The Blue Knight Read Online Free PDF Page A

dangerous as a stickup man.
    I decided I’d patrol the hotels by the Harbor Freeway. I had a theory this guy was using some sort of repairman disguise since he’d eluded all stakeouts so far, and I figured him for a repair or delivery truck. I envisioned him as an out-of-towner who used the convenient Harbor Freeway to come to his job. This burglar was doing ding-a-ling stuff on some of the jobs, cutting up clothing, usually women’s or kids’, tearing the crotch out of underwear, and on a recent job he stabbed the hell out of a big teddy bear that a little girl left on the bed covered up with a blanket. I was glad the people weren’t in when he hit
that
time. He was kinky, but a clever burglar, a lucky burglar. I thought about patrolling around the hotels, but first I’d go see Glenda. She’d be rehearsing now, and I might never see her again. She was one of the people I owed a good-bye to.
    I entered the side door of the run-down little theater. They mostly showed skin flicks now. They used to have a halfway decent burlesque house here, with some fair comics and good-looking girls. Glenda was something in those days. The “Gilded Girl” they called her. She’d come out in a gold sheath and peel to a golden G-string and gold pasties. She was tall and graceful, and a better-than-average dancer. She played some big-time clubs off and on, but she was thirty-eight years old now and after two or three husbands she was back down on Main Street competing with beaver movies between reels, and taxi dancing part-time down the street at the ballroom. She was maybe twenty pounds heavier, but she still looked good to me because I saw her like she used to be.
    I stood there in the shadows backstage and got accustomed to the dark and the quiet. They didn’t even have anyone on the door anymore. I guess even the weinie waggers and bustle rubbers gave up sneaking in the side door of this hole. The wallpaper was wet and rusty and curling off the walls like old scrolls. There were dirty costumes laying around on chairs. The popcorn machine, which they activated on weekend nights, was leaning against the wall, one leg broken.
    “The cockroaches serve the popcorn in this joint. You don’t want any, Bumper,” said Glenda, who had stepped out of her dressing room and was watching me from the darkness.
    “Hi, kid.” I smiled and followed her voice through the dark to the dimly lit little dressing room.
    She kissed me on the cheek like she always did, and I took off my hat and flopped down on the ragged overstuffed chair behind her makeup table.
    “Hey, Saint Francis, where’ve all the birdies gone?” she said, tickling the bald spot on my crown. She always laid about a hundred old jokes on me every time we met.
    Glenda was wearing net stockings with a hole in one leg and a sequined G-string. She was nude on top and didn’t bother putting on a robe. I didn’t blame her, it was so damn hot today, but she didn’t usually go around like this in front of me and it made me a little nervous.
    “Hot weather’s here, baby,” she said, sitting down and fixing her makeup. “When you going back on nights?”
    Glenda knew my M.O. I work days in the winter, night-watch in the summer when the Los Angeles sun starts turning the heavy bluesuit into sackcloth.
    “I’ll never go back on nights, Glenda,” I said casually. “I’m retiring.”
    She turned around in her chair and those heavy white melons bounced once or twice. Her hair was long and blond.
    She always claimed she was a real blonde but I’d never know.
    “You won’t quit,” she said. “You’ll be here till they kick you out. Or till you die. Like me.”
    “We’ll both leave here,” I said, smiling because she was starting to look upset. “Some nice guy’ll come along and . . .”
    “Some nice guy took me out of here three times, Bumper. Trouble is I’m just not a nice girl. Too fucked up for any man. You’re just kidding about retiring, aren’t