Then I saw Clarence coming out of the hotel carrying his report notebook. He grinned at me, came walking light-footed over to my car, opened the door and sat down.
“What’s happening, Bumper?”
“Just curious if the hotel creeper hit again, Clarence.”
“Took three rooms on the fifth floor and two on the fourth floor,” he nodded.
“The people asleep?”
“In four of them. In the other one, they were down in the bar.”
“That means he hit before two a.m.”
“Right.”
“I can’t figure this guy,” I said, popping an antacid tablet. “Usually he works in the daytime but sometimes in the early evening. Now he’s hitting during the night when they’re in and when they’re not in. I never heard of a hotel burglar as squirrelly as this guy.”
“Maybe that’s it,” said Evans. “A squirrel. Didn’t he try to hurt a kid on one job?”
“A teddy bear. He stabbed the hell out of a big teddy bear. It was all covered up with a blanket and looked like a kid sleeping.”
“That cat’s a squirrel,” said Evans.
“That would explain why the other hotel burglars don’t know anything,” I said, puffing on the cigar and thinking. “I never did think he was a pro, just a lucky amateur.”
“A lucky looney,” said Evans. “You talked to all your snitches?” He knew my M.O. from working with me. He knew I had informants, but like everyone else he didn’t know how many, or that I paid the good ones.
“I talked to just about everyone I know. I talked to a hotel burglar who told me he’d already been approached by three detectives and that he’d tell us if he knew anything, because this guy is bringing so much heat on all the hotels he’d like to see us get him.”
“Well, Bumper, if anybody lucks onto the guy I’m betting you will,” said Evans, putting on his hat and getting out of the car.
“Police are baffled but an arrest is imminent,” I winked, and started the car. It was going to be a very hot day.
I was given a report call at Pershing Square, an injury report. Probably some pensioner fell off his soapbox and was trying to figure how he could say there was a crack in the sidewalk and sue the city. I ignored the call for a few minutes and let her assign it to another unit. I didn’t like to do that. I always believed you should handle the calls given to you, but damn it, I only had the rest of the day and that was it, and I thought about Oliver Horn and wondered why I hadn’t thought about him before. I couldn’t waste time on the report call so I let the other unit handle it and headed for the barbershop on Fourth Street.
Oliver was sitting on a chair on the sidewalk in front of the shop. His ever-present broom was across his lap, and he was dozing in the sunshine.
He was the last guy in the world you would ever want to die and come back looking like. Oliver was built like a walrus with one arm cut off above the elbow. It was done maybe forty years ago by probably the worst surgeon in the world. The skin just flapped over and hung there. He had orange hair and a big white belly covered with orange hair. He long ago gave up trying to keep his pants up, and usually they barely gripped him below the gut so that his belly button was always popping out at you. His shoelaces were untied and destroyed from stepping on them because it was too hard to tie them one-handed, and he had a huge lump on his chin. It looked like if you squeezed it, it’d break a window. But Oliver was surprisingly clever. He swept out the barbershop and two or three businesses on this part of Fourth Street, including a bar called Raymond’s where quite a few ex-cons hung out. It was close to the big hotels and a good place to scam on the rich tourists. Oliver didn’t miss anything and had given me some very good information over the years.
“You awake, Oliver?” I asked.
He opened one blue-veined eyelid. “Bumper, how’s it wi’choo?”
“Okay, Oliver. Gonna be a hot one again today.”
“Yeah, I’m gettin’ sticky. Let’s go in the shop.”
“Don’t have time. Listen, I was just wondering, you heard about this burglar that’s been ripping us downtown here in all the big hotels for the past couple months?”
“No, ain’t heard nothin’.”
“Well, this guy ain’t no ordinary hotel thief. I mean he probably ain’t none of the guys you ordinarily see around Raymond’s, but he might be a guy that you would
sometimes
see there. What the hell, even a ding-a-ling has a drink once in a while, and Raymond’s is convenient when you’re getting ready to rape about ten rooms across the street.”
