The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

  Seeing a police car ahead on the left, he blurted, “Jamie, lean forward! Prop Eddie up! Tilt his head so he seems to be looking forward! Make it seem like he's driving!”

  Sweating, Cavanaugh propped Eddie's right hand on the steering wheel. As he neared the police car, he told Jamie, “Now lean back!”

  Cavanaugh tried to put distance between him and Eddie, making the space between them look normal while still managing to stretch his leg toward the brake. Amid waiting traffic, he eased to a stop next to the police car, put the transmission in neutral, and moved back to the passenger seat, the idling engine allowing him to take his foot off the brake. Looking ahead, he pretended this was the most boring day of his life. From the left side of his vision, he had a blurred image of one of the policemen peering at the Taurus. The officer watched Eddie and Cavanaugh for what seemed an eternity.

  The light turned green. Traffic shifted forward. The cruiser seemed frozen in place, the policeman studying Eddie. Then the van ahead of the police car went through the intersection, and the police car caught up to it, filling the gap.

  Working to control his breathing, Cavanaugh slid close to Eddie, gripped the bottom of the steering wheel, put the transmission into drive, and eased his left foot onto the accelerator, matching the pace of traffic.

  “Jamie, lean forward again. Put your head next to Eddie as if you're saying something to him. Put a hand on his shoulder. Keep him from slumping over.”

  In the middle of several lanes of traffic, Cavanaugh saw a space open on his right and steered into that lane so he wouldn't be next to the police car. A taxi blared.

  3

  Jamie had the sensation of spiraling downward. Since having met and married Cavanaugh (which wasn't even his real name), the abnormal had become the rule. Chases. Gunfights. Even getting shot five months earlier. She didn't understand how she'd managed to adjust to Cavanaugh's dangerous, upside-down world, where things were seldom as they appeared. He once joked that she must have been a protective agent in another life. Leaning toward Eddie, holding his shoulder to keep him from slumping, putting her head next to his to keep it from tilting while she pretended to talk to him—all this seemed insanely natural. From the listless feel of his body and the increasing coolness in the skin, she was certain he was dead. Another first, she thought. Touching a corpse. Talking to it.

  I've gone crazy.

  “What killed him?” She tried to keep her fierce emotions from affecting her voice.

  Cavanaugh's face showed the strain of concentrating to keep the Taurus moving with the chaos of traffic. Ahead, a van's brake lights came on as an intersection's signal turned red. He stretched his leg over and pressed the brake pedal, stopping just before his car would have hit the van. “Eddie said something stung him.”

  “A needle on the steering wheel? Another pointed weapon? With some kind of toxin on it?”

  “We need to find a place to park.”

  “In mid-town Manhattan? Lots of luck.”

  “Which we seem to have run out of.”

  The light turned green. The van moved ahead. Cavanaugh shifted his outstretched leg from the brake to the accelerator. “I don't trust myself to try to turn a corner without hitting another car. We need to stay on Seventh Avenue.”

  Flanked by a limousine and a delivery truck, they headed farther south. A taxi veered from the left to get into Cavanaugh's lane. He barely stretched his foot to the brake in time to avoid smashing into it.

  As Eddie's head threatened to list to the right, Jamie gripped the back of his neck tighter to keep it straight. His skin felt cooler. “Driving from the passenger seat. I guess that's something else you need to teach me.”

  “When we get out of this.”

  “Yeah. When we get out of this.” The lovely concept of the future.

  They kept heading south on Seventh Avenue, staying in the middle of the numerous lanes of traffic. Jamie had the sense of being on a runaway wagon, Cavanaugh struggling to keep it under control. A red light stopped them at 34th Street. Then they sped forward again, car horns blaring around them. Five more red lights later, they crossed below West 14th, leaving the rectangular grids of midtown for the randomly arranged streets of Greenwich Village.

