Desperate Measures (13 page)

As a woman screamed on the opposite side of the street, Pittman raced east along Twenty-sixth Street in the direction of Park
Avenue. God help me, he kept thinking.

But he and God weren’t on the best of terms. Because God had allowed Jeremy to die. So Pittman pleaded to the only element
of an afterlife of which he was certain.

Jeremy, listen carefully. Please. Son, please. You have to help your father.

How long do I have before the police come after me? Pittman thought.

An inward voice urged him to run, to keep running, never to stop. But another inward voice, which reminded Pittman of Jeremy,
warned him that running would attract attention. Slow down. Act like nothing’s wrong.

Behind him, in the distance, Pittman heard sirens. The police would find the bodies. They’d talk to the woman who had screamed
when she heard the shots and saw Pittman scramble out of the construction area. They’d start searching for a man with a gym
bag who’d run along Twenty-sixth Street toward Park Avenue.

Get rid of the gym bag, the inward voice said, and again Pittman thought it sounded remarkably like Jeremy.

Get rid of it? But the bag has my clothes, the gun.

Hey, what good will the clothes and the gun do you if you’re in jail?

Walking, trying not to show his tension and his impulse to hurry, Pittman crossed Park Avenue. On the other side, along Twenty-sixth
Street, cars and pedestrians thinned. He came to another construction area. Hearing more sirens, he glanced around him, saw
no one looking in his direction, and dropped the gym bag into a Dumpster.

He turned south on Lexington Avenue. Sweating, still forcing himself to walk slowly, he skirted Gramercy Park, which was locked
for the night. Continuing south, then heading west, hoping he didn’t attract attention, he eventually came to Union Square
Park and was struck by how much his life had changed in the six hours since he’d gotten off a subway here and had walked to
his apartment.

But he couldn’t go to his apartment now, that was sure, and he didn’t know where else he could go. The police would be watching
friends he might ask for help. Hotels would be warned to watch for anyone using his credit card. What the hell am I going
to do?

“Hey, what’s all them sirens about?” a stoop-shouldered, beard-stubbled man asked. He was slumped on a metal bench, holding
what was obviously a pint of alcohol concealed in a paper bag. His overcoat had no elbows. His hair was mussed. He had two
missing front teeth. Pittman had the sense that the man, who looked sixty, was possibly thirty.

“Damned if I know.” Exhausted, Pittman sat next to him.

The man didn’t respond for a moment. “What?”

“The sirens.”

“Huh?”

“You asked about the sirens, what was causing them.”

“They’re disturbin’ my peace ’n’ quiet.”

“Mine, too.”

“Hey, I din’t say you could sit there.”

Siren wailing, dome lights flashing, a police car raced around the park and sped north on Broadway.

“Another one,” the man said. “Disturbin’ my… Damn it, you’re still sittin’ there.” The man clutched his bottle. “My bench.
I din’t say you could…”

Another police car wailed by.

“Take it easy,” Pittman said.

“Yur tryin’ to steal my bench,” the man said louder.

“I told you, take it easy.”

“Where’s a policeman?”

“I’ll pay rent.”

“What’s ’at?”

“I’ll pay rent. You’re right. This is
your
bench. But I’ll pay to share it with you. How does ten dollars sound?”

“Ten… ?”

“And I’ll trade you my overcoat for yours.”

The woman who had screamed when Pittman scrambled from the bodies would tell the police that the man with the gym bag had
been wearing a tan overcoat. The coat that Pittman wanted to trade for was dark blue.

“Trade?”

“I want to share the bench.”

The man looked suspicious. “Les see your money.”

Pittman gave him the ten-dollar bill he’d gotten from the cook at the diner, the last cash he had, except for a few coins.

“And the coat.”

Pittman traded with him. The man’s coat stank of perspiration. Pittman set it beside him.

Switching his bottle from hand to hand, the man struggled into the coat. “Nice.”

“Yep.”

“Warm.”

“Yep.”

“My lucky day.” The man squinted at Pittman, raised the bottle to his lips, upended it, drank the remainder of its contents,
and dropped the bottle behind him onto the grass. “Goin’ for another bottle. Guard the bench.”