“He a ding-a-ling?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can I find him then, Bumper?”
“I don’t know, Oliver. I’m just having hunches now. I think the guy’s done burglaries before. I mean he knows how to shim doors and all that. And like I say, he’s a little dingy. I think he’s gonna stab somebody before too long. He carries a blade. A
long
blade, because he went clear through a mattress with it.”
“Why’d he stab a mattress?”
“He was trying to kill a teddy bear.”
“You been drinkin’, Bumper?”
I smiled, and then I wondered what the hell I was doing here because I didn’t know enough about the burglar to give a snitch something to work with. I was grabbing at any straw in the wind so I could hit a home run before walking off the field for the last time. Absolutely pathetic and sickening, I thought, ashamed of myself.
“Here’s five bucks,” I said to Oliver. “Get yourself a steak.”
“Jeez, Bumper,” he said, “I ain’t done nothin’ for it.”
“The guy carries a long-bladed knife and he’s a psycho and lately he takes these hotels at any goddamn hour of the day or night. He just might go to Raymond’s for a drink sometime. He just might use the restroom while you’re cleaning up and maybe he’ll be tempted to look at some of the stuff in his pockets to see what he stole. Or maybe he’ll be sitting at the bar and he’ll pull a pretty out of his pocket that he just snatched at the hotel, or maybe one of these sharp hotel burglars that hangs out at Raymond’s will know something, or say something, and you’re always around there. Maybe anything.”
“Sure, Bumper, I’ll call you right away I hear anything at all. Right away, Bumper. And you get any more clues you let me know, hey, Bumper?”
“Sure, Oliver, I’ll get you a good one from my clues closet.”
“Hey, that’s aw right,” Oliver hooted. He had no teeth in front, upper or lower. For a long time he had one upper tooth in front.
“Be seeing you, Oliver.”
“Hey, Bumper, wait a minute. You ain’t told me no funny cop stories in a long time. How ’bout a story?”
“I think you heard them all.”
“Come on, Bumper.”
“Well, let’s see. I told you about the seventy-five-year-old nympho I busted over on Main that night?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he hooted, “tell me that one again. That’s a good one.”
“I gotta go, Oliver, honest. But say, did I ever tell you about the time I caught the couple in the back seat up there in Elysian Park in one of those maker’s acres?”
“No, tell me, Bumper.”
“Well, I shined my light in there and here’s these two down on the seat, the old boy throwing the knockwurst to his girlfriend, and this young partner I’m with says, ‘What’re you doing there?’ And the guy gives the answer ninety percent of the guys do when you catch them in that position: ‘Nothing, Officer.’”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Oliver, his shaggy head bobbing.
“So I say to the guy, ‘Well, if
you
ain’t doing anything, move over there and hold my flashlight and lemme see what
I
can do.’”
“Whoooo, that’s funny,” said Oliver. “Whoooo, Bumper.”
He was laughing so hard he hardly saw me go, and I left him there holding his big hard belly and laughing in the sunshine.
I thought about telling Oliver to call Central Detectives instead of me, because I wouldn’t be here after today, but what the hell, then I’d have to tell him
why
I wouldn’t be here, and I couldn’t take another person telling me why I should or should not retire. If Oliver ever called, somebody’d tell him I was gone, and the information would eventually get to the dicks. So what the hell, I thought, pulling back into the traffic and breathing exhaust fumes. It would’ve been really something though, to get that burglar on this last day. Really something.
I looked at my watch and thought Cassie should be at school now, so I drove to City College and parked out front. I wondered why I didn’t feel guilty about Laila. I guess I figured it wasn’t really my fault.
Cassie was alone in the office when I got there. I closed the door, flipped my hat on a chair, walked over, and felt that same old amazement I’ve felt a thousand times over how well a woman fits in your arms, and how soft they feel.
