and rock back and forth like a scale balancing, and say, ‘That’ll be twenty-one cents, ma’am, if you want it to go airmail.’ ‘Oh thank you, Officer,’ she says.”

Seymour hooted again and Ruthie laughed, but things quieted down when my food came, and I loosened my Sam Browne for the joy of eating. It annoyed me though when my belly pressed against the edge of the yellow Formica counter.

Seymour had a flurry of orders to go which he took care of and nobody bothered me for ten minutes or so except for Ruthie who wanted to make sure I had enough to eat, and that my eggs were fluffy enough, and also to rub a hip or something up against me so that I had trouble thinking about the third bagel.

The other counter customer finished his second cup of coffee and Seymour shuffled over.

“More coffee, Mister Parker?”

“No, I’ve had plenty.”

I’d never seen this man before but I admired his clothes. He was stouter than me, soft fat, but his suit, not bought off the rack, hid most of it.

“You ever met Officer Bumper Morgan, Mister Parker?” asked Seymour.

We smiled, both too bloated and lazy to stand up and shake hands across two stools.

“I’ve heard of you, Officer,” said Parker. “I recently opened a suite in the Roxman Building. Fine watches. Stop around anytime for a special discount.” He put his card on the counter and pushed it halfway toward me. Seymour shoved it the rest of the way.

“Everyone around here’s heard of Bumper,” Seymour said proudly.

“I thought you’d be a bigger man, Officer,” said Parker. “About six foot seven and three hundred pounds, from some of the stories I’ve heard.”

“You just about got the weight right,” said Seymour.

I was used to people saying I’m not as tall as they expected, or as I first appeared to be. A beat cop has to be big or he’ll be fighting all the time. Sometimes a tough, feisty little cop resents it because he can’t walk a foot beat, but the fact is that most people don’t fear a little guy and a little guy’d just have to prove himself all the time, and sooner or later somebody’d take that nightstick off him and shove it up his ass. Of course I was in a radio car now, but as I said before, I was still a beat cop, more or less.

The problem with my size was that my frame was made for a guy six feet five or six instead of a guy barely six feet. My bones are big and heavy, especially my hands and feet. If I’d just have grown as tall as I was meant to, I wouldn’t have the goddamn weight problem. My appetite was meant for a giant, and I finally convinced those police doctors who used to send “fat man letters” to my captain ordering me to cut down to two hundred and twenty pounds.

“Bumper’s a one-man gang,” said Seymour. “I tell you he’s fought wars out there.” Seymour waved at the street to indicate the “out there.”

“Come on, Seymour,” I said, but it was no use. This kind of talk shriveled my balls, but it did please me that a newcomer like Parker had heard of me. I wondered how special the “special discount” would be. My old watch was about finished.

“How long ago did you get this beat, Bumper?” asked Seymour, but didn’t allow me to answer. “Well, it was almost twenty years. I know that, because when Bumper was a rookie, I was a young fella myself, working for my father right here. It was real bad then. We had B-girls and zoot-suiters and lots of crooks. In those days there was plenty of guys that would try the cop on the beat.”

I looked over at Ruthie, who was smiling.

“Years ago, when Ruthie worked here the first time, Bumper saved her life when some guy jumped her at the bus stop on Second Street. He saved you, didn’t he, Ruthie?”

“He sure did. He’s my hero,” she said, pouring me a cup of coffee.

“Bumpers always worked right here,” Seymour continued. “On foot beats and now in a patrol car since he can’t walk too good no more. His twenty-year anniversary is coming up, but we won’t let him retire. What would it be like around here without the champ?”

Ruthie actually looked scared for a minute when Seymour said it, and this shook me.

“When is your twentieth year up, Bumper?” she asked.

“End of this month.”

“You’re not even considering pulling the pin, are you Bumper?” asked Seymour, who knew all the police lingo from feeding the beat cops for years.

“What do you think?” I asked, and Seymour seemed satisfied and started telling Parker a few more incidents from the Bumper Morgan legend. Ruthie kept watching me. Women are like cops, they sense things. When Seymour finally ran down, I promised to come back Friday for the Deluxe Businessman’s Plate, said my good-byes, and left six bits for Ruthie which she didn’t put in her tip dish under the counter. She looked me in the eye and dropped it right down her bra.

I’d forgotten about the heat and when it hit me I decided to drive straight for Elysian Park, sit on the grass, and smoke a cigar with my radio turned up loud enough so I wouldn’t miss a call. I wanted to read about last night’s Dodger game, so before getting in the car I walked down to the smoke shop. I picked up half a dozen fifty-cent cigars, and since the store recently changed hands and I didn’t know the owner too well, I took a five out of my pocket.

“From you? Don’t be silly, Officer Morgan,” said the pencil-necked old man, and refused the money. I made a little small talk in way of payment, listened to a gripe or two about business, and left, forgetting to pick up a paper. I almost went back in, but I never make anyone bounce for two things in one day. I decided to get a late paper across the street from Frankie the dwarf. He had his Dodger’s baseball cap tilted forward and pretended not to see me until I was almost behind him, then he turned fast and punched me in the thigh with a deformed little fist.

“Take that, you big slob. You might scare everybody else on the street, but I’ll get a fat lock on you and break your kneecap.”

“What’s happening, Frankie?” I said, while he slipped a folded paper under my arm without me asking.

“No happenings, Killer. How you standing up under this heat?”

“Okay, I guess.” I turned to the sports page while Frankie smoked a king-sized cigarette in a fancy silver holder half as long as his arm. His tiny face was pinched and ancient but he was only thirty years old.

A woman and a little boy about four years old were standing next to me, waiting for the red light to change.

“See that man,” she said. “That’s a policeman. He’ll come and get you and put you in jail if you’re bad.” She gave me a sweet smile, very smug because she thought I was impressed with her good citizenship.

Frankie, who was only a half head taller than the kid, took a step toward them and said, “That’s real clever, lady. Make him scared of the law. Then he’ll grow up hating cops because you scared him to death.”

“Easy, Frankie,” I said, a little surprised.

The woman lifted the child and the second the light changed she ran from the angry dwarf.

“Sorry, Bumper,” Frankie smiled. “Lord knows I’m not a cop lover.”

“Thanks for the paper, old shoe,” I said, keeping in the shade, nodding to several of the local characters and creeps who gave me a “Hi, Bumper.”

I sauntered along toward Broadway to see what the crowds looked like today and to scare off any pickpockets that might be working the shoppers. I fired up one of those fifty-centers which are okay when I’m out of good hand-rolled custom-mades. As I rounded the corner on Broadway I saw six of the Krishna cult performing in their favorite place on the west sidewalk. They were all kids, the oldest being maybe twenty-five, boys and girls, shaved heads, a single long pigtail, bare feet with little bells on their ankles, pale orange saris, tambourines, flutes and guitars. They chanted and danced and put on a hell of a show there almost every day, and there was no way old Herman the Devil-drummer could compete with them. You could see his jaw flopping and knew he was screaming but you couldn’t hear a word he said after they started their act.

Up until recently, this had been Herman’s corner, and even before I came on the job Herman put in a ten-hour day right here passing out tracts and yelling about demons and damnation, collecting maybe twelve bucks a day from people who felt sorry for him. He used to be a lively guy, but now he looked old, bloodless, and dusty. His shiny black suit was threadbare and his frayed white collar was gray and dirty and he didn’t seem to care anymore. I thought about trying to persuade him one more time to move down Broadway a few blocks where he wouldn’t have to compete with these kids and all their color and music. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Herman had been on his beat too long. I walked to my car thinking about him, poor old Devil-drummer.

As I was getting back in my saddle seat I got a burning pain in the gut and had to drop a couple acid eaters. I carried pockets full of white tablets. Acid eaters in the right pocket and bubble breakers in the left pocket. The acid eaters are just antacid pills and the bubble breakers are for gas and I’m cursed with both problems, more or less all the time. I sucked an acid eater and the fire died. Then I thought about Cassie because that sometimes settled my stomach. The decision to retire at twenty years had been made several weeks ago, and Cassie had lots of plans, but what she didn’t know was that I’d decided last night to make Friday my last day on duty. Today, tomorrow, and Friday would be it. I could string my vacation days together and run them until the end of the month when my time was officially up.

Friday was also to be her last day at L.A. City College. She’d already prepared her final exams and had permission to leave school now, while a substitute instructor took over her classes. She had a good offer, a “wonderful opportunity” she called it, to join the faculty of an expensive girls’ school in northern California, near San Francisco. They wanted her up there now, before they closed for the summer, so she could get an idea how things were done. She planned on leaving Monday, and at the end of the month when I retired, coming back to Los Angeles where we’d get married, then we’d go back to the apartment she’d have all fixed up and ready. But I’d decided to leave Friday and go with her. No sense fooling around any longer, I thought. It would be better to get it over with and I knew Cruz would be happy about it.

Cruz Segovia was my sergeant, and for twenty years he’d been the person closest to me. He was always afraid something would happen and he made me promise him I wouldn’t blow this, the best deal of my life. And Cassie was the best deal, no doubt about it. A teacher, a divorced woman with no kids, a woman with real education, not just a couple college degrees. She was young-looking, forty-four years old, and had it all.

So I started making inquiries about what there was for a retired cop around the Bay area and damned if I didn’t luck out and get steered into a good job with a large industrial security outfit that was owned by an ex-L.A.P.D. inspector I knew from the old days. I got the job of security chief at an electronics firm that has a solid government contract, and I’d have my own office and car, a secretary, and be making a hundred more a month than I was as a cop. The reason he picked me instead of one of the other applicants who were retired captains and inspectors is that he said he had enough administrators working for him and he wanted one real iron-nutted street cop. So this was maybe the first time I ever got rewarded for doing police work and I was pretty excited about starting something new and seeing if real police techniques and ideas couldn’t do something for industrial security which was usually pretty pitiful at best.

The thirtieth of May, the day I’d officially retire, was also my fiftieth birthday. It was hard to believe I’d been around half a century, but it was harder to believe I’d lived in this world thirty years before I got my beat. I was sworn in as a cop on my thirtieth birthday, the second oldest guy in my academy class, the oldest being Cruz Segovia, who had tried three times to join the Department but couldn’t pass the oral exam. It was probably because he was so shy and had such a heavy Spanish accent, being an El Paso Mexican. But his grammar was beautiful if you just bothered to listen past the accent, and finally he got an oral board that was smart enough to bother.

I was driving through Elysian Park as I was thinking these things and I spotted two motor cops in front of me, heading toward the police academy. The motor cop in front was a kid named Lefler, one of the hundred or so I’ve broken in. He’d recently transferred to Motors from Central and was riding tall in his new shiny boots, white helmet, and striped riding britches. His partner breaking him in on the motor beat was a leather-faced old fart named Crandall. He’s the type that’ll get hot at a traffic violator and screw up your public relations program by pulling up beside him and yelling, “Grab a piece of the curb, asshole.”

Lefler’s helmet was dazzling white and tilted forward, the short bill pulled down to his nose. I drove up beside him and yelled, “That’s a gorgeous skid lid you got there, boy, but pull it up a little and lemme see those baby blues.”

Lefler smiled and goosed his bike a little. He was even wearing expensive black leather gloves in this heat.

“Hi, Bumper,” said Crandall, taking his hand from the bar for a minute. We rode slow side by side and I grinned at Lefler, who looked self-conscious.

“How’s he doing, Crandall?” I asked. “I broke him in on the job. He’s Bumper-ized.”

“Not bad for a baby,” Crandall shrugged.

“I see you took his training wheels off,” I said, and Lefler giggled and goosed the Harley again.

I could see the edge of the horseshoe cleats on his heels and I knew his soles were probably studded with iron.

“Don’t go walking around my beat with those boots on, kid,” I yelled. “You’ll be kicking up sparks and starting fires.” I chuckled then as I remembered seeing a motor cop with two cups of coffee in his gloved hands go right on his ass one time because of those cleats.

I waved at Lefler and pulled away. Young hotdogs, I thought. I was glad I was older when I came on the job. But then, I knew I would never have been a motor officer. Writing traffic tickets was the one part of police work I didn’t like. The only good thing about it was it gave you an excuse to stop some suspicious cars on the pretext of writing a ticket. More good arrests came from phony traffic stops than anything else. More policemen got blown up that way, too.

I decided, what the hell, I was too jumpy to lay around the park reading the paper. I’d been like a cat ever since I’d decided about Friday. I hardly slept last night. I headed back toward the beat.

I should be patrolling for the burglar, I thought. I really wanted him now that I only had a couple days left. He was a daytime hotel creeper and hitting maybe four to six hotel rooms in the best downtown hotels every time he went to work. The dicks talked to us at rollcall and said the M.O. run showed he preferred weekdays, especially Thursday and Friday, but a lot of jobs were showing up on Wednesdays. This guy would shim doors which isn’t too hard to do in any hotel since they usually have the world’s worst security, and he’d burgle the place whether the occupants were in or not. Of course he waited until they were in the shower or napping. I loved catching burglars. Most policemen call it fighting ghosts and give up trying to catch them, but I’d rather catch a hot prowl guy than a stickup man any day. And any burglar with balls enough to take a pad when the people are home is every bit as dangerous as a stickup man.

I decided I’d patrol the hotels by the Harbor Freeway. I had a theory this guy was using some sort of repairman disguise since he’d eluded all stakeouts so far, and I figured him for a repair or delivery truck. I envisioned him as an out-of-towner who used the convenient Harbor Freeway to come to his job. This burglar was doing ding-a-ling stuff on some of the jobs, cutting up clothing, usually women’s or kids’, tearing the crotch out of underwear, and on a recent job he stabbed the hell out of a big teddy bear that a little girl left on the bed covered up with a blanket. I was glad the people weren’t in when he hit that time. He was kinky, but a clever burglar, a lucky burglar. I thought about patrolling around the hotels, but first I’d go see Glenda. She’d be rehearsing now, and I might never see her again. She was one of the people I owed a good-bye to.

I entered the side door of the run-down little theater. They mostly showed skin flicks now. They used to have a halfway decent burlesque house here, with some fair comics and good-looking girls. Glenda was something in those days. The “Gilded Girl” they called her. She’d come out in a gold sheath and peel to a golden G-string and gold pasties. She was tall and graceful, and a better-than-average dancer. She played some big-time clubs off and on, but she was thirty-eight years old now and after two or three husbands she was back down on Main Street competing with beaver movies between reels, and taxi dancing part-time down the street at the ballroom. She was maybe twenty pounds heavier, but she still looked good to me because I saw her like she used to be.

I stood there in the shadows backstage and got accustomed to the dark and the quiet. They didn’t even have anyone on the door anymore. I guess even the weinie waggers and bustle rubbers gave up sneaking in the side door of this hole. The wallpaper was wet and rusty and curling off the walls like old scrolls. There were dirty costumes laying around on chairs. The popcorn machine, which they activated on weekend nights, was leaning against the wall, one leg broken.

“The cockroaches serve the popcorn in this joint. You don’t want any, Bumper,” said Glenda, who had stepped out of her dressing room and was watching me from the darkness.

“Hi, kid.” I smiled and followed her voice through the dark to the dimly lit little dressing room.

She kissed me on the cheek like she always did, and I took off my hat and flopped down on the ragged overstuffed chair behind her makeup table.

“Hey, Saint Francis, where’ve all the birdies gone?” she said, tickling the bald spot on my crown. She always laid about a hundred old jokes on me every time we met.

Glenda was wearing net stockings with a hole in one leg and a sequined G-string. She was nude on top and didn’t bother putting on a robe. I didn’t blame her, it was so damn hot today, but she didn’t usually go around like this in front of me and it made me a little nervous.

“Hot weather’s here, baby,” she said, sitting down and fixing her makeup. “When you going back on nights?”

Glenda knew my M.O. I work days in the winter, night-watch in the summer when the Los Angeles sun starts turning the heavy bluesuit into sackcloth.

“I’ll never go back on nights, Glenda,” I said casually. “I’m retiring.”

She turned around in her chair and those heavy white melons bounced once or twice. Her hair was long and blond.

She always claimed she was a real blonde but I’d never know.

“You won’t quit,” she said. “You’ll be here till they kick you out. Or till you die. Like me.”

“We’ll both leave here,” I said, smiling because she was starting to look upset. “Some nice guy’ll come along and…”

“Some nice guy took me out of here three times, Bumper. Trouble is I’m just not a nice girl. Too fucked up for any man. You’re just kidding about retiring, aren’t you?”

“How’s Sissy?” I said, to change the subject.

Glenda answered by taking a package of snapshots out of her purse and handing them to me. I’m farsighted now and in the dimness I couldn’t really see anything but the outline of a little girl holding a dog. I couldn’t even say if the dog was real or stuffed.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, knowing she was. I’d last seen her several months ago when I drove Glenda home from work one night.

“Every dollar you ever gave me went into a bank account for her just like we agreed at first,” said Glenda.

“I know that.”

“I added to it on my own too.”

“She’ll have something someday.”

“Bet your ass she will,” said Glenda, lighting a cigarette.

