The Blue Knight Read Online Free Page B

birthday. It was hard to believe I’d been around half a century, but it was harder to believe I’d lived in this world thirty years before I got my beat. I was sworn in as a cop on my thirtieth birthday, the second oldest guy in my academy class, the oldest being Cruz Segovia, who had tried three times to join the Department but couldn’t pass the oral exam. It was probably because he was so shy and had such a heavy Spanish accent, being an El Paso Mexican. But his grammar was beautiful if you just bothered to listen past the accent, and finally he got an oral board that was smart enough to bother.
    I was driving through Elysian Park as I was thinking these things and I spotted two motor cops in front of me, heading toward the police academy. The motor cop in front was a kid named Lefler, one of the hundred or so I’ve broken in. He’d recently transferred to Motors from Central and was riding tall in his new shiny boots, white helmet, and striped riding britches. His partner breaking him in on the motor beat was a leather-faced old fart named Crandall. He’s the type that’ll get hot at a traffic violator and screw up your public relations program by pulling up beside him and yelling, “Grab a piece of the curb, asshole.”
    Lefler’s helmet was dazzling white and tilted forward, the short bill pulled down to his nose. I drove up beside him and yelled, “That’s a gorgeous skid lid you got there, boy, but pull it up a little and lemme see those baby blues.”
    Lefler smiled and goosed his bike a little. He was even wearing expensive black leather gloves in this heat.
    “Hi, Bumper,” said Crandall, taking his hand from the bar for a minute. We rode slow side by side and I grinned at Lefler, who looked self-conscious.
    “How’s he doing, Crandall?” I asked. “I broke him in on the job. He’s Bumper-ized.”
    “Not bad for a baby,” Crandall shrugged.
    “I see you took his training wheels off,” I said, and Lefler giggled and goosed the Harley again.
    I could see the edge of the horseshoe cleats on his heels and I knew his soles were probably studded with iron.
    “Don’t go walking around my beat with those boots on, kid,” I yelled. “You’ll be kicking up sparks and starting fires.” I chuckled then as I remembered seeing a motor cop with two cups of coffee in his gloved hands go right on his ass one time because of those cleats.
    I waved at Lefler and pulled away. Young hotdogs, I thought. I was glad I was older when I came on the job. But then, I knew I would never have been a motor officer. Writing traffic tickets was the one part of police work I didn’t like. The only good thing about it was it gave you an excuse to stop some suspicious cars on the pretext of writing a ticket. More good arrests came from phony traffic stops than anything else. More policemen got blown up that way, too.
    I decided, what the hell, I was too jumpy to lay around the park reading the paper. I’d been like a cat ever since I’d decided about Friday. I hardly slept last night. I headed back toward the beat.
    I should be patrolling for the burglar, I thought. I really wanted him now that I only had a couple days left. He was a daytime hotel creeper and hitting maybe four to six hotel rooms in the best downtown hotels every time he went to work. The dicks talked to us at rollcall and said the M.O. run showed he preferred weekdays, especially Thursday and Friday, but a lot of jobs were showing up on Wednesdays. This guy would shim doors which isn’t too hard to do in any hotel since they usually have the world’s worst security, and he’d burgle the place whether the occupants were in or not. Of course he waited until they were in the shower or napping. I loved catching burglars. Most policemen call it fighting ghosts and give up trying to catch them, but I’d rather catch a hot prowl guy than a stickup man any day. And any burglar with balls enough to take a pad when the people are home is every bit as