"Sir, I'm the owner. My key is in my pocket. If you'll let me—"
He moved his left hand an inch toward his jacket. Later he would think about that inch for a long time: whether it had been a mistake, whether the inch was what did it. Delphine would tell him, firmly and more than once, that it did not matter, that a sixty-one-year-old man in a tuxedo explaining that his key was in his pocket is not a threat no matter which way his hand moves. But in the moment he only knew that the inch was the last thing he did freely.
Dacey closed the distance in two strides, seized Julian's left wrist, and spun him.
There was no warning and no pause. Julian felt himself turned like a door on a hinge and then driven forward and down, and the front of the Maybach came up to meet him. His chest and the left side of his face hit the hood with a sound he would hear in his sleep for months, a deep, hollow, metal boom, like someone kicking a steel drum. His glasses flew out of his breast pocket and skidded across the paint and fell. Something in his left shoulder lit up white. The hood was cold, and it smelled of wax, and under his cheek he could feel the shallow give of the aluminum as it took his weight, and then a second, harder shove as the officer drove a forearm into the back of his neck.
"Don't you move. Don't you move."
"I'm not moving." His voice came out flattened against the metal. "I'm not resisting. Officer, I am not resisting. Please. My daughter—"
"You got anything sharp on you? Any needles? Anything gonna stick me?"
"No. No, sir."
"Where'd you get the key?"
"From the valet. It's my key. It's my car. Please look at the registration, it's in the glove—"
"Shut up." The forearm ground down. The cuff went on his right wrist, bit, ratcheted. "Give me your other hand. Give me your other hand!"