I wondered how much I’d given Glenda over the past ten years. And I wondered how many really good arrests I’d made on information she gave me. She was one of my big secrets. The detectives had informants who they paid but the bluesuits weren’t supposed to be involved in that kind of police work. Well, I had my paid informants too. But I didn’t pay them from any Department money. I paid them from my pocket, and when I made the bust on the scam they gave me, I made it look like I lucked onto the arrest. Or I made up some other fanciful story for the arrest report. That way Glenda was protected and nobody could say Bumper Morgan was completely nuts for paying informants out of his own pocket. The first time, Glenda turned me a federal fugitive who was dating her and who carried a gun and pulled stickups. I tried to give her twenty bucks and she refused it, saying he was a no-good asshole and belonged in the joint and she was no snitch. I made her take it for Sissy who was a baby then, and who had no dad. Since then over the years I’ve probably laid a thousand on Glenda for Sissy. And I’ve probably made the best pinches of any cop in Central Division.

“She gonna be a blondie like momma?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she smiled. “More blond than me though. And about ten times as smart. I think she’s smarter already. I’m reading books like mad to keep up with her.”

“Those private schools are tough,” I nodded. “They teach them something.”

“You notice this one, Bumper?” she smiled, coming over to me and sitting on the arm of the chair. She was smiling big and thinking about Sissy now. “The dog’s pulling her hair. Look at the expression.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, seeing only a blur and feeling one of those heavy chi-chis resting on my shoulder. Hers were big and natural, not pumped full of plastic like so many these days.

“She’s peeved in this one,” said Glenda, leaning closer, and it was pressed against my cheek, and finally one tender doorbell went right in my ear.

“Damn it, Glenda!” I said, looking up.

“What?” she answered, moving back. She got it, and laughed her hard hoarse laugh. Then her laugh softened and she smiled and her big eyes went soft and I noticed the lashes were dark beneath the eyes and not from mascara. I thought Glenda was more attractive now than she ever was.

“I have a big feeling for you, Bumper,” she said, and kissed me right on the mouth. “You and Sissy are the only ones. You’re what’s happening, baby.”

Glenda was like Ruthie. She was one of the people who belonged to the beat. There were laws that I made for myself, but she was almost naked and to me she was still so beautiful.

“Now,” she said, knowing I was about to explode. “Why not? You never have and I always wanted you to.”

“Gotta get back to my car,” I said, jumping up and crossing the room in three big steps. Then I mumbled something else about missing my radio calls, and Glenda told me to wait.

“You forgot your hat,” she said, handing it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, putting the lid on with one shaky hand. She held the other one and kissed my palm with a warm wet mouth.

“Don’t think of leaving us, Bumper,” she said and stared me in the eye.

“Here’s a few bucks for Sissy,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for a ten.

“I don’t have any information this time,” she said, shaking her head, but I tucked it inside her G-string and she grinned.

“It’s for the kid.”

There were some things I’d intended asking her about some gunsel I’d heard was hanging out in the skin houses and taxi-dance joints, but I couldn’t trust myself alone with her for another minute. “See you later, kid,” I said weakly.

“Bye, Bumper,” she said as I picked my way through the darkness to the stage door. Aside from the fact that Cassie gave me all I could handle, there was another reason I tore myself away from her like that. Any cop knows you can’t afford to get too tight with your informant. You try screwing a snitch and you’ll be the one that ends up getting screwed.

TWO

AFTER LEAVING GLENDA it actually seemed cool on the street. Glenda never did anything like that before. Everyone was acting a little ding-a-ling when I mentioned my retirement. I didn’t feel like climbing back inside that machine and listening to the noisy chatter on the radio.

It was still morning now and I was pretty happy, twirling my stick as I strolled along. I guess I swaggered along. Most beat officers swagger. People expect you to. It shows the hangtoughs you’re not afraid, and people expect it. Also they expect an older cop to cock his hat a little so I always do that too.

I still wore the traditional eight-pointed hat and used a leather thong on my stick. The Department went to more modern round hats, like Air Force hats, and we all have to change over. I’d wear the eight-pointed police hat to the end, I thought. Then I thought about Friday as being the end and I started a fancy stick spin to keep my mind off it. I let the baton go bouncing off the sidewalk back up into my hand. Three shoe shine kids were watching me, two Mexican, one Negro. The baton trick impressed the hell out of them. I strung it out like a Yo-Yo, did some back twirls and dropped it back in the ring in one smooth motion.

“Want a choo chine, Bumper?” said one of the Mexican kids.

“Thanks pal, but I don’t need one.”

“It’s free to you,” he said, tagging along beside me for a minute.

“I’m buying juice today, pal,” I said, flipping two quarters up in the air which one of them jumped up and caught. He ran to the orange juice parlor three doors away with the other two chasing him. The shoe shine boxes hung around their necks with ropes and thudded against their legs as they ran.

These little kids probably never saw a beat officer twirl a stick before. The Department ordered us to remove the leather thongs a couple years ago, but I never did and all the sergeants pretend not to notice as long as I borrow a regulation baton for inspections.

The stick is held in the ring now by a big rubber washer like the one that goes over the pipe in the back of your toilet. We’ve learned new ways to use the stick from some young Japanese cops who are karate and aikido experts. We use the blunt end of the stick more and I have to admit it beats hell out of the old caveman swing. I must’ve shattered six sticks over guys’ heads, arms and legs in my time. Now I’ve learned from these Nisei kids how to swing that baton in a big arc and put my whole ass behind it. I could damn near drive it through a guy if I wanted to, and never hurt the stick. It’s very graceful stuff too. I feel I can do twice as well in a brawl now. The only bad thing is, they convinced the Department brass that the leather thong was worthless. You see, these kids were never real beat men. Neither were the brass. They don’t understand what the cop twirling his stick really means to people who see him stroll down a quiet street throwing that big shadow in an eight-pointed hat. Anyway, I’d never take off the leather thong. It made me sick to think of a toilet washer on a police weapon.

I stopped by the arcade and saw a big muscle-bound fruit hustler standing there. I just looked hard at him for a second, and he fell apart and slithered away. Then I saw two con guys leaning up against a wall flipping a quarter, hoping to get a square in a coin smack. I stared at them and they got nervous and skulked around to the parking lot and disappeared.

The arcade was almost deserted. I remember when the slimeballs used to be packed in there solid, asshole to belly button, waiting to look at the skin show in the viewer. That was a big thing then. The most daring thing around. The vice squad used to bust guys all the time for masturbating. There were pecker prints all over the walls in front of the viewer. Now you can walk in any bar or movie house down here and see live skin shows, or animal flicks, and I don’t mean Walt Disney stuff. It’s women and dogs, dykes and donkeys, dildos and whips, fags, chickens, and ducks. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who or what is doing what to who or what.

Then I started thinking about the camera club that used to be next door to the arcade when nudity was still a big thing. It cost fifteen bucks to join and five bucks for every camera session. You got to take all the pictures of a naked girl you wanted, as long as you didn’t get closer than two feet and as long as you didn’t touch. Of course, most of the “photographers” didn’t even have film in their cameras, but the management knew it and never bothered putting in real camera lights and nobody complained. It was really so innocent.

I was about to head back to my car when I noticed another junkie watching me. He was trying to decide whether to rabbit or freeze. He froze finally, his eyes roaming around too casually, hitting on everything but me, hoping he could melt into the jungle. I hardly ever bust hypes for marks anymore, and he looked too sick to be holding, but I thought I recognized him.

“Come here, man,” I called and he came slinking my way like it was all over.

“Hello, Bumper.”

“Well, hello, Wimpy,” I said to the chalk-faced hype. “It took me a minute to recognize you. You’re older.”

“Went away for three years last time.”

“How come so long?”

“Armed robbery. Went to Q behind armed robbery. Violence don’t suit me. I shoulda stuck to boosting. San Quentin made me old, Bumper.”

“Too bad, Wimpy. Yeah, now I remember. You did a few gas stations, right?”

He was old. His sandy hair was streaked with gray and it was patchy. And his teeth were rotting and loose in his mouth. It was starting to come back to me like it always does: Herman (Wimpy) Brown, a lifelong hype and a pretty good snitch when he wanted to be. Couldn’t be more than forty but he looked a lot older than me.

“I wish I hadn’t never met that hangtough, Barty Mendez. Remember him, Bumper? A dope fiend shouldn’t never do violent crime. You just ain’t cut out for it. I coulda kept boosting cigarettes out of markets and made me a fair living for quite a while.”

“How much you boosting now, Wimpy?” I said, giving him a light. He was clammy and covered with gooseflesh. If he knew anything he’d tell me. He wanted a taste so bad right now, he’d snitch on his mother.

“I don’t boost anywhere near your beat, Bumper. I go out to the west side and lift maybe a couple dozen cartons of smokes a day outta those big markets. I don’t do nothing down here except look for guys holding.”

“You hang up your parole yet?”

“No, I ain’t running from my parole officer. You can call in and check.” He dragged hard on the cigarette but it wasn’t doing much good.

“Let’s see your arms, Wimpy,” I said, taking one bony arm and pushing up the sleeve.

“You ain’t gonna bust me on a chickenshit marks case, are you, Bumper?”

“I’m just curious,” I said, noticing the inner elbows were fairly clean. I’d have to put on my glasses to see the marks and I never took my glasses to work. They stayed in my apartment.

“Few marks, Bumper, not too bad,” he said, trying a black-toothed smile. “I shrink them with hemorrhoid ointment.”

I bent the elbow and looked at the back of the forearm. “Damn, the whole Union Pacific could run on those tracks!” I didn’t need glasses to see those swollen abscessed wounds.

“Don’t bust me, Bumper,” he whined. “I can work for you like I used to. I gave you some good things, remember? I turned the guy that juked that taxi dancer in the alley. The one that almost cut her tit off, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, as it came back to me. Wimpy did turn that one for me.

“Don’t these P.O.’s ever look at your arms?” I asked, sliding the sleeves back down.

“Some’re like cops, others’re social workers. I always been lucky about drawing a square P.O. or one who really digs numbers, like how many guys he’s rehabilitating. They don’t want to fail you, you know? Nowadays they give you dope and call it something else and say you’re cured. They show you statistics, but I think the ones they figure are clean are just dead, probably from an overdose.”

“Make sure you don’t O.D., Wimpy,” I said, leading him away from the arcade so we could talk in private while I was walking him to the corner call box to run a make.

“I liked it inside when I was on the program, Bumper. Honest to God. C.R.C. is a good place. I knew guys with no priors who shot phony needle holes in their arms so they could go there instead of to Q. And I heard Tehachapi is even better. Good food, and you don’t hardly work at all, and group therapy where you can shuck, and there’s these trade schools there where you can jive around. I could do a nickel in those places and I wouldn’t mind. In fact, last time I was sorta sorry they kicked me out after thirteen months. But three years in Q broke me, Bumper. You know you’re really in the joint when you’re in that place.”

“Still think about geezing when you’re inside?”

“Always think about that,” he said, trying to smile again as we stopped next to the call box. There were people walking by but nobody close. “I need to geez bad now, Bumper. Real bad.” He looked like he was going to cry.

“Well, don’t flip. I might not bust you if you can do me some good. Start thinking real hard, while I run a make to see if you hung it up.”

“My parole’s good as gold,” he said, already perking up now that he figured I wasn’t going to book him for marks. “You and me could work good, Bumper. I always trusted you. You got a rep for protecting your informants. Nobody never got a rat jacket behind your busts. I know you got an army of snitches, but nobody never got a snitch jacket. You take care of your people.”

“You won’t get a jacket either, Wimpy. Work with me and nobody knows. Nobody.”

Wimpy was sniffling and cotton-mouthed so I unlocked the call box and hurried up with the wants check. I gave the girl his name and birthdate, and lit his cigarette while we waited. He started looking around. He wasn’t afraid to be caught informing, he was just looking for a connection: a peddler, a junkie, anybody that might be holding a cap. I’d blow my brains out first, I thought.

“You living at a halfway house?” I asked.

“Not now,” he said. “You know, after being clean for three years I thought I could do it this time. Then I went and fixed the second day out, and I was feeling so bad about it I went to a kick pad over on the east side and asked them to sign me in. They did and I was clean three more days, left the kick pad, scored some junk, and had a spike in my arm ever since.”

“Ever fire when you were in the joint?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going until the information came back.

“I never did. Never had the chance. I heard of a few guys. I once saw two guys make an outfit. They were expecting half a piece from somewheres. I don’t know what they had planned, but they sure was making a fit.”

“How?”

“They bust open this light bulb and one of them held the filament with a piece of cardboard and a rag and the other just kept heating it up with matches, and those suckers stretched that thing out until it was a pretty good eyedropper. They stuck a hole in it with a pin and attached a plastic spray bottle to it and it wasn’t a bad fit. I’d a took a chance and stuck it in my arm if there was some dope in it.”

“Probably break off in your vein.”

“Worth the chance. I seen guys without a spike so strung out and hurting they cut their arm open with a razor and blow a mouthful of dope right in there.”

He was puffing big on the smoke. His hands and arms were covered with the jailhouse tattoos made from pencil lead shavings which they mix with spit and jab into their arms with a million pinpricks. He probably did it when he was a youngster just coming up. Now he was an old head and had professional tattoos all over the places where he shoots junk, but nothing could hide those tracks.

“I used to be a boss booster at one time, Bumper. Not just a cigarette thief. I did department stores for good clothes and expensive perfume, even jewelry counters which are pretty tough to do. I wore two-hundred-dollar suits in the days when only rich guys wore suits that good.”

“Work alone?”

“All alone, I swear. I didn’t need nobody. I looked different then. I was good looking, honest I was. I even talked better. I used to read a lot of magazines and books. I could walk through these department stores and spot these young kids and temporary sales help and have them give me their money. Give me their money, I tell you.”

“How’d you work that scam?”

“I’d tell them Mister Freeman, the retail manager, sent me to pick up their receipts. He didn’t want too much in the registers, I’d say, and I’d stick out my money bag and they’d fill it up for Mister Freeman.” Wimpy started to laugh and ended up wheezing and choking. He settled down after a minute.

“I sure owe plenty to Mister Freeman. I gotta repay that sucker if I ever meet him. I used that name in maybe fifty department stores. That was my real father’s name. That’s really my real name, but when I was a kid I took the name of this bastard my old lady married. I always played like my real old man would’ve did something for us if he’d been around, so this way he did. Old Mister Freeman must’ve gave me ten grand. Tax free. More than most old men ever give their kids, hey, Bumper?”

“More than mine, Wimpy,” I smiled.

“I did real good on that till-tap. I looked so nice, carnation and all. I had another scam where I’d boost good stuff, expensive baby clothes, luggage, anything. Then I’d bring it back to the salesman in the store bag and tell him I didn’t have my receipt but would they please give me back my money on account of little Bobby wouldn’t be needing these things because he smothered in his crib last Tuesday. Or old Uncle Pete passed on just before he went on his trip that he saved and dreamed about for forty-eight years and I couldn’t bear to look at this luggage anymore. Honest, Bumper, they couldn’t give me the bread fast enough. I even made men cry. I had one woman beg me to take ten bucks from her own purse to help with the baby’s funeral. I took that ten bucks and bought a little ten-dollar bag of junk and all the time I was cutting open that balloon and cooking that stuff I thought, ‘Oh you baby. You really are my baby.’ I took that spike and dug a little grave in my flesh and when I shoved that thing in my arm and felt it going in, I said, ‘Thank you, lady, thank you, thank you, this is the best funeral my baby could have.’” Wimpy closed his eyes and lifted his face, smiling a little as he thought of his baby.

“Doesn’t your P.O. ever give you a urinalysis or anything?” I still couldn’t get over an old head like him not having his arms or urine checked when he was on parole, even if he was paroled on a non-narcotics beef.

“Hasn’t yet, Bumper. I ain’t worried if he does. I always been lucky with P.O.’s. When they put me on the urine program I came up with the squeeze-bottle trick. I just got this square friend of mine, old Homer Allen, to keep me supplied with a fresh bottle of piss, and I kept that little plastic squeeze bottle full and hanging from a string inside my belt. My dumb little P.O. used to think he was sneaky and he’d catch me at my job or at home at night sometimes and ask for a urine sample and I’d just go to the john with him right behind me watching, and I’d reach in my fly and fill his little glass bottle full of Homer’s piss. He thought he was real slick, but he never could catch me. He was such a square. I really liked him. I felt like a father to that kid.”

The girl came to the phone and read me Wimpy’s record, telling me there were no wants.

“Well, you’re not running,” I said, hanging up the phone, closing the metal call box door, and hanging the brass key back on my belt.

“Told you, Bumper. I just saw my P.O. last week. I been reporting regular.”

“Okay, Wimpy, let’s talk business,” I said.

“I been thinking, Bumper, there’s this dog motherfucker that did me bad one time. I wouldn’t mind you popping him.”

“Okay,” I said, giving him a chance to rationalize his snitching, which all informants have to do when they start out, or like Wimpy, when they haven’t snitched for a long time.

“He deserves to march,” said Wimpy. “Everybody knows he’s no good. He burned me on a buy one time. I bring him a guy to score some pot. It’s not on consignment or nothing, and he sells the guy catnip and I told him I knew the guy good. The guy kicked my ass when he found out it was catnip.”

