David Morrell - Desperate Measures
Page 10
is isn't summer camp you're going to. You have to get here fast. That
phone call was probably from someone with the gunman.
Pittman hurried into the living room, frowned down at the corpse, and
almost took the four hundred dollars from the dead man's wallet.
That would look great to the police. After you killed him, you thought
why not steal from him, too?
What about his gun? What about it? Do I take it?
Who do you think you are? John Wayne? You know enough about guns to
shoot yourself, not anybody else.
As the phone started ringing again, Pittman grabbed his spare overcoat,
opened his apartment door, peered out, saw no one, went into the dimly
lit corridor, and locked the door behind him.
In his apartment, the phone kept ringing.
He hurried toward the elevator. But the moment he reached it, extending
his right hand to press the down button, not yet touching it, he heard a
buzz.
Creaking, the elevator began to rise from the ground floor.
Pittman felt pressure behind his ears.
He headed down the stairs but froze as he heard footsteps scraping far
below him, coming up the concrete steps, echoing louder as they ascended
from the ground floor.
Invisible arms seemed to pin his chest, squeezing him. One man in the
elevator, another on the stairs. That would make sense. No one could
come down without their knowing.
Pittman backed up, straining to be silent. Again in the corridor, he
analyzed his options and crept up the stairs toward the next floor.
Out of sight, he heard the elevator stop and footsteps come out. They
hesitated in the corridor. Other footsteps, those in stairwell, came up
to the third floor and joined whoever gotten out of the elevator.
o one spoke as both sets of footsteps proceeded along the corridor. They
stopped about where Pittman judged his apartment would be. He heard a
knock, then another. He heard the scrape of metal that he recognized as
the sound of lock-pick tools. A different kind of metallic sound might
have been the click of a gun being cocked. He heard a door being
opened.
"Shit," a man exclaimed, as if he'd seen the corpse in Pittman's
apartment.
Immediately the footsteps went swiftly into a room. The door was
closed.
I can't stay here, Pittman thought. They might search the building. He
swung toward the elevator door on the fourth floor and pressed the down
button. His hands shook as the elevator wheezed and groaned to his
level.
Part of him was desperate to flee down the stairs. But what if the men
came out and saw him? This way, he'd be out of sight in the
elevator-unless the men came out in the meantime and decided to use the
elevator, stopping it as it descended, in which case he'd be trapped in
the cage with them.
But he had to take the risk. Suppose the men had left someone in the
lobby. Pittman needed a way to get past, and the elevator was it. His
face was slick with sweat as he got in the car and pressed the button
for the basement. As the car sank toward the third floor, he imagined
that he would hear a buzz, that the car would stop, that two men would
get in.
He trembled, watching the needle above the inside of the door point to
3. Then the needle began to point toward 2.
He exhaled. Sweat trickled down his chest under his shirt.
The needle pointed toward 1, then the Blobby
The car stopped. The doors grated open. He faced the musty shadows of
the basement.
The moment he stepped out, the elevator doors closed. As he shifted
past a furnace, the elevator surprised him, rising. Turning, he watched
the needle above the door: 1, 2, 3.
The elevator stopped.
Simultaneously, via the stairwell, he heard noises from the lobby:
footsteps, voices.
"See anybody?"
"No. Our guys just went up."
"Nobody came down?"
"Not that I saw. I've been here only five minutes. Somebody took the
Elevator to the basement."
"Basement? What would anybody want down there?"
"A storage unit maybe.".
"Check it out." Pittman hurried beyond the furnace. In shadows, he
passed locked storage compartments. He heard footsteps on the stairs
behind him. He came to the service door from the basement. Sweating
more profusely, he gently twisted the knob on the dead-bolt lock,
desperate not to make noise. The footsteps reached the bottom of the
stairs.
Pittman opened the door, tensed from the squeak it made, slipped out
into the night, shut the door, and broke into a run. The narrow alley,
only five feet wide, led each way, to Twelfth Street or past another
apartment building to Eleventh Street. Reasoning that the men who were
chasing him would have a car waiting in front of his building on Twelfth
Street, he darted past garbage cans toward Eleventh Street.
At the end, a stout wooden door blocked his way. Clumsy with fright, he
twisted the knob on another dead bolt and at the door, flinching when he
heard a noise far along the alley behind him. He surged out onto
Eleventh Street, trying to adjust his eyes to the glare of headlights
and streetlights. Breathing hard in panic, he turned left and hurried
past startled pedestrians. His goal was farther west, the din of
traffic, the safety of the congestion on Seventh Avenue. And this time,
he did find an empty taxi.
