The Blue Knight Read Free Page A

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.’