“Okay, let’s do him,” I said. “But I ain’t interested in some two- or three-lid punk.”

“I know, Bumper. He’s a pretty big dealer. We’ll set him up good. I’ll tell him I got a guy with real bread and he should bring three kilos and meet me in a certain place and then maybe you just happen by or something when we’re getting it out of the car and we both start to run but you go after him, naturally, and you get a three-key bust.”

“No good. I can’t run anymore. We’ll work out something else.”

“Any way you want, Bumper. I’ll turn anybody for you. I’ll roll over on anybody if you give me a break.”

“Except your best connection.”

“That’s God you’re talking about. But I think right this minute I’d even turn my connection for a fix.”

“Where’s this pot dealer live? Near my beat?”

“Yeah, not far. East Sixth. We can take him at his hotel. That might be the best way. You can kick down the pad and let me get out the window. At heart he’s just a punk. They call him Little Rudy. He makes roach holders out of chicken bones and folded-up matchbooks and all that punk-ass bullshit. Only thing is, don’t let me get a jacket. See, he knows this boss dyke, a real mean bull dagger. Her pad’s a shooting gallery for some of us. If she knows you finked, she’ll sneak battery acid in your spoon and laugh while you mainline it home. She’s a dog motherfucker.”

“Okay, Wimpy, when can you set it up?”

“Saturday, Bumper, we can do it Saturday.”

“No good,” I said quickly, a gas pain slicing across my stomach. “Friday’s the latest for anything.”

“Christ, Bumper. He’s out of town. I know for sure. I think he’s gone to the border to score.”

“I can’t wait past Friday. Think of somebody else then.”

“Shit, lemme think,” he said, rapping his skinny fingers against his temple. “Oh yeah, I got something. A guy in the Rainbow Hotel. A tall dude, maybe forty, forty-five, blondish hair. He’s in the first apartment to the left on the second floor. I just heard last night he’s a half-ass fence. Buys most anything you steal. Cheap, I hear. Pays less than a dime on the dollar. A righteous dog. He deserves to fall. I hear these dope fiends bring radios and stuff like that, usually in the early morning.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll try him tomorrow,” I said, not really very interested.

“Sure, he might have lots of loot in the pad. You could clear up all kinds of burglaries.”

“Okay, Wimpy, you can make it now. But I want to see you regular. At least three times a week.”

“Bumper, could you please loan me a little in advance?”

“You gotta be kidding, Wimpy! Pay a junkie in advance?”

“I’m in awful bad shape today, Bumper,” he said with a cracked whispery voice, like a prayer. He looked as bad as any I’d ever seen. Then I remembered I’d never see him again. After Friday I’d never see any of them again. He couldn’t do me any good and it was unbelievably stupid, but I gave him a ten, which was just like folding up a saw-buck and sticking it in his arm. He’d be in the same shape twelve hours from now. He stared at the bill like he didn’t believe it at first. I left him there and walked back to the car.

“We’ll get that pothead for you,” he said. “He’s sloppy. You’ll find seeds between the carpet and the molding outside the door in the hall. I’ll get you lots of probable cause to kick over the pad.”

“I know how to take down a dope pad, Wimpy,” I said over my shoulder.

“Later, Bumper, see you later,” he yelled, breaking into a coughing spasm.

THREE

I ALWAYS TRY to learn something from the people on my beat, and as I drove away I tried to think if I learned anything from all Wimpy’s chatter. I’d heard this kind of bullshit from a thousand hypes. Then I thought of the hemorrhoid ointment for shrinking hype marks. That was something new. I’d never heard that one before. I always try to teach the rookies to keep their mouths shut and learn to listen. They usually give more information than they get when they’re interrogating somebody. Even a guy like Wimpy could teach you something if you just give him a chance.

I got back in my car and looked at my watch because I was starting to get hungry. Of course I’m always hungry, or rather, I always want to eat. But I don’t eat between meals and I eat my meals at regular times unless the job prevents it. I believe in routine. If you have rules for little things, rules you make up yourself, and if you obey these rules, your life will be in order. I only alter routines when I have to.

One of the cats on the daywatch, a youngster named Wilson, drove by in his black-and-white but didn’t notice me because he was eyeballing some hype that was hotfooting it across Broadway to reach the crowded Grand Central Market, probably to score. The doper was moving fast like a hype with some gold in his jeans. Wilson was a good young copper, but sometimes when I looked at him like this, in profile when he was looking somewhere else, that cowlick of his and that kid nose, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on, made me think of someone. For a while it bothered me and then one night last week when I was thinking so hard about getting married, and about Cassie, it came to me-he reminded me of Billy a little bit, but I pushed it out of my mind because I don’t think of dead children or any dead people, that’s another rule of mine. But I did start thinking of Billy’s mother and how bad my first marriage had been and whether it could have been good if Billy had lived, and I had to admit that it could have been good, and it would have lasted if Billy had lived.

Then I wondered how many bad marriages that started during the war years had turned out all right. But it wasn’t just that, there was the other thing, the dying. I almost told Cruz Segovia about it one time when we used to be partners and we were working a lonely morning watch at three a.m., about how my parents died, and how my brother raised me and how he died, and how my son died, and how I admired Cruz because he had his wife and all those kids and gave himself away to them fearlessly. But I never told him, and when Esteban, his oldest son, died in Vietnam, I watched Cruz with the others, and after the crushing grief he still gave himself away to them, completely. But I couldn’t admire him for it anymore. I could marvel at it, but I couldn’t admire it. I don’t know what I felt about it after that.

Thinking all these foolish things made a gas bubble start, and I could imagine the bubble getting bigger and bigger. Then I took a bubble buster, chewed it up and swallowed it, made up my mind to start thinking about women or food or something good, raised up, farted, said “Good morning, Your Honor,” and felt a whole lot better.

FOUR

IT ALWAYS MADE ME FEEL GOOD just to drive around without thinking, so I turned off my radio and did just that. Pretty soon, without looking at my watch, I knew it was time to eat. I couldn’t decide whether to hit Chinatown or Little Tokyo today. I didn’t want Mexican food, because I promised Cruz Segovia I’d come to his pad for dinner tonight and I’d get enough Mexican food to last me a week. His wife Socorro knew how I loved chile relleno and she’d fix a dozen just for me.

A few burgers sounded good and there’s a place in Hollywood that has the greatest burgers in town. Every time I go to Hollywood I think about Myrna, a broad I used to fool around with a couple years ago. She was an unreal Hollywood type, but she had a good executive job in a network television studio and whenever we went anywhere she’d end up spending more bread than I would. She loved to waste money, but the thing she really had going as far as I was concerned is that she looked just like Madeleine Carroll whose pictures we had all over our barracks during the war. It wasn’t just that Myrna had style and elegant, springy tits, it’s that she really looked like a woman and acted like one, except that she was a stone pothead and liked to improvise too much sexually. I’m game for anything reasonable, but sometimes Myrna was a little too freaky about things, and she also insisted on turning me on, and finally I tried smoking pot one time with her, but I didn’t feel good high like on fine scotch. On her coffee table she had at least half a key and that’s a pound of pot and that’s trouble. I could just picture me and her getting hauled off to jail in a nark ark. So it was a bummer, and I don’t know if it’s the overall depressant effect of pot or what, but I crashed afterwards, down, down, down, until I felt mean enough to kick the hell out of her. But then, come to think of it, I guess Myrna liked that best of all anyway. So, Madeleine Carroll or not, I finally shined her on and she gave up calling me after a couple weeks, probably having found herself a trained gorilla or something.

There was one thing about Myrna that I’d never forget-she was a great dancer, not a good dancer, a great dancer, because Myrna could completely stop thinking when she danced. I think that’s the secret. She could dig hard rock and she was a real snake. When she moved on a dance floor, often as not, everyone would stop and watch. Of course they laughed at me-at first. Then they’d see there were two dancers out there. It’s funny about dancing, it’s like food or sex, it’s something you do and you can just forget you have a brain. It’s all body and deep in your guts, especially the hard rock. And hard rock’s the best thing to happen to music. When Myrna and me were really moving, maybe at some kid place on the Sunset Strip, our bodies joined. It wasn’t just a sex thing, but there was that too, it was like our bodies really made it together and you didn’t even have to think anymore.

I used to always experiment by doing the funky chicken when we first started out. I know it’s getting old now, but I’d do it and they’d all laugh, because of the way my belly jumped and swayed around. Then I’d always do it again right near the end of the song, and nobody laughed. They smiled, but nobody laughed, because they could see by then how graceful I really am, despite the way I’m built. Nobody’s chicken was as funky as mine, so I always stood there flapping my elbows and bowing my knees just to test them. And despite the raw animal moves of Myrna, people also looked at me. They watched both of us dance. That’s one thing I miss about Myrna.

I didn’t feel like roaming so far from my beat today so I decided on beef teriyaki and headed for J-town. The Japanese have the commercial area around First and Second Streets between Los Angeles Street and Central Avenue. There are lots of colorful shops and restaurants and professional buildings. They also have their share of banks and lots of money to go in them. When I walked in the Geisha Doll on First Street, the lunch hour rush was just about over and the mama-san shuffled over with her little graceful steps like she was still twenty instead of sixty-five. She always wore a silk slit-skirted dress and she really didn’t look too bad for an old girl. I always kidded her about a Japanese wearing a Chinese dress and she would laugh and say, “Make moah China ting in Tokyo than all China. And bettah, goddam betcha.” The place was plush and dark, lots of bamboo, beaded curtains, hanging lanterns.

“Boom-pah san, wheah you been hide?” she said as I stepped through the beads.

“Hello, Mother,” I said, lifting her straight up under the arms and kissing her on the cheek. She only weighed about ninety pounds and seemed almost brittle, but once I didn’t do this little trick and she got mad. She expected it and all the customers got a kick out of watching me perform. The cooks and all the pretty waitresses and Sumi, the hostess, dressed in a flaming orange kimono, expected it too. I saw Sumi tap a Japanese customer on the shoulder when I walked in.

I usually held the mama-san up like this for a good minute or so and snuggled her a little bit and joked around until everyone in the place was giggling, especially the mama-san, and then I put her down and let her tell anyone in shouting distance how “stlong is owah Boom-pah.” My arms are good even though my legs are gone, but she was like a paper doll, no weight at all. She always said “owah Boom-pah,” and I always took it to mean I belonged to J-town too and I liked the idea. Los Angeles policemen are very partial to Buddha heads because sometimes they seem like the only ones left in the world who really appreciate discipline, cleanliness, and hard work. I’ve even seen motor cops who’d hang a ticket on a one-legged leper, let a Nip go on a good traffic violation because they contribute practically nothing to the crime rate even though they’re notoriously bad drivers. I’ve been noticing in recent years though that Orientals have been showing up as suspects on crime reports. If they degenerate like everyone else there’ll be no group to look up to, just individuals.

“We have a nice table for you, Bumper,” said Sumi with a smile that could almost make you forget food-almost. I started smelling things: tempura, rice wine, teriyaki steak. I have a sensitive nose and can pick out individual smells. It’s really only individual things that count in this world. When you lump everything together you get goulash or chop suey or a greasy stew pot. I hated food like that.

“I think I’ll sit at the sushi bar,” I said to Sumi, who once confessed to me her real name was Gloria. People expected a geisha doll to have a Japanese name, so Gloria, a third generation American, obliged them. I agreed with her logic. There’s no sense disappointing people.

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 with 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.

As I drove by Zoot, he waved at me and grinned and stood by the mailbox. I wondered if we could’ve got some help with the Post Office special agents to stop this flimflam, but it would’ve been awful hard and not worth the effort. You can’t tamper with someone’s mail very easy. Now, as I looked at his miserable face for the last time, my black mood got blacker and I thought, I’ll bet no other uniformed cop ever takes the trouble to shag him after I’m gone.

Then I started thinking about bookmaking in general, and got even madder, because it was the kind of crime I couldn’t do anything about. I saw the profits reaped from it all around me, and I saw the people involved in it, and knew some of them, and yet I couldn’t do anything because they were so well organized and their weapons were so good and mine were so flimsy. The money was so unbelievably good that they could expand into semilegitimate businesses and drive out competition because they had the racket money to fall back on, and the legitimate businesses couldn’t compete. And also they were tougher and ruthless and knew other ways to discourage competition. I always wanted to get one of them good, someone like Red Scalotta, a big book, whose fortune they say can’t be guessed at. I thought all these things and how mad I get everytime I see a goddamn lovable Damon-Runyon-type bookmaker in a movie. I started thinking then about Angie Caputo, and got a dark kind of pleasure just picturing him and remembering how another old beat man, Sam Giraldi, had humbled him. Angie had never realized his potential as a hood after what Sam did to him.

Sam Giraldi is dead now. He died last year just fourteen months after he retired at twenty years’ service. He was only forty-four when he had a fatal heart attack, which is particularly a policeman’s disease. In a job like this, sitting on your ass for long periods of time and then moving in bursts of heart-cracking action, you can expect heart attacks. Especially since lots of us get so damned fat when we get older.

When he ruined Angie Caputo, Sam was thirty-seven years old but looked forty-seven in the face. He wasn’t very tall, but had tremendous shoulders, a meaty face, and hands bigger than mine, all covered with heavy veins. He was a good handball player and his body was hard as a spring-loaded sap. He’d been a vice officer for years and then went back to uniform. Sam walked Alvarado when I walked downtown, and sometimes he’d drive over to my beat or I’d come over to his. We’d eat dinner together and talk shop or talk about baseball, which I like and which he was fanatic about. Sometimes, if we ate at his favorite delicatessen on Alvarado, I’d walk with him for a while and once or twice we even made a pretty good pinch together like that. It was on a wonderful summer night when a breeze was blowing off the water in MacArthur Park that I met Angie Caputo.

It seemed to be a sudden thing with Sam. It struck like a bullet, the look on his face, and he said, “See that guy? That’s Angie Caputo, the pimp and bookmaker’s agent.” And I said, “So what?” wondering what the hell was going on, because Sam looked like he was about to shoot the guy who was just coming out of a bar and getting ready to climb aboard a lavender Lincoln he had parked on Sixth Street. We got in Sam’s car, getting ready to drive over to catch the eight o’clock show at the burlesque house out there on his beat.

“He hangs out further west, near Eighth Street,” said Sam. “That’s where he lives too. Not far from my pad, in fact. I been looking to see him for a few days now. I got it straight that he’s the one that busted the jaw of Mister Rovitch that owns the cleaners where I get my uniforms done.” Sam was talking in an unnaturally soft voice. He was a gentle guy and always talked low and quiet, but this was different.

“What’d he do that for?”

“Old guy was behind on interest payments to Harry Stapleton the loan shark. He had Angie do the job for him. Angie’s a big man now. He don’t have to do that kind of work no more, but he loves to do it sometimes. I hear he likes to use a pair of leather gloves with wrist pins in the palms.”

“He get booked for it?”

Sam shook his head. “The old man swears three niggers mugged him.”

“You sure it was Caputo?”

“I got a good snitch, Bumper.”

And then Sam confessed to me that Caputo was from the same dirty town in Pennsylvania that he was from, and their families knew each other when they were kids, and they were even distant relatives. Then Sam turned the car around and drove back on Sixth Street and stopped at the corner.

“Get in, Angie,” said Sam, as Caputo walked toward the car with a friendly smile.

“You busting me, Sam?” said Caputo, the smile widening, and I could hardly believe he was as old as Sam. His wavy hair was blue-black without a trace of gray, and his handsome profile was smooth, and his gray suit was beautiful. I turned around when Caputo held out a hand and smiled at me.

“Angie’s my name,” he said as we shook hands. “Where we going?”

“I understand you’re the one that worked over the old man,” said Sam in a much softer voice than before.

“You gotta be kidding, Sam. I got other things going. Your finks got the wrong boy for this one.”

“I been looking for you.”

“What for, Sam, you gonna bust me?”

“I can’t bust you. I ain’t been able to bust you since I knew you, even though I’d give my soul to do it.”

“This guy’s a comic,” said Caputo, laughing as he lit a cigarette. “I can depend on old Sam to talk to me at least once a month about how he’d like to send me to the joint. He’s a comic. Whadda you hear from the folks back in Aliquippa, Sam? How’s Liz and Dolly? How’s Dolly’s kids?”

“Before this, you never really hurt nobody I knew personally,” said Sam, still in the strange soft voice. “I knew the old man real good, you know.”

“He one of your informers, Sam?” asked Caputo. “Too bad. Finks’re hard to come by these days.”

“Old guy like that. Bones might never heal.”

“Okay, that’s a shame. Now tell me where we’re going. Is this some kind of roust? I wanna know.”

“Here’s where we’re going. We’re here,” said Sam, driving the car under the ramp onto the lonely, dark, dirt road by the new freeway construction.

“What the fuck’s going on?” asked Caputo, for the first time not smiling.

“Stay in the car, Bumper,” said Sam. “I wanna talk with Angie alone.”

