The Blue Knight Read Free

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