The Good Cop

CHAPTER 4

I’ve never been pregnant-just not my thing-but I’ve entered the phase of life where enough of my friends have borne fruit to know how they agonize over how they’ll handle the Big News. Oh, eventually they’ll do the mass Facebook blast. But there are some people who need to know first, and there’s a certain order in which they must be informed: her parents, his parents, the best girlfriend, and so on. The hope is that no one high on the list slips up and tells someone who’s lower on the list, like Aunt Kathy, who then blabs it to everyone else and ruins the precious surprise.

Being a reporter with a big scoop can feel like being pregnant. Eventually, you’re going to tell everyone; in truth, you’re dying to tell everyone. Still, you need to be careful about how you dole out your information. You have to play fair with the various parties involved and give them time to properly digest your surprise. But you also have to be discreet lest some other media outlet gets wind of it and blows your big scoop. And until you do the equivalent of the big Facebook blast-in our case, putting it online and in the newspaper-you’re constantly worried about that damn Aunt Kathy.

So I had to move cautiously, do things in the right order, and hope for the best.

My first phone call was to Hakeem Rogers, the Newark Police Department’s public disinformation officer. Or at least that’s what I called him. I have no doubt what he called me was much worse. We were friendly on rare occasions-basically, the occasions when I wrote something he felt reflected well on his department-but otherwise we’re a bit like a small dog and a big raccoon. We fight constantly, scratching, clawing, and squalling the whole time, though no one ever seems to win.

I dialed the number and was just starting to talk to one of his underlings when I heard Rogers shout, “Is that that”-unrepeatable word, one suggesting an incestuous relationship-“Ross? Put that”-another something unrepeatable, this time suggesting homosexuality-“on my line.”

My call was transferred straight into: “You got a lot of nerve calling me after what I read in the paper this morning. I’ve got every media outlet in New York on my ass because of that crap.”

I stifled the urge to reply, Why, Detective, since when did you learn to read? Instead I said: “Crap?”

“Some blowhard minister grandstands for the cameras-talking out his big, black ass the whole time-and you guys run with it like it’s real news. Since when did one person making totally unverified statements become something you print? I used to have respect for you, but you guys have totally gone in the toilet.”

This was, perhaps, the fundamental reason Detective Rogers and I didn’t get along: we each had pronounced opinions about how the other handled his professional responsibilities. Rogers thought it was my job to make the Newark Police Department look good to the outside world. I thought it was his job to provide information, not pass judgment on what we did with it.

“Newark Police: blowhard minister talks out his black ass,” I said. “Can I use that as a headline? That was on the record, right?”

“Stop being a dick for once. You know damn well it’s not.”

“Well, I got news for you, Detective, that blowhard minister might actually be right.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

I relished what I had to say next: “The Eagle-Examiner has acquired autopsy photos of Darius Kipps that indicate he was tied to a chair shortly before his death-”

“You what?” he tried to interrupt.

“-and I’d like to know how that information fits into the Newark Police Department’s finding that Detective Kipps died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” I finished.

For the next five minutes, he peppered me with questions about how I got these photos, what they showed, and what we intended to do with them. For as much as I didn’t like Rogers-and for as much as we might be at cross-purposes on a story like this-I still had to give him and his bosses every opportunity to comment intelligently on this news, perhaps even to contradict it, before we published it. Playing fair can be a real pain that way.

When I finished, Rogers stayed quiet. I thought I heard him grip the phone tighter. He had been around long enough to know a reporter had just lobbed him a stink bomb-and that he better be careful with it.

“Well, I’d like to remind you that ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound’ was a preliminary finding,” he said. “I’ll have to call you back.”

Then he hung up. He didn’t even lob one last swear word or insult at me, so I knew I had him reeling. And that was fun.

But the fun didn’t stop there. My next call was to Ben Hilfiker, the AG’s spokesman. I went to his cell phone first, which he answered by saying, “Come on, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Isn’t there a law that says you’re not allowed to start bugging me until after lunch?”

“Actually, I’ve got something new to bug you with. So I think that resets the clock,” I said, then filled him in on the photos.

“Wow, Carter. Look at you, all grown up, with the big excloo,” he said, shortening the word “exclusive,” as journalists sometimes did.

“You think this is going to make your boss take a swing at this?”

“I don’t know. It still depends on how hard the wind is blowing,” Hilfiker said. “Why don’t you e-mail me those pics and I’ll get back to you.”

My final call was to the spokesman at the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, who was a nice guy-for a political hack. I went through the same rigmarole, asking to interview both the prosecutor and the medical examiner. At the end, I received the same response from him as I had from Rogers: a somewhat worried, “Let me call you back.”

I guess that’s one way having a scoop is unlike being pregnant: not everyone is thrilled to hear your news.

* * *

The final person who needed to be advised of the latest-and be given ample chance to react-was Mimi Kipps. But since this fell into the category of Things You Don’t Do Over the Phone, I knew it would require another visit to the Rutledge Avenue duplex.

I grabbed an umbrella, because a gray morning looked like it was going to turn into a rainy afternoon, and made my way across the street to the parking garage. About halfway there, on the sidewalk, I passed Buster Hays, who was wearing the usual menagerie of wrinkles and stains that he called a wardrobe. He topped it off with a trench coat. With all due respect to the long and honorable history of the trench-coated foreign correspondent, Buster might be the last reporter in the world who still wears one.

I can’t pretend, walking along in my charcoal gray peacoat, that I was living at the zenith of fashion. I was probably closer to the nadir. But at least my coat was younger than the interns we had running around the office. I’m not sure I could say the same about Buster’s.

“Hey, Ivy, you got my Good Neighbors done yet?” he asked.

Good Neighbors? Good grief. I had forgotten.

“Didn’t you read the paper this morning? Things have kind of blown up with the Kipps thing. As a matter of fact, I was hoping you could do me a favor and-”

He immediately cut me off: “Forget it. No Good Neighbors, no IA.”

“You know, I could go to Tina, tell her you’re holding out on me, and she’ll make you give it up.”

It was a bluff-there is honor among thieves when it comes to ratting out fellow reporters to editors-and he knew it.

“Go ahead. Run off to your little girlfriend. By the time you get back, I’ll have forgotten I ever knew anyone at Newark IA. I’ll probably have forgotten I know you.”

