envious. If Darius Kipps was dirty, Tee might or might not know it. But he sure would know someone who knew.
I arrived at his store to find a half-dozen knuckleheads hanging around his front door. They were generally good kids—if you could ignore the pot smell that clings to their clothing—though their presence on Tee’s sidewalk led people to make certain assumptions about what was going on inside. Tee, who was a legitimate businessman, finally got fed up one day and posted a sign in his front window, NO, WE DO NOT SELL WEED HERE .
As I got out of my car, six heads immediately swung my way—well-dressed Caucasian men tend to have this effect on Clinton Avenue in Newark—but then they saw it was me. I’m a frequent enough visitor to Tee’s store that they know I’m not there to arrest them, harass them, or otherwise disrupt their mojo. With their alarm level back down, they returned to what appeared to be a dice game. And not Dungeons & Dragons.
I hit the buzzer by Tee’s front door and waited for the lock to release. When I walked in, Tee was designing a T-shirt for a pair of customers, who were seated in front of his desk.
“Uh-oh, it’s the IRS!” he hollered from behind his desk.
“Sir, this is a random audit,” I said, playing along. “I’m going to have to ask for your last five years of returns, including all associated receipts.”
“Receipts? What’s that? You know a brother like me can’t read. My massa won’t let me.”
“Well then, I’m afraid we’re going to have to throw you in jail with all the other darkies. Now excuse me for a second, I have to plant some drugs on you.”
“C’mon now, don’t make me go all Rodney King on your pasty ass.”
I think the customers knew we were kidding because we were both smiling broadly. But they looked like nice folks, and I could tell we were making them feel uncomfortable. So I pulled out of the act and said, “You want me to come back later?”
“No, no, I’m just finishing. Gimme a second.”
Tee took another five minutes wrapping up with his customers, while I perused some of his inventory, including the ever-popular shirt that showed a stick figure lying on the ground under the words, WHY DON’T YOU GO PRACTICE FALLING DOWN?
I was admiring another one—a top-ten list of “Yo Mama’s So Ugly” jokes—when Tee came over and shook my hand.
“So what’s going on?” Tee asked. “You working on something?”
I told him what I knew about Darius Kipps, finishing with, “So, basically, I need to figure out if he’s crooked.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Tee said. “They all crooked.”
I had repeatedly tried to convince Tee of my belief that, in fact, the vast majority of policemen are not corrupt—in the same way the vast majority of newspaper reporters don’t make up stories. But it only takes a few reprobates to skew the reputation of the rest of them. Newark, for example, had roughly 1,200 police officers last time I checked. If even 99 percent of them were law-abiding, that still meant there were a dozen cops rampaging around the city, wreaking havoc.
Alas, it seems like Tee had experience with all twelve of them.
“C’mon, I’m serious,” I said. “I’ve got a picture of him. You think your friends outside are hard-core enough to know if Kipps was involved in something he shouldn’t be?”
“Them? Nah. They just playin’, you know what I mean?”
I did. In Newark, there were pretend gangs and then there were serious gangs, and it was important to know the difference. Kids like Tee’s knuckleheads might call themselves a gang. They might adopt some of the gestures, mannerisms, and clothing of a gang. They might even say they were Bloods or Crips. But, in reality, they were a gang in roughly the same sense as the Little Rascals. They hung together for camaraderie and mutual protection. They were basically harmless.
“Besides,” Tee pointed out, “you said this guy is Fourth Precinct, right? Those
I arrived at his store to find a half-dozen knuckleheads hanging around his front door. They were generally good kids—if you could ignore the pot smell that clings to their clothing—though their presence on Tee’s sidewalk led people to make certain assumptions about what was going on inside. Tee, who was a legitimate businessman, finally got fed up one day and posted a sign in his front window, NO, WE DO NOT SELL WEED HERE .
As I got out of my car, six heads immediately swung my way—well-dressed Caucasian men tend to have this effect on Clinton Avenue in Newark—but then they saw it was me. I’m a frequent enough visitor to Tee’s store that they know I’m not there to arrest them, harass them, or otherwise disrupt their mojo. With their alarm level back down, they returned to what appeared to be a dice game. And not Dungeons & Dragons.
I hit the buzzer by Tee’s front door and waited for the lock to release. When I walked in, Tee was designing a T-shirt for a pair of customers, who were seated in front of his desk.
“Uh-oh, it’s the IRS!” he hollered from behind his desk.
“Sir, this is a random audit,” I said, playing along. “I’m going to have to ask for your last five years of returns, including all associated receipts.”
“Receipts? What’s that? You know a brother like me can’t read. My massa won’t let me.”
“Well then, I’m afraid we’re going to have to throw you in jail with all the other darkies. Now excuse me for a second, I have to plant some drugs on you.”
“C’mon now, don’t make me go all Rodney King on your pasty ass.”
I think the customers knew we were kidding because we were both smiling broadly. But they looked like nice folks, and I could tell we were making them feel uncomfortable. So I pulled out of the act and said, “You want me to come back later?”
“No, no, I’m just finishing. Gimme a second.”
Tee took another five minutes wrapping up with his customers, while I perused some of his inventory, including the ever-popular shirt that showed a stick figure lying on the ground under the words, WHY DON’T YOU GO PRACTICE FALLING DOWN?
I was admiring another one—a top-ten list of “Yo Mama’s So Ugly” jokes—when Tee came over and shook my hand.
“So what’s going on?” Tee asked. “You working on something?”
I told him what I knew about Darius Kipps, finishing with, “So, basically, I need to figure out if he’s crooked.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Tee said. “They all crooked.”
I had repeatedly tried to convince Tee of my belief that, in fact, the vast majority of policemen are not corrupt—in the same way the vast majority of newspaper reporters don’t make up stories. But it only takes a few reprobates to skew the reputation of the rest of them. Newark, for example, had roughly 1,200 police officers last time I checked. If even 99 percent of them were law-abiding, that still meant there were a dozen cops rampaging around the city, wreaking havoc.
Alas, it seems like Tee had experience with all twelve of them.
“C’mon, I’m serious,” I said. “I’ve got a picture of him. You think your friends outside are hard-core enough to know if Kipps was involved in something he shouldn’t be?”
“Them? Nah. They just playin’, you know what I mean?”
I did. In Newark, there were pretend gangs and then there were serious gangs, and it was important to know the difference. Kids like Tee’s knuckleheads might call themselves a gang. They might adopt some of the gestures, mannerisms, and clothing of a gang. They might even say they were Bloods or Crips. But, in reality, they were a gang in roughly the same sense as the Little Rascals. They hung together for camaraderie and mutual protection. They were basically harmless.
“Besides,” Tee pointed out, “you said this guy is Fourth Precinct, right? Those
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