Brad Parks - The Good Cop

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.