There were lots of things the cops didn't know about Albert Grubb but which they were going to learn. One thing was that Albert Grubb didn't get his muscle mass at Jane Fonda's exercise salon. He got his muscles from a place far away. In a prison in northern California where he had spent the last eleven years of his life. Where he had nothing to do all day except pump iron and be given ice cream and candy and cigarettes by other members of the Aryan Brotherhood for whom he served as hit man. Albert Grubb had hated niggers and slopeheads long before he went to prison and joined the Aryan Brotherhood. Albert Grubb hated niggers and slopeheads even if they didn't wear blue uniforms and wake him up in the morning. And of course he hated everyone in blue uniforms even if they weren't niggers and slopeheads.
There was something else that Wilbur Richfield and Sunney Kee didn't know about Albert Grubb: he was an institutional man.
Albert Grubb had been out of prison only three months, but he had left a trail like Hansel and Gretel in the forest. And still they hadn't rescinded his parole. Upon being released from prison, he had failed to report to his parole officer. Next, he had "forgotten" to show up for a job interview. Next, he had been "unable" to get a driver's license because he couldn't pass the exam. Then another missed opportunity for a job interview. Then, when he showed up at the parole office, he had liquor on his breath. Obviously. And his eyes were dilated from amphetamines. Obviously. And still they had not rescinded his parole.
Albert Grubb had only a 90 I. Q. but he was smart enough to know what was good for him and what was not. And he couldn't for the life of him figure out why his parole officer didn't know. Albert Grubb had had his sabbatical. He was sick and tired of life out on the street. He couldn't bear the thought of getting up and going to another job interview for some boring job he didn't want in the first place. Everyone expected him to do things which gave him a headache and made him grumpy. The fact is, Albert Grubb had an everloving, gut-twisting need to go home. Back to his eight-by-eight-foot cell. To his ice cream and weight lifting, and good-time rapes of every whiskerless kid in the yard, and bashing the faces of niggers and spies in the other prison gangs. To all the things that gave him pleasure.
The first of three backup units pulled up out front at about the instant that Albert Grubb raised up out of bed in his yellow-stained jockey shorts. The team of Jane Wayne and Rumpled Ronald was climbing the stairs to the apartment house at about the same instant that Albert Grubb picked up the dumbbell, hefted it, but decided he'd better not use weapons or they might shoot him.
Two other teams of cops were getting out of their radio cars at about the same moment that Wilbur Richfield decided that Albert Grubb could turn railroad tracks into monkey bars. At about the same moment that Albert Grubb let out a manic hyena laugh and said: "I'm glad they sent a slopehead and a nigger."
Wilbur Richfield partially ducked the first punch that Albert Grubb threw. It only caught Wilbur Richfield in the shoulder. It only dislocated that shoulder.
Sunney Kee drew his stick and tried all the tricks he had seen growing up as a child in Bangkok and later in Taiwan, in all the Bruce Lee movies. But he found out, as had a thousand cops before him, that they work only for Bruce Lee. In real hand-to-hand combat, people like Albert Grubb just refused to cooperate with the various martial-arts moves as all of Bruce Lee's enemies had done. Sunney Kee, who was small and quick and agile, was only making Albert Grubb madder by darting around the bedroom and slapping him with that nightstick, while Wilbur Richfield tried to reach his right-handed holster with his left hand, crying out in pain from the torn deltoid.
There was now absolutely no doubt in Wilbur Richfield's mind that he should shoot down Albert Grubb like a rogue elephant. But Wilbur Richfield couldn't get the holster unsnapped with his good hand, not when Sunney Kee came crashing into him after being thrown across the bedroom by Albert Grubb, who was just getting warmed up.
"Shoot him!" Wilbur Richfield screamed to the brave little rookie who still believed in the movies of Bruce Lee.
Sunney Kee didn't obey his training officer. Instead, he stood up, assumed a martial-arts pose with his stick, and struck Albert Grubb right across the wrist, shoulder and knee before the behemoth had a chance to react. But alas, police academy instructors-who, like Bruce Lee, always have the cooperation of their subjects when demonstrating self-defense-did not always tell it like it is.
