The Good Cop (27 page)

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.

I was so distracted by that thought, I nearly missed another image—and not one that existed only in my imagination. This was a real image, in my rearview mirror.

It was of a silver Mercedes. And it was closing in fast.

*   *   *

Daytime running lights save lives. I can now testify to that because it was the Mercedes’ daytime running lights that first caught the corner of my eye in that mirror. Otherwise, I never would have seen it coming, and that very likely might have cost me the privilege of continued respiration.

As it was, I had perhaps two seconds to make sense of what I was seeing, and four seconds of useful reaction time. I was puttering along, doing thirty miles per hour in the right lane of an avenue that had two lanes heading in my direction. The Mercedes was coming up behind me in the left lane doing at least sixty.

I had, as best I could figure, two choices: try to stop in the hopes that the Mercedes would overshoot me; or hit the gas and lose them in a chase.

My six-year-old Chevy Malibu couldn’t outrun a well-tuned moped, much less an E-class Mercedes with a magnificently engineered eight-cylinder engine. But I knew if I stopped, I might as well just strip off my shirt and scrawl “shoot me here” on my chest. Besides, for all my outward refinement and education, I’m still a Jersey guy. Aggressive driving is a state birthright. So I straightened my right leg to the point of hyperextension and pressed the accelerator down into the floorboards.

The Malibu’s engine hesitated for an instant—its protest to the more-than-111,431 miles it had been forced to carry me and other travelers throughout its life—then finally caught with a roar reminiscent of a gas-powered golf cart climbing a steep hill. In my peripheral vision, I could see the speedometer begin a determined journey up the dial.

The Mercedes was still gaining on me, albeit more slowly as I blasted through the intersection of Norfolk Street—if “blasted” is, in fact, a verb that can be used in conjunction with a used Malibu. South Orange Avenue squeezed down to one lane at that point, which meant I had a momentary reprieve from being overtaken, assuming my friends in the Mercedes weren’t going to want to tussle with oncoming traffic.

But I was knowledgeable enough about the roads of Newark—probably more familiar with them than any town I ever lived in—to recognize I had a problem coming up. South Orange Avenue would soon funnel into Springfield Avenue, then cross Martin Luther King Boulevard, then feed down into Market Street. And there was no possible way, here in the middle of the day, I was going to get through all of that without having to stop for a traffic light, a pedestrian, or a slow-moving city bus.

And stopping, as previously mentioned, was not a real savory menu option.

Without touching the brake, I pulled my wheel hard to the right at the next intersection. The Malibu’s tires, which I had replaced relatively recently—I had, right?—made a horrible squealing sound, and for a moment I wondered if they were going to slip right off their rims and leave me running steel-on-asphalt. But they held and I was soon hurtling down Prince Street, a narrow two-lane road and one of the better car chase venues in downtown Newark, if only because there wouldn’t be as much stuff on it to hit.

I hoped my one fancy maneuver would be enough to lose my chasers, but the Mercedes easily made the turn with me and was closing in on my rear bumper. The driver was not being particularly subtle about his intentions. Then again, why did he need to be? He didn’t exactly need to rely on artifice or subterfuge. He had the vehicle with the better engine, the better handling, the better suspension. Me? I was probably better at Scrabble, but that was about it.

He made a move to pass me on the left, which I countered by drifting to the middle, leaving no room to pass on either side. Knowing he couldn’t get by me, I laid off the accelerator a little but was still getting along quite quickly.

In this manner we sped down Prince Street, with the town houses of University Heights on my left just a blur, toward the first of two traffic lights. The second one, I knew, I wouldn’t have to worry about. It was just Court Street, a road that wouldn’t have much traffic on it. But the first? The first was a concern—the aforementioned Springfield Avenue, one of the most heavily traveled arteries in New Jersey’s largest city.

As I closed to within about a hundred yards, I could see the light facing me was still red, while the light for Springfield was still green. There was no chance it would be able to cycle through from yellow to red in time. I thought about slowing down a little. I couldn’t just bomb right through, kamikaze-style, could I?

Then, with about fifty yards to go, I heard a popping sound from behind me, then another, and I knew damn well it wasn’t the Mercedes backfiring. I was being shot at, again. And that sort of solved the dilemma of whether to slow down. My quandary, instead, became how to elude whatever was in the intersection as I barreled through it. I glanced left and saw the way was clear. I wasn’t so lucky with the right. A red sedan of some sort, a Pontiac maybe, was approaching. If I maintained my current speed, I judged my front bumper would impale its side panel at roughly a ninety degree angle, and that wasn’t going to be good for either of us, especially the driver of the Pontiac.

Then again, if I jammed on the brakes, there was a good chance the Mercedes—now mere feet off my back bumper—was going to rear-end me. And that didn’t seem like it would end well, either.

I was left with one option, and that was to ask for more from the Malibu than it was perhaps able to give me. Using every muscle in my right leg to generate as much force as I could, I hammered the accelerator. Then I laid on the horn with my right palm, hoping it might alert the red car’s driver to the fact that I was coming, traffic signals be damned.

Then I held my breath and tensed my body for the collision.

*   *   *

I careened through the intersection like that, with the expected impact never coming. The red car responded to my blaring horn with an angry bleep of its own, but its antilock brakes were doing the job, bringing the Pontiac to a noisy but safe stop.

The next block was a short one, and I could already see the light was green. I was in the clear for a little while, except for the minor annoyance that there were some hostile young men behind me. I finally allowed myself a glance at my pursuers in the rearview mirror. On the passenger side of the car, I saw an arm stuck out of the front window holding a handgun. The muzzle flashed twice more, and I heard the shots, though the noise was surprisingly distant, almost like a BB gun.

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.