“Come on, Buster, can’t you just give it to me?” I said, aware that I was now whining. “I’m working on a breaking story here. It led the paper today and it’ll probably lead the paper tomorrow. Brodie’s got a big ol’ boner for this thing, and I need to-”

“And then come tomorrow morning when you still haven’t done my Good Neighbors, what leverage do I got? I got Nuttin’ Honey.”

Only Buster would still be referencing a commercial for a cereal that had probably been out of production for twenty-five years. He was just standing there, not quite grinning at me, knowing he had me between a rock and a Good Neighbors. So I gave up.

“You’re a bad man, Buster.”

“I do what I need to do in order to survive in this cruel world,” he said, strolling onward. As he rounded the corner toward the front entrance, he started whistling.

There was no way that in the midst of chasing a scoop of this magnitude, I was going to have time to dig up a story about how Mrs. Doreen Robertson of Bedminster had been so moved by the suffering of the children on her safari trip to Zanzibar that she had convinced her bridge club friends to give money to Tanzanian malaria relief.

But I knew someone who did.

After crossing the street, I surfed through my received calls until I reached a 315 number. As I walked through the garage toward my car, I dialed my new favorite intern, Geoff “Ruthie” Ginsburg.

“This is Geoff,” he answered.

“Geoff!” I said, feigning as much enthusiasm as I could. “How you doing, pal? It’s Carter Ross!”

“Oh, hey! I’m so glad you called! You wouldn’t believe it, but every single pregnancy test has come back negative.”

“Every. Single. One?” I said, now trying for incredulity. Good thing I took a drama class at Amherst. True, I only took it to meet cute girls. But I paid attention. A little.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I need to go to the drugstore and get some more. I’m starting to run low on food coloring, too. You were right, that stuff wasn’t easy to find. I went to three stores before I-”

“Yeah, yeah, Geoff, that’s great, now I…” I tried to interrupt. But Ruthie had been hard at work and wanted to get full credit for it-the interns often act like they’re still in school, still being graded, and don’t want to settle for that B plus. So he kept yammering:

“… found the exact stuff we needed-they have it in Bernardsville, by the way-but it comes in these small bottles. I’ve been squirting it in pretty liberally because I wanted to make sure the tests were accurate. I didn’t want any false negatives. You were right about having people flush their own toilets, by the way. Some of them are a little hesitant about it. The first guy looked at me like I was out of my-”

“Geoff, this is really amazing and you’ve done great w-”

“-mind, but most of them have been really into it. This one lady even had me do it again just because she liked the flushing part so much. It cost me another pregnancy test, but I figured no one would mind too much. I’m going to be expensing all this-”

That was going to be a sight on an expense report: “24 First Response pregnancy tests … $375.58.” I’m glad it was going on his, not mine.

“-stuff. And I figure the paper won’t mind when they see the article we’re going to get out of this. You should hear some of these people’s stories. They’ve been on a waiting list ten, fifteen years to get into these town houses. And now to have them be defective? Can you just-”

“Yeah, Geoff, slow down, big guy. I got something you need to-”

“-imagine what that feels like? And then-this is maybe a sidebar-but I talked to some guys out on the street in front of the town houses and-”

“Geoff!” I said. “That’s all great. And we’ll-”

“But let me just tell you about what these corner boys told me. According to these kids-”

“Okay, okay, take it easy, Geoff,” I said. “I’m sure it’s great, and later you can tell me all about the corner boys. But for right now, we have a bit of an emergency situation and I need your help.”

“Oh!” he said eagerly. “What is it?”

“I need you to do a Good Neighbors feature.”

There was a brief but deliberate silence, followed by: “That … that’s an emergency?”

“I’ll explain later. But for right now, I need that Good Neighbors and I need it quickly. This afternoon if possible. Tomorrow morning at the absolute latest. You know what they’re looking for with a Good Neighbors?”

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I spent the entire first month of my internship doing nothing else.”

“Terrific! So you’re pro. Give me a shout when you’re done.”

“O-okay,” he said. “But I really want to tell you about these corner boys and-”

“Yeah, we’ll talk later, okay? I gotta run.”

I hung up before I could hear his dejected response. I really felt bad for the kid. But in the endless war that is putting out a daily newspaper, there are always going to be casualties. And I’m afraid Ruthie Ginsburg needed to be tallied among today’s body count.

* * *

A light drizzle was falling as I pulled out of the parking garage. Right around the time I passed the seamless border between Newark and East Orange, it had turned into a steady rain. My windshield wipers could keep up, but the sky was so dark I’m not sure I could say the same for my headlights.

I spent the drive giving my brain its first real chance to grind on the big picture: the why, who, and what of a murder. Why would someone want Darius Kipps dead? Who would profit from it? What would they gain?

They were the kind of questions a good detective like Kipps had probably asked himself a thousand times on a hundred different cases. But for as much as I tried to spin a variety of theories, I had neither the information nor the imagination to make any kind of brilliant deductions. By the time I arrived at the Kipps residence, I was no closer to anything resembling an answer. So I focused on the small task at hand-getting a comment from Mimi Kipps for my story-and left the rest for later.

There were no family members milling outside the house on a day like this. I could see light pouring out of those curtainless second-floor windows, so I suspected someone was home. I parked on the opposite side of the street, folded my printouts and tucked them in an inside pocket of my peacoat, where they wouldn’t get wet, then grabbed my umbrella, doing the awkward open-the-umbrella-while-getting-out-of-the-car move. As I walked up the front walkway with my head down, I could feel the chill and the damp trying to work their way in through my coat.

The porch had an awning so I shook out the umbrella, then dropped it to the side. I rang the doorbell and waited.

No one answered. I rang again. Was she in the shower again? Feeding the baby? Maybe I should have called first.

I pressed the bell again, impatient and cold, holding it for a second, listening hard to make sure it was working. And, yes, I could hear a chime. But no Mimi.

Still standing on her front stoop, I pulled out my phone and dialed her cell number. Maybe she was out at the grocery store and left the lights on. She answered on the first ring with, “Please go away.”

“Mimi? It’s Carter Ross.”

“I know. And I know you’re standing on my porch right now. But I have nothing to say to you.”

“I … I’m confused. Did you not like the story today?”