Burt Forsyth wasn't married. He considered his apartment a place only
for changing his clothes, sleeping, and showering. Every night after
work, he followed the same routine: several drinks and then dinner at
Bennie's Oldtime Beefsteak Tavern. The regulars there were like a
family to him.
The bar, on East Fiftieth Street, was out of tone with the expensive
leather-goods store on its left and the designer dress store on its
right. It had garish neon lights in its windows and a sign bragging
that the place had a big-screen television. As Pittman's taxi pulled to
a stop, several customers were going in and out.
Another taxi stopped to let someone off. Pittman studied the man, then
relaxed somewhat when the man went into the bar without looking in
Pittman's direction. After using the last of his cash to pay the
driver, Pittman glanced around, felt somewhat assured that he hadn't
been followed, and hurried toward the entrance.
Pittman's gym bag attracted no attention as he stood among patrons and
scanned the crowded, dimly lit, noisy interior. It was divided so that
the beefsteak part of the bar was in a paneled section to the right. A
partition separated it from the serious drinking part of the
establishment, which was on the left.
There, a long counter and several tables faced a big television that was
always tuned to a sports channel. had been in the place a couple of
times with Burt and knew that Burt preferred the counter. But when he
studied that area, he didn't see Burt's distinctly rugged silhouette.
He stepped farther in, working his way past two customers who were
paying their bi
ll at a cash register in front. He craned his neck to
check the busy tables but still saw no sign of Burt. Pittman felt
impatient. He knew he had to get in touch with the police, but his
sense of danger at his apartment had prompted him to run. Once he
escaped, he had planned to use a pay phone to contact the police. As
soon as he'd gotten in the taxi, though, he'd said the first words that
came into his mind: "Bennie's Tavern. " He had to sort things out. He
had to talk to Burt.
But Burt wasn't in sight. Pittman tried to encourage himself with the
thought that Burt might have made an exception and chosen to eat in the
restaurant part of the bar. Or maybe he's late. Maybe he's still
coming. Maybe I haven't miissed him.
Hurry. The police will wonder why you didn't get in touch with them as
soon as you escaped.
Feeling a tightness in his chest, Pittman turned to make his way into
the restaurant and caught a glimpse of a burly, craggy-faced man in his
fifties with a brush cut and bushy eyebrows. The man wore a rumpled
sport coat and was visible only for a moment as he passed customers and
descended stairs built into the partition between the two sections of
the building.
At the bottom of the hollow-sounding wooden stairs, Pittman passed a
coat room, a pay phone, and a door marked DOLLS. He went into a door
marked GUYS. A thin man with a gray mustache was coming out of a toilet
stall. The man put on a blue suit coat and stepped next to a
long-haired young man in a leather windbreaker at a row of sinks to wash
his hands. The burly man whom Pittman had followed downstairs was
standing to the left at a urinal, his back to Pittman.
"Burt.
The man looked over his shoulder and reacted with surprise, a cigarette
dangling from his mouth. "What are you doing here?"
Pittman walked toward him. "Look, I can explain why I wasn't at work
today. There's something I need to talk to you about. Believe me, it's
serious." The other men in the rest room listened with interest.
"Don't you realize it isn't safe?" Burt said. "I tried to tell you on
the phone today."
"Safe? You sounded like you were giving me the brushoff. A meeting.
Important people. Sure."
Burt pulled up his zipper and pushed the urinal's As water gushed into a
drain, he threw his cigarette in the urinal and pivoted. "For your
information, those important people were-" Burt noticed the two men
standing at the sinks, watching him, and gestured. "Come on, let's get
out of here.
Impatient, Pittman followed him out the door and along the hallway. They
stopped at its end, a distance from the rest rooms and the stair that
led down.
Burt whispered hoarsely, "Those important people were the police."
"What?"
" Looking for you."
"What?' "Haven't you listened to the radio? You didn't see the evening
news?"
"I haven't had time. When I got back to my apartment, a man "Look, I
don't know what you did last night, but the cops think you broke into a
house in Scarsdale and murdered Jonathan Millgate. "WHAT?" Pittman
stepped backward against the wall.
The man with the leather windbreaker came out of the men's room, glanced
curiously at Pittman and Burt, then went up the stairs.