"You'll break his wrist with that move," Sunney Kee had been promised by his police academy instructor.
"You'll paralyze his knee with that one," another had promised.
"You'll put him through the wall!" a dozen martial-arts films had promised Sunney Kee during his days as a devotee.
But all it did was make the Albert Grubbs of this world mad. In truth, given his size and power and love of pain, Albert Grubb might not have been stopped by Reggie Jackson with a Louisville Slugger.
"Shoot the motherfucker!" Wilbur Richfield screamed, thrashing with his ruined right arm, unable to get to the holster which had been twisted clear to the back of his Sam Browne when the body of Sunney Kee knocked him into the hallway.
And just when Sunney Kee, who had an I. Q. of 140, learned something that Albert Grubb with an I. Q. of 90 had known instinctively-that makers of martial-arts movies were full of shit-Albert Grubb landed a punch on top of the head of Sunney Kee, the portion of the body that the physical training instructor promised would break the fist of an attacker.
It nearly broke the skull of Sunney Kee. Actually, it knocked him loopy. Sunney Kee was trying to stand on boneless legs and was seeing all sorts of Taiwanese fireworks and couldn't get the measure of the words that Wilbur Richfield was screaming at him: "Shoot the motherfucker!"
Albert Grubb then broke Sunney Kee's jaw and splintered his cheekbone and smeared his nose over to where his right eye could almost look inside.
Sunney Kee never saw Rumpled Ronald slamming Albert Grubb across his howitzer head with a stick, nor did he hear the four other cops who responded to the call, nor did he see Jane Wayne riding Albert Grubb like a jockey as the giant roared into the kitchen knocking over tables and chairs, spinning his dear old mother right out of her wheel chair onto the linoleum floor.
Rumpled Ronald in the heat of battle showed why Mace is so risky a proposition in violent combat. He drew his can of gas, pointed it at the thrashing mastodon and triggered it. But the upside-down nozzle was pointed at himself. He Maced his own armpit. Right up the short-sleeved uniform shirt. His armpit was on fire!
The most extraordinary part of the brawl was the behavior of Aggie Grubb. With Sunney Kee bleeding from nose, mouth and ears, and Wilbur Richfield still trying to get at his gun, and Rumpled Ronald lying on the floor with two cracked ribs, and Jane Wayne and the other four cops trying to squeeze off Albert Grubb's carotid artery no matter what the police commission and the city council and the press thought about the outlawed choke hold, and while screams of pain and curses terrified the entire apartment house, Aggie Grubb managed to right her wheel chair and get back in it.
Two things happened that would go down in police folklore. First, Albert Grubb extricated himself from under the pile of bodies, staggered back into the corner of the kitchen smashing through a maple hutch and adding a few more cuts to his face and arms, and showed the cops what so far they had accomplished. There was one handcuff dangling from his enormous wrist. The thing he did next was what cops would talk about. He took the loose cuff and snapped it shut on his wrist. On the same wrist. Unencumbered now, wearing two cuffs on one wrist, he thought of San Quentin and gave them the grin of a happy boy going home.
He said, "Okay, now we fight."
And while five young cops, including Jane Wayne, faced the horrifying prospect, two wounded older cops who knew better came staggering from the hallway into the kitchen. One was Rumpled Ronald and the other was Wilbur Richfield, who was finally holding his service revolver in his left hand.
"No, we ain't fightin no more," Wilbur Richfield said hoarsely. "T
his little war's over."
Albert Grubb said, "You can't shoot me. I ain't got no weapon. You'll get in trouble."
Wilbur Richfield said, "You'll get dead, motherfucker. It's worth it."
Albert Grubb studied the black cop. He listened to the quivering voice, saw the hand trembling against the trigger pull, and knew that this nigger would shoot his face clear off if he twitched.
"Okay, boys," Albert Grubb said. "I'm all yours. Gentle as a lamb."
What happened next was what usually happens after a fearful fight or chase, when cops are raging and terrified. It horrifies bystanders and editorial writers and lawyers and judges when later the cops are charged with using excessive force. In such situations it has always happened and always will, despite all the training in the world. Five terrified raging vengeful people, those who were able physically to function after the maiming battle, leaped on their gentle lamb, and with punches, nightstick blows, kicks, choke holds and handcuffs, managed to play a little catch-up.
