Detective Steven Rush (3)

Detective Steven Rush
San Francisco P.D.* (3)
 
                   1955

       (The Ginsburg Report)

     After stashing the other witnesses to the assassination in a separate room, t open the door to  the interrogation room where Ginsburg is fidgeting at the only table in the room.

   " I hope this isn't going to take all day, Your Fuzziness!" he grouses.

     "It will go a lot smoother if you don't piss me off too much, Ginsburg," I answer. "Now… did you see who the shooter was?"

     I pull up a wooden chair and flip it around so I can sit with my legs spread and my forearms resting on the back.

     "All I saw was an old brown Hudson slow down to a crawl.  Then a white cat with a flat-top and shades pointed a rifle out of the back seat window and let go three pops real quick, grazing my sleeve and dropping my associate's boyfriend. Then the car sped off down the street. That's all I know."

    I finish scribbling my notes and look at an impatient Beat poet. "You indicated at the bar that you had some idea who might want to see you dead badly enough to risk a daytime public assassination.…. I'm assuming for now the target was you."

     He takes out a red kerchief and mops his face all the way up to the top of his balding noggin. "How much do you know about the murder trial of the killers of Emmett Till down in Mississippi last month?"

       "Not much," I admit. "I know that two white men were accused of killing a fourteen-year-old negro boy. I know they got off, even with some pretty damning evidence against them."

    "You need to hear the whole nine yards to dig what makes me believe the Klan is trying to off me."

    "Take your time, I tell him. "I have all day,"
 
     He takes a deep breath while nervously fiddling with a pencil someone had left on the table.

       "OK," he begins….."On August twenty-eighth, a black boy from Chicago was kidnapped and brutally murdered. His body was  later thrown into the Tallahatchie River. Two white cats, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, were arrested and tried for the crime."

      I try to recall the details of the newspaper article I'd read, without much success. "What did the boy do to warrant being murdered?"

      Ginsburg gets visibly hot under the collar thinking about it. "The boy was from the north and wasn't wise enough not to whistle at a white woman in the South. The woman is the wife of Roy Bryant….In Bryant's good-old-boy mind, that was worthy of a death sentence."

     I start to get back some of the details of the recent news story. "Didn't they confess to a lesser crime?"

    "Yeah," Ginsberg confirms. "They both confessed to kidnapping the boy, but maintained they released him unharmed…. The all-white jury bought that fantasy and acquitted them on the murder charge on September, twenty-third."

     I scratch my head and ask, "Where do you tie-in to this sad story of miscarriage of American justice?"

      The  poet frowns at me. "If you'll  shut your fuckin' trap for a minute, I'll clue you, Rush!.....Three days later, a few Princeton students drafted a petition denouncing the racist court decision, which is amazing in itself, considering the racist history of that southern university. The school newspaper wrote an article defending and promoting the petition and got a hundred and fifty students and faculty members to sign it."

      Ginsburg glances at the mirror.  "I flew down there after I heard about the petition and also signed. I spoke at a rally that night. During the speech, I was heckled by some hooded clowns and threatened with  lynching if I didn't go home and shut the hell up."

     "So that's why you think the Klan is behind the shooting today?"

     Ginsburg shakes his head and shoots me a disgusted look. "Of course not! I get heckled and threatened all the time!..I don't even know if the cats in hoods were Klansmen. They might have been students with nothing better to do, as far as I know."

     Ginsburg takes a second to calm down. "What makes me think it's the Ku Klux Klan is the letters I've been getting with no return address from somewhere in Oakland since I got back. I got four if them, altogether. In them they threaten to lynch me like a n*gger for signing that petition…. They claim to be Klan and I believe them. Each letter was written by a different person, and they all sound serious."
 
     I stand up and look into the large two-way mirror facing the squad room, knowing the Lieutenant and others are looking in. "I'm gonna need to see those letters, Mister Ginsburg. Do you still have them?"

     "Of course I have them, Copper!" he says in disdain. "I'd be a fool to get rid of the only evidence I have...I'll bring them in today if you want. I don't like the Fuzz, but I'm a a little scared. Today was proof enough for me that my life is in danger.

     "I'll have a uniform escort you home. You can give the letters to him."

     As he gets up, I look into the mirror. "At least I have a place to start now."

      When I'm walking Ginsburg out of the interrogation room, I can't resist a jab at the rude little Beat poet. "So you hate the fuzz until you need a cop, huh?"

     He glares up at me. "Just because I may need a plumber to clean the shit out of my drainpipes sometimes doesn't mean I'll be inviting him to my fuckin' dinner!"

     "Power to the people!" I chuckle. "Start the revolution, but get be home for dinner!"

     "I don't like you, Rush," he seethes.

     "I'll try to keep you breathing anyway, Mister Ginsburg," I smile down at him. "It's my job, after all."


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