by Brad Parks
I couldn’t tell where the shooter was aiming or where the bullets were going. I was fairly certain they weren’t hitting my car—I would have felt that, right?—and I knew for sure they weren’t hitting me. This, I was rapidly discovering, was the way to go when being shot at: pick assailants with lousy aim.
Still, there’s this thing about bullets. They’re cheap, disposable hunks of metal, and therefore no one thinks twice about expending a lot of them when the situation arises. And I was betting it would take only one landing in the right/wrong spot to make this whole little jaunt a lot less fun. I needed some kind of plan beyond hoping the jarring of Newark’s potholes would keep the shooter unsteady.
Prince Street made a quick jog to the left as it passed through Kinney Street. I followed the road, riding the brakes slightly as we sped through a residential area. The Mercedes kept attempting to overtake me on the left. And I continued blocking him. The Malibu may not be good for many things, but getting in people’s way is one of them. It has got a nice, wide rear end—the J. Lo of the car world.
Another shot echoed harmlessly behind me, and I was beginning to feel like I must have had some kind of force field behind me or guardian angel on my shoulder. Then the force field disintegrated, and the guardian angel flew off as two more shots rang out and definitely hit … something.
All I knew for sure is that I was starting to lose control of my car. One bullet felt like it had hit somewhere in the vicinity of my trunk, which shouldn’t have been debilitating to anything other than perhaps the golf clubs I had stored in there. Then I quickly began to figure out where the second one hit: my right rear tire.
The entire car listed back and to the right. Even with power steering, staying straight was suddenly a battle. The only thing that was saving me was that the Malibu was front-wheel drive, and the front wheels seemed unaffected.
The light at Muhammad Ali Avenue was blessedly green. Still, a pivotal decision time was coming. There had been a lot of construction in recent years, so I wasn’t entirely certain about this, but many through streets in Newark now dead-ended, and I was fairly sure Prince Street was one of them.
Partly because of that, and partly because it was the direction my car seemed to want to go, I made as hard a right onto Muhammad Ali as I dared, veering out into the oncoming lane just slightly.
The Mercedes dropped back slightly and made the turn smoothly. I could guess having all four tires intact probably helped in that regard. Then it began closing in on me anew.
And this time, maybe because my flapping right tire didn’t give me much choice, I allowed it. It was beginning to dawn on me that letting the Mercedes slowly shred my car from behind was a losing proposition. The Malibu was the only weapon I had, and I needed to find a way to use it while it was still running. Unless I could make this a demolition derby—not a carnival shooting gallery—I would be facing the prospect of a prolonged underground slumber.
Knowing the shooter was on the right side of the car, at least for the time being, I fought the wheel to stay in the left lane, giving the Mercedes plenty of room to overtake me on the right. As soon as its front bumper was even with my back bumper, I hit my brakes.
It was all happening at about fifty or sixty miles an hour on an urban street, so it all felt very fast. But as soon as my passenger side door was even with the thugs’ driver side, I went back to the accelerator, veered out slightly to my left—to give myself a little room to build some momentum—then brought whatever tonnage the Malibu had slamming into the Mercedes.
The cars hit with a jolt and a thump that sounded more like plastic-on-plastic than metal-on-metal. Without being able to see through the tinted windows, I couldn’t say this for sure, but I felt like I caught the bastards by surprise. The collision sapped us of some of our speed, though we were still traveling fairly fast, with our cars acting like they were caught on each other.
The intersection for Irvine Turner Boulevard was quickly approaching, and I saw that, on our current course, I was going to be steering the Mercedes straight into a utility pole. It was going to be a head-on collision. A nasty one.
The driver of the Mercedes obviously saw it, too, because at the last minute he peeled right, bouncing over a low curb onto the sidewalk and then through a small, empty parking lot. Then, to my surprise, he continued the right turn, hopped down on Irvine Turner Boulevard, and kept going, actually speeding up, like he was eager to get away.
I pounded my brakes and screeched through a (thankfully empty) intersection, barely missing a fire hydrant on the other side—at the price of plowing over a pedestrian crossing sign.
Still, that had to be significantly better than plowing over a pedestrian.
* * *
My Malibu finally came to rest in the side yard of some garden-style apartments. I sat in it for a moment and did some deep, grateful breathing, then got out to assess the damage to my car. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The small crease in the front bumper could be hammered out. The glass in the passenger side mirror was gone, but at least the housing was intact. The scrapes along the right side of the car were superficial, and I wasn’t exactly worried too much about cosmetics at this point. The right rear tire was a floppy mess. I couldn’t see any damage from where the other bullet had hit.
Before long, a lanky teenager wearing a too-long white T-shirt, riding a too-small bicycle cruised up behind me.
“You aight?” he asked in a languid voice. He seemed unimpressed by what he had just witnessed, as if car chases rolled through his neighborhood every Wednesday afternoon right around two o’clock.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“They dropped they gun.”
“They … they did?”
“Yeah, it’s back there,” he said, jerking his head behind him.
“Show me,” I said.
