The Delta Star (16 page)

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
m
aced 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. “This 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
lice
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.”

“Did he always ask the same thing?”

“Not the last time. Then he said it was real important because her mother was dyin and he was her brother.”

“Ever see him before last week?”

“Never did,” she said. “He wasn’t no on-time guy. No kinda street guy. Had a dark stripe suit on and a necktie.”

“See him on Saturday?”

“Last time was Friday afternoon.”

“Did you tell him where Missy lived?”

“I never told him nothin. I never be knowin where she lived, matter a fact.”

“Did any of the girls on Western know where she lived?”

“Prob’ly not. They mighta told him which corner she worked. If they believed him about havin money for her. I never did believe him. I thought about callin you when I heard she went off that roof. He coulda followed her home or somethin. I didn’t like his looks. Wearin dark shades you couldn’t see through. Him and his phony moustache.”

“How did you know it was phony?”

“Not many guys have a moustache that thick. I done a little work as a screen extra.”

“Hooray for Hollywood,” Mario Villalobos said. “Did his hair look real?”

“Couldn’t tell. He wore a cap like you wear in a sports car. Not a pimp hat. That’s why he looked so off-time. Probably a sicko-psycho that tricked with her a few times. Maybe wanted to go home and stick needles through her eyelids but didn’t know where she lived. I picked up a guy like that once.”

“Do you know anyone who was a good friend of Missy?”

“No … well, yeah, but none a the real girls. There was this sissy, name a… name a … le’s see … Dagwood, I think it was. Yeah, name a Dagwood. I seen Missy once or twice when she was workin over around Sunset and La Brea with this sissy name a Dagwood. Little teeny sissy with gold hair. Looks enough like a girl to be a queen, but wears guy’s clothes, least when I saw him.”

“Know where I can find the sissy?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“They got a few sissy bars not too far from there,” the hooker shrugged. “I think I better be goin now. I ain’t made no money all day.”

“Okay, here’s my card,” Mario Villalobos said.

“I hope you catch him,” she said. “Don’t like them freaks that throw girls off roofs. Hard enough in this world tryin to make a honest dollar without some freak throwin you off roofs.”

“If you change your mind about making a report against the pimp, give us a call on that,” Mario Villalobos said. “You shouldn’t have to put up with some dude using you for an ashtray.”

“Well, he on’y be’s mean to me when I’m bad,” she said. “When I’m good, the man’s full a love!”

Mario Villalobos nodded and opened the car door for the woman. He understood that even hookers need a little soap opera in their lives.

There was something nagging at Mario Villalobos. It was one of those relentless little aches that wouldn’t take shape and wouldn’t go away. There was something that was said to him yesterday, either by Lester Beemer’s landlady or his secretary or the mortician who burned Lester Beemer and shoveled him into an urn. Something that didn’t check.

When he looked at his watch to see if it was time to be hungry, it hit him. It was time to be hungry, but first he had to make a call or two.

“I just wanted to make sure I read your inventory correctly,” Mario Villalobos said to the mortician on the other end of the phone. “You released keys and wallet and a little money to his sister, and that was it?”

“Yes,” the mortician said.

“Was he wearing a wristwatch? His secretary said that he wore an old Timex.”

“No, no wristwatch.”

Next, Mario Villalobos made his first contact with the Pasadena policeman who responded to the call that night in the no-tell motel. He reached the cop at home.

“When I saw that pacemaker identification bracelet I called the doctor, who called the undertaker,” the cop told him.

“Was Lester Beemer wearing a wristwatch?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“No, no wristwatch that I recall,” the cop said. “You might ask the undertaker.”

After Mario Villalobos hung up he lit his seventeenth cigarette of the day, reminded himself that he had to cut down, and thought it over. Then he called Mabel Murphy.

“When you helped Lester’s sister retrieve the personal effects from the office and his apartment, did you find his Timex?”

“How did you know he wore a Timex?” she asked.

“You mentioned it yesterday in passing,” Mario Villalobos said.

“Wasn’t he wearing it when he died?” she asked.

“No, he wasn’t.”

“He always wore it,” she said. “Bought a new Timex every couple years. He was a clock watcher. Very punctual.”

“Did you find any claim checks in his personal effects? Maybe he had the watch at a jeweler’s for cleaning or repair?”

“No,” she said. “And anyway, he never bothered. That’s why he didn’t buy expensive watches. When the Timex stopped ticking, he’d run down and buy a new one. He was the same way about neckties. When they got too stained and sloppy, he threw them in the trash can and bought a new one.”

When Mario Villalobos hung up he lit a new cigarette, forgetting he already had one cooking. Not only was Lester Beemer missing a credit card at the time of his death, but a worthless wristwatch as well. He wished they hadn’t cremated the body.

He knew what would happen if he called Pasadena detectives at this juncture to suggest that maybe they had a whodunit homicide on their hands. They’d say thanks and politely kiss him off. He’d do the same in their shoes. A wristwatch that may have been lost or put in a jeweler’s somewhere? A credit card that could have been left anywhere at any time by the old private eye when he was out romancing whores in downtown L. A.? The Pasadena detectives would suggest that if Lester Beemer had some connection with Missy Moonbeam, and was linked to her death, that was Mario Villalobos’ problem. The little child of the science god in Lester Beemer’s chest had just kicked off because he had his three hundredth whore of the year in a motel room and got all excited. Any other problem was not their problem.

After a futile check of the monicker file for a little swish named Dagwood, he decided to try to find him.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said to the black detective lieutenant who was reading the sports page and eating an egg salad sandwich, “I’m going out barhopping tonight.”

“And here I thought you never took a drink,” the lieutenant said without looking up.

“Just thought I’d tell you in case the Hollywood vice squad recognizes me. I’ll be looking in some Hollywood gay bars for some swish named Dagwood. Thought I’d better tell you in case you hear about it and worry that I’m turning gay.”

“I don’t care anything about your sex life,” the lieutenant said, absorbed in the sports page. “Long as you don’t wear dresses to work.”