Brad Parks - The Good Cop

“Can you ask them who they’re working for?”

“He wants to know who you’re working for,” Bernie said into the phone, waited, then announced, “They can’t tell you.”

“Is it a church?” I asked.

“They said they can’t tell you,” Bernie objected.

“Just ask. C’mon.”

Bernie gave an exasperated grunt. “Fine, fine,” he said, returning to his phone. “Is it a church you’re working for?… Okay, okay, I’m not deaf. I hear you … Well, that’s very nice of you, I’ll be sure to tell him … Yeah, Panasonic is good, too. The bigger the better. I don’t bother with anything much under forty these days. No market for it … Right then, I’ll see you by the end of the week.”

He hung up, then turned to me. “They said they can’t tell you who they’re working for, but that you shouldn’t worry for the rest of the day because they lost their best gun trying to kill you the last time, and they won’t be able to get another one until later. See? I told you they’re nice boys.”

* * *

Uncle Bernie was just turning his attention back to briefcases when a chiming sound echoed throughout the warehouse. Bernie looked around, annoyed.

“Meh, what is this, Grand Central Station?” he grumbled, then shuffled over to an intercom on the wall. He pressed a button, then said, “Gene, who is it?”

I heard Gene’s slightly static-garbled voice reply, “He says he’s here to pick up Mr. Ross.”

Bernie looked at me, “You expecting someone? What is this, your mommy coming to pick you up from baseball practice?”

Before I could reply, Gene said, “He says his name is Geoff Ginsburg.”

“Ginsburg. Ginsburg?” Bernie said. “Sounds like a mensch. I probably know his grandfather. Let him in. Maybe he wants a nice pen. I got Cross, you know. Silver or gold. Very classy. I got a guy who engraves them, too. Makes a good gift.”

The black guy went back through the entrance, and Bernie turned back to me. “So, the briefcase. Retails for three hundred. Uncle Bernie gives it to you for two hundred. I’m going to have to ask for cash, though. Normally, returning customer like you, I’d let you open up an account. But it sounds like you might not be around long enough to pay it off. So we’re going to have to make it cash.”

“Fair enough,” I said, digging the bills out of my wallet just as Ruthie appeared.

Bernie was on him like twists on challah bread. “Come in, come in, my friend. Mr. Ginsburg. Fine, fine young fellow you are. A real kluger , this one. I bet you like to read. You look like a reader. You want a Kindle? I got the latest. Give you a good deal.”

I hadn’t prepared Ruthie for this, and he was looking around the warehouse with the same slack-jawed wonder I did when I first saw it.

“Geoff is an intern, which means he makes about five hundred bucks a week,” I said. “I’m not sure he’s in the market.”

“Fine, fine,” Bernie said. “When you get a raise, call me. I got some Farberware that I can tell your mother would just love.”

I put myself in between Bernie and Ruthie, if only to help stop the sales pitch.

“Hey, thanks for coming to get me,” I said. “I’m having a little car trouble.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Ruthie said. “I actually have to talk to you anyway. I got some amazing stuff on red dot. You’re going to want to move it up on your schedule.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. I hadn’t even told Ruthie about my close encounter with a red dot gun.

“I went back and talked to those corner boys a little more. At first they were giving me a hard time, doing all that ‘I ain’t no snitch’ stuff. Then I sorta made a deal with them…”

He glanced down and toed the concrete floor of the warehouse a little bit. “What?” I asked.

“Well, we got talking a little more. And it turns out they’re aspiring rappers.”

“Okay,” I said. This was not surprising: I think roughly two out of every five young men in Newark identifies himself as an aspiring rapper, the same way two out of every five parents on a suburban travel soccer team thinks their kid is going to get a college scholarship. In each case, the chance for even a modest fulfillment of the goal is roughly the same.

“So they were saying they were having a hard time getting noticed and … I promised them I’d do a Good Neighbors about their group.”

“A Good Neighbors? About kids who are hanging out on the corner selling drugs?”

“Well, they said that was just temporary until the stuff they have on iTunes takes off. Besides, they said they rap about positive themes-don’t get your girlfriend pregnant, don’t shoot anyone who doesn’t deserve it, that sort of thing. I thought that’d be good enough. Besides, it was the only way I could get them to talk to me. Trust me, it was worth it.”

Yes. Ruthie would end up doing fine in this business.

“Okay, so what’d did they tell you?”

“Get this,” he said. “The guys selling red dot guns? They’re policemen.”

“What?” I said, and not because my hearing is bad.

“They’re policemen. That’s why the red dot is so sought after. There’s this group of cops that makes money on the side selling guns. Every gun they sell, they put a red dot on the handle. When you buy one of their guns, it comes with a promise: if you get caught with it later, they won’t bust you, as long as it has their special red dot. It’s like automatic amnesty. That’s why the corner boys only want red dot guns. It keeps them from getting arrested.”

I had certainly heard stories of cops shaking down criminals in exchange for looking the other way; or, certainly, cops who made arrests and somehow “forgot” to turn in all the cash they confiscated. It felt like we wrote that story every other year.

But cops selling guns? Arming the enemy? That was something new.

“You sure about this?” I asked. “I mean, why would these kids just tell you this? All for a Good Neighbors?”

“Well, it sounds like the cops keep driving up the price of the guns, and they’re getting tired of it. It’s basically extortion.”

“Okay,” I said. “But how do we know they’re not just making it up?”

Ruthie shrugged, but I saw Bernie nodding out of the corner of my eye and turned toward him. “You know about this, don’t you?” I said.

“I heard stories, yeah,” Bernie said. “I don’t bother with guns. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

“ Cops dealing guns?” I asked, still feeling like I couldn’t quite believe it.

“What, you think it’s a quilting bee out there? It’s Newark,” Bernie said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the street. “I told you some of those cops are involved in some funny business. Not many anymore. But a few.”

“Like who?”

“Eh,” he said, waving me away.

“No, seriously, could you ID individual cops who are involved in this thing?”

“It’s none of my business, kid,” Bernie said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“You don’t want any trouble? Young black men are slaughtering each other on a daily basis in this city, and easy access to guns is what allows them to do it. But you don’t want any trouble? ”

Uncle Bernie shook his head, like I didn’t get it. “Those kids are going to do what they’re going to do. They’re going to get guns one way or another-if not from the cops, then from someone else. What does it matter…”

“It matters because these people are sworn to uphold…” I began to say, then stopped myself. “Never mind.”

A guy who had his brother upstairs forging receipts so he could defraud consumer products companies into sending him new merchandise was not exactly worth engaging in a debate of this nature. His moral compass pointed to wherever the money was.