He wheeled his bike around, and I followed him as he crossed the intersection and pedaled back up the sidewalk. Sure enough, there was a handgun lying on its side against the curb, right around the spot where I had sideswiped the Mercedes. That explained why it sped off the way it did: the occupants were no longer armed.
I squatted next to the gun and studied it, not wanting to touch it in case there were usable fingerprints on it. Using the sum total of my knowledge about handguns, I could tell this one was black, plastic, and nasty.
Out of curiosity—and because I wasn’t exactly going to pick it up and check out its action—I shifted myself to get a good view of the underside of the gun. Sure enough, there was a tiny red dot emblazoned on the butt of the handle. It was so small I’m sure I wouldn’t have noticed it unless I had been looking for it specifically.
“There’s a red dot on this gun,” I said to my bike-riding friend. “You ever heard of red dot guns?”
He smiled at me like he knew something but said, “I ain’t into nothing like that.”
Yes, I’m sure a teenaged kid who was puttering around on his bike during school hours wouldn’t know anything about a criminal enterprise. Oh well. At least I was getting shot at by the very latest in thug chic.
My buddy rode off, leaving me alone to ponder what had just transpired. Obviously, I had been attacked by the same punks who had given me the drive-by treatment outside of Mimi’s place—I didn’t need to match license plates and VIN numbers to recognize that Mercedes. But how had they found me this time? It’s not like I rang up Mimi and tipped her off I was going to see the medical examiner. Heck, I hadn’t even told Tina.
Had they been following me? They obviously knew where I was. But then, if they had really tailed me from the newsroom all the way to the medical examiner’s office and watched me park and walk inside, wouldn’t they have just waited for me there and put a slug behind my right ear as soon as I departed the building?
So was it just dumb luck? Were they driving around, doing their gang thing, when one of them happened to recognize my car? No, that didn’t work. Because when they shot at me the last time, I wasn’t in—or n
ear—the Malibu. They wouldn’t have known it was my car, and besides, it’s not like an aging Chevy Malibu is a rare, priceless vehicle scarcely seen on the streets of Newark.
I hadn’t made much headway on the subject when I saw a Newark Police patrol unit roll to a stop near the corner. They had either gotten a report about shots being fired and had come to investigate, or they were going to give me a ticket for abandoning my derelict car on someone’s lawn.
I walked back to my Malibu just as the two officers emerged from the squad car.
“Man, I could have used you guys about five minutes ago,” I said.
The driver, an older black guy with a bull-like build, a shaved head, and “B. Jones” on his nameplate, looked at me like he was thoroughly uninterested as to when or how I could have used or not used him. This set the tone for what followed, when I explained to Baldy—that’s what the “B” stood for, right?—who I was, what had happened, and how I was truly the victim in this whole scenario.
I went through my story at least three times, and he remained circumspect throughout. Finally, I took them over to the gun, which he picked up bare-handed and walked over to his patrol car, dumping it in the front seat.
“Isn’t that … evidence or something?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to check it for prints?”
Baldy glowered at me and said, “This isn’t television, sir. We never get usable prints off of guns like this.”
“Oh,” I said. “But did you see the red dot on the bottom of it?”
“Huh?”
“There’s a red dot on it, and … I didn’t know if it was something you guys were tracking. I’m told guns with red dots on them are all the rage. I was going to be writing a story about it, and…”
He was fixing me with this I-don’t-give-a-crap stare, so I shut up. He seemed mostly concerned about getting me and my car—and him and his car—out of this area just as soon as was possible, so he could return to … whatever it was he did with his time. Presumably not conditioning his hair.
He asked where I wanted my car to be towed, which seemed like a real leap of faith, inasmuch as I’m not sure the thing was worth fixing. But I gave him a name and number for Mickey the mechanic, the guy who owned the garage across the street from the Eagle-Examiner offices, whom I entrusted with keeping the Malibu in its pristine condition.
Next, I called Tommy, swore him to the usual secrecy, then told him briefly about how my automobile had been incapacitated and that I therefore needed his services as a chauffeur. He responded with a crack about how it would have been better if a bullet had caught me in the ass, thus ridding the world of one more pair of my pleated pants. But he also promised to come pick me up.
The cop eventually gave me a card, which identified him as Bryson M. Jones—personally, I liked “Baldy” better—of the Newark Police Department’s Fourth Precinct. There was a report number on the back that he said I could use when making a claim with my insurance company. I had already given him all my contact information, and he halfheartedly assured me someone would be in touch if they needed anything more from me.
“Are there going to be any criminal charges against the guys who, you know, tried to shoot me?” I asked.
“Yeah, just as soon as we find ’em,” Baldy replied, heavy on the sarcasm. “You know where they are?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Yeah,” he snorted in reply. “Me neither.”
* * *
As I waited for Tommy to arrive, I began focusing on the matter of my immediate survival. Somehow, outwardly, I was maintaining a placid façade. Inwardly, I was more like one of those big-eyed purse dogs that gets scared by its own chew toys. I needed to figure out who was shooting at me and hopefully figure out why—and how to avoid any future encounters.
Somehow, I didn’t think Baldy Jones was going to be much help, so I decided to tap a different part of the Newark Police Department and call my buddy Pritch. He was in the gang unit, after all. Chances were good—if my assailants were, in fact, affiliated in some manner—he might be familiar with them.