“Be careful, fratello,” said Caputo. “I ain’t a punk you can scare. Be careful.”

“Don’t say fratello to me,” Sam whispered. “You’re a dog’s brother. You beat old men. You beat women and live off them. You live off weak people’s blood.”

“I’ll have your job, you dumb dago,” said Caputo, and I jumped out of the car when I heard the slapping thud of Sam’s big fist and Caputo’s cry of surprise. Sam was holding Caputo around the head and already I could see the blood as Sam hammered at his face. Then Caputo was on his back and he tried to hold off the blows of the big fist which drew back slowly and drove forward with speed and force. Caputo was hardly resisting now and didn’t yell when Sam pulled out the heavy six-inch Smith and Wesson. Sam knelt on the arms of Caputo and cracked the gun muzzle through his teeth and into his mouth. Caputo’s head kept jerking off the ground as he gagged on the gun muzzle twisting and digging in his throat but Sam pinned him there on the end of the barrel, whispering to him in Italian. Then Sam was on his feet and Caputo flopped on his stomach heaving bloody, pulpy tissue.

Sam and me drove back alone without talking. Sam was breathing hard and occasionally opened a window to spit a wad of phlegm. When Sam finally decided to talk he said, “You don’t have to worry, Bumper, Angie’ll keep his mouth shut. He didn’t even open it when I beat him, did he?”

“I’m not worried.”

“He won’t say nothing,” said Sam. “And things’ll be better on the street. They won’t laugh at us and they won’t be so bold. They’ll be scared. And Angie’ll never really be respected again. It’ll be better out here on the street.”

“I’m just afraid he’ll kill you, Sam.”

“He won’t. He’ll fear me. He’ll be afraid that I’ll kill him. And I will if he tries anything.”

“Christ, Sam, it’s not worth getting so personally tied up to these assholes like this.”

“Look, Bumper, I worked bookmaking in Ad Vice and here in Central. I busted bookmakers and organized hoodlums for over eight years. I worked as much as six months on one bookmaker. Six months! I put together an investigation and gathered evidence that no gang lawyer could beat and I took back offices where I seized records that could prove, prove the guy was a millionaire book. And I convicted them and saw them get pitiful fines time after time and I never saw a bookmaker go to state prison even though it’s a felony. Let somebody else work bookmaking I finally decided, and I came back to uniform. But Angie’s different. I know him. All my life I knew him, and I live right up Serrano there, in the apartments. That’s my neighborhood. I use that cleaners where the old man works. Sure he was my snitch but I liked him. I never paid him. He just told me things. He got a kid’s a schoolteacher, the old man does. The books’ll be scared now for a little while after what I done. They’ll respect us for a little while.”

I had to agree with everything Sam said, but I’d never seen a guy worked over that bad before, not by a cop anyway. It bothered me. I worried about us, Sam and me, about what would happen if Caputo complained to the Department, but Sam was right. Caputo kept his mouth shut and I admit I was never sorry for what Sam did. When it was over I felt something and couldn’t put my finger on it at first, and then one night laying in bed I figured it out. It was a feeling of something being right. For one of the few times on this job I saw an untouchable touched. I felt my thirst being slaked a little bit, and I was never sorry for what Sam did.

But Sam was dead now and I was retiring, and I was sure there weren’t many other bluesuits in the division who could nail a bookmaker. I turned my car around and headed back toward Zoot Lafferty, still standing there in his pea green slack suit. I parked the black-and-white at the curb, got out, and very slow, with my sweaty uniform shirt sticking to my back, I walked over to Zoot who opened the package door on the red and blue mailbox and stuck his arm inside. I stopped fifteen feet away and stared at him.

“Hello, Morgan,” he said, with a crooked phony grin that told me he wished he’d have slunk off long before now. He was a pale, nervous guy, about forty-five years old, with a bald freckled skull.

“Hello, Zoot,” I said, putting my baton back inside the ring, and measuring the distance between us.

“You got your rocks off once by busting me, Morgan. Why don’t you go back over to your beat, and get outta my face? I moved clear over here to Figueroa to get away from you and your fucking beat, what more do you want?”

“How much action you got written down, Zoot?” I said, walking closer. “It’ll inconvenience the shit out of you to let it go in the box, won’t it?”

“Goddamnit, Morgan,” said Zoot, blinking his eyes nervously, and scratching his scalp which looked loose and rubbery. “Why don’t you quit rousting people. You’re an old man, you know that? Why don’t you just fuck off outta here and start acting like one.”

When the slimeball said that, the blackness I felt turned blood red, and I sprinted those ten feet as he let the letter slide down inside the box. But he didn’t get his hand out. I slammed the door hard and put my weight against it and the metal door bit into his wrist and he screamed.

“Zoot, it’s time for you and me to have a talk.” I had my hand on the mailbox package door, all my weight leaning hard, as he jerked for a second and then froze in pain, bug-eyed.

“Please, Morgan,” he whispered, and I looked around, seeing there was a lot of car traffic but not many pedestrians.

“Zoot, before I retire I’d like to take a real good book, just one time. Not a sleazy little handbook like you but a real bookmaker, how about helping me?”

Tears began running down Zoot’s cheeks and he showed his little yellow teeth and turned his face to the sun as he pulled another time on the arm. I pushed harder and he yelped loud, but there were noisy cars driving by.

“For God’s sake, Morgan,” he begged. “I don’t know anything. Please let my arm out.”

“I’ll tell you what, Zoot. I’ll settle for your phone spot. Who do you phone your action in to?”

“They phone me,” he gasped, as I took a little weight off the door.

“You’re a liar,” I said, leaning again.

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you the number,” he said, and now he was blubbering outright and I got disgusted and then mad at him and at me and especially at the bookmaker I’d never have a chance to get, because he was too well protected and my weapons were too puny.

“I’ll break your goddamn arm if you lie,” I said, with my face right up to his. A young, pretty woman walked by just then, looked at Zoot’s sweaty face and then at mine, and damn near ran across the street to get away from us.

“It’s six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three,” he sobbed.

“Repeat it.”

“Six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three.”

“One more time, and it better come out the same.”

“Six-six-eight-two-seven-three-three. Oh, Christ!”

“How do you say it when you phone in the action?”

“Dandelion. I just say the word Dandelion and then I give the bets. I swear, Morgan.”

“Wonder what Red Scalotta would say if he knew you gave me that information?” I smiled, and then I let him go when I saw by his eyes that I’d guessed right and he was involved with that particular bookmaker.

He pulled his arm out and sat down on the curb, holding it like it was broken and cursing under his breath as he wiped the tears away.

“How about talking with a vice cop about this?” I said, lighting a fresh cigar while he began rubbing his arm which was probably going numb.

“You’re a psycho, Morgan!” he said, looking up. “You’re a real psycho if you think I’d fink on anybody.”

“Look, Zoot, you talk to a vice cop like I say, and we’ll protect you. You won’t get a jacket. But if you don’t, I’ll personally see that Scalotta gets the word that you gave me the phone number and the code so we could stiff in a bet on the phone clerk. I’ll let it be known that you’re a paid snitch and when he finds out what you told me you know what? I bet he’ll believe it. You ever see what some gunsel like Betnie Zolitch can do to a fink?”

“You’re the most rottenest bastard I ever seen,” said Zoot, standing up, very shaky, and white as paste.

“Look at it this way, Zoot, you cooperate just this once, we’ll take one little pukepot sitting in some phone spot and that’ll be all there is to it. We’ll make sure we come up with a phony story about how we got the information like we always do to protect an informant, and nobody’ll be the wiser. You can go back to your slimy little business and I give you my word I’ll never roust you again. Not personally, that is. And you probably know I always keep my word. Course I can’t guarantee you some other cop won’t shag you sometime.”

He hesitated for a second and then said, “I’ll settle for you not rousting me no more, Morgan. Those vice cops I can live with.”

“Let’s take a ride. How’s your arm feeling?”

“Fuck you, Morgan,” he said, and I chuckled to myself and felt a little better about everything. We drove to Central Vice and I found the guy I wanted sitting in the office.

“Why aren’t you out taking down some handbook, Charlie?” I said to the young vice cop who was leaning dangerously back in a swivel chair with his crepe-soled sneak shoes up on a desk doping the horses on a scratch sheet.

“Hi, Bumper,” he grinned, and then recognized Zoot who he himself probably busted a time or two.

“Mr. Lafferty decide to give himself up?” said Charlie Bronski, a husky, square-faced guy with about five years on the Department. I broke him in when he was just out of the academy. I remembered him as a smart aggressive kid, but with humility. Just the kind I liked. You could teach that kind a little something. I wasn’t ashamed to say he was Bumperized.

Charlie got up and put on a green striped, short-sleeved ivy-league shirt over the shoulder holster which he wore over a white T-shirt.

“Old Zoot here just decided to repent his evil ways, Charlie,” I said, glancing at Zoot who looked as sad as anyone I’d ever seen.

“Let’s get it over with, Morgan, for chrissake,” said Zoot. “And you got to swear you’ll keep it confidential.”

“Swear, Charlie,” I said.

“I swear,” said Charlie. “What’s this all about?”

“Zoot wants to trade a phone spot to us.”

“For what?” asked Charlie.

“For nothing,” said Zoot, very impatient. “Just because I’m a good fucking citizen. Now you want the information or not?”

“Okay,” Charlie said, and I could tell he was trying to guess how I squeezed Zoot. Having worked with me for a few months, Charlie was familiar with my M.O. I’d always tried to teach him and other young cops that you can’t be a varsity letterman when you deal with these barf-bags. Or rather, you could be, and you’d probably be the one who became a captain, or Chief of Police or something, but you can bet there’d always have to be the guys like me out on the street to make you look good up there in that ivory tower by keeping the assholes from taking over the city.

“You wanna give us the relay, is that it?” said Charlie, and Zoot nodded, looking a little bit sick.

“Is it a relay spot? Are you sure?” asked Charlie.

“I’m not sure of a goddamn thing,” Zoot blubbered, rubbing his arm again. “I only came ’cause I can’t take this kind of heat. I can’t take being rousted and hurt.”

Charlie looked at me, and I thought that if this lifelong handbook, this ex-con and slimeball started crying, I’d flip. I was filled with loathing for a pukepot like Zoot, not because he snitched, hell, everybody snitches when the twist is good enough. It was this crybaby sniveling stuff that I couldn’t take.

“Damn, Zoot!” I finally exploded. “You been a friggin’ scammer all your life, fracturing every friggin’ law you had nuts enough to crack, and you sit here now acting like a pious nun. If you wanna play your own tune you better damn well learn to dance to it, and right now you’re gonna do the friggin’ boogaloo, you goddamn hemorrhoid!”

I took a step toward Zoot’s chair and he snapped up straight in his seat saying, “Okay, Morgan, okay. Whadda you want? For God’s sake I’ll tell you what you wanna know! You don’t have to get tough!”

“Is the number you phone a relay?” repeated Charlie calmly.

“I think so,” Zoot nodded. “Sounds like some goofy broad don’t know nothing about the business. I been calling this same broad for six months now. She’s probably just some stupid fucking housewife, sitting on a hot seat and taking them bets for somebody she don’t even know.”

“Usually record them on Formica,” Charlie explained to me, “then somebody phones her several times a day and takes the action she wrote down. She can wipe the Formica in case the vice cops come busting down her door. She probably won’t even know who pays her or where the phone calls come from.”

“Fuck no, she ain’t gonna know,” said Zoot, looking at me. “This shit’s too big, Morgan. It’s too goddamn big. You ain’t gonna bother nobody by rousting me. You don’t understand, Morgan. People want us in business. What’s a guy get for bookmaking? Even a big guy? A fucking fine. Who does time? You ever see a book get joint time?” said Zoot to Charlie, who shook his head. “Fuck no, you ain’t and you ain’t going to. Everybody bets with bookies for chrissake and those that don’t, they like some other kind of vice. Give up, Morgan. You been a cop all these years and you don’t know enough to give up fighting it. You can’t save this rotten world.”

“I ain’t trying to, Zoot,” I said. “I just love the friggin’ battle!”

I went down the hall to the coffee room, figuring that Charlie should be alone with Zoot. Now that I had played the bad guy, he could play the good guy. An interrogation never works if it’s not private, and Charlie was a good bullshitter. I had hopes he could get more out of Zoot because I had him loosened up. Anytime you get someone making speeches at you, you have a chance. If he’s shaky about one thing, he might be about something else. I didn’t think you could buy Zoot with money, he was too scared of everything. But being scared of us as well as the mob, he could be gotten to. Charlie could handle him.

Cruz Segovia was in the coffee room working on his log. I came in behind him. There was no one else in the room and Cruz was bent over the table writing in his log. He was so slim that even in his uniform he looked like a little boy bent over doing his homework. His face was still almost the same as when we were in the academy and except for his gray hair he hadn’t changed much. He was barely five feet eight and sitting there he looked really small.

“Qué pasó, compadre,” I said, because he always said he wished I was Catholic and could have been the godfather for his last seven kids. His kids considered me their godfather anyway, and he called me compadre.

“Órale, panzón,” he said, like a pachuco, which he put on for me. He spoke beautiful Spanish and could also read and write Spanish, which is rare for a Mexican. He was good with English too, but the barrios of El Paso Texas died hard, and Cruz had an accent when he spoke English.

“Where you been hiding out all day?” I said, putting a dime in the machine and getting Cruz a fresh cup, no cream and double sugar.

“You bastard,” he said. “Where’ve I been hiding. Communication’s been trying to get you all day! Don’t you know that funny little box in your car is called a radio and you’re supposed to listen for your calls and you’re even supposed to handle them once in a while?”

“Chale, chale. Quit being a sergeant,” I said. “Gimme some slack. I been bouncing in and out of that black-and-white machine so much I haven’t heard anything.”

“You’ll be a beat cop all your life,” he said, shaking his head. “You have no use at all for your radio, and if you didn’t have your best friend for a sergeant, your big ass’d be fired.”

“Yeah, but I got him,” I grinned, poking him in the shoulder and making him swear.

“Seriously, Bumper,” he said, and he didn’t have to say “seriously” because his large black eyes always turned down when he was serious. “Seriously, the skipper asked me to ask you to pay a little more attention to the radio. He heard some of the younger officers complaining about always handling the calls in your district because you’re off the radio walking around so much.”

“Goddamn slick-sleeved rookies,” I said, hot as hell, “they wouldn’t know a snake in the grass if one jumped up and bit them on the dick. You seen these goddamn rookies nowadays, riding down the friggin’ streets, ogling all the cunt, afraid to put on their hats because it might ruin their hair styles. Shit, I actually saw one of these pretty young fuzz sitting in his black-and-white spraying his hair! I swear, Cruz, most of these young cats wouldn’t know their ass from a burnt biscuit.”

“I know, Bumper,” Cruz nodded with sympathy. “And the skipper knows a whole squad of these youngsters couldn’t do half the police work you old-timers do. That’s why nobody says anything to you. But hombre, you have to handle some calls once in a while instead of walking that beat.”

“I know,” I said, looking at my coffee.

“Just stay on the air a little more.”

“Okay, okay, you’re the macho. You got the huevos de oro.”

Cruz smiled now that he was through stepping on my meat. He was the only one that ever nagged me or told me what to do. When someone else had ideas along those lines, they’d hit Cruz with them, and if he thought I needed talking to, he’d do it. They figured I’d listen to Cruz.

“Don’t forget, loco, you’re coming to dinner tonight.”

“Can you see me forgetting dinner at your pad?”

“You sure Cassie can’t come with you?”

“She sure wishes she could. You know Friday’s the last day for her at school and they’re throwing a little party for her. She has to be there.”

“I understand,” said Cruz. “What day is she actually going up north? She decided yet?”

“Next week she’ll be packed and gone.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just take your vacation now and cut out with her. What’s the sense of waiting till the end of the month? That vacation pay isn’t worth being away from her for a few weeks, is it? She might come to her senses and ask herself why the hell she’s marrying a mean old bastard like Bumper Morgan.”

I wondered why I didn’t tell Cruz that I’d decided to do just that. What the hell was the secret? Friday was going to be my last day, I never cared anything about the vacation pay. Was I really afraid to say it?

“Gonna be strange leaving everything,” I muttered to my coffee cup.

“I’m glad for you, Bumper,” said Cruz, running his slim fingers through his heavy gray hair, “If I didn’t have all the kids I’d get the hell out too, I swear. I’m glad you’re going.”

Cruz and me had talked about it lots of times the last few years, ever since Cassie came along and it became inevitable that I’d marry her and probably pull the pin at twenty years instead of staying thirty like Cruz had to do. Now that it was here though, it seemed like we’d never discussed it at all. It was so damn strange.

“Cruz, I’m leaving Friday,” I blurted. “I’m going to see Cassie and tell her I’ll leave Friday. Why wait till the end of the month?”

“That’s fine, ’mano!” Cruz beamed, looking like he’d like to cut loose with a yelp, like he always did when he was drunk.

“I’ll tell her today.” Now I felt relieved, and drained the last of the coffee as I got up to leave. “And I don’t give a damn if I loaf for a month. I’ll just take it easy till I feel like starting my new job.”

