“You never heard from Verna?” asked Laila quietly, and suddenly I was cold and damp and getting chills laying there.
“About six years after I came on the job I got a letter from a lawyer in Joplin. I don’t know how he found me. He said she’d filed for divorce and after that I got the final papers. I paid his fee and sent her about five hundred I’d saved, to get her started. I always hoped maybe she found some nice working stiff and went back to the farm life. She was one who couldn’t make it by herself. She’d have to love somebody and then of course she’d have to suffer when something took them away from her, or maybe when they left on their own. She’d never learn you gotta suffer
alone
in this world. I never knew for sure what happened to her. I didn’t try to find out because I’d probably just discover she was a wino and a streetwalking whore and I’d rather think otherwise.”
“Bumper?”
“What?”
“Please take my bed tonight. Go in and shower and take my bed. You’re dripping wet and you’ll get sick if you stay here on the couch.”
“I’ll be okay. You should see some of the places I’ve slept. Just give me a blanket.”
“Please.”
She began trying to lift me and that almost made me laugh out loud. She was a strong girl, but no woman was about to raise Bumper Morgan, two hundred and seventy-five pounds anytime, and almost three hundred this night with all of me cold dead weight from the booze.
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled, and found I wasn’t too drunk when I stood up. I made my way to her bedroom, stripped, and jumped in the shower, turning it on cold at the end. When I was through I dried in her bath towel which smelled like woman, took the wet gauze bandage off my leg, and felt better than I had all day. I rinsed my mouth with toothpaste, examined my meat-red face and red-webbed eyes, and climbed in her bed naked, which is the only way to sleep, winter or summer.
The bed smelled like her too, or rather it smelled like woman, since all women are pretty much the same to me. They all smell and feel the same. It’s the essence of womanhood, that’s the thing I need.
I was dozing when Laila came in and tiptoed to the shower and it seemed like seconds later when she was sitting on the bed in a sheer white nightgown whispering to me. I smelled lilac, and then woman, and I came to with her velvet mouth all over my face.
“What the hell?” I mumbled, sitting up.
“I touched you tonight,” said Laila. “You told me things. Maybe for the first time in years, Bumper, I’ve really touched another person!” She put her hand on my bare shoulder.
“Yeah, well that’s enough touching for one night,” I said, disgusted with myself for telling her all those personal things, and I took her hand off my shoulder. Now I’d have to fly back to L.A. in a couple of weeks to set this thing up with Laila and her family. Everyone was complicating my life lately.
“Bumper,” she said, drawing her feet up under her and laughing pretty damn jolly for this time of night. “Bumper, you’re wonderful. You’re a wonderful old panda. A big blue-nosed panda. Do you know your nose is blue?”
“Yeah, it gets that way when I drink too much,” I said, figuring she’d been smoking hash, able to see right through the nightie at her skin which was now exactly the color of apricots. “I had too many blood vessels busted too many times there on my nose.”
“I want to get under the covers with you, Bumper.”
“Look, kid,” I said. “You don’t owe me a goddamn thing. I’ll be glad to help you flimflam your family.”
“You’ve let me touch you, Bumper,” she said, and the warm wide velvet mouth was on me again, my neck and cheek, and all that chestnut hair was covering me until I almost couldn’t think about how ridiculous this was.
“Goddamnit,” I said, holding her off. “This is a sickening thing you’re doing. I knew you since you were a little girl. Damn it, kid, I’m an old bag of guts and you’re still just a little child to me. This is unnatural!”
“Don’t call me kid. And don’t try to stop me from having you.”
“
Having
me? You’re just impressed by cops. I’m a father symbol. Lots of young girls feel like that about cops.”
“I hate cops,” she answered, her boobs wobbling against my arms, which were getting tired. “It’s you I want because you’re more man than I’ve ever had my hands on.”
“Yeah, I’m about six cubic yards,” I said, very shaky.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, her hands going over me, and she was kissing me again and I was doing everything I could to avoid the pleasures of a thousand and one nights.
“Listen, I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I groaned. “You’re just too young, I just couldn’t do it with a kid like you.”
“Want to bet?”
“Don’t, Laila.”
“How can a man be so aware and be so square,” she smiled, standing up and slipping off the nightie.
