He got quiet as he drove. Then he said, 'I'm sorry about tonight. I know I was a jerk.'
'Thank you for apologizing,' I said.
'Well, the truth is, things aren't going so good for me personally right now. Molly and me were doing fine until about a week ago when Doris called.'
I wasn't terribly surprised. Old spouses and lovers have a way of resurfacing.
'Seems she found out about Molly because Rocky said something. Now all of a sudden she wants to come home. She wants to get back with me.'
When Doris had left, Marino was devastated. But at this stage in my life I somewhat cynically believed that fractured relationships could not be set and healed like bones. He lit another cigarette as a truck bore down on our rear and swung past. A vehicle rushed up behind us, its high beams in our eyes.
'Molly wasn't happy about it,' he went on with difficulty. 'Truth is, we hadn't been getting along so hot since and it's just as well we didn't spend Christmas together. I think she's started going out on me, too. This sergeant she met. Wouldn't you know. I introduced them at the FOP one night.'
'I'm very sorry.' I looked over at his face and thought he might cry. 'Do you still love Doris?' I gently asked.
'Hell, I don't know. I don't know nothing. Women may as well be from another planet. You know? It's just like tonight. Everything I do is wrong.'
'That's not true. You and I have been friends for years. You must be doing something right.'
'You're the only woman friend I got,' he said. 'But you're more like a guy.
'
'Why, thank you.'
'I can talk to you like a guy. And you know what you're doing. You didn't get where you are because you're a woman. Goddam it' — he squinted into the rearview mirror, then adjusted it to diminish the glare — 'you got where you are in spite of your being one.'
He glanced again in the mirrors. I turned around. A car was practically touching our bumper, high beams blinding. We were going seventy miles an hour.
'That's weird,' I said. 'He has plenty of room to go around us.'
Traffic on 1-95 was light. There was no reason for anyone to tailgate, and I thought of the accident last fall when Lucy had flipped my Mercedes. Someone had been on her rear bumper, too. Fear ran along my nerves.
'Can you see what kind of car it is?' I asked.
'Looks like a Z. Maybe an old 280 Z, something like that.'
He reached inside his coat and slid a pistol from its holster. He placed the gun in his lap as he continued to watch the mirrors. I turned around again and saw a dark shape of a head that looked male. The driver was staring straight at us.
'All right,' Marino growled. «This is pissing me off.' He firmly tapped the brakes.
The car shot around us with a long, angry blare of the horn. It was a Porsche and the driver was black.
I said to Marino, 'You don't still have that Confederate flag bumper sticker on your truck, do you? The one that glows when headlights hit it?'
'Yeah, I do.' He returned the gun to its holster.
'Maybe you ought to consider removing it.'
The Porsche was tiny taillights far ahead. I thought of Chief Tucker threatening to send Marino to cultural diversity class. Marino could go the rest of his life and I wasn't sure it would cure him.
'Tomorrow's Thursday,' he said. 'I've got to go to First Precinct and see if anyone remembers that I still work for the city.'
'What's happening with Sheriff Santa?'
'He's scheduled for a preliminary hearing next week.'
'He's locked up, I presume,' I said.
'Nope. Out on bond. When do you start jury duty?'
'Monday.'
'Maybe you can get cut loose.'
'I can't ask for that,' I said. 'Somebody would make a big deal of it, and even if they didn't, it would be hypocritical. I'm supposed to care about justice.'
'Do you think I should see Doris?' We were in Richmond now, the downtown skyline in view.
I looked over at his profile, his thinning hair, big ears and face, and the way his huge hands made the steering wheel disappear. He could not remember his life before his wife. Their relationship had long ago left the froth and fire of sex and moved into an orbit of safe but boring stability. I believed they had parted because they were afraid of growing old.
'I think you should see her,' I said to him. 'So I should go up to New Jersey.' 'No,' I said. 'Doris is the one who left. She should come here.'
11
Windsor Farms was dark when we turned into it from Gary Street, and Marino did not want me entering my house alone. He pulled into my brick driveway and stared ahead at the shut garage door illuminated by his headlights.
'Do you have the opener?' he asked.
'It's in my car.'
'A lot of friggin' good that does when your car's inside the garage with the door shut.'
'If you would drop me off in front as I requested I could unlock my front door,' I said.
'Nope. You're not walking down that long sidewalk anymore, Doc.' He was very authoritative, and I knew when he got this way there was no point in arguing.
I handed him my keys. 'Then you go on in through the front and open the garage door. I'll wait right here.'
He opened his door. 'I got a shotgun between the seats.'
He reached down to show me a black Benelli twelve-gauge with an eight-round magazine extension. It occurred to me that Benelli, a manufacturer of fine Italian shotguns, was also the name on Gault's false driver's license.
'The safety's right there.' Marino showed me. 'All you do is push it in, pump it and fire.'
'Is there a riot about to happen that I've not been told about?'
He got out of the truck and locked the doors.
I cranked open the window. 'It might help if you knew my burglar alarm code,' I said.
'Already do.' He started walking across frosted grass. 'Your DOB.'
'How did you know that?' I demanded.
'You're predictable,' I heard him say before disappearing around a hedge.
Several minutes later the garage door began to lift and a light went on inside, illuminating yard and garden tools neatly arranged on walls, a bicycle I rarely rode, and my car. I could not see my new Mercedes without thinking of the one Lucy had wrecked.
My former 500E was sleek and fast with an engine partially designed by Porsche. Now I just wanted something big. I had a black S500 that probably would hold its own with a cement truck or a tractor trailer. Marino stood near my car, looking at me as if he wished I would hurry up. I honked the horn to remind him I was locked inside his truck.
'Why do people keep trying to lock me inside their vehicles?' I said as he let me out. 'A taxi this morning, now you.'
