Dacey turned his head. His forearm was still across the back of Ashby's neck. His eyes found Teo, and moved over him, the red vest and the name tag and the brown face, and something in the officer's expression settled, as if Teo had confirmed something he had already decided.
"Get back."
"Sir, it's his car, I parked it for him, I have the ticket, look—" Teo held up the claim stub, the other half of the one Ashby had handed him. Number 1-4. It was shaking in his fingers. "It's in the system, the cabinet took a picture, you can check, he's the owner, his daughter's having a baby—"
"I said get back. You're interfering with an arrest."
"He didn't do anything!"
Dacey keyed the radio on his shoulder. "Fourteen-twelve, I need another unit, Franklin and Adams, side lot of the Marlowe, one in custody, second subject interfering." He let go of Ashby's neck for just long enough to point at Teo. "You. On the ground. Right now."
Behind Teo, a little crowd had gathered at the porte-cochère: the woman in sequins, a couple from the wedding, two men in tuxedos holding drinks. Somebody had a phone up. Teo heard someone say, Oh my God, is that Julian Ashby? He heard someone else say, What did he do?
He looked at the officer. He looked at Ashby's face, pressed sideways against the hood, one eye open and looking back at him, and in that eye there was something Teo could not name, a warning or a plea or both. Don't. Don't, son. Go back.
Teo got down on the brick. He put his hands behind his head the way they showed you in the know-your-rights pamphlets at the nonprofit, the pamphlets that had pictures of cartoon people with their palms open. The paving was cold and damp through his black slacks. He kept saying it, quieter now, to the ground. "He owns the car. He owns the car. He owns the car."
Sirens came up Franklin Street two minutes later. The first unit was a marked Explorer driven by Officer Keisha Lomax, nine years on the job, Fourth Precinct, on duty, body camera clipped and recording, as it had been since she'd pulled out of the precinct lot at the start of her shift. She came through the gate and took in the scene, a Black man in formal wear handcuffed over the hood of a quarter-million-dollar car, a valet face-down on the brick, an off-duty officer red-faced and breathing hard, and her camera caught the half-second in which her own face did something she would later be asked to describe under oath.
"What've we got, Russ?"