Free The Good Cop by Brad Parks

cops beat up a cab driver (named John Smith, of all things) and then dragged his broken body back to the Fourth Precinct, resulting in the rumor the cabbie had been killed—and prompting a spasm of violence and looting from the outraged citizenry. That’s true, but it’s only part of the story. The city actually calmed down the night of Smith’s arrest, to the point where the local National Guard Armory, which had been put on alert, was told to stand down. Violence didn’t flare up again until the next night, when a protest outside the Fourth Precinct got out of hand, leading to four days of sustained unrest.
    Either way, the Fourth played a central role in a cataclysm that left twenty-six people dead and caused ten million dollars in physical damage, to say nothing of what it did to Newark’s reputation. On the fortieth anniversary of the riots, a group of citizens and community leaders led an effort to have a small plaque mounted on the front of the building to commemorate what happened there. Otherwise, the Fourth Precinct was more or less the same place it had been in 1967. There had been talk about tearing it down, but no one had quite gotten around to it.
    Now here it was, harboring secrets once again, playing an oblique role in another tragedy—even if I couldn’t quite measure the angle.
    Lacking any kind of real plan, I locked my car and wandered in the direction of the precinct. I wanted to get a read on the place, imprint an image of it in my brain. I kept my eyes fixed on it as I walked up the sidewalk, then stood there for a while, like if I stared at it long enough its walls would start spilling what they knew.
    I was still rooted there when a voice interrupted me.
    “Can I help you?”
    It was a patrol cop in uniform, taking a smoke break by the side of the building. I’m not sure how I missed him—he had to be at least six foot eight, with the arms of a seven footer—but somehow he startled me a little.
    “I was just … I heard a cop killed himself in there last night, and I guess I wanted to have a look. Is that a problem?”
    “No law against looking,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette.
    I did my best to study the guy out of the corner of my eye while I pretended to examine the building some more. Maybe I had watched a few too many bad eighties movies, but he was tall, black, and wearing a policeman’s hat that made him appear even taller, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of Hightower from Police Academy .
    So. How to handle him? If I told him I was a reporter, the guy’s mouth would cinch up tighter than Uncle Scrooge’s change purse. But there’s a rule about identifying yourself to sources: you only have to do it if you planned to quote them. And since there’s no way a beat cop would ever be cleared by his superiors to be quoted on something like this, I wasn’t exactly risking anything by posing as a nosy bystander.
    “Did you know him?” I asked.
    “We all did.”
    “What happened?”
    “Seems like you already know,” Hightower said, stubbing out his cigarette on the wall of the building, then dropping the butt.
    “Was he a good guy?”
    “You must be a reporter.”
    Busted. Another rule: you don’t necessarily have to identify yourself, but if you’re asked whether you are in fact a reporter, you can’t go lying about it.
    “Yeah, how’d you know?”
    “White guy in this neighborhood? If it’s nighttime, you’re here to buy drugs. If it’s daytime, you’re either a reporter or a social worker. Social workers don’t wear ties.”
    I nodded my head. “You got me,” I said.
    I figured those would be among the last words Hightower and I ever exchanged. But, to my surprise, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit another one. He was going to get as much nicotine in as he could while he was still on break. And that suited my purposes fine.
    “So I’m hearing a bunch of patrol guys found him drunk on bourbon, covered in puke,” I