Brad Parks - The Good Cop

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.