“That’s right!” said Cruz, his eyes happy now. “Sit on that big fat nalgas for a year if you want to. They want you as security chief. They’ll wait for you. And you have forty percent coming every month, and Cassie’s got a good job, and you still have a good bank account don’t you?”

“Hell yes,” I answered, walking toward the door. “I never had to spend much money, with my beat and all.”

“Shhh,” Cruz grinned. “Haven’t you heard? We’re the new breed of professionals. We don’t accept gratuities.”

“Who said anything about gratuities? I only take tribute.”

Cruz shook his head and said, “Ahí te huacho,” which is anglicized slang meaning I’ll be seeing, or rather, watching for you.

“Ahí te huacho,” I answered.

After I left Cruz I went back to the vice squad office and found Zoot hanging his head, and Charlie downright happy, so I figured Charlie had done all right.

“I’d like to talk to you alone for a minute, Bumper,” said Charlie, leading me into the next room and closing the door while Zoot sat there looking miserable.

“He told me lots more than he thinks he did,” said Charlie. He was charged up like any good cop should be when he has something worthwhile.

“He thinks you re taking me off his back?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Charlie smiled. “Play along. He thinks I’m going to save him from you. Just lay off him for a while, okay, Bumper? He told me he’s planning on moving his territory out of the division to Alvarado in a couple of weeks but he has to stay around Figueroa for the time being. I told him I’d talk to you.”

“Tell Zoot he doesn’t have to worry about old Bumper anymore,” I said, getting another gas pain. I vowed to myself I’d lay off the soy sauce next time I ate in J-town.

“Yeah, he’ll be a problem for the Rampart vice squad then,” said Charlie, not getting my meaning.

“Want me to take him back to Fig?”

“I’ll take him,” said Charlie. “I want to talk a little more.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure, Bumper.”

“You think there’s any chance of something going down because of what Zoot told you?”

“There’s a damn good chance. Zoot half-assed copped that he thinks the broad at the relay spot that takes his action is Reba McClain, and if it is we might be able to swing real good with her.”

“How’s that?”

“She’s Red Scalotta’s girlfriend. We took her down in another relay about six months ago and she got probation with a six months’ jail sentence hanging. She’s a meth head and an ex-con and stir crazy as hell. Kind of a sex thing. She’s got a phobia about jails and bull dykes and all that. Real ding-a-ling, but a gorgeous little toadie. We were just talking last week about her and if we could shag her and catch her dirty we might get to Scalotta through her. She’s a real shaky bitch. I think she’d turn her mama to stay on the street. You bringing in Zoot with that phone number was a godsend.”

“Okay, then I’m really going to ask the favor.”

“Sure.”

“Take her today or tomorrow at the latest. If she gives you something good, like a back office, take it down on Friday.”

“A back office! Jesus, I don’t think she’ll have that kind of information, Bumper. And hell, Friday is just two days away. Sometimes you stake out for weeks or months to take a back office. Jesus, that’s where the book’s records are kept. We’d have to get a search warrant and that takes lots of information beforehand. Why Friday?”

“I’m going on vacation. I want to be in on this one, Charlie. I never took a back office. I want it real bad, and it has to be before I go on vacation.”

“I’d do it for you, Bumper, if I could, you know that, but Friday’s only two days away!”

“Just do police work like I taught you, with balls and brains and some imagination. That’s all I ask. Just try, okay?”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “I’ll give it a try.”

Before I left I put on an act for Zoot so he’d think Charlie was his protector. I pretended I was mad at Charlie and Charlie pretended he was going to stop me from any future attempts to stuff Zoot down the goddamn mail chute.

SIX

AFTER I got in my car I remembered the friendly ass bite Cruz gave me and I picked up the hand mike and said, “One-X-L-Forty-five, clear.”

“One-X-L-Forty-five, handle this call,” said the operator, and I grumbled and wrote the address down. “Meet One-L-Thirty, Ninth and Broadway.”

“One-X-L-Forty-five, roger,” I said disgustedly, and thought, that’s what I get for clearing. Probably some huge crisis like taking a chickenshit theft report from some fatass stockbroker who got his wallet lifted while he was reading dirty magazines at the dirty bookstore on Broadway.

One-X-L-Thirty was a rookie sergeant named Grant who I didn’t know very well. He wore one five-year hashmark showing he had between five and ten years on. I’d bet it was a whole lot closer to five. He had a ruddy, smooth face and a big vocabulary. I never heard him swear at any roll-call he conducted. I couldn’t trust a policeman who didn’t swear once in a while. You could hardly describe certain things you see and feelings you have in this job without some colorful language.

Grant was south of Ninth near Olympic, out of his car, pacing up and down as I drove up. I knew it was snobbish but I couldn’t call a kid like him “Sergeant.” And I didn’t want to be out and out rude so I didn’t call these young sergeants by their last names. I didn’t call them anything. It got awkward sometimes, and I had to say, “Hey pal,” or “Listen bud” when I wanted to talk to one of them. Grant looked pretty nervous about something.

“What’s up?” I asked, getting out of my car.

“We have a demonstration at the Army Induction Center.”

“So?” I said, looking down the street at a group of about fifteen marchers picketing the building.

“A lot of draftees go in and out and there could be trouble. There’re some pretty militant-looking types in that picket line.”

“So what’re we gonna do?”

“I just called you because I need someone to stand by and keep them under surveillance. I’m going in to talk to the lieutenant about the advisability of calling a tactical alert. I’d like you to switch to frequency nine and keep me advised of any status change.”

“Look, pal, this ain’t no big thing. I mean, a tactical alert for fifteen ragtag flower sniffers?”

“You never know what it can turn into.”

“Okay,” and I sighed, even though I tried not to, “I’ll sit right here.”

“Might be a good idea to drive closer. Park across the street. Close enough to let them see you but far enough to keep them from trying to bait you.”

“Okay, pal,” I muttered, as Grant got in his car and sped toward the station to talk to Lieutenant Hilliard, who was a cool old head and wouldn’t get in a flap over fifteen peace marchers.

I pulled out in the traffic and a guy in a blue Chevy jumped on his brakes even though he was eighty feet back and going slow. People get black-and-white fever when they see a police car and they do idiotic things trying to be super careful. I’ve seen them concentrate so hard on one facet of safe driving, like giving an arm signal, that they bust right through a red light. That’s black-and-white fever for you.

The marchers across Broadway caught my eye when two of them, a guy and a girl, were waving for me to come over. They seemed to be just jiving around but I thought I better go over for several reasons. First of all, there might really be something wrong. Second, if I didn’t, it looked like hell for a big bad copper to be afraid to approach a group of demonstrators. And third, I had a theory that if enough force could be used fast enough in these confrontations there’d be no riot. I’d never seen real force used quick enough yet, and I thought, what the hell, now was my chance to test my theory since I was alone with no sergeants around.

These guys, at least a few of them, two black guys, and one white, bearded scuz in a dirty buckskin vest and yellow headband, looked radical enough to get violent with an overweight middle-aged cop like myself, but I firmly believed that if one of them made the mistake of putting his hands on me and I drove my stick three inches in his esophagus, the others would yell police brutality twice and slink away. Of course I wasn’t sure, and I noticed that the recent arrivals swelled their numbers to twenty-three. Only five of them were girls. That many people could stomp me to applesauce without a doubt, but I wasn’t really worried, mainly because even though they were fist shaking, most of them looked like middle-class white people just playing at revolution. If you have a few hungry-looking professionals like I figured the white guy in the headband to be, you could have trouble. Some of these could lend their guts to the others and set them off, but he was the only one I saw.

I drove around the block so I didn’t have to make an illegal U-turn in front of them, made my illegal U-turn on Olympic, came back and parked in front of the marchers, who ignored me and kept marching and chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go.” And “Fuck Uncle Sam, and Auntie Spiro,” and several other lewd remarks mostly directed at the President, the governor, and the mayor. A few years ago, if a guy yelled “fuck” in a public place in the presence of women or children, we’d have to drag his ass to jail.

“Hi, Officer, I love you,” said one little female peace marcher, a cute blonde about seventeen, wearing two inches of false eyelashes that looked upside-down, and ironed-out shoulder-length hair.

“Hi, honey, I love you too,” I smiled back, and leaned against the door of my car. I folded my arms and puffed a cigar until the two who had been waving at me decided to walk my way.

They were whispering now with another woman and finally the shorter girl, who was not exactly a girl, but a woman of about thirty-five, came right up. She was dressed like a teenager with a short yellow mini, violet panty hose, granny glasses, and white lipstick. Her legs were too damned fat and bumpy and she was wearing a theatrical smile with a cold arrogant look beneath it. Up close, she looked like one of the professionals and seemed to be a picket captain. Sometimes a woman, if she’s the real thing, can be the detonator much quicker than a man can. This one seemed like the real thing, and I looked her in the eye and smiled while she toyed with a heavy peace medal hanging around her neck. Her eyes said, “You’re just a fat harmless cop, not worth my talents, but so far you’re all we have here, and I don’t know if an old bastard like you is even intelligent enough to know when he’s being put down.”

That’s what I saw in her eyes, and her phony smile, but she said nothing for a few more minutes. Then a car from one of the network stations rolled up and two men got out with a camera and mike.

The interest of the marchers picked up now that they were soon to be on tape, and the chanting grew louder, the gestures more fierce, and the old teenybopper in the yellow dress finally said, “We called you over because you looked very forlorn. Where’re the riot troops, or are you all we get today?”

“If you get me, baby, you ain’t gonna want any more,” I smiled through a puff of cigar smoke, pinning her eyeballs, admiring the fact that she didn’t bat an eye even though I knew damn well she was expecting the businesslike professional clichés we’re trained to give in these situations. I’d bet she was even surprised to see me slouching against my car like this, showing such little respect for this menacing group.

“You’re not supposed to smoke in public, are you, Officer?” She smiled, a little less arrogant now. She didn’t know what the hell she had here, and was going to take her time about setting the bait.

“Maybe a real policeman ain’t supposed to, but this uniform’s just a shuck. I rented this ill-fitting clown suit to make an underground movie about this fat cop that steals apples and beats up flower children and old mini-skirted squatty-bodies with socks to match their varicose veins in front of the U.S. Army Induction Center.”

Then she lost her smile completely and stormed back to the guy in the headband who was also much older than he first appeared. They whispered and she looked at me as I puffed on the cigar and waved at some of the marchers who were putting me on, most of them just college-age kids having a good time. A couple of them sincerely seemed to like me even though they tossed a few insults to go along with the crowd.

Finally, the guy in the headband came my way shouting encouragement to the line of marchers who were going around and around in a long oval in front of the door, which was being guarded by two men in suits who were not policemen, but probably military personnel. The cameraman was shooting pictures now, and I hid my cigar and sucked in a few inches of gut when he photographed me. The babe in the yellow dress joined the group after passing out some Black Panther pins and she marched without once looking at me again.

“I hear you don’t make like the other cops we’ve run into in these demonstrations,” said the guy with the headband, suddenly standing in front of me and grinning. “The L.A.P.D. abandoning the oh so firm but courteous approach? Are you a new police riot technique? A caricature of a fat pig, a jolly jiveass old cop that we just can’t get mad at? Is that it? They figure we couldn’t use you for an Establishment symbol? Like you’re too fucking comical looking, is that it?”

“Believe it or not, Tonto,” I said, “I’m just the neighborhood cop. Not a secret weapon, nothing for lumpy legs to get tight-jawed about. I’m just your local policeman.”

He twitched a little bit when I mentioned the broad so I guessed she might be his old lady. I figured they probably taught sociology lA and lB in one of the local junior colleges.

“Are you the only swine they’re sending?” he asked, smiling not quite so much now which made me very happy. It’s hard even for professionals like him to stay with a smirk when he’s being rapped at where it hurts. He probably just loves everything about her, even the veiny old wheels. I decided, screw it, I was going to take the offensive with these assholes and see where it ended.

“Listen, Cochise,” I said, the cigar between my teeth, “I’m the only old pig you’re gonna see today. All the young piglets are staying in the pen. So why don’t you and old purple pins just take your Che handbooks and cut out. Let these kids have their march with no problems. And take those two dudes with the naturals along with you.” I pointed to the two black guys who were standing ten feet away watching us. “There ain’t gonna be any more cops here, and there ain’t gonna be any trouble.”

“You are a bit refreshing,” he said, trying to grin, but it was a crooked grin. “I was getting awfully sick of those unnatural pseudoprofessionals with their businesslike platitudes, pretending to look right through us when really they wanted to get us in the back room of some police station and beat our fucking heads in. I must say you’re refreshing. You’re truly a vicious fascist and don’t pretend to be anything else.”

Just then the mini-skirted broad walked up again. “Is he threatening you, John?” she said in a loud voice, looking over her shoulder, but the guys with the camera and mike were at the other end of the shouting line of marchers.

“Save it till they get to this end,” I said, as I now estimated her age to be closer to forty. She was a few years older than he was and the mod camouflage looked downright comical. “Want some bubble gum, little girl?” I said.

“Shut your filthy mouth,” he said, taking a step toward me. I was tight now, I wound myself up and was ready. “Stay frosty, Sitting Bull,” I smiled. “Here, have a cigar.” I offered one of my smokes, but he wheeled and walked away with old lumpy clicking along behind him.

The two black guys hadn’t moved. They too were professionals, I was positive now, but they were a different kind. If anything went down, I planned to attack those two right away. They were the ones to worry about. They both wore black plastic jackets and one wore a black cossack hat. He never took his eyes off me. He’d be the very first one I’d go after, I thought. I kept that flaky look, grinning and waving at any kid who gave me the peace sign, but I was getting less and less sure I could handle the situation. There were a couple other guys in the group that might get froggy if someone leaped, and I’ve seen what only two guys can do if they get you down and put the boots to you, let alone nine or ten.

I hated to admit it but I was beginning to wish Grant would show up with a squad of bluecoats. Still, it was a quiet demonstration, as quiet as these things go, and there was probably nothing to worry about, I thought.

The march continued as it had for a few more minutes, with the young ones yelling slogans, and then headband and mini-skirt came back with six or eight people in tow. These kids were definitely collegiate, wearing flares or bleach-streaked Levis. Some of the boys had muttonchops and moustaches, most had collar-length hair, and two of them were pretty, suntanned girls. They looked friendly enough and I gave them a nod of the head when they stopped in front of me.

One particularly scurvy-looking slimeball walked up, smiled real friendly, and whispered, “You’re a filthy, shit-eating pig.”

I smiled back and whispered, “Your mother eats bacon.”

“How can we start a riot with no riot squad,” another said.

“Careful, Scott, he’s not just a pig, he’s a wild boar, you dig?” said the mini-skirt who was standing behind the kids.

“Maybe you could use a little bore, sweetheart, maybe that’s your trouble,” I said, looking at the guy in the headband, and two of the kids chuckled.

“You seem to be the only Establishment representative we have at the moment, maybe you’d like to rap with us,” said Scott, a tall kid with a scrubbed-looking face and a mop of blond hair. He had a cute little baby hanging on his arm and she seemed amused.

“Sure, just fire away,” I said, still leaning back, acting relaxed as I puffed. I was actually beginning to want to rap with them. One time when I asked some young sergeant if I could take a shot at the “Policeman Bill” program and go talk to a class of high-school kids, he shined me on with a bunch of crap, and I realized then that they wanted these flat-stomached, clear-eyed, handsome young recruiting-poster cops for these jobs. I had my chance now and I liked the idea.

“What’s your first name, Officer Morgan?” asked Scott, looking at my nameplate, “and what do you think of street demonstrations?”

Scott was smiling and I could hardly hear him over the yelling as the ring of marchers moved twenty feet closer to us to block the entrance more effectively after the fat bitch in yellow directed them to do it. Several kids mugged at the cameraman and waved “V” signs at him and me. One asshole, older than the others, flipped me the bone and then scowled into the camera.

“That’s it, smile and say pig, you pukepot,” I mumbled, noticing the two black cossacks were at the other end of the line of marchers talking to purple legs. Then I turned to Scott. “To answer your question, my name’s Bumper Morgan and I don’t mind demonstrations except that they take us cops away from our beats, and believe me we can’t spare the time. Everybody loses when we’re not on patrol.”

“What do you patrol, the fucking barnyard?” said one little shitbird wearing shades and carrying a poster that showed a white army officer telephoning a black mother about her son being killed in Vietnam. She was shown in a corner of the poster and there was a big white cop clubbing her with an oversized baton.

“That poster doesn’t make sense,” I said. “It’s awful damn lame. You might as well label it, ‘Killed by the running dogs of imperialism!’ I could do a lot better than that.”

“Man, that’s exactly what I told him,” Scott laughed, and offered me a cigarette.

“No thanks,” I said, as he and his baby doll lit one. “Now that one’s sort of clever,” I said, pointing to a sign which said “Today’s pigs are tomorrow’s porkchops.”

None of the other kids had anything to say yet, except the shithead with the poster, who yelled, “Like, what’re we doing talking to this fucking fascist lackey?”

