Free Nameless Night by G.M. Ford

caterpillars. “So?” the sergeant said again.
    “Sergeant . . . ?”
    “Ramirez,” the cop said. “Sergeant Hector Ramirez.”
    Gray suit opened his mouth to speak, but Ramirez cut him off.
    “And you need what from us?”
    With an air of bemused forbearance, gray suit went through it again.
    “And you want the SPD to lock them up for you?”
    “Yes.”
    “On what charges?”
    “Interfering with a federal officer.”
    Ramirez held out his thick hand. Gray suit looked down into the leathery palm and cocked a quizzical eyebrow in an almost comical gesture that was from hours of practice before the mirror. Ramirez answered the silent question. “Paperwork,” he growled.
    “We don’t require paperwork,” the little guy said. The two cops shot each other a quick glance. Ramirez’s eyebrows ended their kiss. “The prisoners are foreign nationals?” Ramirez ventured.
    “No.” Gray suit pulled a couple of pieces of plastic from his pants pocket and dropped them on the desk. Photo IDs. Driver’s licenses. Ramirez picked them up, shuffled from one to the other and back before handing them to the desk cop, who extracted a pair of half-glasses from his uniform pocket before reading the documents, front and back. Another glance flew from cop to cop.
    “They’re outside, you say?”
    “Yes.”
    “Bring them in,” Ramirez said.
    Gray suit hesitated for a beat, as if testing the wind for irony. Discerning none, he tried to read Ramirez’s face but found himself looking into the unblinking gaze of a stone idol. The little man put on an air of bemused resignation as he turned and headed out the precinct door. On either side of the double doors, filthy windows ran from knee to ceiling. On the right, the windowsills were black, blistered by long-ago cigarettes and littered here and there by half a dozen magazine carcasses, twisted and torn, separated from their once-glossy covers, pages dog-eared and cemented together by substances best left unimagined. On the left, a thirty-year-old jade plant meandered, long and leggy, out of hand, its arid stalks twisting in every imaginable contortion, filling the grimy windows with its thick leathery leaves, furry beneath a quarter inch of dust.
    Sergeant Ramirez spoke into his collar radio. The desk cop stifled a smile. A minute later, a trio of uniformed officers arrived through the door behind the desk. Two men and a woman, their eyes full of questions that didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Both front doors opened. The sounds of the street mingled with the dust and the desperation as a pair of men in dark overcoats led a pair of manacled prisoners into the precinct. The man in the gray suit brought up the rear. He was wiping his hands with a crisp white handkerchief as he shouldered his way through the double doors. The prisoners were middle-aged. A Japanese man and a Caucasian woman, both in their late fifties or thereabouts. Both looking defeated. Her hair had come loose from the clip at the back of her head and was blowing about in the breeze. The man tried to pull away from his captor but failed. Both looked up at the same time. Both of them tried to speak. The cops behind the desk flinched in unison. Both prisoners had a piece of silver duct tape sealing their mouths.
    Ramirez blanched. His hand shook as he pointed. “Take the prisoners to separate interview rooms,” he said. “And get that goddamn tape off of them.” He turned his attention to gray suit. “Keys for the cuffs.”
    Nobody moved until it got real awkward. Finally the little guy gave a nod and one of the overcoats stepped forward to drop a set of keys into the female officer’s outstretched hand. After that, everything happened at once. Two of the officers led the prisoners away. Gray suit and his minions turned to leave but found the doorway filled by a pair of massive SWAT officers, boots, helmets, body armor, and all. A futile attempt to flank the pair made it plain: nobody was going