Brad Parks - The Good Cop

Take all those factors and add their general ineptitude with this sort of thing, and it wasn’t hard to understand why they had missed so badly. It would have been something approaching a miracle if they had actually killed him-a hundred to one shot, especially with that popgun.

They knew before they even rounded the corner, as that fifteenth shot was still echoing, that they hadn’t killed him. They hoped the Red Dot Enterprise guys maybe wouldn’t find out, but of course they did; Red Dot seemed to know exactly where this Ross guy was at all times, so it knew quickly that Ross was on the move again.

The Mercedes guys worried that perhaps the Red Dot wouldn’t give them a second chance, that they had blown their one and only opportunity to get those free guns. But their contact at Red Dot had been very understanding.

His only request was that they not botch it the second time.

Having shared his big theory, Raul Ibanez got in a hurry to have me depart. I guess he was worried someone else might step into the stairwell in the endless search for good cell reception. We agreed that if I had any more questions, I would call his secretary and identify myself as Robert Upshur. (An obscure reference to the first and middle names of the greatest reporter in journalism history, but I digress.)

That left me to stumble out back onto the street, into an afternoon that was trying to get sunny without much luck. Not to get all literary, but it was an appropriate metaphor for how my brain was working on this story.

If Fusco didn’t kill himself-and I believed Ibanez’s science more than I believed anything else I heard so far-then someone else did. Brilliant deduction, I know, but I did graduate in the top 10 percent of my high school class. Was it the same person who killed Darius Kipps? Or did Fusco kill Kipps and then someone else kill Fusco for revenge? I couldn’t say.

At the very least, I had enough new information that when I presented it to Public Disinformation Officer Hakeem Rogers for comment, it was going to make him feel like he was passing a kidney stone. Because, really, I could only imagine two scenarios here, neither of them particularly flattering for Rogers’s employer: One, Newark’s finest were allowing themselves to be snowed by cunning bad guys-possibly a minister, of all people-who were killing cops and getting away with it simply because the police chief didn’t want to look bad in the media; or, two, Newark’s finest were lying.

I couldn’t imagine why they would want to lie about something like this-other than that they’re cops, so lying to reporters comes rather naturally. But I had a fairly simple test to determine which scenario was true.

It hinged on the phone call Fusco allegedly made to Captain Boswell. If that call actually existed, then Fusco was acting under duress-calling because the cunning bad guys put a gun to his head. If that call didn’t exist, I was going to ask our editorial cartoonist to draw a caricature of Captain Boswell with a nose like Pinocchio.

Luckily, I had a way of finding out which it was-providing Fusco was a Verizon Wireless customer and the bosses at that fine company hadn’t yet gotten wise that fearless Eagle-Examiner reporter Tommy Hernandez was dating one of their customer service representatives.

I called Tommy to find out.

“It’s so good to hear from you,” he answered.

“And why is that?”

“Because I wanted to ask: When I saw you in the newsroom earlier, were you, in fact, wearing the same horrifically boring shirt, tie, and pleated pants combination you were wearing yesterday?”

“I was.”

“You know my eyes were still hurting from the last time I had to see it. Couldn’t you have given me a rest?”

“Guess not.”

“So, okay, he was wearing the same clothes … his eyes looked like a raccoon’s … he had a certain rumpled look … did someone have a big night last night?”

“Something like that,” I said. Tommy was a notorious gossip-the TMZ of the newsroom-and didn’t need to know I had spent the night at Tina’s place. He’d have the paparazzi hounding me for weeks.

“Oh, you don’t need to play coy with me. Everyone knows you’re shacking up with Kira the cute library chick.”

“Yep, you got me.”

“What about Tina?”

“What about her?” I asked, perhaps a little too quickly.

“I thought you guys were going to make me Carter Jr.’s special uncle. Or, even better, his fairy godfather.”

“I think that’s on hold for the time being.”

“So you can sow your oats?” Tommy said, clucking his tongue at me. “You’re such a mhore.”

“What’s a mhore?”

“A man-whore.”

He giggled, then apparently decided I had received a sufficient amount of abuse for one phone call, because he switched subjects.

“Hey, I visited my girl in the council clerk’s office this morning,” he said. “She told me there’s been nothing new put in for Reverend Alvin LeRioux, Redeemer Love Christian Church, or any of its various affiliates. So if your pastor is getting something for his cooperation, it isn’t coming from the Newark city fathers.”

“What if it was just expanding or extending an existing contract?” I asked.

“If it meant more money was being spent, it would still have to be approved by the city council. That’s Government 101. The council controls the purse strings.”

“Okay. Thanks for checking,” I said. “Mind if I press you for one more favor.”

“Sure.”

“Your current love interest still work for Verizon Wireless?”

“Yeah.”

I found Mike Fusco’s phone number in my notebook and recited it to Tommy. “Ask him if there were any outgoing calls made by that number around four o’clock this morning.”

“Sure. Want me to do it right now?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m going to put the phone down and call on the landline. Hang on.”

I leaned my elbow against the car door and rested my head on my hand as Tommy called “Stephen” and bantered a little bit before getting around to the purpose of his call. I listened as he asked a few follow-up questions, then made some way-too-precious kissing noises before getting off the phone.

“Sorry you had to hear that,” he said. “I know it offends your hetero sensibilities.”

“Yeah, why do you queers have to rub it in everyone’s face all the time?” I teased back. “I mean, next you’re going to want to hold hands in public or, God forbid, sully the sacred institution of marriage.”

“Yeah. Can you imagine the horror?”

“Anyhow, what did Stephen say?”

“Your subscriber made a phone call at four-oh-four this morning to here,” he said, reading a number with a 973 area code, which I copied. “It lasted a grand, whopping total of two minutes.”

“Two minutes, huh? Do you think you could confess to murdering your best friend and then announce your intention to kill yourself in two minutes?”

Tommy thought about it for a moment and said, “Sure. Not everyone is as wordy as you.”

Especially not when they’re a taciturn tough guy with a gun pointed at his head. I thanked Tommy for his assistance and promised his next fruity, umbrella-topped girl drink would be on me.

Just to make sure the call was for real, I dialed the number he had given me. It rang four times and then went to a voice mail for Captain Denise Boswell.

So Fusco really did talk to her. And it was his last worldly act. As I pulled out of my parking spot and began traveling back down South Orange Avenue toward the office, I conjured this image of Fusco in his final moments. He was bewildered, scared, and fuming, being made to call his captain and confess to a crime he never committed. And then, maybe while he was still trying to figure out how he might save himself, the gun pointed at his head went off.