The corner of Garvey's right eye twitches involuntarily.
"Two-bit whores in need of a flea dip aren't my type." Garvey stands up and gathers the signed sentencing agreements. Prissily stuffing the documents into folders and then into her MK briefcase, Garvey quickly crosses the room to the door.
Turning around, Garvey's eyes light on Feral Li, and she shakes her head as (yet another) wave of confusion sets in.
"What the d--." Sighing, Garvey turns instead to the marshal on the left.
"They've signed, so let's go. Leave their manacles on their hands and feet, but unchain them from the table." The marshal on the right opens the door to the interview room, and Garvey wastes no time in stepping into the hallway. She fishes a phone out of her bag, dials a number, and says,
"Operation Grim Frequencies is a green light. Loading baggage now. ETA to JMS . . . " Garvey checks her watch
". . . 75 minutes."
You are each wearing an orange prison suit. Your feet are manacled and connected by an 18" chain. Your hands are shackled in handcuffs in front of your body, and the cuffs are connected by a chain around your waist. You can walk, so long as no one expects you to run. Garvey and the two marshals escort you back to your cell block, where Garvey gives you five minutes to put your belongings in a cardboard file box with a lid, one box each. From there, two prison guards join your escort downstairs past the canteen, past the hospital ward, past the prison library, and into the loading bay.
A white unmarked van is parked in the loading bay, its engine running.
The marshals see to it that each of you is buckled into a seat in the van, then seat themselves. One marshal sits in the third row. The other sits in the middle row. Garvey sits shot-gun. The driver is an African-American male in a blue law enforcement jacket with large yellow block letters that read "FCC." Construction on I-70 East is wretched, but even with a mile-long traffic snarl outside of Terre Haute, the white van exits I-70 and turns north into downtown Indianapolis in 69 minutes.
Judge Magnus-Stinson's chambers are in the old U.S. Post Office building at the corner of Washington and Ohio Street in downtown Indy. The building is stately, but you see little of it as the van pulls into a loading dock tucked into the west side of the limestone building. Garvey and the marshals escort you in a line up to the third floor. The marshals tell you to sit on a bench in a hallway badly painted in industrial green. Garvey goes inside Judge's chambers, leaving you alone in the hall with the two marshals.
Ten minutes after you arrive, a man of middling height in a tailored navy suit with brass buttons on the cuffs rounds the far corner of the hall and comes striding toward Judge's chambers. As he gets closer, you note that the man is good-looking from a distance but up close bears the hallmarks of a once-handsome fellow perhaps gone to seed; his sandy-colored hair still waves but is thin up top, blue eyes that might once have been the bane of women are watery, and liver spots dot his temples and the backs of his hands. The man spares nary a glance at the five of you, but instead charges forward through Judge's door.