  Traffic became less crowded. Easing to the left toward Sheridan Square, Cavanaugh reached a NO PARKING zone in front of the spear-tipped metal bars of tiny Christopher Park. With no policemen in sight, he jumped from the car and ran around the front to get behind the steering wheel and push Eddie into the passenger seat. Meanwhile, Jamie hurried from the back and fastened Eddie's seat belt. She closed the passenger door against him, then rushed to the back again and leaned Eddie's head against the passenger window as if he were sleeping. Cavanaugh pulled from the NO PARKING zone.

  Driving was still awkward because Cavanaugh had to grip the bottom of the steering wheel, keeping a handkerchief around his right hand, wary of whatever sharp object was embedded in the wheel. He steered around a block and got back onto Seventh Avenue, continuing south.

  “The Holland Tunnel?” Jamie asked.

  “Yes. Hoboken. A shopping mall.”

  4

  In addition to fresh clothes, what they needed were a magnifying glass and a strong pair of tweezers, all of which were in bags Jamie carried to where Cavanaugh had parked in a remote area of the shopping mall's parking lot. Jamie had worn Eddie's leather jacket to conceal the blood on her top. To be thorough, she'd bought two magnifying glasses, and after she and Cavanaugh put on jeans and pullovers in the back seat, they leaned toward the steering wheel, careful not to touch it as they gazed through the magnifying glasses, examining it in painstaking detail.

  “I see something glinting,” Jamie said on her third pass over the wheel. She pointed. “There.”

  “Careful.” Cavanaugh stared through the magnifying glass. “Yes. I see it.” He raised the tweezers and probed at the back of the wheel, gripping something, pulling it free.

  The needle glinted in the late-afternoon sunlight coming through the windshield.

  Jamie shivered.

  “Looks like the back end's been snipped off,” Cavanaugh said. “After it was pushed through the padding on the steering wheel, it must have been trimmed so it wouldn't stick out on either side.”

  “But hidden the way it was, the driver wouldn't get pricked unless he gripped the steering wheel with a little extra force,” Jamie said. “Which Eddie would have needed to do when he turned the corner onto Seventh Avenue.”

  “Let's keep checking in case there are more.”

  But twenty minutes of further searching revealed nothing else. They dropped the needle into a plastic bag.

  5

  “Global Protective Services,” the receptionist's voice said.

  Using his cell phone, Cavanaugh stood next to the Taurus at the deserted edge of the shopping mall's parking lot. In the background, he heard objects clattering, as if workman were removing debris from the explosion at the GPS office. “Mr. Brockman, please.”

  “I'm sorry. He's not available.”

  “Then give me Mr. Karim.”

  “May I tell him who's calling?”

  “Mr. Stoddard. He's expecting my call.”

  “One moment.”

  Cavanaugh heard a click, then nothing. He held the phone closer to his ear as an eighteen-wheel truck roared past on a neighboring highway.

  “Cavanaugh?” Karim's voice suddenly asked. “Where are you? We've been worried about—”

  “What's your cell-phone number?” Cavanaugh worried that the office phones were tapped.

  Karim told him the number.

  “Go to encryption. I'll call you right back.”

  Duncan's justified mania about security had prompted him to arrange for all GPS cell phones to have a scrambler capability so that protectors could speak to one another while eavesdroppers with radio scanners would hear only garbled words. It was the only time Cavanaugh felt comfortable using a cell phone.

  Immediately, he
activated the encryption on his phone, then pressed numbers.

  On the other end, the phone barely rang before Karim answered. “Are you okay?”

  “We had another casualty. Eddie's dead.”

  “What?”

  “A needle hidden in his car's steering wheel. It had some kind of poison on it.”

  The phone became silent for a moment as Karim reacted to this information. “A sharp object. Like the others. After Eddie parked and came up to the office, somebody must have gotten into the building's garage and rigged his car.”

  “Maybe,” Cavanaugh said.

  “How else would—”

  “After Jamie, Eddie, and I went down in the elevator, did you, Kim, Brockman stay together?”

