Pittman didn’t reply.
“The other nights,” Jill asked. “Where—?”
“A park bench and the floor of the intensive-care waiting room.”
“Dear God.”
“Maybe the police aren’t such a bad idea. Call them. Maybe they can protect you.”
“But for how long? I told you, I’d be terrified that they’d let down their guard. No. I’m staying with you,” Jill said.
“In the long run, I’m not sure that would be smart.”
“But in the short run, it’s the option that scares me the least. Besides, there’s something you still haven’t figured out about me,” Jill said.
“You mean in addition to the fact that you have money?”
“The money’s part of it. I don’t have to work for a living. The point is, I’m a nurse because I want to be. Because I need to be. And right now…”
“Yes?”
“My conscience wouldn’t bear what might happen to you if you fail. You need help.”
Pittman’s chest became tight with emotion. He touched her arm. “Thank you.”
“Hey, if I don’t hang around, who’s going to change the bandage on your hand?”
Pittman smiled.
“You ought to do that more often,” Jill said.
Self-conscious, Pittman felt his smile lose its strength.
Jill glanced toward East End Avenue. “I’d better find a pay phone and tell the hospital that I won’t be coming to work. They’ll still have time to get a replacement.”
But after she made the call and stepped from the booth, Jill looked perplexed.
“What’s wrong?”
“My supervisor in intensive care—she said the police had been in touch with her.”
“They must have checked your apartment and connected you with the hospital.”
“But she said somebody else called her as well, one of my friends, telling her I was all right but that I wouldn’t be coming in.”
“What friend?”
“A man.”
Pittman’s muscles contracted. “Millgate’s people. Trying to cover everything. If you did show up at the hospital tonight, you would never have gotten to the sixth floor. But your supervisor wouldn’t be worried enough to call the police when you didn’t show up—because your ‘friend’ told her you were okay.”
“Now I’m really scared.”
“And we still haven’t solved our problem. Where are you going to stay?”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
“What?”
“Let’s keep moving,” Jill said.
“All night? We’d collapse.”
“Not necessarily. You need to go to the library, but it won’t be open until tomorrow.”
“Right.” Pittman was mystified.
“Well, they’ve got libraries in other cities. Instead of waiting until tomorrow, let’s use the time. We’ll be able to sleep on the train.”
“Train?”
“I take the overnight when I go skiing there.”
Pittman continued to look perplexed.
“Vermont.”
Pittman suddenly, tensely understood. A chill swept through him. “Yes. Where Professor Folsom told us it was. Grollier Academy. Vermont.”
FOUR
1
A sleeper car wasn’t available. Not that it made a difference—Pittman was so exhausted that he was ready to sleep anywhere. Shortly after the train left Penn Station, he and Jill ate sandwiches and coffee that she had bought in the terminal. She had also been the one who bought the tickets; he didn’t want anyone to get a close look at him. For the same reason, he chose a seat against a window in an area that had few passengers. The photo of him that the newspapers and television were using didn’t show him as he now looked. Still, he had to be careful.
Soon the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of wheels on rails became hypnotic. Pittman glanced toward the other passengers in the half-full car, assuring himself that they showed no interest in him. Then he peered toward the lights in buildings the train was passing. His eyelids felt heavy. He leaned against the gym bag—he’d retrieved it from Sean O’Reilly’s loft—and started to ask Jill how long the trip would take, but his eyelids kept sinking, and he never got the question out.
2
“Wake up.”
He felt someone nudging him.
“It’s time to wake up.”
Slowly he opened his eyes.
Jill was sitting next to him, her hand on his shoulder. Her face was washed. Her hair was combed. She looked remarkably alert, not to mention attractive for so early in the morning. “Guess what?” she asked. “You snore.”
“Sorry.”
“No problem. You must be exhausted. I’ve never seen anyone sleep so deeply in such uncomfortable conditions.”
“Compared to a park bench, this is the Ritz.”
“Do you remember switching trains?”
Pittman shook his head. The car was almost deserted. No one was close enough to overhear them.
“You do a convincing job of sleepwalking,” Jill said. “If we hadn’t had to board another train, I bet you wouldn’t even have gotten up to go to the bathroom.”
Pittman gradually straightened from where he’d been scrunched down on the seat. His back hurt. “Where are we?”
“A few miles outside Montpelier, Vermont.” Jill raised the shade on the window.
Although the sun was barely up, Pittman squinted painfully at a line of pine trees that suddenly gave way, revealing cattle on a sloping pasture. Across a narrow valley, low wooded mountains still had occasional patches of snow on them.
“What time is… ?”
“Six-fifteen.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any coffee left from last night.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“In that case, wake me when this is over.”
“Come on,” Jill said. “Straighten yourself up. When this train stops, I want to hit the ground running.”
“Are you always this energetic so early in the morning?”
“Only when I’m terrified. Besides, when you’re used to working the night shift, this is late afternoon, not morning.”
