Desperate Measures (16 page)

They’ll shoot, Pittman thought. But he didn’t obey. He reached the top, leapt over a guardrail, and scanned the rooftop for
Sean. There! The roofs of all the buildings on this block were connected, and Sean was sprinting past ventilation pipes and
skylights toward a door on a roof near the end of the block, his short legs moving in a blur.

“Wait, Sean!”

Pittman raced after him. Behind him, he heard shoes scraping on the fire escape.

Sean reached the door, tugged at it, and cursed when he discovered it was locked.

He was banging his shoulder against it, cursing again, when Pittman caught up to him. “Damn it, I left my keys in my room.
I don’t have my knife.”

“Here.” Breathing heavily, Pittman pulled out the knife Sean had given him several years earlier.

With a smile, then a desperate look beyond Pittman toward two policemen who had just climbed onto the roof, Sean yanked the
lock-pick tools from the knife, twisted and poked, freed the lock with astonishing speed, and jerked the door open.

As a policeman yelled, Sean and Pittman darted through the doorway. At once, in the dim light of a stairwell, Sean locked
the door behind them.

“The washing machines. They know about the washing machines,” Sean blurted to himself. “Who the hell told them about the washing
machines?”

Fists pounded on the door.

Sean raced down the stairs. Pittman followed.

“Who told them about the washing machines?” Sean kept muttering.

Or are they after me? Pittman wondered.

“Don’t look behind you. Just keep walking toward the corner.”

They rounded it.

“So far so good,” Sean said.

He hailed a taxi.

“Don’t let the driver think you’re in a rush,” he told Pittman.

They got in.

“Lower Broadway,” Sean told the driver, then started humming.

“Here’s your knife back.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry I couldn’t help pay for the taxi.”

“Hey, I’m not in jail. That’s payment enough.”

They were in a loft on lower Broadway. The loft, which seemed to have once been a warehouse, had almost no furnishings, and
those were grouped closely together in the middle of what felt like a cavern. Although sparse, the furnishings were expensive—an
Italian-made leather sofa, a large Oriental rug, a brass coffee table and matching lamp. Otherwise, in the shadows beyond
the pale light from the lamp, there were crates stacked upon crates in every direction.

Sean slumped on the sofa and sipped from a Budweiser that he’d taken from a refrigerator next to some of the crates.

“What is this place?” Pittman asked.

“A little hideaway of mine. You still haven’t told me what you want.”

“Help.”

“How?”

“I’ve never been on the run before.”

“You’re telling me you want advice?”

“Last night I slept in a park. It’s been two days since I bathed. I’ve been scrounging food. I can see how criminals on the
run get caught. They finally just get worn down.”

“Then I take it you were smart enough not to try to get in touch with your family and friends.”

“My only excuse for a family is my ex-wife, and I wouldn’t ask her for anything,” Pittman said. “As for my friends, well,
I have to assume the police will be watching them in case I show up.”

“So you came to me.”

“I kept asking myself who I knew to get help from but who the police wouldn’t know about. Then it occurred to me—all the people
I interviewed over the years. Some of them have the kind of expertise I need, and the police would never think I’d go to them.”

Sean nodded in approval of Pittman’s reasoning. “But I don’t know what advice I can give you. There’s a bathroom and a shower
in back. You can spend the night here. For sure,
I
am. Other than that…”

“There has to be something you can tell me.”

“If they catch you, you’ve already got a brilliant defense.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Insanity,” Sean said.

“
What?”

“All that business about your being suicidal. I assume that’s another exaggeration.”

Pittman didn’t respond.

“You mean it’s true?” Sean asked in surprise.

Pittman stared at his Coke can.

“Your son died,” Sean said, “and you fell apart.”

“That’s right.”

“My sister died when I was twenty-five. She was a year younger than me. Car accident,” Sean said.

“And?”

“I nearly drank myself to death. God, I loved her.”

“Then you understand,” Pittman said.

“Yes. But it’s a little different now, isn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“When you’re tired and hungry and scared.”

“I feel like I’m being selfish. My son was wonderful. And here I’m thinking about myself.”

