The Good Cop by Brad Parks

arm.
    “Pastor Al!” she said.
    “Noemi, my child,” he said, without getting up.
    “It’s so good of you to come.”
    “I came as soon as I heard.”
    I thought, at that point, he would offer a prayer, read some Scripture, or do something appropriately nonsecular. Instead, he gestured at me.
    “Noemi, I was hoping we could share some words in confidence,” he said. “I am troubled by the presence of a reporter here.”
    And I am troubled by ministers who wear two-thousand-dollar silk suits. But at least I’m polite enough to keep it to myself.
    He continued: “I know the media enjoys publicizing tragedy for its own purposes. But these are private moments to be shared by family and loved ones.”
    Mimi looked over at me, obviously torn. I had earned her trust, and I could tell she liked me. But, at the same time, Pastor Al trumped Reporter Carter in her world.
    I saved her the trouble of having to kick me out.
    “Actually, I was just leaving,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”
    Pastor Al was still mopping his forehead as I left.
    *   *   *
    Relieved to be no longer serving as a human pacifier, I returned to my car, having already decided on my next course of action. With apologies to Mike Fusco, I had to figure out if Darius Kipps had been a straight-up cop.
    If he wasn’t, it meant he probably did kill himself, in which case I was just wasting my time. It’s not that crooked cops don’t make for great copy—they do—it was Brodie’s suicide policy. There would just be no getting around it. Besides, I’d never get anything on-the-record. No one was going to piss on a dead cop’s grave, even if he was bent.
    Then again, if Darius Kipps wasn’t dirty, it opened the possibility the suicide wasn’t what it seemed, in which case I had a load of dynamite on my hands. Either way, I wasn’t going to find my answer in the phone book or on the Internet. I was going to find it on the streets.
    I started driving through the heart of the hood, down a series of avenues I have come to know as well as any place I’ve ever lived. During my years at the Eagle-Examiner , the milieu had become familiar, even comfortable: the vacant lots and abandoned buildings, the aging Victorians and ancient storefronts, the new construction and glistening chain stores. It’s the hodgepodge that is present-day Newark, a city forever striving to renew itself, with mixed results.
    I love it when some visiting journalist parachutes into town for three days to write the Definitive Newark Story. Because the fact is, if they’re looking to write “Newark: City on the Rise,” they’ll find that. And if they’re looking to write “Newark: Still the Same Hellhole Despite What the Mayor Keeps Telling People,” they’ll find that, too. To me, the city is like its own kind of Rorschach test. What you choose to see—whether you want to be optimistic or pessimistic in your view—says as much about you as it does about the place.
    My destination was the Clinton Hill section of Newark and my man, Reginald “Tee” Jamison. The nickname came from the thriving T-shirt shop he ran—no one, other than perhaps his wife, called him by his real name. I had written a story about him a few years back, and we had since become unlikely friends. I say “unlikely” only in a statistical sense, inasmuch as there are roughly two hundred million white people living in America, and Tee is friends with only two of them.
    Still, I was glad to be one of the two. Despite the superficial differences between us—he has more hair in two of his dreadlocks than I have on my entire head, not to mention more muscle in one of his pectorals than I have in my entire body—we were kindred spirits in more ways than not, and we enjoyed deciphering our respective worlds for each other.
    Plus, he grew up in Newark, shuffling between a variety of foster care placements in all parts of the city, so he has a network of contacts that would make any reporter