  “Together?”

  “Waiting for the police and the fire department. Did you stay together?”

  “No, not all the time. We went back to your office, trying to save files and contain the damage. Each of us had different things to do. When the police and the fire department showed up, things got more confusing. Why? What are you getting at?”

  “Would there have been time for one of you to go down to William's office?”

  “I don't understand.” Karim sounded more confused. “Why would any of us have wanted to go there?”

  “Because one of you got information that we went there.”

  But how? Cavanaugh thought. Did someone have William's office bugged to find out if he learned who Aaron Stoddard was?

  “Wait a minute,” Karim said. “Are you suggesting one of us tried to kill you?”

  “Where's Brockman?”

  “I haven't the faintest idea. Home probably. Even if he's not the boss any longer, he's entitled. We spent all night at the office, remember.” Karim's voice had an edge to it. “Or maybe he's as dumb as I am, and he's putting in another shift, meeting a client or whatever. Don't tell me you think Brockman—”

  “I'm just trying to cover the possibilities. ”

  “Next, you'll be asking about Kim. I'll save you the trouble. She's not here. Did you think she had something to do with this? What about me?”

  “I told you I'm just trying to cover the possibilities. There isn't time for this. We need to do something about Eddie. I'm in a parking lot at a shopping mall in Hoboken.”

  “Then I guess I'm not the only one having a fabulous time.”

  “Tell the police I'll leave Eddie with his car.”

  Cavanaugh told Karim the license number and directions to the shopping mall.

  “Everything's the way it was when he got killed, except the needle's in a plastic bag on the seat next to him.

  “The police won't be happy you moved the murder weapon.”

  “Would they rather somebody else died from being stung by it? Tell them to expect to find our fingerprints all over the car. But maybe they'll also find some evidence left by the killer. We'll call them later and answer their questions. But there's no way we'll take the risk of exposing ourselves by coming in.”

  6

  In the mall, Cavanaugh and Jamie stood in a corner near glass doors, concealed by customers who came and went.

  “Won't be long now,” Jamie said. “The sign says it's supposed to come at four o'clock.”

  Air brakes hissing, a bus stopped outside the glass doors. The sign said, WEATHERVIEW RETIREMENT CENTER. As elderly people cued up to get on the bus, Cavanaugh and Jamie merged with them, the only young people in the group. Cavanaugh noticed that the driver wasn't collecting money. The bus was apparently some kind of community service.

  “How'd the shopping go?” Cavanaugh asked a white-haired man ahead of him.

  “Shopping? Don't come here to shop. I walk. Exercise. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure do,” Jamie said. “But why don't you walk in a park or some place nice?”

  “And get killed?”

  “Yeah, the streets aren't as safe as they used to be.”

  “The ozone layer's shot. Skin cancer. I'm talking about skin cancer. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure do. Not to mention all the junk in the air. Smog. Car exhaust.”

  “That's what I mean.”

  As Cavanaugh and Jamie got on the bus, Jamie's rapport with the man made it seem they were together. When the man missed his step, Cavanaugh caught his arm, helping him inside. He gave the bus driver an “I need to keep an eye on the old fellow” look, then proceeded with Jamie and the elderly man toward seats in the back.

  When the bus eased away from the mall, heading toward a busy street, Jamie touched Cavanaugh's arm and nodded toward the deserted part of the lot where they'd left Eddie in the Taurus.

  Sirens wailing, three police cars sped toward the vehicle.

  7

  “Where to?” the taxi driver asked.

  “Across the river,” Jamie said.

  “Manhattan? Gonna cost you.” The driver ignored Cavanaugh, enjoying Jamie's figure and her captivating eyes. “Once I get over there, I'm not allowed to take a fare back to Hoboken.”

  “I don't have a choice. I've got a meeting I absolutely need to attend. I'll pay double, plus a twenty percent tip.”