“It’s just the bluesuit,” I said with a voice gone hoarse and squeaky. “I probably look pretty sharp to you in my uniform.”
Laila busted up then, falling on the bed and rolling on her stomach, laughing for a good minute. I smiled weakly, staring at her apricot ass and those thunder thighs, thinking it was over. But after she stopped laughing she smiled at me softer than ever, whispered in Arabic, and crept under the sheet.
I
WOKE UP
Friday morning with a terrible hangover. Laila was sprawled half on top of me, a big smooth naked doe, which was the reason I woke up. After living so many years alone I don’t like sleeping with anyone. Cassie, who I made love to maybe a hundred times, had never slept with me, not all night. We’d have to get twin beds, Cassie and me. I just can’t stand to be too close to anybody for too long.
Laila didn’t wake up and I took my clothes into the living room and dressed, leaving a note that said I’d get in touch in a week or so, to work out the details of handling her bank account and dumping a load of snow on Yasser and the family.
Before I left I crept back into the bedroom to look at her this last time. She was sprawled on her stomach, sleek and beautiful.
“Salām
, Laila,” I whispered. “A thousand
salāms
, little girl.”
I very carefully made my way down the stairs of Laila’s apartment house to my car parked in front, and I felt a little better when I got out on the road with the window down driving onto the Hollywood Freeway on a windy, not too smoggy day.
Then I thought for a few minutes about how it had been with Laila and I was ashamed because I always prided myself on being something more than the thousands of ugly old slimeballs you see in Hollywood with beautiful young babies like her. She did it because she was grateful and neurotic and confused and I took advantage. I’d always picked on someone my own size all my life, and now I was no better than any other horny old fart.
I went home and had a cold shower and a shave and I felt more or less human after some aspirin and three cups of coffee that started the heartburn going for the day. I wondered if after a few months of retirement my stomach might begin to rebuild itself, and who knows, maybe I’d have digestive peace.
I got to the Glass House a half hour early and by the time I shined my black high-top shoes, buffed the Sam Browne, hit the badge with some rouge and a cloth, I was sweating a little and feeling much improved. I put on a fresh uniform since the one from yesterday was covered with blood and birdshit. When I pinned on the gleaming shield and slid the scarred baton through the chrome ring on my Sam Browne I felt even better.
At rollcall Cruz was sitting as usual with the watch commander, Lieutenant Hilliard, at the table in front of the room, and Cruz glanced at me several times like he expected me to get up and make a grand announcement that this was my last day. Of course I didn’t, and he looked a little disappointed. I hated to disappoint anyone, especially Cruz, but I wasn’t going out with a trumpet blare. I really wanted Lieutenant Hilliard to hold an inspection this morning, my last one, and he did. He limped down the line and said my boondockers and my shield looked like a million bucks and he wished some of the young cops looked half as sharp. After inspection I drank a quart or so from the water fountain and I felt better yet.
I meant to speak to Cruz about our lunch date, but Lieutenant Hilliard was talking to him so I went out to the car, and decided to call him later. I fired up the black-and-white, put my baton in the holder on the door, tore off the paper on my writing pad, replaced the old hot sheet, checked the back seat for dead midgets, and drove out of the station. It was really unbelievable. The
last time
.
After hitting the bricks, I cleared over the air, even though I worried that I’d get a burglary report or some other chickenshit call before I could get something in my stomach. I couldn’t stand the idea of anything heavy just now so I turned south on San Pedro and headed for the dairy, which was a very good place to go for hangover cures, at least it always was for me. It was more than a dairy, it was the plant and home office for a dairy that sold all over Southern California, and they made very good specialty products like cottage cheese and buttermilk and yogurt, all of which are wonderful for hangovers if you’re not too far gone. I waved at the gate guard, got passed into the plant, and parked in front of the employee’s store, which wasn’t opened yet.
I saw one of the guys I knew behind the counter setting up the cash register and I knocked on the window.
“Hi, Bumper,” he smiled, a young guy, with deep-set green eyes and a mop of black hair. “What do you need?”
“Plasma, pal,” I said, “but I’ll settle for yogurt.”
