He’s glancing in his mirrors as I sit back in my seat, hoping we don’t crash. We’re not going as fast as it seems but it’s nerve-racking, and Marino’s in a treacherous mood because of the phone call to the Hay-Adams Hotel. He rarely treats a death scene as an emergency. Usually lights and sirens aren’t needed. Usually it’s too late for us to prevent or save much, but he’s impatient, aggressive, in a blind fury.

“Jesus Christ! Who the hell was that? Who the hell was I just on the phone with?”

He’s been going on and on since he ended the call. There’s nothing I can say, and I know when it’s best to mostly listen. Marino needs to vent, then he’ll be okay. But he won’t forgive and forget. He never does. Whoever makes a fool of Pete Marino will have hell to pay. It may take years. In some instances it’s taken decades.

“I can’t believe it. I freakin’ can’t believe it! And what the crap does Roberts think he’s doing?” Marino glares into the rearview mirror at the marked unit flashing and wailing behind us. “Did you hear me ask for his assistance? Did you hear me request a backup or yell Mayday?”

He glances angrily at me, and he’s almost shouting. I’m silent as I sit snugly strapped in my seat, watching the lights pulsing in my side mirror, waiting for him to calm down.

“No, I didn’t think so,” he loudly answers his own questions. “This is what’s called playing cops and robbers. The idiot Roberts is all dressed up with no place to go because I don’t need his damn help.”

Marino glares in the mirror every other second, his jaw muscle doing its rapid-fire flexing again. He snatches his portable radio out of the charger.

“Unit thirty-three,” he holds the radio close to his lips, practically spitting he’s so pissed.

“Thirty-three.”

“Ask one-sixty-four to call me.” He’s instantly polite with a touch of sweetness as he talks to the dispatcher he refers to as Rosie.

“Roger, thirty-three,” she says, and her tone is different with him too, and it needles me a little.

Marino loves women but he’s never known what to do with them besides the obvious courting, badgering, acting out, being led by the nose and in general being controlled by his lesser member, as Lucy not so delicately puts it. No relationship he’s had has ever lasted, not with his former wife Doris, who in my opinion he’s never gotten over. He’s also fallen out with me more than once, badly, almost irreparably.