The naked edge

12

While Elvis crooned, Cavanaugh peered up from mopping the floor. His gray janitor's coveralls covered the blood on his clothes and gave him the rumpled look of somebody who'd worked too many years on the night shift. The small radio was a bonus.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Cavanaugh answered, annoyed. The fireman appeared genuine, but after the night's threats, it was foolish to make assumptions. "And what are you doing here?" He almost let go of his mop in apparent sudden realization. "Wait a minute, is there a fire?"

"Didn't you hear the explosion?"

"Explosion?"

"On the fortieth floor."

"What?"

"And poison gas," the exhausted fireman said.

"Poison… Jesus, don't tell me it's terrorists!"

"We don't know what it is. You need to get out of here."

"Buddy, I don't need convincing."

"Anybody else on this floor?"

"Nobody."

"You're positive."

"I've been up and down this corridor for the past hour. The place is deserted."

A bell sounded. Down the corridor, an elevator opened. A policeman charged out.

"This floor's clear!" the fireman shouted to be heard above the music. "I'm getting this janitor out of here."

"On the double! We don't know what else might happen!" The policeman ducked back into the elevator. Its doors closed.

"You heard him," the fireman said. "Go!"

"I'm outta here," Cavanaugh said.

He and the fireman hurried toward the stairwell door.

"Hold it, I forgot my coat," Cavanaugh said.

"Hurry!" The fireman turned and yelled down the stairs toward where footsteps and voices struggled upward, "Evacuee coming down!"

"I'm right behind you!" Cavanaugh yelled. "Check the other floors. Poison gas? God help anybody who's in the building."

Breathing hard, the fireman climbed to the next level. Simultaneously, Cavanaugh opened the maintenance room's door all the way. There, amid boxes of cleaning supplies, Jamie and Eddie waited. Only one other set of coveralls had been in the room. They'd been too big for Jamie, so Eddie wore them.

Jamie grabbed a box, holding it as if it contained something important.

Clutching his mop as if he was too startled to realize it was in his hand, Cavanaugh led the way through the stairwell door. Lights glared. Above, the door to the thirtieth floor banged shut as the fireman went in. Below, other firemen climbed and opened doors.

Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Eddie hurried down.

"One of your men ordered us out of here," he told the next fireman, four floors down. "I don't understand what's happening."

"Just do what he told you." The fireman breathed hard from the climb and the weight of his equipment. "Get out of the building. Evacuees coming down!" he yelled to his team farther below.

As Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Eddie hurriedly descended, the clatter of their footsteps added to those of the emergency team.

"Evacuees!" a fireman yelled to other men below him. "Are you hurt?" he asked Cavanaugh.

"No. Just scared."

"I hear you," the fireman said. Putting his oxygen mask on, he braced himself and opened a door.

They hurried lower. Passing emergency workers, breathing hoarsely, they reached the fifth floor, the fourth…

A few seconds after they passed the lobby door, it banged open. A fireman charged up the stairs, shouting into his two-way radio, "Affirmative! Poison gas! The thirtieth floor! Make sure the building's empty!"

With his attention focused on the upper floors, the fireman failed to see them below.