“The story was fine, but I need you to leave.”

“Can I … can I come back later?”

“No.”

“Can we talk on the phone later?”

“No.”

“Uh,” I said, at an unusual loss for words. I had been rehearsing parts of my conversation with Mimi on the drive out, and this was not in any of the versions that had played out in my head. “Mimi, am I missing something here? Yesterday I spent a few hours at your home in the morning. Then I came back in the afternoon. You seemed very keen to have me working on this and now you’re freezing me out? What gives?”

There was a pause. Then: “Pastor Al says I shouldn’t talk to you.”

Ah. The anointed man of God strikes again. “And why did he say that?”

“He … he says you’re an agent of Satan.”

I couldn’t help it: I laughed. “Mimi, no offense, but that’s absurd. Do I look like an agent of Satan? Do I talk like an agent of Satan?”

“Pastor Al says Satan comes in many forms and can be very persuasive.”

“I grant you the prince of darkness is probably a little too subtle to send someone here with horns and a forked tail showing,” I said. “But, honestly, use your head. Use your heart. I was holding your baby yesterday. The little guy was sucking on my finger, for goodness’ sake. You really think one of Satan’s minions would go for that?”

In my time as a newspaper reporter, I had stood on a lot of front porches and tried to talk my way into a lot of houses. This, I was fairly certain, was the first time I had to convince someone I wasn’t shilling for Mephistopheles.

“Maybe … maybe you’re just trying to keep my guard down. I just don’t think Pastor Al would-”

“Look, Mimi, maybe I’m Satan’s soldier and maybe I’m not-it doesn’t sound like anything I can say will convince you anyway-but right now I know one thing I am, and that’s a reporter with a job to do. I came here because I have some photos of your husband you need to see before I write about them in the newspaper. Will you please let me in so you can look at them?”

I heard the deadbolt slide and there was Mimi Kipps, standing on the other side of the screen door, still holding her phone.

“What photos?” she said. I guess her curiosity-to say nothing of her desire to clear her dead husband’s name-was stronger than her fear of whatever menace I posed as Beelzebub’s buddy.

“They might be a little hard for you to look at,” I admitted, slipping my phone in my pocket. “They’re autopsy photos.”

Her hand had traveled as far as the handle of the screen door, but it wasn’t going any farther. Still, I was making progress.

“I still don’t think I … Maybe, maybe I can have Mike look at them.”

Mike as in Mike Fusco, Darius’s sometime-partner. It sounded like a fine compromise to me.

“Okay. Can you call him? Have him come out here?”

“Just wait here,” she said, closing the door.

I shoved my hands in my pocket. I was a little miffed at having to stay out on the porch like I was a Labrador who had been playing in puddles. But, at the same time, it was hard not to feel empathy for Mimi. The poor woman had to be reeling. She had lost her husband and didn’t really understand how or why, but probably didn’t have much time to think about it, mostly because she still had two kids to care for. She had her minister filling her head with superstitious nonsense, a pushy reporter trying to get her to comment on his story, untold numbers of relatives coming and going and yet-through it all-she was, in some very basic way, alone.

I looked down at the flower bed, where the dead leaves had gone slick and shiny in the rain. Somewhere underneath, there might have been a bulb yearning to push through, or a perennial with roots full of possibility, or a seed waiting to germinate. The leaves had been like a blanket through the long winter, providing needed insulation. But unless someone got in there and cleaned them out, whatever lay underneath would be smothered, lacking the air and sunlight it needed to thrive.

The dirt needed to be uncovered. There seemed to be a lot of that going on around here.

* * *

Three, maybe five minutes later, Mimi again appeared at her front door.

“Mike is on his way,” she said. “Here. You look a little cold.”

She opened the screen and handed me a mug of coffee. I expressed my gratitude because that’s how my mother raised me. Mimi closed both doors, and as soon as I was sure she couldn’t see me, I emptied the contents of the mug in the flower bed.

After roughly another ten minutes on the porch, time I spent trying to fend off a case of the chills, Mike Fusco rolled up in what was clearly not a Newark Police Department vehicle. It was a shiny, black Ford F-150 with jacked-up suspension. Between that and all the muscles, I was beginning to think maybe he was overcompensating for something.

I watched him get out of his truck-actually “descend from his truck” might be more accurate-and walk with long but unhurried strides through the rain. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a different color tight-fitting sweater from yesterday, and he didn’t have a hat or umbrella. Yes, he was a tough guy. I tried to pretend like I hadn’t been shivering.

When he reached the porch, he nodded at me, then slid by me. He opened the front door, announcing, “Hey, Mimi, it’s me.”

He did a quarter-turn in my direction and said, “Come on in.”

I was barely inside the small entryway when Mimi appeared at the back of the living room, saw me, and said, “He can’t come in.”

“Why not?” Fusco asked.

Mimi immediately looked sheepish. But she still said, “Pastor Al says he’s an agent of Satan.”

“You gotta stop listening to that nut,” Fusco said, scowling.

“He’s not a nut, he’s-”

“You still giving him money?” Fusco interrupted. “I thought you said you were going to stop.”

Mimi looked down at her bare feet and started mumbling something. I couldn’t figure out the dynamic between her and Fusco, who not only felt comfortable enough to walk into the house without knocking-and invite me in-but knew about her finances. Maybe this was a battle Darius had been fighting, trying to get his wife to stop donating to the too-slick pastor, and now Fusco was stepping in, providing backup for his fallen partner.

“Never mind. We’ll talk about it later. Why don’t you go up and shower. I’ll keep an eye on the baby,” Fusco said, nodding in the direction of Jaquille. The miracle baby was sleeping in the Pack ‘N Play, wrapped in what appeared to be a baby straightjacket.

“Okay,” she said, disappearing upstairs. Fusco sat. I sat. And, like that, there we were again: eyeballing each other while Mimi Kipps showered. He broke the silence more quickly this time. “So you got some photos to show me?”

“Yeah,” I said, reaching inside the pocket of my peacoat and pulling out my folded printouts. I handed them to Fusco, who went through them one by one. He brought two of them up to his face for closer inspection, then put them down.

“You sure this is Kipps?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“And someone just leaked these to you?”

“Something like that.”

“You sure they’re not doctored or anything?”

“Positive. Saw it with my own eyes.”

