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“I haven’t asked a thing about you…Mr. Paul Convert.”

The fairly genteel look on my inquisitor’s face evaporated. His brows furrowed as if maybe he was the heavy in some silent film from the Golden Age. He stared at me, stood away from the table, maybe considered hitting, stabbing, or shooting me, and then went up the stairs.

I shouldn’t have used the name I’d learned. I should have asked forgiveness and buried my anger in other cases—A Free Man, for instance. But there comes a time when a man has to stand up and be heard, a time when their threats do not outweigh his freedom.

The time for waiting was over. Now that I knew the players, I also knew the play. They were going to kill me, and soon.

I’m a pretty supple guy. Once a week for six years I took yoga classes at a studio on Montague until the rent pushed out the young lesbian couple who taught there. They moved only about a mile away, but I didn’t have the time for that commute.

Still, my hips and knees were pretty limber, and with real concentration I was able to get the big toe of my left foot over the chain between my wrists. The right foot was easier, and my hands, though not free, were at least in a position to do one thing or another.

I shattered the stool, making one of the legs a good club. Then I searched around the cellar one more time, looking for either an exit or a better weapon. I found neither.

Then I examined the stairs.

Only the first three steps seemed wired for the alarm. This gave me a slight edge. I took the round seat of the stool and the leg turned club in hand and leaped up to the fourth step, teetered a bit, and then found the inner balance the yoga instructors always talked about. I climbed the rest of the way, stood as far to the side as I could, and then carefully let the seat roll down. It did as I wished, and when it hit the last three steps, the gong went off.

I pressed back against the wall, the door flung open, and a foot crossed the threshold. I hit his ankle for all I was worth. He tumbled forward, and I hit him across the nose with a swing that Babe Ruth would have been proud of. He tumbled down the stairs and I raced after.

I was able to retrieve his automatic and aim just as another mercenary appeared at the top of the stair.

I shot only twice. I didn’t know then that these were the only two men left to guard me.

I could see the sole of my second victim’s shoe from where I crouched. The man I’d battered into unconsciousness was still breathing. I searched him for more weapons but found none. After maybe thirty seconds, I began to make my way back up.

The man was dead. One shot had made a hole just above the right eye. There were a few items of value left on his clay: the key to my cuffs, a telephone number scrawled on a neatly folded sheet of paper, and a cell phone that looked like it had just been cut from its plastic wrapper.

In his wallet was an identity card for Security Managers Inc., a worldwide prison, prisoner transport, and mercenary provider. His name had been Tom Eliot.

On the third floor of the suburban Queens house I found a briefcase chock-full of fifty-dollar bills. Payment for my demise, no doubt.

I handcuffed the unconscious soldier to the worktable in the basement, then used his keys to drive one of the SUVs out of the driveway.

23.

It didn’t take long to become a fugitive, just a few days of pretty good police work.

“Hello?” Aja-Denise said on the seventh ring. “Who’s this?”

“It’s me.”

“Hi, Daddy.” There was a smile in her words.

I was driving across the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge.

“Honey, I got to talk fast so listen close.”

“Okay.” She got serious.

I told her the general outline of my situation in no more than four sentences.

“What you need me to do?” she asked.

“Tell your mother and her fool of a husband that you all need to be out of town in the hour. Tell her that it’s cops’ rules.”

“Cops’ rules,” she repeated.

“That’s right.”