"What is he doing?" Skip asked in a low tone.
"Introducing those officers to their boss," Burke replied.
Skip frowned. "Huh?"
Burke snickered. "He's showing them that his dick is bigger."
"Ah."
Sal didn't often use the fact that he was married to the police commissioner's nephew to get what he wanted, but when it was needed, he would. Right now, it was needed. At least until we figured out why these three officers were being so weird.
My main concern was getting Skip out of there and back to Sal's house before he fell apart. Exploding cars might be a regular part of my world, but Skip had no experience with them. He was going to lose it at some point, and I knew he wouldn't want to lose it in front of witnesses or people he didn't know.
Sal stopped in front of the three officers and then held out his phone. I was pretty sure it was on speaker when all three of them glanced down at it and then turned pale.
I didn't smirk, but I wanted to.
Sal stood there for only a few minutes before placing the phone back to his ear, nodding a couple of times, and then hanging up and putting it back in his pocket. Clarke and Sal turned and walked back to us without saying another word to the officers.
"Can we go now?" I asked.
"Yes," Sal replied.
I grabbed Skip's arm and started leading him toward the car the others had arrived in. "What did Jerry say to them?"
I could feel the heat of the officers' glares on my back.
"He merely reminded them that they work for the citizens of our fair city and that Skip is one of those citizens. He also reminded them that Skip is a doctor, and if they fucked with him, he might not be inclined to treat one of them the next time they got injured."
"I wouldn't do that," Skip insisted.
"I know that," Sal said, "but they don't."
"Sal—"
Sal stopped and turned to look at Skip. "Do you know why they were holding you here?"
Skip frowned. "No."
"Because they think they have bigger dicks than anyone on the SWAT team. Wu was involved in this incident, so they wanted to prove to him that they held the power. It had nothing to do with you. You were just an innocent bystander who got caught in the dick-measuring contest between SWAT and uniformed officers."
Skip's eyes widened. "That's actually a thing?"
Sal started walking again. "Unfortunately, it is."
"It's stupid," I said. "It doesn't matter what our rank is. We're all police officers."
When we reached the vehicle, I opened the back door and let Skip climb in before getting in beside him. The others loaded up, and then Sal pulled out of the parking spot and started driving.
The hospital wasn't far from the fifteen-acre estate where Sal lived with his family, so it didn't take long before we were pulling up in front of the gate. The place was a fortress set on the outskirts of the city. Ten-feet-high stone walls encircled the entire fifteen-acre estate, right to the edge of the river inlet it was built next to. It was manned by a fulltime security force, including armed guards at the gate.
Made my two-bedroom apartment look like a slum.
When Sal and his husband, Lany, had moved here with their twin daughters, I thought they were nuts. For one, it used to belong to Vincenzo Castellano, the former head of the Castellano Crime Syndicate.
And two, the sheer upkeep on the place had to be more than Sal and Lany made in a year. Luckily for them, Vinnie, Lany's extremely rich parents, and a few other friends had created a trust fund for the security force and the upkeep on the place.
It allowed Sal, Lany, their six adopted kids, and numerous other people they had collected over the years to live here in relative comfort and safety.
