Here She Lies

workers, criminals — and me. My arresting officers jostled me through the flux of people until we reached a baroque wooden counter etched with graffiti: dogeetdog, 20/2/life, poppa-ratzi. A large black woman with a gold chain around the neck of her police uniform glared at me and then smirked at my companions.
    “Whadygot, boys?”
    “Booking.”
    “Name?”
    “Ann-anus Milliken.”
    “Anna-ees.” And then I spelled it: “A-n-a-i-s.” If she was writing it down, it had to be right. “Please, this is a mistake. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    They all three laughed as if they’d heard it all before. Unless it was my please : white woman in business duds being so polite. Though both my cops were also white, they weren’t white like me in my beige suit, my makeup, my done hair, my nice diction. In fact there were plenty of white people around; this was about something else, some huge misunderstanding.
    “I’d like to make a phone call,” I said.
    Ignoring me, she took a large paper envelope on which she had written my name and the date and inflated it by slapping it against the air. “Phone, keys, jewelry. Empty your pockets. Dump the purse. Put it all in here.”
    “What?”
    “I said—”
    “No, I heard you, but—”
    “You heard me? Then do it.”
    I did it.
    “Take her upstairs.”
    Officer Williams nodded (he was the tall one; since the shock of my arrest I had taken note of their name tags and removed my own) and P.O. Kiatsis (flabby, pale) tapped my shoulder. I walked between them, weaving past harried clumps of people for whom my presence here was a non-event. Didn’t anyone realize that I didn’t belong here? That this was a terrible mistake? I tried to make eye contact with a professional-looking woman in a nice blue suit, but she ignored me,as did a short man with a blond toupee and a kind face, and a young woman with a high ponytail and huge hoop earrings, lugging a stenotype machine. No one saw me. We rumbled up three flights in a battered elevator, they looking anywhere but at me, me searching back and forth between their blank faces. Down a long hall. Through a reinforced-glass door with DETECTIVES UNIT in black lettering so degraded it was hard to read. Into a desk-crowded, noise-addled room where again no one paused to notice me. An odor of hamburgers and French fries lingered in the air. Scattered across desks were the remnants of half-eaten early lunches — splayed paper wrappings, pried-apart plastic salad containers, water bottles, popped soda cans. I felt sick and involuntarily heaved, just slightly, but enough that one of the detectives bothered a glance: a thick-necked young man in a T-shirt with a tiny bicycle on his chest. He looked away.
    Against the wall, in a corner, was a shallow cell open to view like a cage. Officer Williams swung open the cell door. Kiatsis unlocked my handcuffs. My arms fell freely to my sides and I felt a warm rush of blood to my hands, realizing only now that they had grown numb. Both officers stared at me, waiting for me to step into the cell.
    “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Who is charging me with grand larceny?”
    “The Feds,” Williams answered.
    “No, I mean who ? What organization? Who says I stole from them?”
    “Don’t know.” His bland tone spoke volumes: didn’t know, didn’t care. “There’s a felony warrant on you. We’re just holding you until the Feds get here.”
    I walked into the cell and turned around to face them. Williams clanked the door shut and turned the key. I was locked in now. Alone. A prisoner. And as I realized that, as it really sank in, panic switched on inside my brain. The awareness that I was trapped in this cell amplified my desire to leave it, and my inability to move, to burst out of here, quickly transformed into a feeling of suffocation. I had to get out, talk to someone, get some help.
    “Officer Williams!” I said.
    His attention had swerved to a pair of nearby detectives analyzing last night’s baseball game. He turned partway back to face me now. “They’ll get here soon,” he said. “There’s a phone on the wall. You got three calls.”
    “Then what?”
    He nodded slowly (like he knew something I didn’t), sighed deeply (like I wouldn’t understand even he if tried to explain), shook his head (like I was a lost cause anyway) and turned his back on me (as if I didn’t exist). Kiatsis was already across the room at the coffee machine.
    As soon as he walked away I