The Blue Knight Read Online Free Page A

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