Marino realizes Dr. Self has gotten off the phone, and he moves across the sunporch as silently as a shadow and lets himself out the glass door. He shuts it without a sound and follows the walkway around the pool, through the garden with its fruit trees that have the red stripes around them, and along the side of the small, white, stucco house where Dr. Self lives but shouldn’t live, simply has no business living. Anybody could walk right up to her front door. Anybody could walk right up to her office in back by the palm-shaded pool. It isn’t safe. Millions of people listen to her every week and she lives like this. It isn’t safe. He should go back and knock on her door and tell her.
His tricked-out Screamin’ Eagle Deuce is parked on the street, and he walks around it once to make sure nobody has done anything to it while he was in his appointment. He thinks about his flat tire. He thinks about getting his hands on whoever did it. A light film of dust coats the flames over blue paint and the chrome, and he is more than a little irritated. He detailed the motorcycle early this morning, polished every inch of trim and then had a flat tire and now there is dust. Dr. Self should have covered parking. She should have a damn garage. Her fancy white Mercedes convertible is in the driveway and no other car will fit, so her patients park on the street. It isn’t safe.
He unlocks the bike’s front fork and ignition and swings his leg over the warrior seat, thinking how much he loves not living like the poor city cop he was most of his life. The Academy supplies him with an H2 Hummer, black with a turbo-diesel V8, 250-horsepower engine, four-speed overdrive transmission, a load-bearing exterior rack, winch and off-road adventure package. He bought the Deuce and tricked it out to his heart’s content, and he can afford a psychiatrist. Imagine that.
He shifts the bike into neutral and presses the starter button as he stares at the attractive white house where Dr. Self lives but shouldn’t live. He holds in the clutch and gives the bike some gas, the ThunderHead pipes making plenty of noise as lightning flashes in the distance and a dark army of retreating clouds wastes its artillery over the sea.