Free The Blue Knight by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

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