Frustrated, Burt waited until the man disappeared. "Look," he said
quietly, sternly to Pittman "we can't talk here. The police might be
watching me in case you try to get in touch. In fact, I have a hunch
one of them's at a table next to mine."
"Where then? When can we talk?"
"Meet me at eleven o'clock. Madison Square Park. The entrance on Fifth
Avenue. I'll make sure I'm not followed. Damn it, what did you get
yourself into? I want to know what's going on."
"Believe me, Burt, you're not the only one."
Pittman was so disoriented that only when he was out on the shadowy
street did he realize that he should have asked Burt to lend him some
money. The Metro ride from Scarsdale into Manhattan and the taxi from
his apartment to the restaurant had used all his cash. He had his
checkbook, but he knew that the stores open at this hour would accept
checks only for the amount of purchase. That left ...
Pittman glanced nervously behind him, saw no sign that anyone was
following him, and walked quickly toward Fifth Avenue. There, a few
blocks south, he came to the main office of the bank he used. The
automated teller machine was in an alcove to the left of the entrance.
He put his access card into the slot and waited for a message on the
ATM's screen to ask him for his number.
To his surprise, a different message appeared. SEE BANK OFFICER.
The machine made a whirring sound. It swallowed his card. Pittman
gaped. What the ... ? There's got to be some mistake. Why would ...?
The obvious dismaying answer occurred to him. The police must have
gotten a court order. They froze my account.
Burt was right.
"Haven't you listened to the radio? You didn't see the evening news?"
Burt had demanded. Pittman walked rapidly along a side street, checking
several taverns, finding one that had a television behind the bar. Since
the Chronicle and all the other New York City newspapers came out in the
morning, they wouldn't have had enough time to run a story about
anything that happened to Jonathan Millgate late last night.
The only ready source of news that Pittman could think of was a cable
channel like CNN. He sat in a shadowy, smoke filled corner of the
tavern and in frustration watched the fourth round of a boxing match. He
fidgeted, not sharing the enthusiasm of the other patrons in the bar
about a sudden knockout.
Come on, he kept thinking. Somebody put on the news.
He almost risked drawing attention to himself by asking the man behind
the bar to switch channels to CNN. But just as Pittman stood to
approach the counter, news came on after the fight, and Pittman was
stunned to see his photograph on a screen behind the reporter. The
photo had been taken years earlier when Pittman had had a mustache. His
features had been heavier, not yet ravaged by grief. Nonetheless, he
immediately receded back into the shadows.
"Suicidal obituary writer kills ailing diplomat," the reporter intoned,
obviously enjoying the lurid headline.
Feeling his extremities turn cold as blood rushed to his stomach,
Pittman listened in dismay. The reporter qualified his story by
frequently using the words alleged and possibly, but his tone left no
doubt that Pittman was guilty. According to the Scarsdale police, in
cooperation with the Manhattan homicide department, Pittman-suffering
from a nervous, breakdown as a consequence of his son's death-had
determined to commit suicide and had gone so far as to write his own
obituary. Newswriters who had desks near Pittman knew him as being
depressed and distracted. He was said to be obsessed with Jonathan
Millgate, an obsession that had begun seven years earlier when Pittman
had become irrationally convinced that Millgate
was involved in a
defense-industry scandal. Pittman had stalked Millgate so relentlessly
for an interview that Millgate had considered asking the police for a
restraining order. Now, in his weakened mental state, Pittman had again
become fixated on Millgate, apparently enough to kill him as a prelude
to Pittman's suicide. Warned of the danger, Millgate's aides had taken
the precaution of moving the senior statesman from a New York hospital
where he was recovering from a heart attack. Pittman had managed to
follow Millgate to an estate in Scarsdale, had broken into Millgate's
room, and had disconnected his life-support system, killing him.
Fingerprints on the outside door to Millgate's room as well as on
Millgate's medical equipment proved that Pittman had been inside. A
nurse had seen him flee from the old man's bedside. A check that
Pittman had given to a New York City taxi driver who drove him to the
estate had made it possible for the police to narrow their investigation
to Pittman as their main suspect. Pittman was still at large.
Pittman stared at the television and strained to keep from shaking. His
sanity felt threatened. Despite the differences, surely everyone in the
tavern must know it was his photograph they'd just been shown. He had
to get onto the street before someone called the police.
The police. Pittman walked in alarmed confusion from the bar, keeping
his head low, relieved that no one tried to stop him. Maybe I'm wrong.