He nodded.

“My source said it looked like someone tied him to a chair,” I added. “That how it looks to you?”

He grimaced. “Those photos are pretty blurry. Without really being able to look at them? I don’t know. But, yeah, he was restrained somehow, with something. A rope? Some wire? Shoelaces? Believe it or not, a good forensics guy can tell the difference.”

“Okay,” I said. “But just to make sure I’m not jumping to conclusions. I mean … this isn’t a suicide. Something weird happened, yes?”

“Yeah,” he said, staring at the screen of the television, which was off. Then he added a more emphatic: “Yeah.”

I let him sort through things for a few moments. He was no longer looking at the television but rather through it, at some distant spot that may as well have been a mile away.

“So what’s the scene like at the precinct right now?” I said, just to snap him out of it. “How did that whole Pastor Al press conference play?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned his head toward me. “My captain basically told me to disappear for a few weeks, said I was going to be placed on administrative leave, said to call it a ‘mental health break.’ I said no way, I don’t want that nut bird stuff in my file. You get something like that on your record, it can seriously screw up a promotion. So captain said, ‘Call it what you want to. I won’t put anything in your file. I just don’t want to see you around here for a while.’”

It sounded like the cop version of that shirt at Tee’s place, the one that said, WHY DON’T YOU GO PRACTICE FALLING DOWN?

He shook his head in disbelief, adding, “I even had to turn in my service weapon.”

Mostly to keep Fusco talking, I said, “What do you make of that?”

He grasped the corner of his lip in his teeth. It was a very untough look. He might not have been aware he was doing it.

“You think the captain knew you were … looking into the Kipps thing?” I prompted.

“Who says I’m looking into the Kipps thing?”

I made a palms-up, you-think-I’m-stupid-or-something gesture. “I think there’s a grieving widow upstairs who is convinced her husband didn’t kill himself, and I’m betting she’s asked you for help. And you don’t strike me as the kind of guy who would turn down a request like that.”

I thought for sure I had him now. That’s right, Mike Fusco. You’re a big hero. Now tell the friendly newspaper reporter all about it …

Most guys would grab that and run with it. But Fusco just sat there, looking at me with the same mile-off stare he had been giving the television.

“At risk of stating the obvious, your department is trying to throw a big old blanket over Darius Kipps’s death,” I said. “Unless I’m missing something, there’s no way anyone with half a brain could look at the marks on that body and say, ‘Oh, yeah, this man killed himself and was acting alone.’ Now, some people are saying Kipps was mixed up in something. Other people, like you, are telling me no way. All I know is, something is up. Someone killed Darius Kipps, for some reason I have yet to determine. Are you going to help me figure it out or not?”

“I don’t-” he started, then stopped himself. “Look, I can’t be talking to you. You know that, right? I shouldn’t have talked to you before. My department has policies about that, and even on leave-or whatever they’re calling it-I have to follow that. I’m only here as a favor to Mimi. I’ll show her these pictures, and if she has something to say, she’ll call you, okay?”

“So you’re just going to-”

“She’ll call you,” he said more firmly.

I could tell I was shoving him too close to the edge. And furthermore, I realized trying to move him any more was going to be futile. Mike Fusco didn’t get pushed around.

“Okay,” I said. “But, look, why don’t you just give me your number? That way, if I get anything else, I can call you and I don’t have to bother Mimi directly? I don’t want to upset her any more than she’s already upset, you know?”

It was, I thought, a reasonable request. And apparently Fusco thought so, too. I held out my pad and pen. He grabbed them, then wrote “Mike Fusco” with a phone number underneath.

For the time being, it seemed like the best I was going to get.

* * *

The rain had slackened but was still coming down hard enough to make the puddles dance as I went back outside. I grabbed my umbrella from where I had left it but didn’t bother opening it. If Fusco didn’t need one, neither did I.

Which just meant I was damp by the time I got back in my Malibu. What is it with these tough guys, anyway?

Feeling defeated, I considered consoling myself with an early lunch. A good, wholesome lunch. The kind that would be served on a real plate and, perhaps, even include vegetables and a side salad. Unfortunately, I was in a part of town where the food options were boundless-as long as you were looking for fried chicken. It’s hard to eat healthy in the hood.

I was still considering what to do about this dilemma three minutes later when my phone rang. It was a 609 number, which likely meant state government.

“Carter Ross,” I said.

“Hey, it’s Hilfiker.”

“That was fast. What’s going on?”

“Well, we’re about to have two conversations.”

“Okay.”

“The first is the one we’re having on the record, that you can go ahead and print in that silly newspaper of yours,” he said. “The second is the conversation I always wished people would have with me when I was a reporter, the one where I explain why the first conversation doesn’t make much sense.”

“Oh, this ought to be good,” I said, pulling over to the side of Central Avenue and fishing my notebook out of my pocket.

“Right, so here goes with the first one. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“The attorney general’s office has determined that there is no need for an independent investigation into the death of Darius Kipps. The attorney general has every confidence that the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office will conduct a thorough investigation and resolve this matter in a satisfactory fashion.”

I scribbled furiously, writing in the self-taught shorthand I had developed over the years. Hilfiker helped by saying it slowly enough-“talking at notebook speed,” is what we call it-so I could get it down verbatim. I waited until he was done and then said, “Really?”

“Really.”

“You got a feather by any chance?”

“No, why?”

“Because you could knock me over with one right now,” I said. “You guys are seriously taking a pass on this? You told your boss about the pictures, right?”

“I did. I even showed them to him.”

“And he knows we’re going to run with this?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t say that explicitly. But he’s not a dummy. I don’t need to explain to him what mud-mucking journalists like you do for a living.”

“So … okay, I guess let’s have the second conversation now. Because, you’re right, I’m totally perplexed.”

“Okay, well, basically-we’re off the record now-your pastor took the heat off.”

“My pastor?”

“Yeah, whatshisname. The megachurch guy. LeRioux.”

“Why would he … that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he felt like he had gotten all the mileage he could out of this thing and decided he was done.”

“So he gets his face time and he goes home?”

“Something like that,” Hilfiker said.

“That’s cold.”

“Tell me about it. It’s also pretty stupid, frankly.”

“How so?”

“He’s screwing himself out of a payday.”

“I’m not following you.”

