by Brad Parks
And it kept coming. I heard glass shattering behind me, parked cars being hit in front of me, and bullets ricocheting all around me. At some point, I covered my head with my hands-like that would somehow be good defense-and buried my face in the ground. I wondered if the last thing I would ever see in this world was cold, dead grass.
Then it ended. The quiet was, in its own way, as loud as the noise had been moments earlier. There was no squeaking of tires, no wailing of car alarms, no shrieking of wounded humanity.
Just silence.
* * *
The first thing I forced myself to do was crawl toward the curb and the parked cars. I wanted metal at my back and something to dive under should the need arise. I probably looked ridiculous, going on all fours across the sidewalk, but it would be a little while before I felt like having the precious contents of my skull more than about two feet off the ground.
Eventually, I reached a rusting Toyota Celica, against which I stayed huddled for a minute or so, trying to resist the involuntary shaking that was overtaking my body. Still dazed, I looked back at Mimi’s house, which was pockmarked with bullet holes like a modern-day Alamo. Several of the windows had been shot out. The siding was going to need a serious patch job.
Finally, I stood up on gone-wobbly legs. The Mercedes had disappeared. For now. Was it coming back? I didn’t have much experience with drive-by shootings-watching Boyz in the Hood twenty years ago just doesn’t count-but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
I ran, or maybe just stumbled, to my car, fumbling nervously with my keys until I got the door open. I dove in, turned the engine over, and started driving. For the next few blocks, I have to admit I was rather generous with the accelerator, rather stingy with the brakes.
My first thought, once my heart rate returned to something like normal and my breathing was back under my own control, was that I ought to call the police. Shooting at someone, that’s illegal, isn’t it? I didn’t have a book called Being Target Practice for Dummies handy, but I was reasonably certain the law frowned on citizens discharging firearms in the direction of other citizens.
Right. Definitely. Once I put sufficient distance between myself and all those spent shell casings on Rutledge Avenue, I dialed the number for the East Orange Police Department.
A female voice answered: “East Orange Police, Officer Heyward speaking, may I help you?”
“Yes, I’m … I’m calling to report a shooting,” I said in a voice that sounded too faltering to be my own, almost like I was going through puberty again.
“What is your address?”
“Well … I … I live in … in Bloomfield, actually … but the shooting happened on Rutledge Avenue.”
“We’re already responding to a report about shots fired on Rutledge,” she said. “Do you require officer assistance?”
“No … it’s … it’s over now. I was just on Rutledge Avenue when these guys started shooting at me.”
“Were you hit, sir? Do you require medical assistance?”
“No, I … I guess I just thought it was the sort of thing you guys liked to know about for, I don’t know, statistical purposes. I was shot at, you know?”
“Can you identify the person who was shooting at you, sir?”
“I didn’t really get a look at him. It was just these guys in a Mercedes and suddenly one of them started shooting at me”-I had said that already, hadn’t I? — “and, well, it was just a lot of bullets and…”
I could tell she was thinking, Yeah, and what do you want me to do about it? Instead, she said, “Are you still at the scene, sir?”
“No, I … I took off. I just … I wanted to get out of there.”
“I understand, sir. If you’d like, you can come into the station and file a report.”
A report? This wasn’t my briefcase being stolen out of the back of my car. These were killers who just happened to have bad aim. She wanted me to file a report?
I was building up some good, indignant outrage when I started thinking about this thing from the cop’s perspective. She was getting a phone call from a guy who was informing her of a shooting about which she already knew. And he couldn’t tell her much of anything new or useful. I realized that if our roles were reversed, I’d blow me off, too.
“Yeah, thanks. Maybe I’ll … maybe I’ll do that,” I said, and then hung up.
I became aware I had just run a red light-the honking of the person I nearly T-boned alerted me to this-and I finally pulled over. Like most guys, I’m a bad multitasker under even the best of circumstances. Thinking and driving were two things that weren’t going to be able to coexist for me at this moment, and right now I needed to think more than I needed to drive.
It is one thing to be shot at. It’s quite another thing to not know who’s doing it or why.
Everything happened so fast. I needed to slow down the scene. Maybe it would tell me something I didn’t know.
The first thing I saw was a silver Mercedes sedan with tinted windows. Immediate, knee-jerk reaction: it was driven by a drug dealer, a fairly high-level one-because the kids standing out on the corner selling dime bags for seven dollars couldn’t afford a ride like that. And it was obviously a drug dealer who didn’t particularly care about being too cliched in his vehicle choices.
But why would a drug dealer-or a drug-dealing gang, if it was one of those-want to shoot me? I wasn’t in the drug game. Guys who are don’t usually bother with civilians. And how would they have even known I was there? It’s not like I posted my itinerary online.
I thought back to my scene. The next thing that appeared was the gun. I am not any kind of firearms expert-I don’t know my calibers from my millimeters-but it was not a large gun. Then it started firing.
If it was supposed to be a hit, it was incredibly sloppy (as evidenced by the fact that I was still around to critique it). Maybe they were just trying to scare me off. The stubbornly high murder rate that persisted in urban areas-most of which related to the drug trade-suggested that when a professional wanted you dead, chances are you ended up dead.
