Free Black Water Transit by Carsten Stroud Page B

motivated assailant. The only description he was able to give the investigating officers from the Sixth Precinct, and this while sitting on the back steps of an EMS ambulance, talking through a purple face twice normal size and lips that looked like raw Polish sausages, was that she was female and black and built like an artillery shell.
    “What millimeter?” asked a cop from the Sixth, a recon vet with four ugly years in Vietnam stuck deep into his ribs, who had early on in this case decided that whatever the victim had to say, he was certainly no judge of anything military and had probably spent the entire Vietnam War up in Toronto smoking ganja and spray-painting stupid Marxist slogans on the sides of public buildings.
    “What do you mean?” says Rubinek, looking more than usually snitty. Blood was running from his nosedown into his goatee and one of his eyes was puffed and half closed and the eyeball was bright red. He looked like the hand puppet from hell.
    The cop sighed and repeated the question.
    “You said she looked like a shell. I asked you what size.”
    Rubinek wiped some blood off his teeth with a swab of cotton and spat blood onto the sidewalk. Some of it hit the cop’s boot. Eddie Rubinek was a guy who never knew when to quit. He’s still at it, by the way; if you see him around Centre Street, ask him how’s his nose. He never gets it. He never will.
    Anyway, shortly after the report came in from the Sixth, the CO of the Two Five called the Sex Crimes section and told Casey Spandau to get her butt into his office right now. He then asked her where she had been and if she had anything to say about the incident.
    Casey Spandau just sat in the wooden rail-back chair he kept in his office exactly for this purpose and she gives him back that Chinese stare and asks if she could have a member of the NYPD’s black police officers association, the Guardians, as a witness to the meeting. The CO looked at her in silence for almost a full minute.
    Then he asked her once again, straight out, had she in any way contributed to the thumping-out of Eddie Rubinek? She never broke her stare and never said a word. He fought back a red cloud around the edge of his vision and swallowed hard twice, told himself again that she was worth the effort.
    “Spandau, can I ask you a hypothetical?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Shawana Coryell is a little white kid and she’s scooped by three black guys. Are you still on the case?”
    “Yes, sir! Of course. It’s not the kid’s fault.”
    “Okay. And instead of Eddie Rubinek we have Johnny Cochran, and Johnny does his usual giant-squidact, sprays sticky black shit all over the courtroom, the jury goes stone-blind, achieves the approximate IQ of bark mulch. Bingo, the perps walk. Are you now waiting for Johnny Cochran outside the D train exit?”
    “I firmly believe that O.J. was framed, sir.”
    “Yeah? So was Jesus Christ, but then he never took Mary Magdalene apart with a Swiss Army knife. Casey, spare me your totally fucked-in-the-head opinions on the Simpson case and answer my damned question.”
    “To answer that would … seem inculpatory, sir.”
    “Inculpatory! God’s holy trousers! Now we got Kennesaw Mountain Clarence goddamn Darrow here. Okay. The Eight Ball is as black as dime-store licorice, Spandau. Does she get tuned-up for being the stupidest judge in Christendom?”
    “She should be fired. She’s a disgrace to her people.”
    “Oh man. What color
are
your people, Officer Spandau?”
    “What color?”
    “Never mind. I’ll tell you. Your people are blue. There are thirty-one thousand of them in the city. Everybody else is and will forever be a total goddamn stranger. Now. Did you or didn’t you tune-up Eddie Rubinek?”
    “Sir, I can’t answer that question.”
    “Why the
hell
not?”
    “I … any answer I give you … would be dishonest.”
    “Spare me that condescending crap, kid. You know where this will go, don’t you? Your badge is in the