“It’ll be here when you get back.”

“Damn well better be.”

The man staggered from the park, heading south on Broadway.

As another police car wailed by, Pittman slumped lower on the bench, hoping to blend with the park’s other residents.

The night’s chill in combination with the aftermath of adrenaline made him hug himself, shivering. Urgent thoughts assaulted
his mind.

Burt had said he suspected a detective was watching him from a table in the restaurant. Maybe it wasn’t a detective, Pittman
thought. Maybe it was the gunman, who followed Burt from the restaurant, hoping I’d be in touch with him.

But the gunman didn’t need to kill Burt. Burt wasn’t a threat to him. In the darkness, Burt wouldn’t have been able to identify
him.

Pittman felt colder. In the shadowy park, he hugged himself harder. The son of a bitch, he didn’t have to kill Burt!

A movement to Pittman’s right distracted him. Still slumped on the bench, he turned his head, focusing sharply on two figures
moving toward him. They didn’t wear uniforms. They weren’t policemen, unless they were working under cover. But they didn’t
move with the authority of policemen. They seemed to creep.

Predators. They must have seen me give money to the guy who was on this bench. Now they want money, too.

Pittman sat up. The figures came closer.

If there’s trouble, I’ll attract the police.

Pittman stood to walk away, but the shambling figures reached him. He braced himself for an attack.

“Goddamn it,” a slurred voice said. “Git away from him. He’s mine. I foun’ him. He’s rentin’ my bench.”

The figures glared at the man in Pittman’s overcoat, who was coming back with a bottle in a paper bag.

“Din’t you hear me? Git.” The man fumbled in his grimy pants and pulled out a church key-style bottle opener. He jabbed its
point at them. “Move yur asses away from my bench. ’S mine. Mine and his.”

The sullen figures hesitated, then shifted back toward the shadows from which they had risen.

“Bastards.” The man slumped onto the bench. “They’da taken my bench in a minute. Gotta keep watchin’.”

“That’s the truth.”

The man drank from his bottle. “Lie down.”

“What?” Pittman asked suspiciously.

“Git some sleep. You look beat.”

Pittman didn’t move.

“I won’t let those bastards git to you. I always stay up, guardin’ my bench.”

Pittman woke with a start. The shadows were gone. The air was pale, the sun not yet risen over the city’s buildings. Traffic
was sporadic.

As he became fully alert, his memories from the previous night made him flinch. He sat upright. The man to whom he’d given
his trench coat was no longer on the bench.

But someone else was—a well-dressed, slender, gray-haired man who wore spectacles. Pittman had the sense that the man, who
seemed to be in his fifties, had nudged his knee.

“Did you sleep well?”

Skin prickling, Pittman had no idea if this was a policeman or a pervert. He debated what to answer. “No, not really.”

“That’s understandable. When
I
slept on a bench like this, I always woke up with back trouble.”

“When
you
did?”

“Before I reformed. You look like you’re recently down on your luck. Fairly good clothes. But that overcoat. Where on earth
did you get that overcoat?”

Pittman realized that the grungy blue coat was draped across his lap. The man to whom he’d given his own coat must have covered
Pittman when, despite all his effort not to, he drifted off to sleep. That would have been about 3:00
A.M
.

“I got it from a friend.”

“Certainly. Well, no doubt you wonder what I’m doing here.”

Pittman didn’t respond.

“My name is Reverend Thomas Watley. I come here every morning to see if the park has any new occupants. The other residents
are quite familiar with me. In fact, at the moment, they’ve gone to my church. Every morning at six, a free, although modest,
breakfast is available. There’s also a place to shower, shave, and relieve oneself. Would you care to join us?”

Pittman still didn’t respond.

“I do conduct a religious service, but your attendance is not required, if that’s what worries you.”

Pittman kept staring.

“Well, then.” The man shrugged. “I must get back to my guests.” He held out his hand.

At first Pittman thought that the man wanted to shake hands, but then he realized that the man was trying to give him something.

