“It sucks, don’t it? Going up there and working with good people and drinking beer in the Boardroom. It all gets to me, if you want to know. People hating cops and cops hating ’em back. When I was getting started, old folks, kids, parents—they was happy to see me. I was proud to put on the uniform and shined my shoes every day. Now, after twenty years, I get bricks throwed at me in the projects and citizens don’t even answer if I say good morning. I work my ass off for twenty-six years, and they promote me to captain and put me in charge of the training bureau.”

“That’s probably the place where you can do the most good,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but that’s not why I got stuck there.”

He stared out his side window, watching green highway signs fly by.

“They’re putting me out to pasture, hoping I’ll hurry up and retire or die. And I gotta tell you, Doc, I think about it a lot. Taking the boat out, fishing, taking the RV on the road and maybe going out west to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, all those places I’ve always heard about. But then when it gets right down to it, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. So I just think I’ll croak in the saddle.”

“Not anytime soon,” I said. “And should you retire, Marino, you can do like Benton.”

“With all due respect, I ain’t the consultant type,” he said. “The Institute of Justice and IBM ain’t gonna hire a slob like me. Doesn’t matter what I know.”

I didn’t disagree or offer another word, because, with rare exception, what he had said was true. Benton was handsome and polished and commanded respect when he walked into a room, and that was really the only difference between him and Pete Marino. Both were honest and compassionate and experts in their fields.

“All right, we need to pick up 395 and head over to Constitution,” I thought out loud as I watched signs and ignored urgent drivers riding my bumper and darting around me because going the speed limit wasn’t fast enough. “What we don’t want to do is go too far and end up on Maine Avenue. I’ve done that before.”

I flicked on my right turn signal.

“On a Friday night when I was coming up to see Lucy.”

“A good way to get carjacked,” Marino said.

“Almost did.”

“No shit?” He looked over at me. “What’d you do?”

“They started circling my car, so I floored it.”

“Run anybody over?”

“Almost.”

“Would you have kept on going, Doc? I mean, if you had run one of them over?”

“With at least a dozen of his buddies left, you bet your boots.”