The other moment that would go down in police folklore occurred when Albert Grubb was down on the floor, covering his head, taking his not unexpected lumps, thinking how he'd get his turn when he got back home again and got to bash some spies and niggers in the prison yard.
What happened was that Aggie Grubb wheeled her gnarled skeleton body over to the pile of cursing, screaming, vengeful cops who were trying to inflict everything short of death on Albert Grubb. And she became a cheerleader.
"Kick him! Punch him! Use that stick!" she screamed.
And one of the cops thumping Albert Grubb looked up, stunned.
Aggie Grubb was really into it. Her brittle eyes were gleaming like handcuffs. She strained forward in her wheel chair to see a cop cracking the noggin of Albert Grubb with his stick.
"Kick him!" Aggie Grubb screamed, saliva drooling down her chin. "Use your feet! Punch his eyes out!"
It was probably the cheerleading of Aggie Grubb that stopped the game of catch-up, more than it was the exhaustion of the players. All the cops, Jane Wayne included, looked at the mother of Albert Grubb in wonder.
"Well, ya ain't gonna stop now, are ya, ya chicken-shits?" she screamed, baring her single tooth. Drooling.
Henceforth, whenever the cops of Rampart Division met to drink and ventilate and recall the bad old times, Aggie Grubb would be referred to as The Mother of the Year.
If there was any justice or irony to the situation, it occurred after Sunney Kee was taken away by ambulance-eventually to be given a medical pension for neurological injuries, and after Rumpled Ronald was driven code three to the hospital with two cracked ribs, in too much pain to accept a blow job from The Den Mother, who was the duty nurse that afternoon-when Albert Grubb, bleeding from a dozen head wounds, was being led down the stairway, his hands cuffed behind him. He was indeed as docile as a lamb, hoping they wouldn't keep him in county jail too long before sending him back home to San Quentin. Albert Grubb suddenly remembered that he might need his allergy medicine, in that the pollens had been blowing wild all week, what with the Santa Ana winds.
"How about tellin my ma to give ya my medicine?" Albert Grubb yelled to the cops.
"I'd like to give you some double-aught shotgun pellets," Jane Wayne said, wondering how badly Rumpled Ronald was hurt.
"Come on, sweet stuff," Albert Grubb grinned through bloody teeth. "I got asthma."
Jane Wayne had been thinking of how she failed to get the choke hold properly clamped to the twenty-two-inch neck of Albert Grubb. She was thinking of how the carotid choke hold was the only weapon of value against animals like Albert Grubb in the sudden hand-to-hand fighting that police officers have to do. She was thinking how impossible it would be to use taser guns in such situations without shooting each other. She was thinking how Rumpled Ronald Maced himself and could as easily have Maced one of them. She was coming to the inescapable conclusion that for one human being, even of superior strength, to overcome the resistance of another who really didn't want to cooperate, the choke hold was the only weapon, outside of deadly force.
She was thinking how the city council and the ACLU and the police commission and the press didn't like the idea of choking the necks of the Albert Grubbs of this world, fearing they might lose a few Albert Grubbs from time to time. She was thinking all this, and of how one city councilman stood up and said that the use of Mace was as rough as the cops should ever have to get.
"You need your asthma medicine, Albert?" she asked, with eyes as crazed and deranged as The Bad Czech's.
"Yeah, baby," Albert Grubb grinned. "I knew you wouldn't let a sick man suffer."
"Well, Albert, since we can't legally choke you animals anymore, here's a little medicine, compliments of your city councilman."
Jane Wayne drew the Mace can from her Sam Browne, and before Albert Grubb saw it coming, he had a snootful of gas and was writhing on the ground, yelling. After which she sprayed it in his mouth. Lots of it.
Because of incipient emphysema he ended up in the prison ward of the county hospital with respiratory complications, and nearly died. Three cops later swore to Internal Affairs investigators that Albert Grubb was gassed during the fight, and Jane Wayne was ultimately cleared of the charge of excessive force leveled by Albert Grubb, who they decided was a poor loser.