Unless these weren’t pros. What if they were amateurs who happened to drive a nice car?
I tried to think back on the sequence of events that had led me there. I had gotten a call from Mimi Kipps asking me to come see her. I responded to the call, only to learn she had left in a hurry minutes before I arrived, escorted by the anointed man of God. Then someone was shooting at me.
Oh. Right. The weepy woman calls. The gallant, dumb man answers-never knowing he’s walking into a trap. That’s how the shooters knew I was going to be there. Mimi Kipps told them.
In the immortal words of former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry: bitch set me up.
* * *
Having this knowledge, proving this knowledge, and then figuring out what to do with it were all distinctly different issues, of course. And I was stuck on the middle part. Could I prove that this was anything more than a bad coincidence? I knew better, of course, but there was nothing to definitively say the gangbangers weren’t just shooting up the duplex next door.
Another question: Was her pastor in on it? Since he showed up minutes before the shooting started to whisk Mimi away, it would suggest he was. Then again, was it possible Mimi was playing him like she was playing me? Maybe she called him all weepy, too, knowing he would come running just like I did?
Yet another question: Why would Mimi need me dead? How was I threat to her? Sure, I might be the only person who was really onto her. But how did she know that? I thought about my conversation with Pastor Al, where I had hinted about the affair but never directly stated it. Had he known what I was trying to get at and alerted Mimi?
But if that was the case, and Pastor Al was complicit in Mimi and Fusco’s conspiracy to kill Darius Kipps, then why would he have called for an independent investigation-and then dropped it? For that matter, if Mimi and Fusco had teamed up to kill Darius to get him out of the way-so their affair could
blossom-then why was Fusco now dead?
Nothing made sense at all, unless … were Pastor Al and Mimi somehow romantically involved?
Now, that was just gross. He was old enough to be her father, and he hadn’t aged particularly well-he looked like he could be her grandfather. Merely the thought of them bumping uglies was revolting. Then again, could I rule it out? Not really.
Was it even possible-and, oh, this was really sordid-that Pastor Al was Jaquille’s real father? I thought all the way back to my first interview with Mimi, when she had told me about how much trouble she had getting pregnant, thanks to her one-testicled husband and his low sperm count. Had Jaquille’s conception been a bit less miraculous than originally advertised?
Short of getting Pastor Al to submit to a paternity test, I wasn’t sure how I would ever substantiate this theory. But it was a possibility I couldn’t rule out: that the call for an investigation had been a smokescreen, and that all these dead police officers were really just Pastor Al’s way of clearing away competitors for Mimi’s affections.
For all I knew, Mimi really was innocent-relatively-in everything. Maybe Pastor Al had called her, told her to invite me over, and then cleared her out of harm’s way just in time for me to get shot at.
These and other thoughts were doing laps around my cranium when I received a text message from Tina: “NPD presser @ 11. Command center. Can u make it?”
Could I make it? Yeah. Did I want to? Negative. I was starting to think the representatives of the Newark Police Department were the last people to know what was going on, so spending time with them seemed rather pointless. Given what I had just been through, shouldn’t I get special dispensation from having to attend pointless press conferences?
Then again, Tina didn’t know I had spent part of my morning ducking bullets. And maybe she didn’t need to know. For whatever her current feelings for me were-was going from potential baby daddy to booty call a promotion or a demotion? — she had shown the tendency to be plenty protective of me. If I told her about my little drive-by incident, she’d pull me into the office and not let me leave until I was eligible for Medicare.
And while I still aspired to reach a ripe and gummy old age, I didn’t feel like remaining at large was necessarily going to jeopardize it. As long as I didn’t agree to meet Mimi Kipps in any dark alleys, I would be okay. I just had to be a little more wary.
I texted Tina back, “On my way,” then shifted into gear, trying to pay a little more attention to traffic signals this time. The Newark Police Command Center was on University Avenue, not to be confused with its headquarters on Green Street. I guess whenever the Green Street facility had been built-by either the Holy Roman Empire or Alexander the Great, judging by how antiquated it was-no one worried about satellite hookups. The Command Center was, therefore, a little better suited to press events.
Arriving all of two minutes before it started, I was ushered to the conference room where they held these kinds of functions. The chairs in the middle of the room were filled with a variety of reporters. Along the back wall was a row of cameras on tripods, including some that belonged to cameramen I had seen earlier in the day on Fusco’s street. They were now going to have everything they needed-sound bites from the scene and from the police-in plenty of time for their noon broadcasts.
Hakeem Rogers was up front, fussing with something, but he still found time to shoot me a scowl when he spied me standing along the side wall. I nodded at him, but I was mostly distracted by who was-or, in this case, was not-alongside Rogers.
Typically, these press conferences consisted of Rogers introducing the police director, who, as an appointee of the mayor, wanted to be putting in a good word with the voters of Newark. The director usually appeared in front of a wall of blue-clad men, officers who were somehow involved in the law enforcement triumph the director was there to announce. The officers didn’t say much-they were just there for decoration-but they sure gave the director a good background for the cameras.
