The Blue Knight by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page A

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