“Look,” I said, “I ain’t gonna lay down and play dead just because you can say ‘fuck’ pretty good. I mean nobody’s shocked by that cheap shit anymore, so why don’t we just talk quiet to each other. I wanna hear what you guys got to say.”

“Good idea,” said another kid, a black, with a wild natural, wire-rim glasses, and a tiger tooth necklace, who almost had to shout because of the noise. “Tell us why a man would want to be a cop. I mean really. I’m not putting you on, I want to know.”

He was woofing me, because he winked at the blond kid, but I thought I’d tell them what I liked about it. What the hell, I liked having all these kids crowded around listening to me. Somebody then moved the marchers’ line a little north again and I could almost talk in a normal voice.

“Well, I like to take lawbreakers off the street,” I began.

“Just a minute,” said the black kid, pushing his wire-rims up on his nose. “Please, Officer, no euphemisms. I’m from Watts.” Then he purposely lapsed into a Negro drawl and said, “I been knowin’ the PO-lice all mah life.” The others laughed and he continued in his own voice. “Talk like a real cop and tell us like it is, without any bullshit. You know, use that favorite expression of L.A.P.D.-‘asshole,’ I believe it is.” He smiled again after he said all this and so did I.

“What part of Watts you live in?” I asked.

“One-O-Three and Grape, baby,” he answered.

“Okay, I’ll talk plainer. I’m a cop because I love to throw assholes in jail, and if possible I like to send them to the joint.”

“That’s more like it,” said the black kid. “Now you’re lookin’ so good and soundin’ so fine.”

The others applauded and grinned at each other.

“Isn’t that kind of a depressing line of work?” asked Scott. “I mean, don’t you like to do something for someone once in a while instead of to them?”

“I figure I do something for someone every time I make a good bust. I mean, you figure every real asshole you catch in a dead bang burglary or robbery’s tore off probably a hundred people or so before you bring him down. I figure each time I make a pinch I save a hundred more, maybe even some lives. And I’ll tell you, most victims are people who can’t afford to be victims. People who can afford it have protection and insurance and aren’t so vulnerable to all these scummy hemorrhoids. Know what I mean?”

Scott’s little girlfriend was busting to throw in her two cents, but three guys popped off at once, and finally Scott’s voice drowned out the others. “I’m a law student,” he said, “and I intend to be your adversary someday in a courtroom. Tell me, do you really get satisfaction when you send a man away for ten years?”

“Listen, Scott,” I said, “in the first place even Eichmann would stand a fifty-fifty chance of not doing ten years nowadays. You got to be a boss crook to pull that kind of time. In fact, you got to work at it to even get to state prison. Man, some of the cats I put away, I wouldn’t give them ten years, I’d give them a goddamned lobotomy if I could.”

I dropped my cigar because these kids had me charged up now. I figured they were starting to respect me a little and I even tried for a minute to hold in my gut but that was uncomfortable, and I gave it up.

“I saw a big article in some magazine a few years ago honoring these cops,” I continued. “‘These are not pigs’ the article said, and it showed one cop who’d delivered some babies, and one cop who’d rescued some people in a flood, and one cop who was a goddamn boy scout troop leader or something like that. You know, I delivered two babies myself. But we ain’t being paid to be midwives or lifeguards or social workers. They got other people to do those jobs. Let’s see somebody honor some copper because the guy made thirty good felony pinches a month for ten years and sent a couple hundred guys to San Quentin. Nobody ever gives an award to him. Even his sergeant ain’t gonna appreciate that, but he’ll get on his ass for not writing a traffic ticket every day because the goddamn city needs the revenue and there’s no room in prisons anyway.”

I should’ve been noticing things at about this time. I should’ve noticed that the guy in the headband and his old lady were staying away from me and so were the two black guys in the plastic jackets. In fact, all the ones I spotted were staying at the other end of the line of marchers who were quieting down and starting to get tired. I should’ve noticed that the boy, Scott, the other blond kid, and the tall black kid, were closer to me than the others, and so was the cute little twist hanging on Scott’s arm and carrying a huge heavy-looking buckskin handbag.

I noticed nothing, because for one of the few times in my life I wasn’t being a cop. I was a big, funny-looking, blue-suited donkey and I thought I was home-run king belting them out over the fences. The reason was that I was somewhere I’d never been in my life. I was on a soapbox. Not a stage but a soapbox. A stage I could’ve handled. I can put on the act people want and expect, and I can still keep my eyes open and not get carried away with it, but this goddamned soapbox was something else. I was making speeches, one after another, about things that meant something to me, and all I could see was the loving gaze of my audience, and the sound of my own voice drowned out all the things that I should’ve been hearing and seeing.

“Maybe police departments should only recruit college graduates,” Scott shrugged, coming a step closer.

“Yeah, they want us to solve crimes by these ‘scientific methods,’ whatever that means. And what do us cops do? We kiss ass and nod our heads and take federal funds to build computers and send cops to college and it all boils down to a cop with sharp eyes and an ability to talk to people who’ll get the goddamn job done.”

“Don’t you think that in the age that’s coming, policemen will be obsolete?” Scott’s little girlfriend asked the question and she looked so wide-eyed I had to smile.

“I’m afraid not, honey,” I said. “As long as there’s people, there’s gonna be lots of bad ones and greedy ones and weak ones.”

“How can you feel that way about people and still care at all about helping them as you say you do when you arrest somebody?” she asked, shaking her head. She smiled sadly, like she felt sorry for me.

“Hell, baby, they ain’t much but they’re all we got. It’s the only game in town!” I figured that was obvious to anybody and I started to wonder if they weren’t still a little young. “By the way, are most of you social science and English majors?”

“Why do you say that?” asked the black kid, who was built like a ballplayer.

“The surveys say you are. I’m just asking. Just curious.”

“I’m an engineering major,” said the blond kid, who was now behind Scott, and then for the first time I was aware how close in on me these certain few were. I was becoming aware how polite they’d been to me. They were all activists and college people and no doubt had statistics and slogans and arguments to throw at me, yet I had it all my way. They just stood there nodding, smiling once in a while, and let me shoot my face off. I knew that something wasn’t logical or right, but I was still intrigued with the sound of my own voice and so the fat blue maharishi said, “Anything else about police work you’d like to talk about?”

“Were you at Century City?” asked the little blonde.

“Yeah, I was there, and it wasn’t anything like you read in the underground newspapers or on those edited TV tapes.”

“It wasn’t? I was there,” said Scott.

“Well, I’m not gonna deny some people got hurt,” I said, looking from one face to another for hostility. “There was the President of the United States to protect and there were thousands of war protestors out there and I guarantee you that was no bullshit about them having sharpened sticks and bags of shit and broken bottles and big rocks. I bet I could kill a guy with a rock.”

“You didn’t see any needless brutality?”

“What the hell’s brutality?” I said. “Most of those blue-coats out there are just lads your age. When someone spits in his face, all the goddamn discipline in the world ain’t gonna stop him or any normal kid from getting that other cat’s teeth prints on his baton. There’s times when you just gotta play a little catch-up. You know what five thousand screaming people look like? Sure, we got some stick time in. Some scumbags, all they respect is force. You just gotta kick ass and collect names. Anybody with any balls woulda whaled on some of those pricks out there.” Then I remembered the girl. “Sorry for the four-letter word, miss,” I said as a reflex action.

“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.

“Come by the apartment at eleven,” she said. “I’ll make sure I’m home by then.”

“That’s pretty early to leave your friends.”

“You don’t think I’d sit around drinking with a bunch of educators when I could be learning at home with Officer Morgan, do you?”

“You mean I can teach a teacher?”

“You’re one of the tops in your field.”

“You have a class tomorrow morning,” I reminded her.

“Be there at eleven.”

“A lot of these teachers and students that don’t have an early class tomorrow are gonna want to jive and woof a lot later than that. I think you ought to stay with them tonight, Cassie. They’d expect you to. You can’t disappoint the people on your beat.”

“Well, all right,” she sighed, “But I won’t even see you tomorrow night because I’ll be dining with those two trustees. They want to give me one final look, and casually listen to my French to make sure I’m not going to corrupt the already corrupted debs at their institution. I suppose I can’t run off and leave them either.”

“It won’t be long till I have you all to myself. Then I’ll listen to your French and let you corrupt the hell out of me, okay?”

“Did you tell them you’re retiring yet?” She asked the question easily, but looked me straight in the eye, waiting, and I got nervous.

“I’ve told Cruz,” I said, “and I got a surprise for you.”

“What?”

“I’ve decided that Friday’s gonna be my last day. I’ll start my vacation Saturday and finish my time while I’m on vacation. I’ll be going with you.”

Cassie didn’t yell or jump up or look excited or anything, like I thought she would. She just went limp like her muscles relaxed suddenly, and she slipped off the desk and sat down on my lap where there isn’t any too much room, and with her arms doubled around the top of my neck she started kissing me on the face and mouth and I saw her eyes were wet and soft like her lips, and next thing I know, I heard a lot of giggling. Eight or ten kids were standing in the hall watching us through the open door, but Cassie didn’t seem to hear, or didn’t care. I did though because I was sitting there in my bluesuit, being loved up and getting turned on in public.

“Cassie,” I gasped, nodding toward the door, and she got up, and calmly shut the door on the kids like she was ready to start again.

I stood and picked up my hat from the floor. “Cassie, this is a school. I’m in uniform.”

Cassie started laughing very hard and had to sit down in the chair I’d been in, leaning back, and holding her hands over her face as she laughed. I thought how sexy even her throat was, the throat usually being the first thing to show its age, but Cassie’s was sleek.

“I wasn’t going to rape you,” she said at last, still chuckling between breaths.

“Well, it’s just that you teachers are so permissive these days, I thought you might try to do me on the desk like you said.”

“Oh, Bumper,” she said finally, holding her arms out, and I came over and leaned down and she kissed me eight or ten warm times all over my face.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel now that you’re really going to do it,” she said. “When you said you actually are finishing up this Friday, and that you told Cruz Segovia, I just went to pieces. That was relief and joy you saw on my face when I closed the door, Bumper, not passion. Well, maybe a little of it was.”

“We’ve been planning all along, Cassie, you act like it was really a shock to you.”

“I’ve had nightmares about it. I’ve had fantasies awake and asleep of how after I’d gone, and got our apartment in San Francisco, you’d phone me one bitter night and tell me you weren’t coming, that you just could never leave your beat.”

“Cassie!”

“I haven’t told you this before, Bumper, but it’s been gnawing at me. Now that you’ve told Cruz, and it’s only two more days, I know it’s coming true.”

“I’m not married to my goddamn job, Cassie,” I said, thinking how little you know about a woman, even one as close as Cassie. “You should’ve seen what happened to me today. I was flimflammed by a soft-nutted little kid. He made a complete ass out of me. He made me look like a square.”

Cassie looked interested and amused, the way she always does when I tell her about my job.

“What happened?” she asked, as I pulled out my last cigar and fired it up so I could keep calm when the humiliation swept over me.

“A demonstration at the Army Induction Center. A kid, a punk-ass kid, conned me and I started blabbing off about the job. Rapping real honest with him I was, and I find out later he’s a professional revolutionary, probably a Red or something, and oh, I thought I was so goddamn hip to it. I been living too much on my beat, Cassie. Too much being the Man, I guess. Believing I could outsmart any bastard that skated by. Thinking the only ones I never could really get to were the organized ones, like the bookmakers and the big dope dealers. But sometimes I could do things that even hurt them. Now there’s new ones that’ve come along. And they have organization. And I was like a baby, they handled me so easy.”

“What the hell did you do, Bumper?”

“Talked. I talked to them straight about things. About thumping assholes that needed thumping. That kind of thing. I made speeches.”

“Know what?” she said, putting her long-fingered hand on my knee. “Whatever happened out there, whatever you said, I’ll bet wouldn’t do you or the Department a damn bit of harm.”

“Oh yeah, Cassie? You should’ve heard me talking about when the President was here and how we busted up the riot by busting up a skull or three. I was marvelous.”

“Do you know a gentle way to break up riots?”

“No, but we’re supposed to be professional enough not to talk to civilians the way we talk in police locker rooms.”

“I’ll take Officer Morgan over one of those terribly wholesome, terribly tiresome TV cops, and I don’t think there’s a gentle way to break up riots, so I think you should stop worrying about the whole thing. Just think, pretty soon you won’t have any of these problems. You’ll have a real position, an important one, and people working under you.”

“I got to admit, it gets me pretty excited to think about it. I bet I can come up with ways to improve plant security that those guys never dreamed of.”

“Of course you can.”

“No matter what I do, you pump me up,” I smiled. “That’s why I wanted you for my girl in spite of all your shortcomings.”

“Well, you’re my Blue Knight. Do you know you’re a knight? You joust and live off the land.”

“Yeah, I guess you might say I live off my beat, all right. ’Course I don’t do much jousting.”

“Just rousting?”

“Yeah, I’ve rousted a couple thousand slimeballs in my time.”

“So you’re my Blue Knight.”

“Wait a minute, kid,” I said. “You’re only getting a former knight if you get me.”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?”

“It’s okay to shuck about me being some kind of hero or something, but when I retire I’m just a has-been.”

“Bumper,” she said, and laughed a little, and kissed my hand like Glenda did. That was the second woman to kiss my hand today, I thought. “I’m not dazzled by authority symbols. It’s really you that keeps me kissing your hands.” She did it again and I’ve always thought that having a woman kiss your hands is just almost more than a man can take. “You’re going to an important job. You’ll be an executive. You have an awful lot to offer, especially to me. In fact, you have so much maybe I should share it.”

“I can only handle one woman at a time, baby.”

“Remember Nancy Vogler, from the English department?”

“Yeah, you want to share me with her?”

“Silly,” she laughed. “Nancy and her husband were married twelve years and they didn’t have any children. A couple of years ago they decided to take a boy into their home. He’s eleven now.”

“They adopted him?”

“No, not exactly. They’re foster parents.” Cassie’s voice became serious. “She said being a foster parent is the most rewarding thing they’ve ever done. Nancy said they’d almost missed out on knowing what living is and didn’t realize it until they got the boy.”

Cassie seemed to be searching my face just then. Was she thinking about my boy? I’d only mentioned him once to her. Was there something she wanted to know?

“Bumper, after we get married and settled in our home, what would you say to us becoming foster parents? Not really adopting a child if you didn’t want to, but being foster parents, sharing. You’d be someone for a boy to look up to and learn from.”

“A kid! But I never thought about a family!”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and after seeing Nancy and hearing about their life, I think about how wonderful it would be for us. We’re not old yet, but in ten or fifteen more years when we are getting old, there’d be someone else for both of us.” She looked in my eyes and then down. “You may think I’m crazy, and I probably am, but I’d like you to give it some thought.”

That hit me so hard I didn’t know what to say, so I grinned a silly grin, kissed her on the cheek, said, “I’m end of watch in fifteen minutes. Bye, old shoe,” and left.

She looked somehow younger and a little sad as she smiled and waved at me when I’d reached the stairway. When I got in my black-and-white I felt awful. I dropped two pills and headed east on Temple and cursed under my breath at every asshole that got in my way in this rush-hour traffic. I couldn’t believe it. Leaving the Department after all these years and getting married was change enough, but a kid! Cassie had asked me about my ex-wife one time, just once, right after we started going together. I told her I was divorced and my son was dead and I didn’t go into it any further. She never mentioned it again, never talked about kids in that way.

Damn, I thought, I guess every broad in the world should drop a foal at least once in her life or she’ll never be happy. I pushed Cassie’s idea out of my mind when I drove into the police building parking lot, down to the lower level where it was dark and fairly cool despite the early spring heat wave. I finished my log, gathered up my ticket books, and headed for the office to leave the log before I took off the uniform. I never wrote traffic tickets but they always issued me the ticket books. Since I made so many good felony pinches they pretty well kept their mouths shut about me not writing tickets, still, they always issued me the books and I always turned them back in just as full. That’s the trouble with conformists, they’d never stop giving me those ticket books.

After putting the log in the daywatch basket I jived around with several of the young nightwatch coppers who wanted to know when I was changing to nights for the summer. They knew my M.O. too. Everybody knew it. I hated anyone getting my M.O. down too good like that. The most successful robbers and burglars are the ones who change their M.O’s. They don’t give you a chance to start sticking little colored pins in a map to plot their movements. That reminded me of a salty old cop named Nails Grogan who used to walk Hill Street.

About fifteen years ago, just for the hell of it, he started his own crime wave. He was teed off at some chickenshit lieutenant we had then, named Wall, who used to jump on our meat every night at rollcall because we weren’t catching enough burglars. The way Wall figured this was that there were always so many little red pins on the pin maps for nighttime business burglaries, especially around Grogan’s beat. Grogan always told me he didn’t think Wall ever really read a burglary report and didn’t know shit from gravy about what was going on. So a little at a time Nails started changing the pins every night before rollcall, taking the pins out of the area around his beat and sticking them in the east side. After a couple weeks of this, Wall told the rollcall what a hell of a job Grogan was doing with the burglary problem in his area, and restricted the ass chewing to guys that worked the eastside cars. I was the only one that knew what Grogan did and we got a big laugh out of it until Grogan went too far and pinned a full-blown crime wave on the east side, and Lieutenant Wall had the captain call out the Metro teams to catch the burglars. Finally the whole hoax was exposed when no one could find crime reports to go with all the little pins.