“Not for me.” Pittman’s eyes felt gritty, as if sand had been thrown into them.
“Let me whisper something that might get you going.”
“It better be good.”
“Breakfast, and I’m paying.”
“You’re going to have to, since I don’t have any cash. But I’ll say this—you do have a way with words.”
3
“Montpelier? Sounds French.”
“The first settlers in this area were French.”
“And this is the capital of Vermont?” Pittman sat with Jill at a restaurant table that gave them a window view of New England buildings along a picturesque street. “It doesn’t feel as if many people live here.”
“Fewer than ten thousand. But then only about six hundred thousand people live in the entire state.”
“A good place to hide out.”
“Or to send students to a school that’s isolated enough that they won’t be contaminated by the outside world while they’re being taught to be aristocrats.”
Pittman sipped his coffee. “Do I detect a little anger?”
“More than a little. My parents tried to raise me that way—to think of myself as better than ordinary people. They’re still horrified that I’m a nurse. All those sick people. All that blood.”
“I get the feeling your background involves a lot more money than—”
“In polite society, this isn’t talked about.”
“I was never good at manners.”
“Millions.”
Pittman blinked and set down his coffee cup.
“I don’t know how much,” Jill said. “My parents won’t discuss it. We’re having a difference of opinion about how I should conduct my future. They’ve been trying to punish me by threatening to disinherit me.”
“They’re the ones who earned it. They could handle it without being jerks. But my parents think the money gives them some kind of divine right to look down on people.”
“Yes, you are angry.”
“I told you, I want to help people, not ignore them or take advantage of them. Anyway, my grandparents anticipated all this and let me be independent by establishing the trust fund for me.”
“We have a similar attitude. When I was a reporter—”
“Was? You still are.”
“No. I’m an obituary writer. But there was a time… before Jeremy died, before I fell apart… The stories I loved doing the best were the ones that involved exposing the corruption of self-important members of the Establishment, especially in the government. It gave me a special pleasure to help drag them down and force them to experience what life is like for all of us ordinary bastards of the world.”
“Drag aristocrats like Jonathan Millgate down?”
“I sure tried my damnedest.”
“Be careful. If you talk like that to the wrong person, you could be providing a motive for why you might have wanted to—”
The next obvious words—kill him—never came out. Abruptly Jill stopped talking as the waitress set down their orders: grapefruit, English muffins, and yogurt for Jill; hash browns, eggs, and bacon for Pittman.
“You’ll never get back into shape if you keep eating that way,” Jill said.
“At least I ordered whole-wheat toast. Besides, I’ve been using a lot of energy lately.”
“Right. You’re not in enough danger—you’ve got to order a death sentence for breakfast.”
“Hey, I’m trying to eat.”
Jill chuckled, then glanced around at the warm dark tone of the wood in the rustically decorated room. “I’ll be right back.”
“What is it?”
“Somebody just left a newspaper. USA Today.” She looked eager to read it, but once she returned to their table and studied the front page, she murmured, “Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Bad?”
As the waitress seated a man and a woman at the table next to them, Jill handed him the newspaper. “Some things are better left unsaid.”
Pittman scanned the story, becoming more and more disheartened. The crazed obituary writer’s murder spree continued, bold letters announced. Pittman was being blamed for killing Father Dandridge. He was also being charged for shooting a man who, with two associates, had supposedly been sent to Jill’s apartment by Jonathan Millgate’s son to pass on his thanks for the skillful attention she had given his father while in intensive care. In addition, Pittman was suspected of abducting Jill.
“It keeps getting worse,” Pittman said. “Maybe I ought to just hang myself and be done with it.”
“Don’t say that, not even as a joke.”
Pittman thought about it.“The thing is, it was a joke—about suicide. I’m amazed. A couple of days ago, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”
Jill looked at him harder. “Maybe some good will come out of this.”
Pittman gestured toward the newspaper. “At the moment, it doesn’t look that way. We’d better leave. We’ve got plenty to do.”
“Find the library?”
“Right.” Pittman stood. “There’s a reference series most libraries have. The Dictionary of American Biography. It lists the background, including education, for almost every intellectually famous person in the United States. It’ll tell me if all the grand counselors went to Grollier. Then maybe the librarian will be able to help with something else.”
“What’s that?”
“How to find Grollier Academy.”
4
“Four hundred dollars?” Jill shook her head, skeptical.
“I know. I’m not crazy about it, either, but I think this is the best deal we’re going to get,” Pittman said. “Every other used car on the lot costs more than the cash we have.”
The car salesman, gangly, wearing a bow tie, watched with interest from the window of his office as Pittman and Jill circled the gray 1975 Plymouth Duster. The two-door sedan had what was once considered to be a sporty outline, but the rust on the rear fenders and the cracks in the vinyl top were evidence of the hard use that the vehicle had received.
“Then let’s forget about paying cash,” Jill said. “I’ll write him a check and get something decent.”