“Thought about you all night,” she said after I kissed her a dozen times or so. “Had a miserable evening. Couple of bores.”
“You thought about me all night, huh?”
“Honestly, I did.” She kissed me again. “I still have this awful feeling something’s going to happen.”
“Every guy that ever went into battle has that feeling.”
“Is that what our marriage is going to be, a battle?”
“If it is, you’ll win, baby. I’ll surrender.”
“Wait’ll I get you tonight,” she whispered. “You’ll surrender all right.”
“That green dress is gorgeous.”
“But you still like hot colors better?”
“Of course.”
“After we get married I’ll wear nothing but reds and oranges and yellows. . . .”
“You ready to talk?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Cruz gave me a talking-to—about you.”
“Oh?”
“He thinks you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
“Go on,” she smiled.
“Well . . .”
“Yes?”
“Damn it, I can’t go on. Not in broad daylight with no drink in me. . . .”
“What did you talk about, silly?”
“About you. No, it was more about me. About things I need and things I’m afraid of. Twenty years he’s my friend and suddenly I find out he’s a damned intellectual.”
“What do you need? What’re you afraid of? I can’t believe you’ve ever been afraid of anything.”
“He knows me better than you know me.”
“That makes me sad. I don’t want anyone knowing you better than I do. Tell me what you talked about.”
“I don’t have time right now,” I said, feeling a gas bubble forming. Then I lied and said, “I’m on the way to a call. I just had to stop for a minute. I’ll tell you all about it tonight. I’ll be at your pad at seven-thirty. We’re going out to dinner, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Then we’ll curl up on your couch with a good bottle of wine.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she smiled, that clean, hot, female smile that made me kiss her.
“See you tonight,” I whispered.
“Tonight,” she gasped, and I realized I was crushing her. She stood in the doorway and watched me all the way down the stairs.
I got back in the car and dropped two of each kind of pill and grabbed a handful from the glove compartment and shoved them in my pants pockets for later.
As I drove back on the familiar streets of the beat I wondered why I couldn’t talk to Cassie like I wanted. If you’re going to marry someone you should be able to tell her almost anything about yourself that she has a right to know.
I pulled over at a phone booth then and called Cruz at the station. Lieutenant Hilliard answered and in a couple seconds I heard Cruz’s soft voice, “Sergeant Segovia?” He said it like a question,
“Hello, Sergeant Segovia, this is future former Officer Morgan, what the hell you doing besides pushing a pencil and shuffling paper?”
“What’re you doing besides ignoring your radio calls?”
“I’m just cruising around this miserable beat thinking how great it’ll be not to have to do it anymore. You decided where you want me to take you for lunch?”
“You don’t have to take me anywhere.”
“Look, goddamnit, we’re going to some nice place, so if you won’t pick it, I will.”
“Okay, take me to Seymours.”
“On my beat? Oh, for chrissake. Look, you just meet me at Seymour’s at eleven-thirty. Have a cup of coffee but don’t eat a damn thing because we’re going to a place I know in Beverly Hills.”
“That’s a long way from your beat, all right.”
“I’ll pick you up at Seymour’s.”
“Okay,
’mano, ahí te huacho
.”
I chuckled after I hung up at that Mexican slang because
watching
for me is exactly what Cruz always did when you stop and think about it. Most people say, “I’ll be seeing you,” because that’s what they do, but Cruz, he always watched for me. It felt good to have old sad-eye watching for me.
I
GOT BACK IN MY CAR
and cruised down Main Street, by the parking lot at the rear of the Pink Dragon. I was so sick of pushing this pile of iron around that I stopped to watch some guys in the parking lot.
There were three of them and they were up to something. I parked the car and backed up until the building hid me. I got out and walked to the corner of the building, took my hat off, and peeked around the corner and across the lot.