Hilfiker sighed. “Haven’t you learned to be a little more cynical by now? Think about it. I’m sure Detective Kipps has a life insurance policy-all cops do, especially Newark cops. Problem is, if his death is ruled a suicide, the policy is no good. That means the Widow Kipps is destitute. On the other hand, if she is suddenly flush with a half million bucks’ worth of insurance company money…”

“Maybe she expresses her piety by giving ten percent of it to the anointed man of God, in loving memory of her dead husband,” I completed.

“There you go.”

“So why would he call off the dogs?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t part of the phone call. And his honor the attorney general didn’t say. But I’m guessing once he heard LeRioux was dropping it, he thought there was no reason for him to pick it up. You can bet no one in Essex County is going to be clamoring for him to step in.”

“Okay, but let’s leave the politics out of this for a second-”

“This is New Jersey,” Hilfiker said. “You can never leave the politics out of it.”

“I know, I know, but…” I began, struggling to put words to my thoughts. I watched a woman in a hijab hurry down the street, carrying two plastic grocery bags, bowing her head to keep her face out of the rain.

“Well, call me naive, but I thought maybe your boss might just do the right thing here,” I said.

“Who says he’s not?”

“Come on, you saw those pictures.”

“Yeah, but you’re thinking like a reporter. This is a lawyer you’re dealing with. He might have just decided that, legally, it was right to let the locals deal with it. Just because the attorney general is the top law enforcement agent in the state doesn’t mean he has to get involved every time someone disputes a traffic ticket.”

“This is hardly a traffic ticket…”

“You know what I’m saying. Sometimes the AG has to pick and choose, and maybe he figures this one is best left where it is.”

“In other words, the Newarkers made this mess, so let them clean it up.”

“Well, that’s another way to look at it. But yeah. And, remember, Newark makes the mess, but it’s really Essex County that ought to be cleaning it up. That’s how the food chain goes. Sure, it leads up to my guy eventually. But it hits the Essex County prosecutor first.”

“Right, right,” I said.

The hijab woman had rounded the corner, out of sight. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask the attorney general’s spokesman, so I didn’t object when Hilfiker said: “Anyhow, I gotta run. Good luck with it.”

“Thanks. For both conversations,” I said, ending the call and putting my car into Drive at the same time. I pulled a quick U-turn and pointed myself back in the direction of Mimi’s house.

I didn’t know if she’d believe me-what with me being an agent of Satan and all-but she needed to know that her beloved Pastor Al, the man she trusted so implicitly, had simply been exploiting her to get free advertising on the evening news. And now, having used her, he was dropping her and going back to whatever it was he really preferred to be doing.

Like drop-kicking orphans.

* * *

Arriving back at the Kipps household, I got out of the car with my umbrella open this time. I didn’t need any more of that tough guy stuff.

I was about to walk across the street when I happened to glance up at those naked second-story windows. I saw Mimi Kipps-or at least the top half of her-wearing one towel on her body and another on her head, having an animated conversation with someone. And being the naturally curious reporter that I am, I stopped to see who.

She wasn’t looking at the person very often. She was mostly puttering around the room. Making a bed, maybe? On occasion, she would bend over, pick something up, and put it somewhere else, like she was cleaning up toys in a child’s bedroom. She moved with the practiced efficiency of a mom who had done this before, but she also maintained her half of the dialogue the entire time. Her body language suggested she was angry, tense.

I kept watching-yeah, so I’m a voyeur, what’s your point? — but still couldn’t tell who was carrying the other side of the exchange. I moved up the street a little bit, to give myself a different angle. And there, standing with his arms crossed, was Mike Fusco. He was leaning against the wall with his head tilted to one side, giving no hint as to his emotional state.

And it struck me as, well, a little strange that Mimi would be talking with him while she wasn’t dressed. I realize that as a starchy WASP, I tend to be a smidge prudish about such matters. But still. There are a scant number of women in my life who would feel comfortable talking to me while wearing a towel. Half of them I’m related to and the other half I’ve …

Slept with? Could Mimi and Fusco be …

No. I chased the thought from my mind. Or at least I was trying to. And then Mimi made a large, frustrated motion-an “I’ve had it” kind of gesture-and Fusco walked up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders.

She didn’t fight it, just immediately let her body slump, giving in to the massage. Fusco worked on her for about a minute or so while Mimi stood there, giving me the chance to think that, well, maybe they were just really, really good friends. There was still some possibility this could be platonic, right? Mimi needed a human touch. Fusco wanted to give her some comfort, and he was probably the kind of guy who’d be better communicating with his actions than his words.

Besides, no woman who had given birth five months earlier-to say nothing of a woman who had just lost her husband-would be trolling for some kind of random hook-up. A guy might. Guys can pretty much turn off their brains and shut out those kinds of petty distractions when it comes to sex. But women are too practical about human relations for that sort of thing. So this was probably just …

I was still trying to work out that line of reasoning when Mimi Kipps blew it right away. She turned into Fusco, wrapped an arm around the back of his head, and pulled him close for a kiss. And it didn’t look like it was their first. Their heads fell into a familiar rhythm. His hands went for her back and butt, and I wondered how much longer the towel was going to stay in place.

Before things shifted to something more suited for late-night cable, Mimi pushed Fusco out of sight-into a back bedroom, perhaps-leaving me to sort out the ramifications of it all.

Fusco and Mimi. Ramifying, as it were.

Yikes.

I’m sure Mimi wasn’t the first widow to take up with her husband’s best friend, but wasn’t this a bit … soon? Don’t they usually wait a month or two-or, heck, at least until the deceased is in the ground-before they …

And then, finally, the lightbulb went on above my head: there was no need to wait because it had already been going on. This wasn’t a new romance. This was an affair. I thought about the first time I saw Mimi with Fusco, how they had been sharing a cup of coffee with such intimacy, how she had draped her hand so casually on his shoulder.

Then I thought about that conversation they had earlier, where Fusco had essentially berated her for giving money to the pastor. I had dismissed it as Fusco taking up his buddy’s battle, never thinking it was possibly his own battle. I had been watching a lover’s spat.

Yeah, Mimi and Fusco had probably been doing this for a while, which meant …

I felt like I needed one of those feathers to knock me over again. Here I was, slamming my brain around, trying to imagine these big, complicated scenarios that led to the death of Darius Kipps. And all along, it had been one of the oldest and simplest of sins. Lust.

