The other two each caught one of his arms and tried to pull him off, but that left his legs free to stamp on my face like someone trying to put out a fire. Not that this hurt. He had a right as big as a medicine ball, and I wasn’t feeling anything very much since it had connected with my chin. Humming like an electric eel, I lay there waiting for him to stop so that I could show him who was really in charge of the interrogation. By the time they got a ring in his pointy nose and hauled him off, I was just about ready for my next wisecrack. I might have made it, too, but for the blood that was pouring out of my nose.

When I was absolutely sure no one was about to knock me down again, I got off the floor and told myself that when they hit me again it would be because I had truly earned a beating and that it would have been worth it.

“Being a cop,” I said, “is a lot like looking for something interesting to read in the newspaper. By the time you’ve found it, you can bet there’s a lot that’s rubbed off on your fingers. Before the war, the last war, I was a cop in Germany. An honest cop, too, although I guess that won’t mean much to apes like you. Plainclothes. A detective. But when we invaded Poland and Russia they put us in gray uniforms. Not green, not black, not brown, gray. Field Gray, they called it. The thing about gray is you can roll around in the dirt all day and still look smart enough to return a general’s salute. That’s one reason we wore it. Another reason we wore gray was maybe so that we could do what we did and still think we had standards—so that we could manage to look ourselves in the eye when we got up in the morning. That was the theory. I know, stupid, wasn’t it? But no Nazi was ever so stupid as to ask us to wear a white uniform. You know why? Because a white uniform is hard to keep clean, isn’t it? I mean, I admire your courage wearing white. Because let’s face it, gentlemen, white shows everything. Especially blood. And the way you conduct yourselves? That’s a big disadvantage.”