This time the director was nowhere around. Nor was there a wall of blue. Indeed, there was only one officer alongside Rogers: Captain Denise Boswell. She was in full dress uniform, right up to her hat, which she was nervously fussing with as she waited for the show to begin.
The other oddity about this was that I didn’t know what she planned to say. Generally at these kinds of gatherings, you had some inkling of what would be announced-a break on a case, a big drug bust, a fugitive from justice apprehended.
This time it was a total mystery. And as Rogers approached the podium, I found myself leaning forward, just a little bit curious.
* * *
Rogers opened the proceedings by introducing himself, thanking everyone for coming, and taking an unveiled swipe at me.
“There has been a great deal of speculation about the death of Detective Sergeant Darius Kipps, specifically in print,” Rogers said. “While ordinarily we prefer to let our investigation run its course before we make any major public statements, the Newark Police Department has determined that, in light of the death of Detective Michael Fusco and some apparent connections between the two investigations, it was time to put an end to the speculation.”
He looked up and rewarded me with another scowl. “Toward that end, I would like to introduce Captain Denise Boswell. After a long and decorated career with the Newark Police Department, Captain Boswell was placed in command of the Fourth Precinct late last year, becoming the first female officer in Newark history to attain that level. Since she was the commanding officer to both Sergeant Kipps and Detective Fusco, we felt it was appropriate for her to make this difficult announcement. Captain Boswell?”
The room was quiet as Boswell approached the microphone. She had a sheet of white paper that had been folded into quarters, and the rustling as she unfolded it was amplified by the conference room’s sound system. Captain Boswell was not a tall woman, far shorter than the men who usually appeared at these things, and the variety of microphones that had been strapped to the podium-representing various local radio, television, and Internet outlets-had not been adjusted properly. She was practically lost behind them.
Her voice, however, was not. It was strong and confident as she began reading from her sheet of paper.
“This has been a tragic week in the City of Newark, with the loss of two of our finest officers, Darius Kipps and Michael Fusco. It has been particularly hard for those of us in the Fourth Precinct who had the privilege of working alongside these officers as they attended to their duties. And I would ask that we all keep the families of these officers in our prayers during this difficult time.”
She paused for a quick moment of solemnity, then pushed onward:
“As many of you are aware, the department announced a preliminary determination that Detective Sergeant Darius Kipps died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That will not be our final determination in this matter. And on behalf of the Newark Police Department, I would like to publicly apologize to the family of Darius Kipps for this error.”
My internal Surprise-o-meter was registering one of its highest possible readings. As a rule, police departments didn’t admit to botching anything, much less an investigation into the death of one of their own officers. Then Boswell pushed the Surpriseometer clear off the charts.
“Early this morning,” she said slowly, deliberately, “I received a call from Detective Fusco’s cell phone. During this call, he confessed to killing Detective Sergeant Kipps over a personal dispute and then to altering certain aspects of the crime scene to make it appear to be a suicide.”
She paused again, and some of the reporters actually squirmed in their seats. Professional decorum demanded that they not react in a demonstrable manner. But I knew that if this had been a movie they were watching at home, half of them would have been yelling at their television screens, “Whoa!”
Boswell continued her statement: “Detective Fusco informed me he could not live with himself as a result of this act but that he wanted
to set the record straight. He then terminated the phone call. As we now know, it appears that placing that phone call was his last act before he turned his service weapon on himself and ended his own life.”
As soon as I heard the term “service weapon,” I felt a prickle from the base of my spine all the way up to my neck. In my head, I could hear the voice of tough guy Mike Fusco telling me about how he had been placed on administrative leave and lamenting, I even had to turn in my service weapon.
When had he told me that? Yesterday, when I came by with those photos of Kipps. Had he somehow gotten the gun back during the eighteen hours or so between when I last saw him and when he supposedly pulled its trigger? Did he have another department-issued gun that had simply been confused for his service weapon?
I didn’t know. But it was another inconsistency. That and the two shots that had been fired. I still didn’t know of any cop-or anyone who knew which end of a gun fired-who could miss his own head from six inches away.
Meanwhile, Captain Boswell was finishing up, “I’m sure many of you will have questions about how such a tragedy could have occurred and about whether it could have been prevented. We in the Newark Police Department are asking ourselves the same questions today. Unfortunately, we may not have many answers, as so much of this seemed to involve issues known only to these two officers.”
Boswell lifted her head for the first time, refolded her note, then stepped aside so Hakeem Rogers could take her place in front of the microphones.
“We will now take a limited number of questions,” he said. “Please wait for me to call on you.”
I immediately raised my hand in the air, but Rogers motioned to one of the television guys, who asked, “Captain Boswell, can you describe the nature of this personal dispute between these two officers?”
Boswell didn’t make a move toward the microphone. Instead, Rogers handled it: “That’s not something we’re going to be able to discuss. It was a personal dispute of a personal nature.”