Desperate Measures (11 page)

Pittman’s face felt clammy.

He was thirty-eight years old. He had never been in the military. Apart from the previous night and the Saturday seven years
earlier when the two men had broken his jaw, his only experience with violence had been through people he had interviewed
who were acquainted with violence, either as victims, criminals, or police officers.

And now he had killed a man. Appalled by the blood on the telephone, he gingerly set it on its receptacle.

What am I going to…?

Abruptly he worried that somebody had heard the crash. He swung toward the wall behind which the neighbor’s television blared—people
laughing, an announcer saying something about a trip to Jamaica, people applauding, a game show. He expected to hear urgent
footsteps, the neighbor pounding on the door.

Instead, what he heard was the TV announcer giving out a prize on the game show. No matter the noise from the television,
his apartment seemed eerily quiet.

What if I was wrong and he really
is
a policeman?

Breathing with effort, Pittman opened the man’s suit coat and took out the police identification that the man had shown him.
A card next to the badge said that the detective’s name was William Mullen. The photograph on the ID matched the face of the
dead man. But as Pittman examined it, he was unnerved to discover that the photograph had been pasted over another photograph,
which didn’t look anything like the corpse. Pittman checked the man’s wallet, and in addition to almost four hundred dollars,
he found a driver’s license in the name of Edward Halloway, residence in Alexandria, Virginia. Pittman had never heard of
any New York City policeman who lived several states away. This definitely wasn’t a cop.

What the hell was he, then?

The phone rang.

Pittman stared.

The phone rang a second time.

Who would—?

The phone rang a third time.

Should I—?

The phone rang a fourth time.

Suppose it’s Burt.

Pittman picked it up. Listening, he said nervously, “Hello.”

Pause.

Click.

Jesus.

In a rush, Pittman entered his bedroom, grabbed a brown sport coat, and pulled his suitcase from his closet. Instantly he
put the suitcase back and took out the gym bag he had used when he had still been a runner. He had once interviewed a security
specialist, who was an expert in blending with a crowd. One of the hard things, the expert had said, was to find something
that would hold weapons or equipment but not be conspicuous. A suitcase was too bulky, and besides, anybody who carried a
suitcase into any public building other than a transportation terminal attracted attention.

Conversely, while a briefcase looked more natural, especially if you were well dressed, it wasn’t big enough. But a reasonably
attractive gym bag was ideal. Enough people went to exercise after work that a gym bag appeared natural, even if the person
carrying it wore a suit, although casual clothes were obviously better.

And a gym bag held a lot.

Trembling, Pittman put a fresh pair of underwear and socks into the bag. He shoved in an extra shirt, a tie, his black sweat
suit, his running shoes, his electric razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo.

What else?

This isn’t summer camp you’re going to. You have to get out of here fast. That phone call was probably from someone working
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
the stairwell, came up to the third floor and joined whoever had gotten out of the elevator.

No 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 B.

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 tugged at
the door, flinching when he heard a noise far along the alley behind him. He surged out onto Eleventh Street, straining 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-screen
television that was always tuned to a sports channel. Pittman 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 bill 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 missed 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
longhaired 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 brush-off. A meeting. Important people. Sure.”

Urgent, Burt pulled up his zipper and pushed the urinal’s lever. As water gushed into a drain, he threw his cigarette into
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 stairs 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.”