Mimi Kipps was just another adulterous wife. Mike Fusco was just another swinging dick. And they both wanted the third wheel out of the way.

I began imagining a new scenario, one that made the pieces fit: Darius learned his quasi-partner was having an affair with his wife, got blisteringly drunk for the first time in a decade, and, while still smashed, angrily confronted Fusco. And sure, Kipps was a big guy. But he was also borderline blacking out, so Fusco was able to subdue him easily.

Maybe that’s when the chair tying came in. I could imagine Fusco tying up Kipps, just so they could talk without Kipps trying to throw punches. Maybe Fusco argued that he and Mimi were in love and that Kipps might as well face the fact that his marriage was over.

But Kipps refused, raved that he was going to get Mimi back no matter what, maybe even threatened to harm her. Whatever it was, it made Fusco realize he had to get rid of Kipps. So Fusco grabbed Kipps’s gun, untied him, pushed him in the shower in the locker room, and, blam, game over.

The ballistics would match. And Fusco would have known the water from the shower would destroy or alter key evidence, like gunshot residue or blood spatter. And when other cops heard the gunshot and came to investigate, there’s Fusco, just another cop in the bedlam. No one would have realized he was there all along.

Or heck, maybe it was even more sinister than that. Maybe this was a premeditated act, and Mimi and Fusco had come up with some kind of plan to get rid of Kipps and make it look like suicide. They tied him down, forced him to drink a bunch of booze, then went for the kill.

Either way, it worked. Sure, Mimi had been hell-bent on clearing her husband’s name, trying to convince me and others he never would have committed suicide, even going so far as to have Fusco tell me about the inconsistency with the bourbon (which may have been invented). But all that-as Ben Hilfiker had so cynically pointed out-was just for insurance purposes.

The reaction of the Newark Police Department certainly made sense. The cops were just embarrassed that one of their own had killed himself and wanted the thing to be over with as soon as possible.

Even Pastor Al’s actions were now a little more logical. He must have learned about the affair or guessed it was happening-Fusco and Mimi weren’t being terribly discreet, if glomming in front of a window was any guide-and washed his hands of it, dropping his call for an independent investigation.

Or maybe he just decided to let a higher authority sort it out.

* * *

I could have stood there for another hour, cataloguing the implications of my new discovery. But a car rolled by slowly, its occupants-an elderly couple-peering at me curiously. I suddenly became aware I was just a weird white guy standing in the rain in a town where I didn’t belong, staring at someone’s house. I couldn’t have been any more obvious with binoculars and a telescope.

I folded my umbrella, got back into my car, and skittered away before I attracted too much more attention. Or before my two lovebirds finished. Maybe I should have given Fusco more credit than that. But if he was still stuck in the backrub-as-foreplay method of seduction, he couldn’t necessarily be ruled out as a member of the Minute Man Club.

Back on Central Avenue, I again considered my dining options-there’s a Popeyes and a KFC, after all-but instead drove toward Redeemer Love Christian Church. It was time to pay a visit to the anointed man of God and I knew, both from my travels and from a multitude of billboards, that I could find him and his spiritual healing on West Market Street in Newark.

My plan was, basically, to play both smart and dumb. I knew he had called the attorney general-though, since I had that from an off-the-record source, I needed to get him to admit it. That would be the smart part. The dumb part was to ask why he made that call and pretend like I didn’t know the answer.

As I drove, I accessed our archives on my phone so I could quickly read over the story we had written about him and the church a few months back. The narrative started in early seventies Newark with Pastor Al, then a high school gym teacher, holding services in his basement. During a bleak time for still-riot-scarred Newark, a time when vacancy rates were soaring and “urban renewal” had become a grim joke, LeRioux was a charismatic preacher who offered hope. He took in wayward souls, gave them new birth through Jesus, and joined them with his flock.

Membership doubled every few years. Most tithed, and the money was constantly being plowed back into expanding facilities. Before long, the gym teacher was preaching full time and moved into a storefront on Sussex Avenue, then a former bowling alley on Norfolk Street. A church-affiliated day care was opened. Then a senior living facility. Redeemer Love Christian could take care of you from cradle to grave.

As the congregation grew, so did Pastor Al’s reputation and import. The story left as an open question when, exactly, LeRioux had found the time to get his doctorate or what institution had given it to him. But somewhere along the line he started calling himself Reverend Doctor. Maybe he just liked how it sounded.

Either way, the story made it sound as if Pastor Al had a mastery of political science, turning the perception that he could influence his parishioners’ votes into leverage to get what he wanted, whether it was funding for his day care, tax breaks for church-owned housing projects, or contracts to wash police vehicles at a chain of car washes the church had opened around the city.

Sometime in the nineties, he convinced the city council to more or less donate a chunk of land on West Market Street, and that was where his congregation built its current home-a massive, modern megachurch, complete with offices, broadcast facilities for Sunday’s services, and a theaterlike sanctuary with a large stage and seating for two thousand. The sanctuary was called LeRioux Chapel-named after Pastor Al’s parents, of course, because he was far too modest to name it after himself.

But no one was fooled. The church was essentially a monument to the Reverend Doctor Alvin LeRioux.

The real nut of the story came from a splinter group who said they had been cast out of the flock for asking too many questions about church finances. According to them, Redeemer Love Christian had revenues of approximately $22 million a year from tithes and various ancillary industries. But no one would give them-or our reporter-any accounting of where the money went. I guess they had noticed Pastor Al’s silk suits, too.

It reminded me of the old joke about the priest and the televangelist, talking about how they determined what percentage of the offering stayed with them and what percentage went to God’s work. The priest said he drew a line in the middle of his office, then tossed all the money in the air. Whatever landed on the left went to him, to the right went to God. The televangelist said he had a slightly different method: he threw all the money in the air, and whatever God caught, He could keep.

So I more or less knew what I was getting myself into as I parked on the street-eschewing Redeemer Love’s large, recently paved, fenced-in lot-and walked through the front door of the church offices. I passed a sign on a stanchion that read, PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE WHILE IN GOD’S HOUSE, and I complied, just in case God was ready to hit me with His version of roaming charges. I was greeted by a receptionist, and when I told her I wanted to talk to Alvin LeRioux, she looked at me like I had just asked for an audience with the pope.