  8

  They got out at Times Square and went into a store that had CAMERA in its title but sold almost everything. They came out with two over-the-shoulder travel bags, went into a nearby drug store, bought the toiletries they needed, and put them in the bags. They went into a clothing store and used some of the cash from the Gulfstream's bug-out bag to buy a few more clothes, including underwear and socks.

  They walked east on Forty-Second Street.

  “Having fun yet?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “Loving every minute. God help me, I've been with you so long I can't tell the difference between being scared and feeling an adrenaline surge.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the rule of five?”

  “No.” Jamie made her way along the congested sidewalk. The time was almost six o'clock. Car horns blared amid stalled traffic. “But I've got nothing better to do, so why don't you tell me?”

  “You're sure?”

  “Can't wait.”

  “In the Second World War, instructors training American fighter pilots couldn't help noticing how many students died on their early missions. No matter how hard the instructors tried to teach the pilots the way to spot traps and get out of tough places, a large percentage of each class got shot down. So the instructors researched files that dated all the way back to the First World War, and what they discovered was a mathematical pattern. The majority of novice pilots were shot down within their first five missions.”

  Jamie looked at him.

  “The same pattern showed up in the Korean war and in Vietnam. Five was the magic number. After that, their chances of surviving combat flights increased dramatically. During the first five missions, the tension of combat was so unfamiliar that the students had trouble using what they'd learned. They were too busy adjusting. It was only after five missions that they started to know the difference between fear and adrenaline. Once the pilots understood that adrenaline primed their reflexes and made them better able to track a target and pull the trigger in the split second when it mattered, they were on their way to being professionals. The pilots who survived five missions tended to survive thirty and forty missions. If you consider everything that happened to us . . . I'm not talking about the training I gave you since we got married. Training's only half of what it takes. The real thing, adjusting to fear—that's the other half. You graduated. You passed your five missions.”

  “Is that supposed to give me confidence that I . . . that we have a better chance of surviving?”

  “We got this far, didn't we?”

  As the evening became dimmer and cooler, they stared up at the imposing entrance to Grand Central Station.

  9

  The stocky black man jogged around a curve and increased speed down a straightaway through a wooded park in a suburb of Washington, D.C. He wasn't alone. At 6:30 in the morning, an army of
his fellow exercisers primed themselves for another day's combat in offices throughout the nation's capitol. The chill of October had its effect, prompting the black man to wear a long-legged, navy exercise suit. Breath vapor blew from his mouth.

  Hearing rhythmic rapid footfalls behind him, he waited for the faster runners to pass him. A white man and woman, each wearing gray exercise suits, came abreast of him. He maintained his moderate pace, waiting for them to surge ahead, but instead they kept even with him, one on each side, their footfalls matching his.

  When he looked at one and then the other, he almost faltered.

  “I do believe,” the Southern Baptist said.

  “I'll tell you what I believe,” Cavanaugh said.

  “I'm not sure I want to know,” the black man, John Rutherford, said.

  “I believe in gun oil and plenty of ammunition.”

  “I'm relieved. For a second, I expected you to say something you hoped would shock me.”

  “Bull Durham,” Jamie said.

  Rutherford nodded, jogging past a duck pond. “Baseball's an enjoyable pastime.”

  “So are the slow kisses Kevin Costner's character believes in,” Jamie said.

  “If you expect me to be shocked by that—” Rutherford breathed hard as he ran. “—I remind you I was married. My wife . . . God rest her soul . . . believed in slow kisses, also. How are you, Jamie?” His smile was genuine. “The last time I saw you, you were in a hospital bed. I'm glad you recovered from your wound.”

  “How's the guy who shot me doing?”

  “Not well, I'm afraid. Prison doesn't agree with him. Seems he prefers solitary confinement to all the inmates who want to be his friend.”

  “What a shame. And how about you, John?” Cavanaugh asked. “How are you getting along? I understand congratulations are in order.”