“Can’t.” Pittman recalled an interview he had once conducted with a private detective who was an expert in tracing fugitives. “An out-of-state check. The salesman will probably decide to call your bank to see if the check is good. The police will have put the bank on alert about reporting any attempt to get money from your account. My guess is that the grand counselors will have used their influence to get the same information. They would all know where to focus their search. It’s the same reason we can’t rent a car. To do that, we need to use your or my credit card. The moment either name is in the computer, we’re blown. The grand counselors would immediately figure out why we’re in Vermont. They’d have men waiting for us by the time we showed up at Grollier Academy.”
“Four hundred dollars.” Jill bleakly surveyed the rusted automobile.
“I know. It’s a fortune when the only money at our disposal is a thousand. But we don’t have an option. At least we bargained the salesman down from four hundred and fifty.”
“But can we be certain the car won’t break down when we drive it off the lot?”
“Well, the best thing I can tell you is, this car has a Chrysler slant-six engine. It’s almost indestructible.”
“I didn’t realize you knew about auto mechanics.”
“I don’t.”
“Then how—?”
“I once did a story about used-car lots and ways to tell if the buyer was getting cheated.”
“Remarkable. I’m beginning to realize you’re the sum of all the interviews you conducted.”
“Something like that.”
“And if we buy this heap, you think we’ll be getting a good deal?”
“Only if the salesman gives us a free tank of gas.”
5
As they headed northwest from Montpelier past the mountains that flanked Route 89, the Duster performed better than Pittman expected, its slant-six engine sounding powerful and smooth.
Because his bandaged left hand made it awkward for him to steer, Jill did the driving. She opened her window. “Whoever owned this car sure liked cigars.”
“On the positive side, the seat covers don’t look bad. Which is more than I can say about me. I’d better get presentable for when we arrive at Grollier.”
He took the battery-powered razor from his gym bag, and while he shaved, he stared at the wooded peaks. “The map the used-car salesman gave us says this range is called the Green Mountains. An odd name for a place known for skiing.”
“I told you the French were the first settlers here. Analyze the name of the state. Vermont is another way of saying mont vert: Green Mountain.”
“It seems so peaceful here. What could there possibly be about Grollier Academy that’s so terrifying to the grand counselors?”
“At the library, the Dictionary of American Biography sure wasn’t much help,” Jill said. “Professor Folsom was right. Eustace Gable and Anthony Lloyd went to Grollier, the same as Jonathan Millgate. But the other two grand counselors don’t have any mention of Grollier in the entries about them.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything. Does it mean they didn’t actually go there, or is it that they don’t want to advertise?”
As the Duster rounded a curve, revealing a meadow flanked by spruce trees, wooded peaks looming above them, Pittman was so preoccupied, he barely noticed the vista. “Maybe they realized that it wasn’t in their best interests for it to be known that they all went to the same prep school.”
“Why would that hurt them?”
&
nbsp; “Too blatantly chummy. The general public might catch on about one of the federal government’s nasty secrets: how inbred it is. Certain prep schools for the elite prepare the cream of the future Establishment to go to Ivy League colleges. That future Establishment graduates from those colleges and heads toward Washington. There they dominate various branches of the government. The CIA is tight with Yale, for example. The State Department used to be dominated by people from Harvard. Clinton’s administration has a close relationship with Yale Law School.
“But it gets more specific. Ivy League colleges have secret societies, and the most prestigious—Skull and Bones, for example—are almost exclusively for members of the Establishment. A President appoints his classmates, his fellow society members. They become ambassadors or serve on the cabinet or as his advisers. You know the story—the President goes out of office and his appointees move into the private sector, where as members of the boards of various corporations they use their influence in Washington to manipulate government regulations. Or else they form their own consultation businesses and cater to foreign clients who pay them extremely well to use their powerful contacts. That’s the reason I wanted to bring Millgate down to my level. Because he was in thick with the weapons manufacturers. He advocated military involvement in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, and Iraq, to name the most famous instances. But the question is, Was that for the good of the country and the world, or was it for the good of the weapons manufacturers and Millgate’s Swiss bank account?
“On the most basic level, one of the reasons there’s so much corruption in the government is that few politicians and diplomats have the courage to question the behavior of a former classmate and club member. Good old so-and-so made a mistake by accepting bribes. But he’s not really a bad guy. Why turn him in and make trouble for him? Some social commitments are more important than representing the American people. Did you ever hear about Bohemian Grove?”
“No.” Jill looked puzzled.
“It’s another secret society: a males-only club, the main purpose of which is a summer outing that takes place each year in a compound in the woods of northern California. Its members are among the most powerful men in the United States: senators, cabinet members, major financiers, and corporate executives. Every Republican President since Nixon has been a member. The members are allowed to bring equally powerful guests from foreign countries. And what do all these influential men do? They get drunk, sing campfire songs, put on skits, and have pissing contests.”
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