Nevertheless, I was ushered toward a set of double doors that had REV. DR. LERIOUX imprinted on a brass plate to the side. The doors led to a large office suite that contained several efficient, diligent female underlings, dressed in conservative suits that ran the color spectrum from black all the way to slate gray.

The one who appeared to be the alpha underling-she was wearing a wireless headset, like she was the operator standing by to take my order-was in her midthirties and, I must say, quite easy on the eyes. She was tall and elegant, with light-brown skin and the kind of cheekbones that were made for modeling. She fairly oozed cool professionalism, but I still couldn’t help but wonder if Pastor Al was getting some of her on the side. If he was? Well, bravo for him.

She greeted me by saying, “How can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Reverend LeRioux.”

“And may I ask who you are?”

“You may,” I said, and left it at that. I hate it when people beat around the bush.

It tripped her up for just a second, enough to put a small crack in her Little Miss Unflappable facade. But she recovered quickly enough. “Well, then, who are you?”

“Carter Ross, agent of Satan,” I said, smiling.

Another crack. She actually frowned.

“Sorry, that’s just what your boss calls me behind my back. I’m really a reporter for the Eagle-Examiner, and I have to say the Satan thing has been way overblown. We were using him as a stringer for a while, but we canned him. He kept trying to convince everyone that Milton had misquoted him in Paradise Lost and we all got tired of hearing it.”

This time she was determined not to miss a beat: “And may I say…” she paused to rephrase, “Why do you need to speak to the reverend?”

I kept right on smiling. “I’m writing a story about Darius Kipps, the dead cop Pastor Al was very interested in last night but has apparently forgotten about today. He also forgot to invite us to the press conference, but it’s okay-I won’t hold it against him.”

“Please have a seat,” she said, pointing to a pair of easy chairs and a couch that surrounded a small coffee table in the corner.

Then she disappeared behind a door to her right. Probably to fetch security.

* * *

But it wasn’t a security guard who soon came out to greet me. It was the reverend-perhaps-doctor himself. And if irritation correlates to perspiration, he was plenty aggravated. He was already mopping himself by the time he greeted me.

Still, he seemed determined to play nice. With what was intended to be a friendly smile, he looked down at me-being six-and-a-half feet tall, I suppose he looked down on most people-and gave me a cologne-doused handshake, guaranteeing me another day of smelling like eau de Al. He asked me if I needed anything to drink and I declined. Then he thanked the alpha underling, whose name was apparently Desiree, and invited me into his personal chambers.

I followed him into a room with high ceilings and dimensions large enough to accommodate a decent game of Wiffle ball. He hobbled over behind his desk like a man ten years overdue for a knee replacement, and I tried not to pop an Achilles tendon every time my feet sank into his extra-plush carpeting. It was like DuPont had started making a brand called StainMaster QuickSand.

Pastor Al plopped himself in a chair, removed his gold-wire-framed glasses, and took another opportunity to mop his hangdog face. As he did so, I pulled a pen and notebook out of my pocket. No need to make him think this was a social call.

He replaced his glasses, sighed, and in that voice-of-God bass asked, “So what can I do for you today, Mister Ross?”

So I was Mr. Ross now. It was an upgrade from Lucifer’s cabana boy, or whatever he called me around Mimi.

Since he was showing courtesy, I did the same and kept my tone respectful, even while my words were sharp: “I’m working on a follow-up story about Darius Kipps, and to be honest I’m a little perplexed by your actions, Reverend. Last night you held a press conference and announced that the Newark Police Department was telling a big, bad lie. Then you said the state attorney general ought to step in. But this morning you called the attorney general and told him thanks but no thanks. Can you explain that for me?”

Pastor Al actually squirmed in his seat. He did the face-wiping routine again. “You ask very challenging questions, young man,” he said. “I can see why your editors would consider you a good reporter.”

And I can see you’re stalling me, Pastor Al, I thought. But, mindful I had to keep my inner wiseass on a leash, I just sat there with my notebook open and my mouth shut.

“Have you ever heard of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican?”

“You’ll have to refresh my memory, Reverend. It’s been a long time since Sunday school.”

“This comes to us from the Gospel of Saint Luke. Now, the Pharisees were very pious men, and they were much admired for their righteousness. The Publicans were the tax collectors, and I think we all know, no one likes the tax collector”-he threw in a pause because I guess this is where his congregation would usually share a chuckle. “Now, as the parable is told to us by Luke, these men enter the temple to pray. The Pharisee stands up and prays to God about his own virtue, telling God that he fasts and tithes, thanking God that he is not like the lowly tax collector. The Publican, now, the Publican, he stands at a distance. He dares not raise his head to God. And when it is his time to pray, he beats his breast and humbly asks God to have mercy on him, for he is a sinner.”

Pastor Al paused to let his words have their impact. For all his flaws, he was a mesmerizing preacher.

“Now, who do you think Jesus tells us is justified in the eyes of the Lord? Who is more favored by the Father?”

“Uh,” I said, because I felt like it was a trick question.

“The Publican!” he boomed. “The Publican is justified because he recognizes his unworthiness before God! Jesus teaches that ‘everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’ So I am mindful of the Pharisee and the Publican as I admit to you I made a mistake in my handling of this matter.”

“Mistake?” I said.

“Yes. I believe they call it looking before you leap.”

What, I wanted to say, because you didn’t know your parishioner was two-timing with the deceased’s best friend? But mindful of my plan to act somewhat dumb, I said, “How so?”

“I’m afraid I fell back on some of my old instincts. In my days as a young pastor, I felt there was only one way to accomplish a goal, and that was to pursue it with straightforward tenacity and intensity-to make a lot of noise, in essence. It is only in my more senior years that I have come to realize there are many different ways to accomplish a goal, and sometimes they are quieter. The Lord hears a whispered prayer just as well as He hears one that is shouted.”

And in my days as a young reporter, I might have fallen for a line of fiddle-faddle like that. But in my more senior years, I recognized the reverend was talking out his ass. And while in polite conversation we allow people to obfuscate like this all the time, I wasn’t going to let Pastor Al get away with it here.