“I don’t presume to tell you how to grieve. But I will tell you this—you can’t go wrong if you do what your son would have
wanted you to do. And right now, he’d have been telling you to look out for your ass.”

The shower was primitive, just a nozzle over a plastic stall with a drain in the concrete floor. There wasn’t any soap, shampoo,
or a towel. Pittman was pleased that he’d had the foresight to put a toilet kit in his gym bag. He found two steel chairs
that he put near the shower’s entrance, draping his sport coat over one, his slacks over the other. There wasn’t any door
to the shower, and after he came out to dry himself with his dirty shirt, he discovered that, as he had hoped, the steam from
the shower had taken some of the wrinkles out of his jacket and pants. He put on fresh underwear and socks, decided to save
his remaining clean shirt by putting on his black cotton sweat suit, and returned to Sean among the crates.

Sean had opened a cabinet, revealing a television, and was watching CNN. “They sure like you.”

“Yeah, pretty soon I’ll have my own series.”

“Well,” Sean said, opening another beer. “From the newspaper and now this, I have a pretty good idea of their side. What’s
yours?” He put his feet on the coffee table.

For the second time that day, Pittman explained.

Sean listened intently, on occasion asked a question, and tapped his fingers together when Pittman finished. “Congratulations.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been a thief since I was twelve. I’ve spent half my life in prison. I’ve had to go underground three times because of
a misunderstanding with the mob. I’ve been married to four women, two of them simultaneously. But I have never ever had the
distinction of being in as much trouble as you are. And all this happened since two nights ago?”

“Yes.”

“Worthy of the
Guinness Book of World Records
.”

“At least
you’re
amused. I can see I made a mistake coming to you.”

“Not so fast. Who sent the gunman to your apartment?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why would someone want to make it seem that you killed Millgate?”

“I have no—”

“Damn it, don’t you think you’d better
start
having some ideas? As near as I can tell, from the moment you killed that man in your apartment—”

“Accidentally.”

“I’m sure that makes a difference to him.… Ever since then, you’ve been running.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“You wasted time going to this computer expert. Why was it a waste of time? Because your only purpose was to find a way to
get in touch with me. Why? Because you want advice on how to keep running. Sorry.”

“What?”

“In the first place, you don’t need that kind of advice. You’ve been doing damned well on your own. In the second place, if
all you do is keep running, the only thing you’ll accomplish is to get tired. Then you’ll make a mistake, and they’ll grab
you.”

“But there’s no alternative.”

“Isn’t there? Reverse direction. Hunt instead of being hunted. God knows, you’ve got plenty of targets.”

“Hunt? That’s easy enough for you to say.”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to leap for joy at my advice. From what you’ve told me, it seems to me that you’ve been running
away since your son died. Running from everything.”

The suggestion that Pittman was a coward made his face became hot with anger. He wanted to get his hands on Sean and punch
the shit out of him.

“Touched a nerve, did I?”

Pittman inhaled, straining to calm himself.

“I guess you don’t like the advice I’m giving you,” Sean said. “But it’s the only advice I’ve got. I’m an expert. I’ve been
running from things all my life. Do what I say, not what I do.”

Pittman stared, then parted his lips in a bitter smile.

“What’s funny?” Sean asked.

“All this talk about running. For twenty years, I ran every day. All that time. Where was I going?”

“To the finish line, pal. And if you’re still thinking about killing yourself, if I were you I’d want to go out a winner,
not a loser. You can destroy yourself—that’s your business. But don’t let the bastards do it for you.”

Pittman felt his face get hot again. But this time it wasn’t because he was angry at Sean. Instead, his fury was directed
elsewhere. “Bastards. Yes.”

For a moment, he didn’t move or speak, didn’t breathe. His powerful emotion held him in stasis. Then he squinted at Sean.
“When my son died…” he began to say, then hesitated.

Sean studied him, obviously curious about what Pittman intended to say.

