Desperate Measures
Page 4
next to him, and had another drink. To fill the time.
He sat in darkness. He imagined what it would have been like if Jeremy
had lived. With basketball playoffs approaching, he would have spent
the coming Saturday afternoon playing one-on-one with Jeremy. Afterward
they'd have gone for pizza and a movie, or maybe to Tower Records
whatever they wanted to do. The future would have been theirs.
Pitt ' man wept.
He turned on the kitchen light, opened the drawer where he'd put the
.45, and took out the pistol.
Vaguely conscious that the time was 8:00 P.m., because the sitcom next
door had ended and another was starting, he continued to stare at the
.45. His eyes became like the lenses of a microscope, focusing
intensely on the gleaming blue metal, magnifying the trigger, the
hammer, the opening in the barrel from which the bullet would ...
The next thing he was aware of, a new sound disturbed him, the smooth
deep voice of a man who spoke in formal cadences. The voice came from
the apartment next door. The voice was ... A television news
announcer? Frowning, Pittman turned his gaze from the .45 and fixed it
on the stove's mechanical clock. Its numbers whirred 10:03 becoming
10:04. Pittman frowned harder. He had so absorbed himself in the gun
that he hadn't been conscious of so much time passing. Hand trembling,
he set down the .45. The news announcer on the television next door had
said something about Jonathan Millgate.
"Haven't seen you in a while, Matt." The heavy man, an Italian, had
gray hair protruding from the bottom of his Yankees baseball cap. He
wore a Yankees baseball jersey as well, and he held a ladle with which
he'd been stirring a large steaming pot of what smelled like
chicken-noodle soup as Pittman came into the diner.
The place was narrow, with Formica-topped tables along one side, a
counter along the other. The Overhead fluorescent lights made Pittman
blink after the darkness of the street. It was almost 11:00 P.M. As
Pittman sat at the counter, he nodded to the only other customer, a
black man drinking a CUP Of coffee at one of the tables. a "You been
sick?" the cook asked. "Is that why you haven't been in?"
"Everybody keeps saying ... Do I look sick?"
"Or Permanently hungover. Look at how loose your clothes are. How much
weight have you lost? Ten, fifteen pounds? And judging from them bags
under your eyes, I'd say you haven't been sleeping much, either."
Pittman didn't answer. "What'll it be for tonight?"
"To start with, a favor."
The cook appeared not to have heard as he stirred the soup. "I wonder
if you could store this for me."
"What?" The cook glanced at the counter in front of Pittman and sounded
relieved. "That box?"
Pittman nodded. The box had once held computer paper. Now it concealed
the .45 and its container of ammunition. He had stuffed the box with
shredded newspaper so that the gun wouldn't shift and make a thunking
noise when the box was tilted. He had sealed the box many times with
tape. ' "Just a place to store this," Pittman said. "I'll even pay you
for ...
"No need," the cook said. "What's in it? How come you can't keep it at
your place? There's nothing funny about this, is there?"
"Nah. It's just a gun."
"A gun?"
Pittman smiled at his apparent joke. "I've been working on a book. This
is a copy of the printout and the computer discs. I'm paranoid about
fires. I'd ask my girlfriend to help, but she and I just had a fight. I
want to keep a duplicate of this material someplace besides my
apartment."
"Yeah? A book? What's it about?"
"Suicide. Let me have some of that soup, will you?"
Pittman prepared to eat his first meal in thirty-six hours.
He'd packed the gun and left it with the cook at the diner because his
experience of losing time while he stared at the weapon had taught him
there was every chance he might shoot himself before he made good on his
promise to work for Burt Forsyth until Chronicle died. The effort of
getting through this particular day, the bitterness and emptiness he had
felt, had been so intense that he couldn't be certain of his resolve to
keep himself alive for eight more days. This way, in the event of
overwhelming despair, he would have a chance of regaining control by the
time he reached the diner, got the box, and went to his apartment.
Pittman felt compelled to keep the promise he had made. For eight more
days.
Despite his reluctance, he went back to the hospital. This time, he
took a taxi. Not because he was in a hurry. After all, he still had a
great deal of time to fill and would have preferred to walk. ]But to
get to the hospital, he would have had to Pass through several
neighborhoods that became dangerous at this hour. He found it bitterly
ironic that in doing his best to postpone his death for eight more days,
he had to be extra careful about not dying in the meanwhile.