A skinny hype in a long-sleeved blue shirt was talking to another brown-shirted one. There was a third one with them, a little T-shirt who stood a few steps away. Suddenly Blue-shirt nodded to Brown-shirt, who walked up and gave something to little T-shirt, who gave Brown-shirt something back, and they all hustled off in different directions. Little T-shirt was walking toward me. He was looking back over his shoulder for cops, and walking right into one. I didn’t feel like messing around with a narco bust but this was too easy. I stepped in the hotel doorway and when T-shirt walked past, squinting into the sun, I reached out, grabbed him by the arm, and jerked him inside. He was just a boy, scared as hell. I shoved him face forward into the wall, and grabbed the hip pocket of his denims.
“What’ve you got, boy? Bennies or reds? Or maybe you’re an acid freak?”
“Hey, lemme go!” he yelled.
I took the bennies out of his pocket. There were six rolls, five in a roll, held together by a rubber band. The day of ten-benny rolls was killed by inflation.
“How much did they make you pay, kid?” I asked, keeping a good grip on his arm. He didn’t look so short up close, but he was skinny, with lots of brown hair, and young, too young to be downtown scoring pills in the middle of the morning.
“I paid seven dollars. But I won’t ever do it again if you’ll lemme go. Please lemme go.”
“Put your hands behind you, kid,” I said, unsnapping my handcuff case.
“What’re you doing? Please don’t put those on me. I won’t hurt you or anything.”
“I’m not afraid of you hurting me,” I laughed, chewing on a wet cigar stump that I finally threw away. “It’s just that my wheels are gone and my ass is too big to be chasing you all over these streets.” I snapped on one cuff and brought his palms together behind his back and clicked on the other, taking them up snug.
“How much you say you paid for the pills?”
“Seven dollars. I won’t never do it again if you’ll lemme go, I swear.” He was dancing around, nervous and scared, and he stepped on my right toe, scuffing up the shine.
“Careful, damn it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Please lemme go. I didn’t mean to step on you.”
“Those cats charged you way too much for the pills,” I said, as I led him to the radio car.
“I know you won’t believe me but it’s the first time I ever bought them. I don’t know
what
the hell they cost.”
“Sure it is.”
“See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You cops don’t believe nobody.”
“You know all about cops, do you?”
“I been arrested before. I know you cops. You all act the same.”
“You must be a hell of a heavyweight desperado. Got a ten-page rap sheet, I bet. What’ve you been busted for?”
“Running away. Twice. And you don’t have to put me down.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“In the car,” I said, opening the front door. ““And don’t lean back on the cuffs or they’ll tighten.”
“You don’t have to worry, I won’t jump out,” he said as I fastened the seat belt over his lap.
“I ain’t worrying, kid.”
“I got a name. It’s Tilden,” he said, his square chin jutting way out.
“Mine’s Morgan.”
“My first name’s Tom.”
“Mine’s Bumper.”
“Where’re you taking me?”
“To Juvenile Narcotics.”
“You gonna book me?”
“Of course.”
“What could I expect,” he said, nodding his head disgustedly. “How could I ever expect a cop to act like a human being.”
“You shouldn’t even expect a human being to act like a human being. You’ll just get disappointed.”
I turned the key and heard the click-click of a dead battery. Stone-cold dead without warning.
“Hang loose, kid,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Where could
I
go?” he yelled, as I lifted the hood to see if someone had torn the wires out. That happens once in a while when you leave your black-and-white somewhere that you can’t keep an eye on it. It looked okay though. I wondered if something was wrong with the alternator. A call box was less than fifty feet down the sidewalk so I moseyed to it, turning around several times to keep an eye on my little prisoner. I called in and asked for a garage man with a set of booster cables and was told to stand by for about twenty minutes and somebody’d get out to me. I thought about calling a sergeant since they carry booster cables in their cars, but I decided not to. What the hell, why be in a rush today? What was there to prove now? To anyone? To myself?