“In case you decide not to join us, here’s five dollars. I know it isn’t much, but sometimes it takes only a little boost
to raise a person back to where he was. Remember, whatever caused your downfall, it’s not irremediable. The problem can be
solved.”

“Reverend, I very much doubt that,” Pittman said bitterly.

“Oh?”

“Unless you can raise the dead.”

“You lost your…?”

“Son.”

“Ah.” The reverend shook his head. “You have my sincerest condolences. There is no greater burden.”

“Then what makes you think my problem can be solved?”

This time, it was the reverend who didn’t respond.

“Thank you for the money, Reverend. I can use it.”

Wearing the grungy blue coat, Pittman stooped his shoulders and tried to look as defeated as he felt, making himself walk
unsteadily up Lexington Avenue. The sun rose above buildings. Traffic increased. Horns blared.

Pittman wanted it to seem that he was oblivious to anything but objects along the sidewalk. Trying to appear off balance,
he turned from Lexington onto Twenty-sixth Street. He stooped and pretended to pick up a coin, looked at his palm with satisfaction,
then put the pretend coin into his dingy coat.

He risked a glance ahead of him and saw some slight commotion in the next block between Park Avenue and Madison, near Madison
Square Park. The dome lights on a stationary police car were flashing. The bodies would have been removed by now. The investigation
of the crime scene would be concluding.

Burt. Sickened by what had happened last night, Pittman continued to waver along Twenty-sixth Street. When he came to some
garbage cans, he lifted their lids and snooped inside. He moved on. He came to other garbage cans and inspected them as well,
ignoring the smell. Then he came to a Dumpster. Trying to look awkward, he struggled up the side of the bin, poked around
in it, clutched his gym bag, lurched down, and reversed his direction, heading back toward Lexington. He was far enough away
that the police would not have noticed him, especially as disheveled as he looked. After all, he thought caustically, the
homeless are invisible.

About the only thing in his favor, Pittman decided, was that it was Saturday. The man he needed to contact would more likely
be at home than at work. The trouble was that when Pittman looked in a Manhattan telephone directory, he didn’t find any listing
for the name of the man he was looking for: Brian Botulfson. He called information and asked an operator to see if Brian Botulfson
was listed in any of the other boroughs.

In Brooklyn. The operator wouldn’t give Pittman the address, though, forcing him to walk to the New York Public Library, where
he looked in the directory for Brooklyn and found the address he wanted. He could have phoned Brian, but one of the things
he’d learned early as a reporter was that while phone contact had the merit of efficiency, it couldn’t compare to an in-person
interview. The subject could get rid of you on the phone merely by hanging up, but a face-to-face meeting was often so intimidating
that a subject would agree to talk.

Pittman had met Brian only a couple of times, mostly in connection with Brian’s arrest for using his computer to access top
secret Defense Department files. The last occasion had been seven years ago when Brian had done Pittman a favor, obtaining
Jonathan Millgate’s unlisted telephone numbers. Now Pittman needed another favor, but there was a chance that Brian either
wouldn’t remember their previous conversations or wouldn’t care—at least on the phone. The contact had to be one-on-one.

Pittman dumped his grungy coat in a waste can. After using some of Reverend Watley’s five dollars to buy orange juice and
a Danish from a sidewalk vendor, he boarded a subway train for Brooklyn, took his electric razor from his gym bag, made himself
look as presentable as he could, stared out the window, and brooded.

The last time Pittman had seen him, Brian Botulfson lived in a run-down apartment building on the Lower East Side. Surrounded
by expensive computer components that hid the cockroaches on the dingy walls, Botulfson had obviously enjoyed the glamorized
image of an impoverished student. But now his apartment building was quite respectable—clean, made of brick, with large, glinting
windows, in an attractive neighborhood, the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.

Pittman nodded to a man coming out of the well-maintained building. Then he climbed steps, paused in the vestibule, studied
the names on the buzzer directory, and pressed the button for 4 B.

When he didn’t get an answer, he pressed again.

One-on-one contact? Great. But what if nobody’s home? Damn it, I came all this way for nothing.

He was about to press the button a third time when a nasally male voice spoke from the tinny microphone. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Brian?” Pittman asked. “Is that you?”