“Sure. Come on in, Bumper,” he laughed, and I passed through, heading for the tall glass door to the cold room where the yogurt was kept. I took two yogurts from the shelf, and he gave me a plastic spoon when I put them on the counter.
“That all you’re having, Bumper?” he asked, as I shook my head and lifted the lid and spooned out a half pint of blueberry which I finished in three or four gulps and followed with a lime. And finally, what the hell, I thought, I grabbed another, French apple, and ate it while the guy counted his money and said something to me once or twice which I nodded at, and I smiled through a mouthful of cool creamy yogurt that was coating my stomach, soothing me, and making me well.
“Never saw anyone put away yogurt like that, Bumper,” he said after I finished.
I couldn’t remember this young guy’s name, and wished like hell they wore their names on the gray work uniform because I always like to make a little small talk and call someone by name when he’s feeding me. It’s the least you can do.
“Could I have some buttermilk?” I asked, after he threw the empty yogurt containers in a gleaming trash can behind the counter. The whole place sparkled, being a dairy, and it smelled clean, and was nice and cool.
“Why sure, Bumper,” he said, leaving the counter and coming back with a pint of cold buttermilk. Most of the older guys around the dairy wouldn’t bring me a pint container, and here I was dying of thirst from the booze. Rather than say anything I just tipped it up and poured it down, only swallowing three times to make him realize his mistake.
“Guess I should’ve brought you a quart, huh?” he said after I put the milk carton down and licked my lips.
I smiled and shrugged and he went in the back, returning with a quart.
“Thanks, pal,” I said. “I’m pretty thirsty today.” I tipped the quart up and let it flow thick and delicious into my mouth, and then I started swallowing, but not like before, more slowly. When I finished it I was really fit again. I was well. I could do anything now.
“Take a quart with you?” he said. “Would you like more yogurt or some cottage cheese?”
“No thanks,” I said. I don’t believe in being a hog like some cops I’ve worked with. “Gotta get back to the streets. Friday mornings get pretty busy sometimes.”
I really should’ve talked a while. I knew I should, but I just didn’t feel like it. It was the first time this guy ever served me so I said the thing that all policemen say when they’re ninety percent sure what the answer will be.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, shaking his head. “Come see us anytime, Bumper.”
While driving out the main gate of the dairy, I fired up a fresh cigar which I knew couldn’t possibly give me indigestion because my stomach was so well coated I could eat tin cans and not notice.
Then I realized that was the last time I’d ever make my dairy stop. Damn, I thought, everything I do today will be for the last time. Then I suddenly started hoping I’d get some routine calls like a burglary report or maybe a family dispute which I usually hated refereeing. I wouldn’t even mind writing a traffic ticket today.
It would’ve been something, I thought, really something to have stayed on the job after my twenty years. You have your pension in the bag then, and you own your own mortgage, having bought and paid for them with twenty years’ service. Regardless of what you ever do or don’t do you have a forty percent pension the rest of your life, from the moment you leave the Department. Whether you’re fired for pushing a slimeball down the fire escape, or whether you’re booked for lying in court to put a scumbag where he ought to be, or whether you bust your stick over the hairy little skull of some college brat who’s tearing at your badge and carrying a tape recorder at a demonstration, no matter what you do, they got to pay you that pension. If they have to, they’ll mail those checks to you at San Quentin. Nobody can take your pension away. Knowing that might make police work even a little
more
fun, I thought. It might give you just a little more push, make you a little more aggressive. I would’ve liked to have done police work knowing that I owned my own mortgage.
As I was cruising I picked a voice out of the radio chatter. It was the girl with the cutest and sexiest voice I ever heard. She was on frequency thirteen today, and she had her own style of communicating. She didn’t just come on the horn and answer with clipped phrases and impersonal “rogers.” Her voice would rise and fall like a song, and getting even a traffic accident call from her, which patrol policemen hate worst because they’re so tedious, was somehow not quite so bad. She must’ve been hot for some cop in unit Four-L-Nine because her voice came in soft and husky and sent a shiver through me when she said, “Foah-L-Ninah, rrrrrrraj-ahh!”
