The naked edge

12

Chest heaving, Cavanaugh turned slowly and saw two policemen in the living room, their pistols aimed at him, Jamie, and Kim. In the open doorway, an intense man in a suit aimed a pistol also. Outside, more sirens joined the commotion as the man in the suit yelled, "For the last time, drop your weapons!"

Cavanaugh let go of his knife. It clattered onto the floor.

"My gun might go off if I drop it," Jamie told the man.

"Gently," the man said, aiming, "set it down."

Jamie obeyed, then carefully straightened, both hands in the air. Kim raised her hands, also.

"Get the paramedics up here," the man told someone behind him. "You three," he said to Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Kim. "Over against this wall! Lean forward! Spread your legs! Get a police woman up here!" he shouted down the stairs.

"We were defending ourselves," Cavanaugh maintained as he leaned forward with his hands against the wall.

"Sure you were."

"They attacked us in my apartment," Kim said. "The third floor."

"Check that," the man told a policeman. He studied Kim. "So if you live up there, how did you get down here?"

"Lieutenant," an officer said, peering into the kitchen. "We've got a broken window."

"I think we're going to be a long time sorting this out," the lieutenant said. "Just so we don't have any misunderstandings with a judge and a jury, you have the right to remain silent. You know the drill?"

"Yes."

"Do you want an attorney?"

"Seems like I don't have a choice."

"You got that right." The lieutenant searched him from behind, lifted Cavanaugh's jacket, and found his empty holster. "Where's the gun that goes with this?"

Cavanaugh nodded toward where it had fallen. "Near the door."

"You better have a permit for this."

"I do."

"Why do you need it?"

"I'm in the security business. Global Protective Services."

"Yeah, I saw how you were protecting this guy on the floor, leaving impressions of your shoes on his kidneys. Global Protective Services, huh? I'm impressed all to hell."

Cavanaugh decided the conversation had just about come to an end. "How do I contact my attorney?"

"Unless you've got a supply of carrier pigeons, I suggest using this." The man pulled Cavanaugh's phone from his jacket.

"Now?"

"When I'm finished." The man patted Cavanaugh's chest and found his claw-shaped knife in a plastic sheath suspended by a break-away chain around Cavanaugh's neck.

Meanwhile, a policewoman arrived and searched Jamie, removing her knife from her hip.

The man glanced from it toward the pistol and the knives on the floor. "Between these and the automatic rifles on the stairs, we've got enough weapons to outfit the military of a Caribbean country."

"Lieutenant," a policeman said at the door. "The apartment upstairs is shot to pieces."

"Just your normal Saturday night in Greenwich Village," the lieutenant said. "Sit on the floor," he told Cavanaugh.

Cavanaugh obeyed.

"Cross your legs."

Cavanaugh did.

"Here's your cell phone. Tell your attorney to be quick. Tell him Lt. Russell can't wait to talk to him."

Ambulance attendants crouched next to the man Cavanaugh had subdued.

"Is he going to live?" Russell asked.

"He'll be able to answer your questions. My, my, he's got a pistol under his jacket."

"And there'll be another knife somewhere," Cavanaugh said.

"Yeah," the ambulance attendant said, "on a chain around his neck." The attendant pulled it from under his shirt. "Looks like a claw."

"Like the one that was around your neck," Russell told Cavanaugh. "Are you guys making some kind of fashion statement?"

"And what's this? Another fashion statement?" Using forceps, the attendant probed the man's left ear and removed a flesh-colored object.

"An earbud radio receiver," Cavanaugh said. "If he's got one of those, he's also got a miniature microphone." Cavanaugh studied the man's blood-spotted turtleneck. "Probably pinned to the front of his collar. A mike the size of a dime."

"Damned if there isn't," the attendant said.

Lt. Russell yelled down the stairs, "Does the wounded guy down there have a microphone on his collar? And something in his ear?"

"Just a second, Lieutenant, while I…Yeah!"

"Same with this guy!" someone shouted from the upper stairs, where the third gunman lay dead.

Russell inspected the microphone and pried off its back. Just before he pulled out a tiny battery, he asked Cavanaugh, "Who the hell did you take on? The CIA?"