“‘They fire your ass down there already?” he asked.
“What’s this, trick or treat?” Lucy said just as loudly, tugging a sleeve of his uniform shirt. “You trying to make us finally believe you’re a real cop?”
“Marino,” I said as we went into the kitchen, “I don’t think you’ve met Jo Sanders.”
“Nope,” he said.
“You’ve heard me talk about her.”
He gave Jo a blank look. She was an athletically built strawberry blonde with dark blue eyes, and I could tell he thought she was pretty.
“He knows exactly who you are,” I said to Jo. “He’s not being rude. He’s just being him.”
“You work?” Marino asked her, fishing his smoldering cigarette out of the ashtray and drawing one last puff.
“Only when I have no choice,” Jo answered.
“Doing what?”
“A little rappelling out of Black Hawks. Drug busts. Nothing special.”
“Don’t tell me you and Lucy are in the same field division down there in South America.”
“She’s DEA,” Lucy told him.
“No shit?” Marino said to Jo. “You seem kind of puny for DEA. ”
“They’re into quotas,” Jo said.
He opened the refrigerator and shoved things around until he found a Red Stripe beer. He twisted off the cap and started chugging.
“Drinks are on the house,” he called out.
“Marino,” I said. “What are you doing? You’re on duty.”
“Not anymore. Here, let me show you.”
He set the bottle down hard on the table and dialed a number.
“Mann, what’cha know,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, yeah. Listen, I ain’t joking. I’m feeling like shit. You think you could cover for me tonight? I’ll owe ya:’
Marino winked at us. He hung up, hit the speaker button on the phone and dialed again. His call was answered on the first ring.
“Bray;” the deputy chief of administration, Diane Bray, announced in my kitchen for all to hear.
“Deputy Chief Bray, it’s Marino,” he said in the voice of someone dying of a terrible scourge. “Really sorry to bug you at home.”
He was answered with silence, having instantly and deliberately irritated his direct supervisor by addressing her as “Deputy Chief.” According to protocol; deputy chiefs were always addressed as “Chief,” while the chief himself was called “Colonel.” Calling her at home didn’t win him any points, either.
“What is it?” Bray tersely asked.
“I feel like hell,” Marino rasped. “Throwing up, fever, the whole nine yards. I gotta mark off sick and go to bed.”
“You certainly weren’t sick when I saw you a few hours ago.,,
“It happened real sudden. I sure hope I didn’t catch some bacteria thing. . .”
I quickly dashed out Strep and Clostridia on a notepad.
“. . . you know, like strep or Clos-ter-ida out there at the scene. One doctor I called warned me about that, because of getting in such close proximity to that dead body and all…
“When does your shift end?” she interrupted him.
“Eleven.”
Lucy, Jo and I were red-faced, strangled by laughter we were fighting to hold in.
“It’s not likely I can find someone to be watch commander this late in the shift,” Bray coldly replied.
“I already got hold of Lieutenant Mann in third precinct. He’s nice enough to work the rest of tour for me,” Marino let her know as his health failed precipitously.
“You should have notified me earlier!” Bray snapped.
“I kept hoping I could hang in there, Deputy Chief Bray.”
“Go home. I want to see you in my office tomorrow.”
“If I’m well enough, I’ll drop by, I sure will, Deputy Chief Bray. You take care, now. Sure hope you don’t get whatever I got.”
She hung up.
“What a sweetheart,” Marino said as laughter leapt out.
“God, no wonder,” Jo said when she could finally talk again. “I hear she’s pretty much hated.”
“How’d you hear that?” Marino frowned. “They talk about her in Miami?”
“I’m from here. On Old Mill, right off Three Chopt, not too far from the University of Richmond.”
“Your dad teach there?” Marino asked.
“He’s a Baptist minister.”
“Oh. That must be fun.”
“Yeah,” Lucy chimed in, “kind of bizarre to think she grew up around here and we never met until Miami. So, what are you going to do about Bray?”