He returned to the hospital because of the television announcer's
reference to Millgate. Through the thin walls , he had listened to the
news report. Pittman's expectation was that Millgate had died and a
brief description of his public-service career was being provided. Burt
Forsyth would be annoyed about that-Millgate dying before Pittman
finished the obituary in time for tomorrow morning's edition of the
newspaper. But the TV news story had not been Millgate's death. To the
contrary, Millgate was still in intensive care, as the announcer had
pointed out.
Instead, the story had been about another possible scrape in Millgate's
background. To the government's dismay, copy of a Justice Department
special prosecutor's report had been leaked to the press this evening.
The report, a final draft never intended for publication, implicated
Millgate a negotiator in a possible covert attempt-unsanctioned
Congress-to buy nuclear weapons from the chaos of governments in what
used to be the Soviet Union.
An unsubstantiated charge against him. Solely an assessment of where
the Justice Department's investigation might eventually lead. But the
gravity of the news announcer's voice had made the grave allegation
sound as established fact. Guilty until proven innocent. This was
second time in seven years that Jonathan Millgate had implicated as a
go-between in a major arms scandal, Pittman knew that if he failed to
investigate this time, if he didn't at least make an attempt to get a
statement from him- gate's people, Burt Forsyth would accuse him of
renigging on his bargain to do his best for the Chronicle during brief
time remaining to it. For Burt and what Burt had done for Jeremy,
Pittman forced himself to try.
Pittman stood on the corner across from the hospital's Emergency
entrance. It was after midnight. A drizzle intensified the April
night's chill. He buttoned his wed London Fog topcoat and felt dampness
even through the soles of his shoes. The drizzle created misty halos
around gleaming streetlights and the brighter f
loodlights at the
Emergency entrance. By contrast, the lights in some of the hospital
rooms were weak, making Pittman feel lonely. He stared up toward what
had been Jeremy's window on the tenth floor, and that window was dark.
Feeling even more lonely, he crossed the street toward the hospital.
At this hour, traffic was slight. The Emergency area was almost
deserted. He heard a far-off siren. The drizzle strengthened, wetting
the back of his neck. When Jeremy had been sick, Pittman had learned
about the hospital in considerable detail-the locations of the various
departments, the lounges that were most quiet in the middle of the
night, the areas that had coffee machines, the places to get a sandwich
when the main cafeteria was closed. Bringing Jeremy to the hospital for
chemotherapy, he had felt uncomfortable at the main entrance and in the
lobby. The cancer had made Jeremy so delicate that Pittman had a fear
of someone in a crowd bumping against him. Given Jeremy's low
blood-cell counts, a bruise would have taken a considerable time to
heal. In addition, Pittman had felt outraged by the stares of people in
the lobby, who seemed shocked to see a skinny, bald fifteen-year-old,
his face gaunt, his hairless scalp tinted blue from blood vessels close
to the surface. Terribly sensitive about his son's feelings, Pittman
had chosen an alternate route, in the back, a small entrance around the
corner to the left of the Emergency area. The door was used primarily
by interns and nurses, and as Pittman discovered, the elevators in this
section were faster, perhaps because fewer people used them.
Retracing this route created such vivid memories that he sensed Jeremy
next to him as he passed a private ambulance parked outside this exit.
It was gray. It had no hospital markings. But through a gap in
curtains drawn across the back windows, Pittman saw a light, an oxygen
unit, various medical monitors. A man wearing an attendant's white coat
was checking some equipment.
Then Pittman was beyond the ambulance, whose engine was running,
although its headlights were off. He noticed a stocky man in a dark
suit drop the butt of a cigarette into a puddle and come to attention,
seeing Pittman. You must really have needed a cigarette, Pittman
thought, to stand out here in the rain.
Nodding to the man, who didn't nod back, Pittman reached for the
doorknob and noticed that the light was out above the entrance. He
stepped inside, went up four steps to an echoey concrete landing, and
noticed another stocky man in a dark suit, this one leaning against the
wall next to where the stairs turned upward. The man's face had a hard
expression with squinted, calculating eyes.
Pittman didn't need the stairs; instead, he went forward, across the
landing, through a door to a brightly lit hospital corridor. The
pungent, acrid, too-familiar odors of food, antiseptic, and medicine
assaulted him. When Pittman used to come here daily to visit Jeremy,
the odors had been constantly present, on every floor, day or night. The
odors had stuck to Pittman's clothes. For several weeks after Jeremy's
death, he had smelled them on his jackets, his shirts, his pants.
The vividness of the painful memories caused by the odors distracted
Pittman, making him falter in confusion. Did he really want to put
himself through this? This was the first time he'd been back inside the
hospital. Would the torture be worth it just to please Burt?