Then I started getting a little hungry because there was a small diner across the street and I could smell bacon and ham. The odor was blowing through the duct in the front of the place over the cooking stoves. The more I sniffed the hungrier I got, and I looked at my watch and thought, what the hell. I went back and unstrapped the kid.
“What’s up? Where we going?”
“Across the street.”
“What for? We taking a bus to your station or something?”
“No, we gotta wait for the garage man. We’re going across the street so I can eat.”
“You can’t take me in there looking like this,” said the kid, as I led him across the street. His naturally rosy cheeks were lobster-red now. “Take the handcuffs off.”
“Not a chance. I could never catch a young antelope like you.
“I swear I won’t run.”
“I know you won’t, with your hands cuffed behind you and me holding the chain.”
“I’ll die if you take me in there like a dog on a leash in front of all those people.”
“Ain’t nobody in there you know, kid. And anybody that might be in there’s been in chains himself, probably. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I could sue you for this.”
“Oh
could
you?” I said, holding the door and shoving him inside.
There were only three counter customers, two con guys, and a wino drinking coffee. They glanced up for a second and nobody even noticed the kid was cuffed. I pointed toward a table at the rear.
“Got no waitress this early, Bumper,” said T-Bone, the proprietor, a huge Frenchman who wore a white chef’s hat and a T-shirt, and white pants. I’d never seen him in anything else.
“We need a table, T-Bone,” I said, pointing to the kid’s handcuffs.
“Okay,” said T-Bone. “What’ll you have?”
“I’m not too hungry. Maybe a couple over-easy eggs and some bacon, and a few pieces of toast. And oh, maybe some hash browns. Glass of tomato juice. Some coffee. And whatever the kid wants.”
“What’ll you have, boy?” asked T-Bone, resting his huge hairy hands on the counter and grinning at the boy, with one gold and one silver front tooth. I wondered for the first time where in the hell he got a silver crown like that. Funny I never thought of that before. T-Bone wasn’t a man you talked to. He only used his voice when it was necessary. He just fed people with as few words as possible.
“How can I eat anything?” said the kid. “All chained up like a convict or something.” His eyes were filling up and he looked awful young just then.
“I’m gonna unlock them,” I said. “Now what the hell you want? T-Bone ain’t got all day.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Give him a couple fried eggs straight up, some bacon, and a glass of milk. You want hash browns, kid?”
“I guess so.”
“Give him some orange juice too, and an order of toast. Make it a double order of toast. And some jam.”
T-Bone nodded and scooped a handful of eggs from a bowl by the stove. He held four eggs in that big hand and cracked all four eggs one at a time without using the other hand. The kid was watching it.
“He’s got some talent, hey, kid?”
“Yeah. You said you were taking these off.”
“Get up and turn around,” I said, and when he did I unlocked the right cuff and fastened it around the chrome leg of the table so he could sit there with one hand free.
“Is this what you call taking them off?” he said. “Now I’m like an organ grinder’s monkey on a chain!”
“Where’d you ever see an organ grinder? There ain’t been any grinders around here for years.”
“I saw them on old TV movies. And that’s what I look like.”
“Okay, okay, quit chipping your teeth. You complain more than any kid I ever saw. You oughtta be glad to be getting some breakfast. I bet you didn’t eat a thing at home this morning.”
“I wasn’t even
at
home this morning.”
“Where’d you spend the night?”
He brushed back several locks of hair from his eyes with a dirty right hand, “I spent part of the night sleeping in one of those all-night movies till some creepy guy woke me up with his cruddy hand on my knee. Then I got the hell outta there. I slept for a little while in a chair in some hotel that was open just down the street.”
“You run away from home?”
“No, I just didn’t feel like sleeping at the pad last night. My sis wasn’t home and I just didn’t feel like sitting around by myself.”
“You live with your sister?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your parents?”
“Ain’t got none.”
“How old’s your sister?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Just you and her, huh?”
“Naw, there’s always somebody around. Right now it’s a stud named Slim. Big Blue always got somebody around.”