“I’m sorry, Reverend, but I don’t have a doctorate in religion”-and chances are neither do you, you fraud-“so you’re losing me a little bit. Let me keep it simple for a second: Did you call the attorney general this morning?”

I thought maybe Pastor Al wasn’t going to give in so easily-that I was going to have to wade through more a few more miles of Confusion Creek to get to where I needed to go-but he just squirmed a little more and then, finally, said, “Yes, I did.”

“And did you inform him you were dropping your call for an independent investigation into the death of Darius Kipps?”

“Yes, I did,” he said, without squirming this time.

“And why did you do that?”

“I received information at the highest level that made me think differently about the matter.”

It was the first semi-useful thing he said, and I was scribbling it in my notebook as I asked, “Did the attorney general give you that information?”

“No.”

“Then who, at the highest level, did?”

“That is something I would rather not say,” Pastor Al replied. “I have to respect certain confidences in this matter. But what I heard satisfied my … curiosity in this matter, enough that I considered it closed.”

“So what did you hear?”

“I was asked not to divulge the details publicly, and I will honor that request.”

“Okay. So you … you now trust in the conclusions reached by the Newark Police Department?”

“I do.”

“Because, you know, my paper has come across evidence that Detective Kipps’s death may not have been a suicide.”

I told him about the photos. He paid careful attention but asked no questions. When I was done, he said, “Well, that sounds like something to leave to the authorities. I’m sure they will handle that according to their policies and procedures.”

“Right,” I said, mostly just to stall so I could consider how to word my next question. It was time to start playing a little less dumb about the Mimi-Fusco affair. I doubted Pastor Al would get too explicit in his answer-it didn’t seem like his style-but I wanted to know if he knew. Maybe he could whip a biblical passage on me, something fearsome from the Old Testament about torturing fornicators.

The question came out as: “Was there anything in Mimi’s actions or in the actions of Detective Fusco that might have … influenced how you felt about this matter?”

“Detective Fusco?” LeRioux boomed. “What would Detective Fusco have to do with this?”

“Oh, you know him?”

“I do.”

“Well, he just seems to have taken a lot of interest in Mimi,” I said, hoping Pastor Al would catch my drift.

He didn’t. “Are you saying Detective Fusco is continuing to investigate this matter on his own?”

Oh, he’s investigating a lot more than that, I thought.

“I’m not sure what Detective Fusco is or isn’t doing,” I answered honestly. “But he sure seems to be providing Mimi with a great deal of … comfort.”

It was, I decided, my last gambit. If he didn’t play into it this time, I was dropping it.

“Well, that is a very Christian thing of him to do,” Pastor Al said. “I will have to make sure he is lauded for that in some way. Perhaps we can invite him to our Law Enforcement Recognition banquet next fall.”

I looked at Pastor Al for any sign of falseness. But there was nothing on his drooping face except for loose jowls.

He didn’t know about the affair. And I sure wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. For the time being, I didn’t want Mimi and Fusco knowing I was onto them. I couldn’t take the chance of informing Pastor Al and having him turn it into an opportunity to lecture Mimi about the seventh commandment.

Why Pastor Al dropped his call for an independent investigation was once again a mystery to me. Maybe he really did learn something that made him buy into the official version. Or maybe what he learned was that someone “at the highest level” was making him an offer he couldn’t refuse, just to shut him up.

Somewhere, I suspected, one of Pastor Al’s car washes might have a fleet of Newark City street sweepers in it.

The myth of gun-running is that given the large numbers of illegal weapons found on city streets, the traffickers must be pushing product in huge quantities. The truth is that Red Dot Enterprises, like other criminal syndicates that dealt in guns, kept their quantities modest. A small number of guns was, quite simply, easier to hide.

So there was no huge cache of weapons, no warehouse stockpiled with firearms. Their entire inventory, stashed here and there, was contained in a few duffel bags.

That said, selling them was a nice, lucrative sideline-a great way to supplement other income.

The economics of gun-running are really no different than any other prohibited product. The prohibition itself helps drive up the perceived value of the item because it means the demand cannot be met through the ordinary mechanisms of legitimate commerce. The prohibition also creates an imperfect marketplace for the item, wherein information-about everything from supply to price-can be easily obscured.

From there, Red Dot Enterprises relied on the simplest of all business principles: buy low, sell high.

The guns that Red Dot Enterprises offered to their clients, those brand-name.22s and.38s that were so easily tucked into waistbands, typically retailed for somewhere between $299 and $329. Sure, you could get guns for less-Hi Point made a 9 mm that went for roughly $150-but Red Dot Enterprises didn’t bother with those. The margins were too low.

Every once in a while, Red Dot Enterprises had a customer ask for something with a little more “stopping power,” as gun people liked to call it. Those requests were honored on an as-needed basis. Requests for automatic weapons were rejected. They were just too hard to find. Besides, they tended to attract a little too much attention.

Mostly, Red Dot stuck with the low-caliber guns it could acquire easily. A typical shipment involved twenty guns for the standard $8,000-or $400 apiece. The associates at Red Dot Enterprises had a rule that they didn’t sell a new gun for less than $500, which guaranteed they’d made at least $2,000 per shipment. That more than compensated for the time and gas money.

But, in truth, the new guns were only part of where the money was. New guns were great for luring in customers. They were a kind of status symbol in the hood-every corner punk wanted to be the guy with the new gun-and they had a certain practical value, because the owner could be reasonably assured a gun that came in a new box would function properly when it was absolutely needed.

A big chunk of the money, though? That was in the used gun market. Old guns littered the hood like so much McDonald’s trash, getting used and reused many times. Red Dot Enterprises had devised a variety of ways to acquire old guns while spending virtually no money to do it. As a result, every used gun Red Dot Enterprises sold was nearly 100 percent profit. And Red Dot had devised a way to get a far better price than most of the other gun runners, who might sell a used gun for as little as $50 or rent one out for even less.

So, essentially, Red Dot Enterprises had two types of customers. There were high-end buyers, who were looking for-and received-the high-end, new merchandise. And then there were the customers who came to Red Dot Enterprises for a new gun, balked at the price tag, and happily settled for used merchandise. Either way, there was money to be made.

And for Red Dot Enterprises, the great thing about guns were: the more people have, the more other people feel they need one. It was a business model based on a fear that fed itself.