Now that’s the way to roger a call, I thought. I was driving nowhere at all, just touring the beat, looking at people I knew and ones I didn’t know, trying not to think of all the things I’d never do out here. I was trading them for things I’d
rather
do, things any sane man would rather do, like be with Cassie and start my new career and live a civilized normal life. Funny I should think of it as
civilized
, that kind of life. That was one of the reasons I’d always wanted to go to North Africa to die.
I always figured kind of vaguely that if somebody didn’t knock me off and I lasted say thirty years, I’d pull the pin then because I could never do my kind of police work past sixty. I really thought I could last that long though. I thought that if I cut down on the groceries and the drinking and the cigars, maybe I could last out here on the streets until I was sixty. Then I’d have learned almost all there was to learn here. I’d know all the secrets I always wanted to know and I’d hop a jet and go to the Valley of the Kings and look out there from a pink granite cliff and see where all
civilization
started, and maybe if I stayed there long enough and didn’t get drunk and fall off a pyramid, or get stomped to death by a runaway camel, or ventilated by a Yankee-hating Arab, maybe if I lasted there long enough, I’d find out the last thing I wanted to know: whether
civilization
was worth the candle after all.
Then I thought of what Cruz would say if I ever got drunk enough to tell him about this. He’d say, “’
Mano
, let yourself love, and give yourself away. You’ll get your answer. You don’t need a sphinx or a pink granite cliff.’”
“Hi, Bumper,” a voice yelled, and I turned from the glare of the morning sun and saw Percy opening his pawnshop.
“Hi, Percy,” I yelled back, and slowed down to wave. He was a rare animal, an honest pawnbroker. He ran hypes and other thieves out of his shop if he even suspected they had something hot. And he always demanded good identification from a customer pawning something. He was an honest pawnbroker, a rare animal.
I remembered the time Percy gave me his traffic ticket to take care of because this was the first one he’d ever gotten. It was for jaywalking. He didn’t own a car. He hated them and took a bus to the shop every day. I just couldn’t disillusion old Percy by letting him know that I couldn’t fix a ticket, so I took it and paid it for him. It’s practically impossible to fix a ticket anymore in this town. You have to know the judge or the City Attorney. Lawyers take care of each other of course, but a cop can’t fix a ticket. Anyway, I paid it, and Percy thought I fixed it and wasn’t disappointed. He thought I was a hell of a big man.
Another black-and-white cruised past me going south. The cop driving, a curly-haired kid named Nelson, waved, and I nodded back. He almost rear-ended a car stopped at the red light because he was looking at some chick in hot pants going into an office building. He was a typical young cop, I thought. Thinking of pussy instead of police work. And just like all these cats, Nelson loved talking about it. I think they all love talking about it these days more than they love doing it. That gave me a royal pain in the ass. I guess I’ve had more than my share in my time. I’ve had some good stuff for an ugly guy, but by Maggie’s muff, I never talked about screwing a dame, not with anybody. In my day, a guy was unmanly if he did that. But your day is over after this day, I reminded myself, and swung south on Grand.
Then I heard a Central car get a report call at one of the big downtown hotels and I knew the hotel burglar had hit again. I’d give just about anything, I thought, to catch that guy today. That’d be like quitting after your last home run, like Ted Williams. A home run your last time up. That’d be something. I cruised around for twenty minutes and then drove to the hotel and parked behind the black-and-white that got the call. I sat there in my car smoking a cigar and waited another fifteen minutes until Clarence Evans came out. He was a fifteen-year cop, a tall stringbean who I used to play handball with before my ankles got so bad.
We had some good games. It’s especially fun to play when you’re working nightwatch and you get up to the academy about one a.m. after you finish work, and play three hard fast games and take a steam bath. Except Evans didn’t like the steam bath, being so skinny. We always took a half case of beer with us and drank it up after we showered. He was one of the first Negroes I worked with as a partner when L.A.P.D. became completely integrated several years ago. He was a good copper and he liked working with me even though he knew I always preferred working alone. On nightwatch it’s comforting sometimes to have someone riding shotgun or walking beside you. So I worked with him and lots of other guys even though I would’ve rather had a one-man beat or an “L” car that you work alone, “L” for lonesome. But I worked with him because I never could disappoint anyone that wanted to work with me that bad, and it made the handball playing more convenient.