The marshals pretended to be patient while Petronelli pretended to read their warrant. He’d been trumped and hated it. He finished playing with the document and thrust it at Mervyn, who scanned it quickly and shrugged.

“Call me when you can,” Mervyn said. “I’m standing by.”

The woman handcuffed Ted, patted him down, but left him his wallet and cell phone. Then the two led him out of the interview room and through the maze of offices to the elevators. Neither one spoke to him.

“Does either of you want to tell me where we’re going?” Ted said, breaking the silence once they were all in a car—a monstrous SUV equipped with ringbolts on the floor, which Ted assumed were there so prisoners could be shackled in place. Apparently he did not represent enough of a risk.

The woman drove. The man watched Ted in a mirror on the sun visor. Neither one answered him at first. Just before pulling out into traffic, the woman caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “MDC Brooklyn,” she said.

The Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, was famous for all the wrong reasons. It was the short-term jail for the federal justice system in the Eastern District, a warehouse for all levels of alleged criminals. From drug lords and made men to white-collar suburbanites and tax evaders, all were waiting to be arraigned or, without bail, awaiting trial. Some waited years. Ted had never been there, but every lawyer had heard the stories. It was a vile, smelly, violent holding pen—one of the worst in the system. Stabbings, sexual assaults, and suicides were normal.

They were inching along the LIE when a cell phone rang from the front seat. The man answered. He listened for a minute, twice saying the words “Yes, sir.”

“Change in plans,” he said to the driver. “We’re to deliver him into the city.”

-68-

-68-

Ted braced for a trip downtown. If he was very lucky, he would be taken to the FBI or the federal prosecutor’s offices for questioning. The more likely destination was the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal facility similar to the MDC Brooklyn, this one located in Lower Manhattan. The main differences between the two institutions were a matter of opinion. Most attorneys agreed if the MDC Brooklyn was a zoo, then the MCC was a circus. That was metaphor, as the reality was worse. Each held dangerous animals in cages with considerably less oversight and control than any zoo or circus.