“That’s what you call your sister? Big Blue?”
“She used to be a dancer, kind of. In a bar. Topless. She went by that name. Now she’s getting too fat in the ass so she’s hustling drinks at the Chinese Garden over on Western. You know the joint?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Anyway, she always says soon as she loses thirty pounds she’s going back to dancing which is a laugh because her ass is getting wider by the day. She likes to be called Big Blue so even
I
started calling her that. She got this phony dyed-black hair, see. It’s almost blue.”
“She oughtta wash your clothes for you once in a while. That shirt looks like a grease rag.”
“That’s ’cause I was working on a car with my next door neighbor yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to change it.” He looked offended by that crack. “I wear clothes clean as anybody. And I even wash them and iron them myself.”
“That’s the best way to be,” I said, reaching over and unlocking the left cuff.
“You’re taking them off?”
“Yeah. Go in the bathroom and wash your face and hands and arms. And your neck.”
“You sure I won’t go out the window?”
“Ain’t no window in that john,” I said. “And comb that mop outta your face so somebody can see what the hell you look like.”
“Ain’t got a comb.”
“Here’s mine,” I said, giving him the pocket comb.
T-Bone handed me the glasses of juice, the coffee, and the milk while the kid was gone, and the bacon smell was all over the place now. I was wishing I’d asked for a double order of bacon even though I knew T-Bone would give me an extra big helping.
I was sipping the coffee when the kid came back in. He was looking a hundred percent better even though his neck was still dirty. At least his hair was slicked back and his face and arms up to the elbow were nice and clean. He wasn’t a handsome kid, his face was too tough and craggy, but he had fine eyes, full of life, and he looked you right in your eye when he talked to you. That’s what I liked best about him.
“There’s your orange juice,” I said.
“Here’s your comb.”
“Keep it. I don’t even know why I carry it. I can’t do anything with this patch of wires I got. I’ll be glad when I get bald.”
“Yeah, you couldn’t look no worse if you was bald,” he said, examining my hair.
“Drink your orange juice, kid.”
We both drank our juice and T-Bone said, “Here, Bumper,” and handed a tray across the counter, but before I could get up the kid was on his feet and grabbed the tray and laid everything out on the table like he knew what he was doing.
“Hey, you even know what side to put the knife and fork on,” I said.
“Sure. I been a busboy. I done all kinds of work in my time.”
“How old you say you are?”
“Fourteen. Well, almost fourteen. I’ll be fourteen next October.”
When he’d finished he sat down and started putting away the chow like he was as hungry as I thought he was. I threw one of my eggs on his plate when I saw two weren’t going to do him, and I gave him a slice of my toast. He was a first-class eater. That was something else I liked about him.
While he was finishing the last of the toast and jam, I went to the door and looked across the street. A garage attendant was replacing my battery. He saw me and waved that it was okay. I waved back and went back inside to finish my coffee.
“You get enough to eat?” I asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You sure you don’t want another side of bacon and a loaf or two of bread?”
“I don’t get breakfasts like that too often,” he grinned.
When we were getting ready to leave I tried to pay T-Bone.
“From you? No, Bumper.”
“Well, for the kid’s chow, then.” I tried to make him take a few bucks.
“No, Bumper. You don’t pay nothin’.”
“Thanks, T-Bone. Be seeing you,” I said, and he raised a huge hand covered with black hair, and smiled gold and silver. And I almost wanted to ask him about the silver crown because it was the last time I’d have a chance.
“You gonna put the bracelets back on?” asked the boy, as I lit a cigar and patted my stomach and took a deep sniff of morning smog.
“You promise you won’t run?”
“I swear. I hate those damn things on my wrists. You feel so helpless, like a little baby.”
“Okay, let’s get in the car,” I said, trotting across the street with him to get out of the way of the traffic.
“How many times you come downtown to score?” I asked before starting the car.