Brad Parks: The Good Cop

“But what?”

“Well, the Fourth is … like I said, I came up in the Fourth, so I know it pretty well. And it’s tight. Especially the black officers, no offense,” he said, as if I would somehow be offended I had been left out. “The brothers of the Fourth stick together.”

“So?”

“So I’m just hearing some weird stuff, is all. Stuff I never thought I’d hear coming from the Fourth. I went over there this morning, just to pay a visit to some of the guys I still know over there, see how they were doing with it, and…”

“What?”

“You ain’t writing this, right?”

“No. My paper doesn’t write suicides. It’s kind of a policy.”

“Okay. Well. Shoot, man, I shouldn’t even be talking about this. But they were saying Kipps might have been dirty.”

“Dirty? Dirty how?”

“I don’t know. But word is out he recently had contact with Internal Affairs. And a cop who’s spending time with IA, man, that doesn’t always look good.”

“Yeah, I guess not. Did anyone say specifically what it might have been? There’s all different kinds of dirty.”

“No. No one said. And I didn’t ask,” Pritch said. “The truth is, I don’t even want to know. The man is dead. Leave it at that.”

“Of course, of course,” I said as another call started ringing through on my phone. I took a glance at the screen.

It was Mimi Kipps.

“Pritch, I gotta run. Darius Kipps’s widow is calling on the other line.”

“Oh, geez,” he said. “Well, remember: I didn’t tell you nothing and you don’t know nothing, especially not about Kipps being dirty. That’s the last thing that woman needs to hear. She’s going to have it hard enough.”

* * *

As I clicked from one call to the other, I realized there was no good way to handle this. I couldn’t exactly continue the charade that I was going to be writing a glowing thousand-word paean to the life and times of Sergeant Kipps when I knew there were going to be about three paragraphs in the next day’s paper. At the same time, if the Newark Police Department hadn’t informed Mimi Kipps about the nature of or circumstances surrounding her husband’s death, I sure wasn’t going to tell her.

But I was spared at least part of that quandary when Mimi started off our conversation with: “He didn’t kill himself.”

“Mimi?” I said, just to make sure it was her.

“Yes, this is Mimi Kipps, and I want you to know: my husband did not kill himself. I don’t want you writing it that way. I don’t want anyone talking about him that way. I don’t care what the Newark Police Department or anyone else has to say about it. There is no way he did what they’re saying he did.”

The preternaturally calm Mimi Kipps I had met earlier this morning was gone. This version was spitting sharp stuff.

“I know my husband,” she continued. “And I know how he felt about suicide. You know what he called people who killed themselves? Cowards. Every time he responded to a suicide call-and he would catch them from time to time-he would always say the same thing: ‘That’s the coward’s way out.’ Especially when it was a man with a family. He’d said, ‘That man had no right to do that to himself and leave those kids behind without a daddy.’”

I had already left the pizzeria by this point. The Green Street headquarters of the Newark Police Department was right around the corner, but I wasn’t walking in that direction. I was going toward the Eagle-Examiner parking garage. I could tell Mimi and I needed to chat in person.

“Mimi, I-”

“Do you know why that chaplain didn’t give me any of the details earlier this morning?” she interrupted. “Because the higher-ups down at Green Street were debating how to word the press release. A stupid press release. They didn’t want to use the word ‘suicide’ because they thought it would make the department look bad. So they settled on ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound.’ As if nobody knows that it means the same thing. They were just out here, showing me a copy of it before they sent it out. Can you believe that? All they care about is how they’re going to look to the media. I threw them out of the house. It’s bull. It’s bull. No matter what they call it. There’s just no way. And I don’t want you writing it.”

“Mimi, I’m coming out to see you right now,” I said. “Can you just sit tight? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll see you,” she said and ended the call.

I reached my car and tried to put my head in order as I drove back toward East Orange. On the one hand, there was what Pritch told me about Internal Affairs. Was Darius Kipps dirty? He had been talking about buying a new house, taking his kids to Disney. A guy making ninety grand a year might be able to swing those kinds of outlays on his own, depending on his other expenses. Or it might have been a sign he was supplementing his income in some less-than-legitimate fashion. And once he got caught, the decorated cop-who was the son of a decorated cop-couldn’t handle the shame. So he arranged himself a hasty exit.

On the other hand, I had my gut-and Mimi Kipps’s loud, insistent voice-saying that suicide didn’t fit. You didn’t spend hours at the hospital telling your infant son how he was going to root for the Eagles someday if you didn’t plan to stick around and do it with him, right? And there was also what I had learned about Kipps being an all-about-the-law police officer. Cops like that didn’t go bad, did they?

The bottom line was … well, there was no bottom line. I had no real idea what happened. And perhaps I should have let it drop-I had a big story about a public housing project to hand to Tina by the end of the week, after all-but part of being a reporter means never turning off your natural curiosity. There was nothing wrong with spending an afternoon indulging it a little bit.

I arrived at Rutledge Avenue to find it looking much the same as it had when I left it a few hours earlier. There were still no news vans, which now made sense-a suicide wasn’t good material for them, either. I walked around a group of friends and family on the sidewalk, some of whom were smoking cigarettes, nodding at them as I passed.

Mimi answered the door, but there was a different vibe to her, a certain set of the jaw, a certain look in her eye. Earlier in the morning, I thought she had been in shock. Now I was beginning to recognize she was simply made of tougher material than most. This woman was going to keep holding it together as long as she needed to. She was a single mom now, after all. And if there’s one thing working in the hood has taught me, it was to never underestimate a single mom.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, opening the door so I could enter. “You have good timing. There’s someone you really need to talk to.”

I looked around the living room, which was empty.

“Follow me,” she said, walking toward the back of the duplex.

She led me down a narrow hallway into a brightly lit kitchen with cheerful yellow cabinets and white linoleum floors. In the middle of the room, there was a small folding table with three matching plastic chairs. A thirty-something man sat on the far side. He had short-cropped hair that was just beginning to go gray. He wore jeans and a tight-fitting sweater that made it clear he was proud of the time he spent in the gym. A half-finished cup of coffee sat in front of him. Next to him was another half-finished cup and a chair that had been pushed out. He and the widow Kipps had obviously been sharing a beverage.

“This is Mike, Darius’s partner,” Mimi said, walking around behind him and draping a hand on his shoulder for a second. “Mike, this is the reporter I was telling you about.”