Wall was transferred to the morning watch, which is our graveyard shift, at the old Lincoln Heights jail. He retired from there a few years later. Nails Grogan never got made on that job, but Wall knew who screwed him, I’m sure. Nails was another guy that only lived a few years after he retired. He shot himself. I got a chill thinking about that, shook it off, and headed for the locker room where I took off the bluesuit and changed into my herringbone sport coat, gray slacks, and lemon yellow shirt, no tie. In this town you can usually get by without a tie anywhere you go.

Before I left, I plugged in my shaver and smoothed up a little bit. A couple of the guys were still in the locker room. One of them was an ambitious young bookworm named Wilson, who as usual was reading while sitting on the bench and slipping into his civvies. He was going to college three or four nights a week and always had a textbook tucked away in his police notebook. You’d see him in the coffee room or upstairs in the cafeteria going through it all the time. I’m something of a reader myself but I could never stand the thought of doing it because you had to.

“What’re you reading?” I asked Wilson.

“Oh, just some criminal law,” said Wilson, a thin youngster with a wide forehead and large blue eyes. He was a probationary policeman, less than a year on the job.

“Studying for sergeant already?” said Hawk, a cocky, square-shouldered kid about Wilson’s age, who had two years on, and was going through his badge-heavy period.

“Just taking a few classes.”

“You majoring in police science?” I asked.

“No, I’m majoring in government right now. I’m thinking about trying for law school.” He didn’t look right at me and I didn’t think he would. This is something I’ve gotten used to from the younger cops, especially ones with some education, like Wilson. They don’t know how to act when they’re with old-timers like me. Some act salty like Hawk, trying to strut with an old beat cop, and it just looks silly. Others act more humble than they usually would, thinking an old lion like me would claw their ass for making an honest mistake out of greenness. Still others, like Wilson, pretty much act like themselves, but like most young people, they think an old fart that’s never even made sergeant in twenty years must be nearly illiterate, so they generally restrict all conversation to the basics of police work to spare you, and they generally look embarrassed like Wilson did now, to admit to you that they read books. The generation gap is as bad in this job as it is in any other except for one thing: the hazards of the job shrink it pretty fast. After a few brushes with danger, a kid pretty much loses his innocence, which is what the generation gap is really all about-innocence.

“Answer me a law question,” said Hawk, putting on some flared pants. We’re too GI to permit muttonchops or big moustaches or he’d surely have them. “If you commit suicide can you be prosecuted for murder?”

“Nobody ever has,” Wilson smiled, as Hawk giggled and slipped on a watermelon-colored velvet shirt.

“That’s only because of our permissive society,” I said, and Wilson glanced at me and grinned.

“What’s that book in your locker, Wilson?” I asked, nodding toward a big paperback on the top shelf.

“Guns of August.”

“Oh yeah, I read that,” I said. “I’ve read a hundred books about the First World War. Do you like it?”

“I do,” he said, looking at me like he discovered the missing link. “I’m reading it for a history course.”

“I read T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom when I was on my First World War kick. Every goddamn word. I had maps and books spread all over my pad. That little runt only weighed in at about a hundred thirty, but thirty pounds of that was brains and forty was balls. He was a boss warrior.”

“A loner,” Wilson nodded, really looking at me now.

“Right. That’s what I dig about him. I would’ve liked him even better if he hadn’t written it all so intimate for everyone to read. But then if he hadn’t done that, I’d never have appreciated him. Maybe a guy like that finally gets tired of just enjoying it and has to tell it all to figure it all out and see if it means anything in the end.”

“Maybe you should write your memoirs when you’re through, Bumper,” Wilson smiled. “You’re as well known around here as Lawrence ever was in Arabia.”

“Why don’t you major in history?” I said. “If I went to college that’d be my meat. I think after a few courses in criminal law the rest of law school’d be a real drag, torts and contracts and all that bullshit. I could never plow through the dust and cobwebs.”

“It’s exciting if you like it,” said Wilson, and Hawk looked a little ruffled that he was cut out of the conversation so he split.

“Maybe so,” I said. “You must’ve had a few years of college when you came on the Department.”

“Two years,” Wilson nodded. “Now I’m halfway through my junior year. It takes forever when you’re a full-time cop and a part-time student.”

“You can tough it out,” I said, lighting a cigar and sitting down on the bench, while part of my brain listened to the youngster and the other part was worrying about something else. I had the annoying feeling you get, that can sometimes be scary, that I’d been here with him before and we talked like this, or maybe it was somebody else, and then I thought, yes, that was it, maybe the cowlick in his hair reminded me of Billy, and I got an empty tremor in my stomach.

“How old’re you, Wilson?”

“Twenty-six,” he said, and a pain stabbed me and made me curse and rub my pot. Billy would’ve been twenty-six too!

“Hope your stomach holds out when you get my age. Were you in the service?”

“Army,” he nodded.

“Vietnam?”

“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 giggled 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.”

Harry came back before I could get away from the bar. “Know who that was, Bumper?” he said, his eyes glassy and his cheeks pale. He had acne as a young man and now his putty-colored cheeks looked corroded.

“Who was it,” I sighed, “Irma?”

“No, that was the hospital. I spent every cent I had, even with the hospital benefits, and now she’s been put in a big ward with a million other old, dying people. And still I got to pay money for one thing or another. You know, when Flossie finally dies there ain’t going to be nothing left to bury her. I had to cash in the insurance. How’ll I bury old Flossie, Bumper?”

I started to say something to soothe Harry, but I heard sobbing and realized Freddie had started blubbering. Then in a second or two Harry started, so I threw five bucks on the bar for Freddie and Harry to get bombed on, and I got the hell away from those two without even saying good-bye. I’ve never understood how people can work in mental hospitals and old people’s homes and places like that without going nuts. I felt about ready for the squirrel tank right now just being around those two guys for an hour.

EIGHT

TEN MINUTES LATER I was driving my Ford north on the Golden State Freeway and I started getting hungry for Socorro’s enchiladas. I got to Eagle Rock at dusk and parked in front of the big old two-story house with the neat lawn and flower gardens on the sides. I was wondering if Socorro planted vegetables in the back this year, when I saw Cruz in the living room standing by the front window. He opened the door and stepped out on the porch, wearing a brown sport shirt and old brown slacks and his house slippers. Cruz didn’t have to dress up for me, and I was glad to come here and see everyone comfortable, as though I belonged here, and in a way I did. Most bachelor cops have someplace like Cruz’s house to go to once in a while. Naturally, you can get a little ding-a-ling if you live on the beat and don’t ever spend some time with decent people. So you find a friend or a relative with a family and go there to get your supply of faith replenished,

I called Cruz my old roomie because when we first got out of the police academy twenty years ago, I moved into this big house with him and Socorro. Dolores was a baby, and Esteban a toddler. I took a room upstairs for over a year and helped them with their house payments until we were through paying for our uniforms and guns, and were both financially on our feet. That hadn’t been a bad year and I’d never forget Socorro’s cooking. She always said she’d rather cook for a man like me who appreciated her talent than a thin little guy like Cruz who never ate much and didn’t really appreciate good food. Socorro was a slender girl then, twelve years younger than Cruz, nineteen years old, with two kids already, and the heavy Spanish accent of El Paso which is like that of Mexico itself. They’d had a pretty good life I guess, until Esteban insisted on joining the army and was killed two years ago. They weren’t the same after that. They’d never be the same after that.

“How do you feel, oso?” said Cruz, as I climbed the concrete stairs to his porch. I grinned because Socorro had first started calling me “oso” way back in those days, and even now some of the policemen call me “bear” from Socorro’s nickname.

“You hurting, Bumper?” Cruz asked. “I heard those kids gave you some trouble at the demonstration today.”

“I’m okay,” I answered. “What’d you hear?”

“Just that they pushed you around a little bit. Hijo la-. Why does a man your age get involved in that kind of stuff? Why don’t you listen to me and just handle your radio calls and let those young coppers handle the militants and do the hotdog police work?”

“I answered a radio call. That’s how it started. That’s what I get for having that goddamn radio turned on.”

“Come on in, you stubborn old bastard,” Cruz grinned, holding the wood frame screen door open for me. Where could you see a wood frame screen door these days? It was an old house, but preserved. I loved it here. Cruz and I once sanded down all the woodwork in the living room, even the hardwood floor, and refinished it just as it had been when it was new.

“What’re we having?” Cruz asked, brushing back his thick gray-black hair and nodding toward the kitchen.

“Well, let’s see,” I sniffed. I sniffed again a few times, and then took a great huge whiff. Actually I couldn’t tell, because the chile and onion made it hard to differentiate, but I took a guess and pretended I knew.

“Chile relleno, carnitas and cilantro and onion. And… let’s see… some enchiladas, some guacamole.”

“I give up,” Cruz shook his head. “The only thing you left out was rice and beans.”

“Well hell, Cruz, arroz y frijoles, that goes without saying.”

“An animal’s nose.”

“Sukie in the kitchen?”

“Yeah, the kids’re in the backyard, some of them.”

I went through the big formal dining room to the kitchen and saw Socorro, her back to me, ladling out a huge wooden spoonful of rice into two of the bowls that sat on the drainboard. She was naturally a little the worse for wear after twenty years and nine kids, but her hair was as long and black and shiny rich as ever, and though she was twenty pounds heavier, she still was a strong, lively-looking girl with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. I snuck up behind her and tickled her ribs.

“Ay!” she said, dropping the spoon. “Bumper!”

I gave her a hug from the back while Cruz chuckled and said, “You didn’t surprise him, he smelled from the door and knew just what you fixed for him.”

“He’s not a man, this one,” she smiled, “no man ever had a nose like that.”

“Just what I told him,” said Cruz.

“Sit down, Bumper,” said Socorro, waving to the kitchen table, which, big and old as it was, looked lost in the huge kitchen. I’d seen this kitchen when there wasn’t a pathway to walk through, the day after Christmas when all the kids were young and I’d brought them toys. Kids and toys literally covered every foot of linoleum and you couldn’t even see the floor then.

“Beer, Bumper?” asked Cruz, and opened two cold ones without me answering. We still liked drinking them out of the bottle, both of us, and I almost finished mine without taking it away from my mouth. And Cruz, knowing my M.O. so well, uncapped another one.

“Cruz told me the news, Bumper. I was thrilled to hear it,” said Socorro, slicing an onion, her eyes glistening from the fumes.

“About you retiring right away and going with Cassie when she leaves,” said Cruz.

“That’s good, Bumper,” said Socorro. “There’s no sense hanging around after Cassie leaves. I was worried about that.”

“Sukie was afraid your puta would seduce you away from Cassie if she was up in San Francisco and you were down here.”

“Puta?”

“The beat,” said Cruz taking a gulp of the beer. “Socorro always calls it Bumper’s puta.”

“Cuidao!” said Socorro to Cruz. “The children are right outside the window.” I could hear them laughing, and Nacho yelled something then, and the girls squealed.

“Since you’re leaving, we can talk about her can’t we, Bumper?” Cruz laughed. “That beat is a puta who seduced you all these years.”

Then for the first time I noticed from his grin and his voice that Cruz had had a few before I got there. I looked at Socorro who nodded and said, “Yes, the old borracho’s been drinking since he got home from work. Wants to celebrate Bumper’s last dinner as a bachelor, he says.”

“Don’t be too rough on him,” I grinned. “He doesn’t get drunk very often.”

“Who’s drunk?” said Cruz, indignantly.

“You’re on your way, pendejo,” said Socorro, and Cruz mumbled in Spanish, and I laughed and finished my beer.

“If it hadn’t been for that puta, Bumper would’ve been a captain by now.”

“Oh sure,” I said, going to the refrigerator and drawing two more beers for Cruz and me. “Want one, Sukie?”

“No thanks,” said Socorro, and Cruz burped a couple times.

“Think I’ll go outside and see the kids,” I said, and then I remembered the presents in the trunk of my car that I bought Monday after Cruz invited me to dinner.

“Hey, you roughnecks,” I said when I stepped out, and Nacho yelled, “Buuuum-per,” and swung toward me from a rope looped over the limb of a big oak that covered most of the yard.

“You’re getting about big enough to eat hay and pull a wagon, Nacho,” I said. Then four of them ran toward me chattering about something, their eyes all sparkling because they knew damn well I’d never come for dinner without bringing them something.

“Where’s Dolores?” I asked. She was my favorite now, the oldest after Esteban, and was a picture of what her mother had been. She was a college junior majoring in physics and engaged to a classmate of hers.

“Dolores is out with Gordon, where else?” said Ralph, a chubby ten-year-old, the baby of the family who was a terror, always raising some kind of hell and keeping everyone in an uproar.

“Where’s Alice?”

“Over next door playing,” said Ralph again, and the four of them, Nacho, Ralph, María, and Marta were all about to bust, and I was enjoying it even though it was a shame to make them go through this.

“Nacho,” I said nonchalantly, “would you please take my car keys and get some things out of the trunk?”

“I’ll help,” shrieked Marta.

“I will,” said María, jumping up and down, a little eleven-year-old dream in a pink dress and pink socks and black patent leather shoes. She was the prettiest and would be heartbreakingly beautiful someday.

“I’ll go alone,” said Nacho. “I don’t need no help.”

“The hell you will,” said Ralph.

“You watch your language, Rafael,” said María, and I had to turn around to keep from busting up at the way Ralph stuck his chubby little fanny out at her.

“Mama,” said María. “Ralph did something dirty!”

“Snitch,” said Ralph, running to the car with Nacho.

I strolled back into the kitchen still laughing, and Cruz and Socorro both were smiling at me because they knew how much I got a bang out of their kids.

“Take Bumper in the living room, Cruz,” said Socorro. “Dinner won’t be ready for twenty minutes.”

“Come on, Bumper,” said Cruz, taking four cold ones out of the refrigerator, and a beer opener. “I don’t know why Mexican women get to be tyrants in their old age. They’re so nice and obedient when they’re young.”

“Old age. Huh! Listen to the viejo, Bumper,” she said, waving a wooden spoon in his direction, as we went in the living room and I flopped in Cruz’s favorite chair because he insisted. He pushed the ottoman over and made me put my feet up.

“Damn, Cruz.”

“Got to give you extra special treatment tonight, Bumper,” he said, opening another beer for me. “You look dog tired, and this may be the last we have you for a long time.”

“I’ll only be living one hour away by air. You think Cassie and me aren’t gonna come to L.A. once in a while? And you think you and Socorro and the kids aren’t gonna come see us up there?”

“The whole platoon of us?” he laughed.

“We’re gonna see each other plenty, that’s for sure,” I said, and fought against the down feeling that I was getting because I realized we probably would not be seeing each other very often at all.

“Yeah, Bumper,” said Cruz, sitting across from me in the other old chair, almost as worn and comfortable as this one. “I was afraid that jealous bitch would never let you go.”

“You mean my beat?”

“Right.” He took several big gulps on the beer and I thought about how I was going to miss him.

“How come all the philosophizing tonight? Calling my beat a whore and all that?”

“I’m waxing poetic tonight.”

“You also been tipping more than a little cerveza.”

Cruz winked and peeked toward the kitchen where we could hear Socorro banging around. He went to an old mahogany hutch that was just inside the dining room and took a half-empty bottle of mescal out of the bottom cabinet.

“That one have a worm in it?”

“If it did I drank it,” he whispered. “Don’t want Sukie to see me drinking it. I still have a little trouble with my liver and I’m not supposed to.”

“Is that the stuff you bought in San Luis? That time on your vacation?”

“That’s it, the end of it.”

“You won’t need any liver you drink that stuff.”

“It’s good, Bumper. Here, try a throatful or two.”

“Better with salt and lemon.”

“Pour it down. You’re the big macho, damn it. Drink like one.”

I took three fiery gulps and a few seconds after they hit bottom I regretted it, and had to drain my bottle of beer while Cruz chuckled and sipped slowly for his turn.

“Damn,” I wheezed and then the fire fanned out and my guts uncoiled and I felt good. Then in a few minutes I felt better. That was the medicine my body needed.

“They don’t always have salt and lemon lying around down in Mexico,” said Cruz handing me back the mescal. “Real Mexicans just mix it with saliva.”

“No wonder they’re such tough little bastards,” I wheezed, taking another gulp, but only one this time, and handing it back.

“How do you feel now, ’mano?” Cruz giggled, and it made me start laughing, his silly little giggle that always started when he was half swacked.

“I feel about half as good as you,” I said, and splashed some more beer into the burning pit that was my stomach. But it was a different fire entirely than the one made by the stomach acid, this was a friendly fire, and after it smoldered it felt great.

“Are you hungry?” asked Cruz.

“Ain’t I always?”

“You are,” he said, “you’re hungry for almost everything. Always. I’ve often wished I was more like you.”

“Like me?”