The elevator doors were directly across from the door through which he
had entered the corridor. If he went ahead, he suspected that his
impulse would be to go up to the tenth floor and what had been Jeremy's
room rather than to go to the sixth floor, where Millgate was and where
Jeremy had died in intensive care.
Abruptly a movement on Pittman's right disturbed him. A large-chested
man stepped away from the wall next to the door Pittman had used. His
position had prevented Pittman from noticing him when he came toward the
elevators. The man wore an oversized windbreaker. "Can I help?" The
man sounded as if he'd swallowed broken glass. "You lost? You need
directions?"
"Not lost. Confused." The man's aggressive tone made Pittman's body
tighten. His instincts warned him not to tell the truth . "I've got a
sick boy on the tenth floor. The nurses let me see him at night. But
sometimes I can barely force myself to go up there."
"Sick, huh? Bad?"
"Cancer. "
"Yeah, that's bad."
But the man obviously didn't care, and he'd made Pittman feel so
apprehensive, his stomach so fluttery, that Pittman had answered with
the most innocent, believable story he could think of. He certainly
wasn't going to explain his real reason for coming to the hospital to a
man whose oversized windbreaker concealed something that made a
distinct, ominous bulge on the left side of his waist.
Footsteps made Pittman turn. He faced yet another solemn, stocky man,
this one wearing an overcoat. The man had been standing against the
wall on the opposite side of the door from where the man in the
windbreaker had been standing. Neither man had rain spots on his coat.
The rain had started fifteen minutes previously, so they must have been
waiting in this corridor at least that long, Pittman thought. Why?'
Recalling the man who'd been smoking outside and the man in the
stairwell, he inwardly frowned.
"Then you'd better get up and see your boy," the second man said.
"Right. " More uneasy, Pittman reached to press the elevator's up
button when he heard a ding and the doors suddenly opened. Loud voices
assaulted him.
"I won't be responsible for this!"
"No one's asking you to be responsible. He's my patient now."
The elevator compartment was crammed. A man on a gurney with an oxygen
mask over his face and an intravenous tube leading into his left arm was
being quickly wheeled out by two white-coated attendants. A nurse
swiftly followed, holding an intravenous bottle above the patient. A ,
intense young man was arguing with an older red-faced man who had a
stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard with what looked like a
medical file in his hand.
"But the risk of-"
"I said he's my responsibility."
The young man surged from the elevator just as Pittman felt hands behind
him grab his arms and pull him back out of the way. The gurney, the two
attendants, the nurse, and the young man hurried past him toward the
door to the stairwell. As the man with the stethoscope charged out,
trying to stop them, two dark-suited, solemn, well-built men also had'
been in the elevator-veered ahead of him and formed a blockade.
"Damn it, if you don't get out of my way-"
"Relax, doctor. Everything's going to be fine."
Pittman squirmed, pained by the force of the hands that gripped him from
behind. Through the window in the stairwell door, he saw the man who'd
been waiting on the landing dart forward to open the door. The
attendants pushed the gurney through, then lifted it, hurry
ing with it
down the stairs to the exit from the hospital. Although restrained,
Pittman was able to turn his head enough to see the man who'd been
smoking in - the rain yank the outside door open. The attendants rushed
with the gurney, disappearing into the night along with the nurse and
the thin, intense man. The somber, stocky men retreated, letting go of
Pittman, moving swiftly into the stairwell, down the stairs, through the
outside door.
The man with the stethoscope trembled. "By God, I'll phone the police.
They can't-"
Pittman didn't stay to hear the rest of his sentence. What he heard
instead were repeated thunks as doors to the private ambulance outside
were opened and closed. He ran down the stairs. Peering out toward the
drizzle-misted darkness, he saw the private ambulance pull away, a dark
Oldsmobile following.
Immediately he lunged into the chilling rain. Seeing frost come out of
his mouth, he raced through puddles toward the street corner opposite
the Emergency entrance. From having come to the hospital so often with
Jeremy, he knew the easiest places to hail a taxi late at night, and the
corner across from Emergency was one of the best.
An empty taxi veered around a curve, almost striking Pittman as he ran
across toward the corner.
"Watch it, buddy!" Pittman scrambled in. "My father's in that Private
ambulance." He pointed toward where, a block ahead, the ambulance and
the dark Oldsmobile were stopped at a light. , 'He's being taken for
emergency treatment to another hospital. Keep up with them."
"What's wrong with this hospital?"