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notice.
    Marino slams on the brakes, shoves the SUV into park and boils out. The blower is as loud as an airboat. Then abrupt silence as the young man stops what he’s doing. His dark glasses stare, his mouth expressionless. I try to place him. Maybe I’ve just seen him in the area doing yard work.
    “You like it if I did that to your car?” Marino yells at him.
    “I don’t have a car.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “I don’t have to tell you,” he says in the same indifferent tone, and I notice his hair is long and carrot red.
    “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that.”
    Marino stalks around the truck, inspecting it. He pulls out a notepad and makes a big production of writing down the truck’s plate number. Next he photographs it with his BlackBerry.
    “I find anything I’ll write you up for damaging city property,” he threatens, the veins standing out in his neck.
    A shrug. He isn’t scared. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s even smiling a little.
    Marino gets back in and resumes driving. “Fucking asshole.”
    “Well you made your point,” I reply dryly.
    “What the hell’s wrong with kids these days? Nobody raises them right. If he was mine, I’d kick his damn ass.”
    I don’t remind him that his only child, Rocco, who is dead, was a career criminal. Marino used to kick his ass and a lot of good it did.
    “You seem very agitated today,” I comment.
    “You know why? Because I think we’re dealing with some type of fucking terrorist who’s now in our backyard. That’s my gut and I wish to hell it wasn’t, and me and Machado are having a real beef about it.”
    “And you started thinking this when exactly?”
    “After the second case in Jersey. I got a real bad feeling Jamal Nari is the third one.”
    “Terrorists generally claim responsibility,” I remind him. “They don’t remain anonymous.”
    “Not always.”
    “What about enemies?”
    I get back to the reason my vacation is being delayed and possibly ruined. More to the point, I need Marino to focus on what’s before us and not on connections he’s making to cases in New Jersey, to terrorism or to anything else.
    “I would imagine that after the storm of publicity Jamal Nari must have gained a few detractors,” I add.
    “Nothing to account for this that we know about so far.” Marino turns on Irving Street.
    A light wind stirs hardwood trees and their shadows move on the sunny pavement. The traffic is intermittent, a couple of cars, a moped, and a boxy white construction truck that Marino tailgates and blares his horn at because it’s not going fast enough. The truck pulls over to let him pass and Marino guns the engine.
    He’s in a mood all right and I doubt it’s solely related to his so-called beef with Machado. Something else is going on. Marino might be scared and going out of his way to act like he’s not.
    “And the highly publicized problem with the FBI was about this time last year?” I’m asking him. “Why strike now? A lot of people have forgotten about it. Including me.”
    “I don’t know how you forget after the way he treated you at the White House. Accusing you of selling body parts, saying autopsies are for profit and all that bullshit. Kind of an irony that the very thing he went after you about is now going to happen to him.”
    “Did he live alone?” I ask.
    “Second marriage. Joanna Cather. She was one of his students in high school and now works there as a psychologist.” Marino has gone from angry to subdued. “They started dating a couple years ago when he got divorced. Needless to say she’s much younger. She kept her name when they got married for obvious reasons.”
    “What obvious reasons?”
    “The name Nari. It’s Muslim.”
    “Not necessarily. It could be Italian. Was he Muslim?”
    “I guess the Feds thought he was which is why they went after him.”
    “They went after him because of a computer error, Marino.”
    “What matters is the way it looks and assumptions they make.