“Always feasting, on everything. Too bad it can’t go on forever. But it can’t. I’m damn glad you’re getting out now.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am. But I know what I’m talking about, ’mano. Cassie was sent to you. I prayed for that.” Then Cruz reached in his pocket for the little leather pouch. In it was the string of black carved wooden beads he carried for luck. He squeezed the soft leather and put it away.

“Did those beads really come from Jerusalem?”

“They did, that’s no baloney. I got them from a missionary priest for placing first in my school in El Paso. ‘First prize in spelling to Cruz Guadalupe Segovia,’ the priest said, as he stood in front of the whole school, and I died of happiness that day. I was thirteen, just barely. He got the beads in the Holy Land and they were blessed by Pius XI.”

“How many kids did you beat out for the prize?”

“About six entered the contest. There were only seventy-five in the school altogether. I don’t think the other five contestants spoke any English. They thought the contest would be in Spanish but it wasn’t, so I won.”

We both laughed at that. “I never won a thing, Cruz. You’re way ahead of me.” It was amazing to think of a real man like Cruz carrying those wooden beads. In this day and age!

Then the front door banged open and the living room was filled with seven yelling kids, only Dolores being absent that night, and Cruz shook his head and sat back quietly drinking his beer and Socorro came into the living room and tried to give me hell for buying all the presents, but you couldn’t hear yourself over the noisy kids.

“Are these real big-league cleats?” asked Nacho as I adjusted the batting helmet for him and fixed the chin strap which I knew he’d throw away as soon as the other kids told him big leaguers don’t wear chin straps.

“Look! Hot pants!” María squealed, holding them up against her adolescent body. They were sporty, blue denim with a bib, and patch pockets.

“Hot pants?” Cruz said. “Oh, no!”

“They even wear them to school, Papa. They do. Ask Bumper!”

“Ask Bumper,” Cruz grumbled and drank some more beer.

The big kids were there then too, Linda, George, and Alice, all high school teenagers, and naturally I bought clothes for them. I got George a box of mod-colored long-sleeved shirts and from the look in his eyes I guess I couldn’t have picked anything better.

After all the kids thanked me a dozen times, Socorro ordered them to put everything away and called us to dinner. We sat close together on different kinds of chairs at the huge rectangular oak table that weighed a ton. I know because I helped Cruz carry it in here twelve years ago when there was no telling how many kids were going to be sitting around it.

The youngest always said the prayers aloud. They crossed themselves and Ralph said grace, and they crossed themselves again and I was drooling because the chiles rellenos were on a huge platter right in front of me. The big chiles were stuffed with cheese and fried in a light fluffy batter, and before I could help myself, Alice was serving me and my plate was filled before any one of those kids took a thing for themselves. Their mother and father never said anything to them, they just did things like that.

“You do have cilantro,” I said, salivating with a vengeance now. I knew I smelled that wonderful spice.

Marta, using her fingers, sprinkled a little extra cilantro over my carnitas when I said that, and I bit into a soft, handmade, flour tortilla crammed with carnitas and Socorro’s own chile sauce.

“Well, Bumper?” said Cruz after I’d finished half a plateful which took about thirty-five seconds.

I moaned and rolled my eyeballs and everybody laughed because they knew that look so well.

“You see, Marta,” said Socorro. “You wouldn’t hate to cook so much if you could cook for somebody like Bumper who appreciates your work.”

I grinned with a hog happy look, washing down some chile relleno and enchilada with three big swigs of cold beer. “Your mother is an artist!”

I finished three helpings of carnitas, the tender little chunks of pork which I covered with Socorro’s chile and cilantro and onion. Then, after everyone was finished and there were nine pairs of brown eyes looking at me in wonder, I heaped the last three chiles rellenos on my plate and rolled one up with the last flour tortilla and the last few bites of carnitas left in the bowl, and nine pairs of brown eyes got wider and rounder.

“Por Dios, I thought I made enough for twenty,” said Socorro.

“You did, you did, Sukie,” I said, enjoying being the whole show now, and finishing it in three big bites. “I’m just extra hungry tonight, and you made it extra good, and there’s no sense leaving leftovers around to spoil.” With that I ate half a chile relleno and swallowed some beer and looked around at all the eyes, and Nacho burped and groaned. We all busted up, Ralph especially, who fell off his chair onto the floor holding his stomach and laughing so hard I was afraid he’d get sick. It was a hell of a thing when you think of it, entertaining people by being a damn glutton, just to get attention.

After dinner we cleared the table and I got roped into a game of Scrabble with Alice and Marta and Nacho with the others kibitzing, and all the time I was swilling cold beer with an occasional shot of mescal that Cruz brought out in the open now. By nine o’clock when the kids had to go to bed I was pretty well lubricated.

They all kissed me good night except George and Nacho, who shook hands, and there were no arguments about going to bed, and fifteen minutes later it was still and quiet upstairs. I’d never seen Cruz or Socorro spank any of them. Of course the older ones spanked hell out of the younger ones, I’d seen that often enough. After all, everyone in this world needs a thumping once in a while.

We took the leaf out of the table and replaced the lace tablecloth and the three of us went into the living room. Cruz was pretty well bombed out, and after Socorro complained, he decided not to have another beer. I had a cold one in my right hand, and the last of the mescal in my left.

Cruz sat next to Socorro on the couch and he rubbed his face which was probably numb as hell. He gave her a kiss on the neck.

“Get out of here,” she grumbled. “You smell like a stinking wino.”

“How can I smell like a wino. I haven’t had any wine,” said Cruz.

“Remember how we used to sit like this after dinner back in the old days,” I said, realizing how much the mescal affected me, because they were both starting to look a little fuzzy.

“Remember how little and skinny Sukie was,” said Cruz, poking her arm.

“I’m going to let you have it in a minute,” said Socorro, raising her hand which was a raw, worn-out-looking hand for a girl her age. She wasn’t quite forty years old.

“Sukie was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen,” I said.

“I guess she was,” said Cruz with a silly grin.

“And still is,” I added. “And Cruz was the handsomest guy I ever saw outside of Tyrone Power or maybe Clark Gable.”

“You really think Tyrone Power was better looking?” said Cruz, grinning again as Socorro shook her head, and to me he honestly didn’t look a bit different now than he ever had, except for the gray hair. Damn him for staying young, I thought.

“Speaking of pretty girls,” said Socorro, “let’s hear about your new plans with Cassie.”

“Well, like I told you, she was gonna go up north to an apartment and get squared away at school. Then after the end of May when Cruz and me have our twenty years, she’d fly back here and we’d get married. Now I’ve decided to cut it short. I’ll work tomorrow and the next day and run my vacation days and days off together to the end of the month when I officially retire. That way I can leave with Cassie, probably Sunday morning or Monday and we’ll swing through Las Vegas and get married on the way.”

“Oh, Bumper, we wanted to be with you when you get married,” said Socorro, looking disappointed.

“What the hell, at our age getting married ain’t no big thing,” I said.

“We love her, Bumper,” said Socorro. “You’re lucky, very lucky. She’ll be perfect for you.”

“What a looker.” Cruz winked and tried to whistle, but he was too drunk.

Socorro shook her head and said, “sinvergüenza,” and we both laughed at him.

“What’re you going to do Friday?” asked Socorro. “Just go into rollcall and stand up and say you’re retiring and this is your last day?”

“Nope, I’m just gonna fade away. I’m not telling a soul and I hope you haven’t said anything to anyone, Cruz.”

“Nothing,” said Cruz, and he burped.

“I’m just cutting out like for my regular two days off, then I’m sending a registered letter to Personnel Division and one to the captain. I’ll just sign all my retirement papers and mail them in. I can give my badge and I.D. card to Cruz before I leave and have him turn them in for me so I won’t have to go back at all.”

“You’ll have to come back to L.A. for your retirement party,” said Cruz. “We’re sure as hell going to want to throw a retirement party for you.”

“Thanks, Cruz, but I never liked retirement parties anyway. In fact I think they’re miserable. I appreciate the thought but no party for me.”

“Just think,” said Socorro. “To be starting a new life! I wish Cruz could leave the job too.”

“You said it,” said Cruz, his eyes glassy though he sat up straight. “But with all our kids, I’m a thirty-year man. Thirty years, that’s a lifetime. I’ll be an old man when I pull the pin.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m lucky,” I said. “Remember when we were going through the academy, Cruz? We thought we were old men then, running with all those kids twenty-one and twenty-two years old. Here you were thirty-one, the oldest guy in the class, and I was close behind you. Remember Mendez always called us elefante y ratoncito?”

“The elephant and the mouse,” Cruz giggled.

“The two old men of the class. Thirty years old and I thought I knew something then. Hell, you’re still a baby at that age. We were both babies.”

“We were babies, ’mano,” said Cruz. “But only because we hadn’t been out there yet.” Cruz waved his hand toward the streets. “You grow up fast out there and learn too much. It’s no damn good for a man to learn as much as you learn out there. It ruins the way you think about things, and the way you feel. There’re certain things you should believe and if you stay out there for twenty years you can’t believe them anymore. That’s not good.”

“You still believe them, don’t you, Cruz?” I asked, and Socorro looked at us like we were two raving drunks, which we probably were, but we understood, Cruz and me.

“I still believe them, Bumper, because I want to. And I have Sukie and the kids. I can come home, and then the other isn’t real. You’ve had no one to go to. Thank God for Cassie.”

“I’ve got to go fix school lunches. Excuse me, Bumper,” said Socorro, and she gave us that shake of the head which meant, it’s time to leave the drunken cops to their talk. But Cruz hardly ever got drunk, and she didn’t really begrudge him, even though he had trouble with his liver.

“I never could tell you how glad we were when you first brought Cassie here for dinner, Bumper. Socorro and me, we stayed awake in bed that night and talked about it and how God must’ve sent her, even though you don’t believe in God.”

“I believe in the gods, you know that,” I grinned, gulping the beer after I took the last sip of the mescal.

“There’s only one God, goddamnit,” said Cruz.

“Even your God has three faces, goddamnit,” I said, and gave him a glance over the top of my beer bottle, making him laugh,

“Bumper, I’m trying to talk to you seriously.” And his eyes turned down at the corners like always. I couldn’t woof him anymore when his eyes did that.

“Okay.”

“Cassie’s the answer to a prayer.”

“Why did you waste all your prayers on me?”

“Why do you think, pendejo? You’re my brother, mi hermano.”

That made me put the beer down, and I straightened up and looked at his big eyes. Cruz was struggling with the fog of the mescal and beer because he wanted to tell me something. I wondered how in hell he had ever made the Department physical. He was barely five-eight in his bare feet, and he was so damn skinny. He’d never gained a pound, but outside of Esteban, he had the finest-looking face you would ever see.

“I didn’t know you thought that much about Cassie and me.”

“Of course I did. After all, I prayed her here for you. Don’t you see what you were heading for? You’re fifty years old, Bumper. You and some of the other old beat cops’ve been the machos of the streets all these years, but Lord, I could just see you duking it out with some young stud or chasing somebody out there and all of a sudden just lying down on that street to die. You realize how many of our classmates had heart attacks already?”

“Part of being a policeman,” I shrugged.

“Not to mention some asshole blowing you up,” said Cruz. “You remember Driscoll? He had a heart attack just last month and he’s not nearly as fat as you, and a few years younger, and I’ll bet he never does anything harder than lift a pencil. Like you today, all alone, facing a mob, like a rookie! What the hell, Bumper, you think I want to be a pallbearer for a guy two hundred and eighty pounds?”

“Two seventy-five.”

“When Cassie came, I said, ‘Thank God, now Bumper’s got a chance.’ I worried though. I knew you were smart enough to see how much woman you had, but I was afraid that puta had too strong a grip on you.”

“Was it you that kept getting me assigned to the north end districts all the time? Lieutenant Hilliard kept telling me it was a mistake every time I bitched about it.”

“Yeah, I did it. I tried to get you away from your beat, but I gave up. You just kept coming back down anyway and that meant nobody was patrolling the north end, so I didn’t accomplish anything. I can guess what it was to you, being el campeón out there, having people look at you the way they do on your beat.”

“Yeah, well it isn’t so much,” I said, nervously fidgeting with the empty bottle.

“You know what happens to old cops who stay around the streets too long.”

“What?” I said, and the enchilada caught me and bit into the inside of my gut.

“They get too old to do police work and they become characters. That’s what I’d hate to see. You just becoming an old character, and maybe getting yourself hurt bad out there before you realize you’re too old. Just too old.”

“I’m not that old yet. Damn it, Cruz!”

“No, not for civilian life. You have lots of good years ahead of you. But for a warrior, it’s time to quit, ’mano. I was worried about her going up there and you coming along in a few weeks. I was afraid the puta would get you alone when Cassie wasn’t there. I’m so damn glad you’re leaving with Cassie.”

“So am I, Cruz,” I said, lowering my voice like I was afraid to let myself hear it. “You’re right. I’ve half thought of these things. You’re right. I think I’d blow my brains out if I ever got as lonely as some I’ve seen, like some of those people on my beat, homeless wandering people, that don’t belong anywhere…”

“That’s it, Bumper. There’s no place for a man alone, not really. You can get along without love when you’re young and strong. Some guys can, guys like you. Me, I never could. And nobody can get along without it when he gets old. You shouldn’t be afraid to love, ’mano.”

“Am I, Cruz?” I asked, chewing two tablets because a mailed fist was beating on my guts from the inside. “Is that why I feel so unsure of myself now that I’m leaving? Is that it?”

I could hear Socorro humming as she made lunches for the entire tribe. She would write each one’s name on his lunch sack and put it in the refrigerator.

“Remember when we were together in the old days? You and me and Socorro and the two kids? And how you hardly ever spoke about your previous life even when you were drunk? You only said a little about your brother Clem who was dead, and your wife who’d left you. But you really told us more, much more about your brother. Sometimes you called him in your sleep. But mostly you called someone else.”

I was rocking back now, holding my guts which were throbbing, and all the tablets in my pocket wouldn’t help.

“You never told us about your boy. I always felt bad that you never told me about him, because of how close we are. You only told me about him in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“You’d call ‘Billy,’ and you’d say things to him. Sometimes you’d cry, and I’d have to go in and pick up your covers and pillow from the floor and cover you up because you’d throw them clear off the bed.”

“I never dreamed about him, never!”

“How else would I know, ’mano?” he said softly. “We used to talk a lot about it, Socorro and me, and we used to worry about a man who’d loved a brother and a son like you had. We wondered if you’d be afraid to love again. It happens. But when you get old, you’ve got to. You’ve got to.”

“But you’re safe if you don’t, Cruz!” I said, flinching from the pain. Cruz was looking at the floor, not used to talking to me like this, and he didn’t notice my agony.

“You’re safe, Bumper, in one way. But in the way that counts, you’re in danger. Your soul is in danger if you don’t love.”

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

Cruz looked up at me, and his eyes got even softer than normal and turned way down at the corners because he was being most serious. His heavy lashes blinked twice and he sighed, “Yes. Even after Esteban, and even though he was the oldest and you always feel a little something extra for the firstborn. Even after Esteban was killed I felt this to be the truth. After the grief, I knew it was God’s truth. I believed it, even then.”

“I think I’ll get a cup of coffee. I have a stomachache. Maybe something warm…”

Cruz smiled, and leaned back in his chair. Socorro was finishing the last of the lunches and I chatted with her while we warmed up the coffee. The stomachache started to fade a little.

I drank the coffee and thought about what Cruz said which made sense, and yet, every time you get tied up to people something happens and that cord is cut, and I mean really cut with a bloody sword.

“Shall we go in and see how the old boy’s doing?”

“Oh sure, Sukie,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder. Cruz was stretched out on the couch snoring.

“That’s his drinking sleep. We’ll never wake him up,” she said. “Maybe I just better get his pillow and a blanket.”

“He shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch,” I said. “It’s drafty in this big living room.” I went over to him and knelt down.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Put him to bed,” I said, picking him up in my arms.

“Bumper, you’ll rupture yourself.”

“He’s light as a baby,” I said, and he was surprisingly light. “Why the hell don’t you make him eat more?” I said, following Socorro up the stairs.

“You know he doesn’t like to eat. Let me help you, Bumper.”

“Just lead the way, Mama. I can handle him just fine.”

When we got in their bedroom I wasn’t even breathing hard and I laid him on the bed, on the sheets. She had already pulled back the covers. Cruz was rattling and wheezing now and we both laughed.

“He snores awful,” she said as I looked at the little squirt.

“He’s the only real friend I ever made in twenty years. I know millions of people and I see them and eat with them and I’ll miss things about all of them, but it won’t be like something inside is gone, like with Cruz.”

“Now you’ll have Cassie. You’ll be ten times closer with her.” She held my hand then. Both her hands were tough and hard.

“You sound like your old man.”

“We talk about you a lot.”

“Good night,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “Cassie and me are coming by before we leave to say good-bye to all of you.”

“Good night, Bumper.”

“Good night, old shoe,” I said to Cruz in a loud voice and he snorted and blew and I chuckled and descended the stairs. I let myself out after turning out the hall light and locking the door.

When I went to bed that night I started getting scared and didn’t know why. I wished Cassie was with me. After I went to sleep I slept very well and didn’t dream.