“When my son died, I can’t describe how angry I was—at the hospital, at his doctors. Jeremy’s death wasn’t their fault. It’s
just that I desperately needed somebody to be angry at. If somebody had made a mistake, then in a bizarre way Jeremy’s death
would have made sense. Medical carelessness. The alternative is to accept that Jeremy died because of a cosmic crapshoot,
that he was unlucky, that he just happened to get a type of rare, untreatable cancer. That kind of thinking—there’s no pattern
or point; the universe is arbitrary—can drive a person crazy. When I finally accepted that Jeremy’s doctors weren’t to blame,
I still needed someone to be angry at. So I chose God. I screamed at God. I hated Him. But eventually I realized that wasn’t
doing any good, either. Because God wouldn’t scream back. How could I possibly hurt Him? What good is it to be angry if you
can’t punish what you’re angry at? My anger was useless. It wasn’t going to bring Jeremy back. That’s when I decided to kill
myself.”

The reference caused Sean’s gaze to narrow, his expression somber.

“Anger.” Pittman’s jaw muscles hardened. “When I was with Millgate, he said something to me. A name. At least it sounded like
a name. ‘Duncan.’ Millgate said that several times. Then something about snow. Then a while later, he said, ‘Grollier.’ I
didn’t know what he meant, and I was too damned busy to ask him. All I wanted was to put Millgate’s oxygen prongs back into
his nostrils and get out of there. But the gunman who was waiting for me at my apartment sure thought it was important to
find out if I’d repeated to anyone what Millgate had said to me. Anger.” Pittman stood. “Stop running away? Hunt them?
Yes
. When Jeremy died, my anger was useless. But this time, it won’t be. This time, I’ve got a purpose. This time, I intend to
find someone to blame.”

Pittman stood across from the Emergency entrance to the hospital. It was shortly after midnight, and the same as two nights
earlier, a drizzle created a misty halo around streetlights. His mind continued to reel from the trauma that so much had happened
to him in the brief time since he had last been here. Chilled by the rain, he shoved his hands into the pockets of a wool-lined
navy Burberry overcoat that Sean had pulled from a crate. In his right pocket, he touched the .45. It was the only thing that
he had taken from the gym bag, which he’d left with Sean at the loft. He peered up toward the pale light in the tenth-floor
window of what had once been Jeremy’s room. Determination overcame his weariness. Necessity insisted. There were so many things
he needed to learn, and one of them was why Millgate’s people had taken the old man from the hospital that night. That was
when everything had started. After waiting for a gap in traffic, Pittman crossed toward the hospital.

At this late hour, the front lobby was almost deserted. The few people who were slumped in the imitation leather chairs in
the lobby seemed to pay no attention as he headed toward the elevators. Nonetheless, he felt exposed.

His nerves troubled him for another reason, for he knew the memories he would have to fight when he got off the elevator near
the intensive-care ward on the sixth floor. He tried not to falter when he glanced toward the large area on his left, the
intensive-care waiting room. A group of haunted-looking men and women sat on uncomfortable metal chairs, their faces haggard,
their eyes puffy, struggling to remain awake, waiting for news about their loved ones.

Grimly recalling when he had been one of them, Pittman forced himself to concentrate on his purpose. Past the entrance to
the children’s intensive-care ward, he turned to the right and went down a short corridor to the door for adult intensive
care. He had never been in that area, but he assumed that it wouldn’t be much different from the children’s area.

Indeed, it was virtually identical. After pulling the door open, he faced a pungent-smelling, brightly lit ten-foot-long hallway,
at the end of which was a counter on the left and glass cabinets behind it. The counter was covered with reports, the cabinets
filled with equipment and medicines. Amid the hiss, wheeze, beep, and thump of life-support systems, doctors and nurses moved
purposefully in and out of rooms on the right and beyond the counter, fifteen rooms all told, in each of which a patient lay
in urgent need.

Pittman knew the required procedures. Automatically he turned toward a sink on the left of the door, put his hands under a
dispenser of disinfectant, and waited while an electronic eye triggered the release of an acrid-smelling red fluid. He swabbed
his hands thoroughly, then put them beneath the tap, where another electronic eye triggered the release of water. A third
electronic eye activated the hot-air dispenser that dried his hands. He reached for a white gown from a stack near the sink
when a woman’s grating voice stopped him. “
May I help you? What are you doing here?
”