“Hey, Woodward N. Bernstein!” he crowed. “I might have to pretend I don’t know you, with all the stuff you been stirring up lately. You a bad man.”
“You’ve been hanging out with Hakeem Rogers again, haven’t you?”
“That ass hat? Naw. I’m just talking about what I’m reading in the paper. You been lighting fires, my friend.”
“It’s what I do,” I said. “You got a second to help me put out a fire by any chance?”
“Yeah, I’m just walking to get some lunch downtown. You want to join? I’ll let you pay.”
The Eagle-Examiner had paid for a number of Pritch’s lunches, and he was worth every one of them. “Love to,” I said. “But my transportation has just been shot up by some guys I’m thinking might be acquaintances of yours.”
“No kidding. Who?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. That’s why I’m placing this call to the pride of the Newark Police Gang Unit. You know of a crew that rolls around the city in a silver Mercedes E-class with tinted windows?”
I absentmindedly toed the pedestrian crossing sign that was still sticking out from underneath my car like it was the Wicked Witch of the West’s legs.
“Yeah, that sounds like BMF,” Pritch said.
“And BMF is…?”
“Black Mafia Family. I actually should say it’s a group of knuckleheads pretending to be Black Mafia Family. The original BMF was out of Michigan, Detroit or Flint, I think. They got hooked up with some Mexicans that were supplying them with product, established themselves nationally. You ever hear of Big Meech?”
“Sounds like a burger sold at McDonald’s.”
“Not quite. Big Meech is a legend in the hip-hop community. He was the guy who started BMF. He and his brother lived large for a while. They were pretty stupid about it, you ask me. Too flashy. The best hos. The VIP table service. The best cars.
“You can’t just rub it in our face like that, you know?” Pritch continued. “They were also sloppy and dumb. It ended up being one of those big RICO statute things. They got them blabbing all over the place on wires and arrested all of them, eventually. And I think they’re all still in jail. The original BMF doesn’t really exist anymore. As far as I know, it’s been dismantled.”
“So who are these guys who don’t seem to like me much?”
“They’re just playing around, acting like they all bad, like they’re the real BMF. Everyone knows the name Black Mafia Family. Now these guys are just using the name. It’s like if the real McDonald’s went bankrupt and you decided to open up a fast-food joint with golden arches on it that sold hamburgers. It’d probably fool some people, but it’s not the real thing.”
“I have to say, it sort of felt like the real thing when they were chasing me through Newark shooting at me.”
“Well, let me ask you something: You dead yet?”
“No.”
“Then, trust me, it wasn’t the real thing. These guys are small-timers. They’re just driving that Mercedes around, doing their best BMF imitation. The only reason we haven’t shut them down is that they really haven’t done anything worth shutting down. We’ve had bigger fish to fry.”
“So why would they try to shoot the friendly local Eagle-Examiner reporter?”
“Aw, hell, I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t get their paper on time this morning. Who knows with some of these punks?”
“Does shooting at a reporter mean they’ve escalated into something worth frying?” I asked hopefully.
“Not when it’s you,” he cracked.
“Ouch?”
“Come on, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Could you ID the driver or the shooter?”
“Nope, just the car.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna do much for us. But I’ll put the word out with some of the guys in the unit, maybe have them put a little heat on these turkeys, get them to cool it with whatever beef they got.”
“Thanks. Hey, mind answering another question? It’s about Mike Fusco. I assume you heard about that.”
“Yeah. I don’t know anything about it, though. And I don’t really know him. He got to the Fourth after I left.”
“It’s not about him. It’s about his gun.”
“Okay, go.”
Since my most recent conversation with Raul Ibanez, this question had been coalescing in my mind and was now fully formed: “The word from Captain Boswell is that Fusco killed himself with his service weapon. I got a source in the medical examiner’s office that confirmed it for me, matched the serial numbers and everything. But Fusco told me the day before he was killed that his service weapon had been taken from him when he was placed on leave. So how is it possible that gun was used?”
“Well, it’s possible Fusco was lying to you. His captain knew if she was placing him on leave, she’d have to take his gun. It’s policy. But maybe if he bitched about it enough, she let it slide. Some cops feel naked without their weapon, even off duty. Or…”
Pritch actually chuckled, but it was the kind that didn’t have a lot of mirth behind it. “Or what?” I asked.
“Well, officially, all our guns are under lock and key, tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Unofficially?”
“Unofficially, we’ve had a problem for years with guns that were supposed to have been under lock and key showing up on the street again. I know guys who have brought in the same gun two, three times only to have it get back out.”
“How is that happening?”
“We’re just sloppy. Eventually, a confiscated gun gets destroyed. But the department doesn’t do it right away. In the short term, the gun just gets locked up. Each precinct has a locker and there are only certain people who are supposed to have access to it, but that doesn’t mean a lot. They’ll hide an extra key near the locker because everyone keeps losing the main one, and before long anyone with a uniform is helping themselves.”
“What about people without uniforms?” I asked. “Like, maybe, people in an overly aggressive prayer group?”