Aggie Grubb defended Jane Wayne by saying that of course he was Maced during the fight and she'd have given her eyetooth if they'd stuck the Mace can up his ass. She was just disappointed that the cops didn't do a real number on the bastard, who should have been douched to death when she had the chance.
The Mother of the Year became a Rampart heroine when she said that boys like hers not only proved that Father Flanagan of Boys Town was full of shit, but that kids like Albert could turn Mother Teresa of Calcutta into an abortionist.
***
Ten o'clock came and went and Mario Villalobos did not receive any intelligence reports on Russian spies. He was a little disappointed. It was a dreary day and there were a lot of routine follow-up reports to catch up on. A fruitcake call would have helped relieve the monotony.
And while Rumpled Ronald was being treated for his cracked ribs and was realizing that his twenty-year pension did not make him immortal, he was approached by a black woman who had seen him brought in by ambulance.
She was wearing green silk shorts, knee boots, a green jersey see-through top, with a sequined lime jacket thrown over her shoulders. She wore heavy orange lipstick and orange blush on her mocha-colored flesh. Her hair was not her own but was obviously a wig, done in orange spikes. In all, she wasn't the height of haute couture, but she sure as hell attracted attention walking down the street. And that was her business.
She stood watching Rumpled Ronald lying inside a cubicle in the emergency ward, and had seen them hang up his uniform shirt. She was nursing an ugly salve-covered burn on her left shoulder and she started toward Rumpled Ronald three times.
When the doctor left to check X rays, she approached. "Officer?" she said tentatively.
"Yeah?" He looked up at the hooker. "I can't be dealing with police problems, lady."
"My old man burned my shoulder," she said. "I been thinkin about makin a report."
"Call the station," Rumpled Ronald said. "I'm in no shape to be taking reports."
"But he's a pimp. I thought you all'd be interested."
"Call vice," Rumpled Ronald said. "They'll be glad to take a report. They don't like pimps."
"I got somethin else I wanna talk to the po-Yict about," she said.
"Oh!" Rumpled Ronald said, moving around painfully on the stretcher, turning his rumpled face away from the hooker. "Gimme a break! I just survived a five-Pamper day!"
"It's about that white girl Missy," the hooker said. "I hear on the streets she got pushed off that roof."
"What white girl? What roof?" Rumpled Ronald moaned.
"The Wonderland Hotel," she said. "A girl got throwed off the roof. I thought I should tell you all I know if somebody's
killin workin girls."
Ten minutes later Mario Villalobos got a telephone call from a voice he hardly recognized. The voice was full of anguish and misery and self-pity, and finally he realized who it was.
"Ronald?" he said. "What happened?"
"There's a hooker here with some information about a case you're handling," Rumpled Ronald said. "I got some busted ribs and my armpit got Maced and they had to shave off the hair, and I'm so sore I can't even accept a blow job from The Den Mother, and I only wish I could take my brand-new pension and get the fuck outa here and go back to America except that the animal that busted my ribs was an American and I'm getting involved in a homicide investigation and I don't want no part of it!"
Mario Villalobos drove to the hospital and had a brief conversation with the hooker who called herself Bo Derek Smith. They sat in the detective's car in the hospital parking lot. As was to be expected, she had changed her mind about making a pandering report or any kind of report against the pimp who had burned her with the cigarette. Usually he was nice to her, she said, and if she made the report he'd just get out on bail and set fire to her or pull her nipples off with a pair of pliers. So she thought it best to tolerate the shoulder burn and to go ahead and let him use her for an ashtray when she was bad. And to try to be a better girl in the future and make lots of money for him.
She did however decide to talk about Missy Moonbeam, because even pimps didn't like sicko-psychos who totally destroyed good merchandise.
"Two times I run into this guy last week on Western Avenue," she told Mario Villalobos. "This white guy. Sorta big with black hair. He ast about Missy Moonbeam, you know, like where she hustled and where she lived. Said he used to be her ol man and had some money for her."
"What kind of car did he drive?"
"He came walkin up. Once I was with three girls. Once I was with another girl. I wear different wigs so I don't think he knew he talked to me twice."
the Delta Star (1983) Page 15