Desperate Measures (32 page)

When the door to 4 B opened in response to the knock, Brian Botulfson—who still wore his pajamas, had rumpled hair, and looked
exhausted—slumped his shoulders with discouragement the moment he saw Pittman. “Aw, no. Give me a break. Not you. The last
thing I need is—”

“How
are
you, Brian?” Pittman asked cheerily “How have you been doing since I saw you last?”

In the background, Pittman heard an infant crying harshly, not the usual baby cry, but a hurt cry, a sick cry. Pittman remembered
it well from when Jeremy had been an infant.

“Uh-oh, sounds like you’ve been up all night.” Pittman entered.

“Hey, you can’t—”

Pittman shut the door and locked it. “You don’t seem very happy to see me, Brian.”

“The last time you were here, I got in so much trouble with… If Gladys was here…”

“But she isn’t. We waited until she left.”

Jill was preoccupied by the cries from the baby. “Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

“He doesn’t sound well. Has he got a fever?”

“I think so,” Brian said.

“You didn’t check his temperature?” Jill asked.

“I didn’t have time. I was too busy getting him clean after he threw up.”

“Seems like you could use some help. Where’s your thermometer? Let me see the baby supplies you got.”

Pittman raised his hands. “Almost forgot, Brian. This is my friend Jill.”

“Hello, Brian. I’m a nurse. I used to work in pediatrics. I’ll take good care of your son. The thermometer?”

“On his bedside table.” Brian pointed.

As Jill went toward a room to the left of the kitchen, Pittman said, “See, it’s your lucky day.”

“Yeah, I feel lucky all to hell. Look, you’ve got to stop coming here. The police are searching for you.”

“No kidding.”

“I can’t get involved in this. I can’t—”

“I won’t come around again. I swear, Brian. Scout’s honor.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“Ah, but I didn’t swear on Scout’s honor.”

Brian groaned. “If the police find out…”

“I’m a dangerous criminal. Tell them I terrified you so much, you had to help me.”

“The newspapers say you killed a priest and a man in somebody’s apartment and… I’m losing count.”

“Not my fault. All easily explainable.”

“You still don’t get it. I don’t want to know anything you’re doing. I’d be an accessory.”

“Then we’re in agreement. I don’t want you to know what I’m doing, either. But if you refuse to help me, if I get caught,
I’ll convince the police that you
are
an accessory,” Pittman lied.

“Don’t think like that. I’d go to prison again.”

“And imagine what Gladys would say. On the other hand, I never turn against my friends, Brian. The quicker we do this, the
quicker I’m out of here. I want you to give me a crash course in hacking.”

Jill leaned out from the baby’s room. “His fever’s a hundred and one.”

“Is that bad?” Brian asked nervously.

“It isn’t good. But I think I can lower it. By the way, Brian, those children’s aspirins are a no-no for a baby’s fever. They
can cause a serious condition called Reye’s syndrome. Have you got any Tylenol?”

“See?” Pittman said. “In good hands. Now come on, Brian, pay us for the house call. Show me how to do a little hacking. Or
we’ll hang around the house until Gladys comes home.”

Brian turned pale. “What programs do you want to get into?”

“Unlisted telephone numbers, and the addresses that go with them.”

“What city?”

“I don’t want to tell you, Brian. You’re going to have to show me how to get in without knowing what city I want. Then you’re
going to sit in a corner while I play with your computer.”

“I feel like crying.”

“Will the baby be all right?” Pittman drove from the apartment building.

“As long as Brian keeps giving him a children’s dose of Tylenol on schedule. And liquids. A sponge bath doesn’t hurt. I told
him to get the baby to a doctor if the fever gets worse or the vomiting persists. Cute kid. I think he’ll be okay.”

“And maybe Brian will get some sleep tonight.”

“Unless Gladys decides to make trouble. Did he let you have what you wanted?”

Pittman held up a sheet of paper. “I learned from the mistake we made with the guy from the alumni association. Don’t let
anybody know our next move. Brian showed me how to get unlisted phone numbers and addresses. But he doesn’t know whose or
what city.”

“Washington.”

Pittman nodded.

“The grand counselors.”

Pittman nodded again.

“Long drive.”

“We can’t fly. You’d have to use a check or a credit card to buy our tickets. Your name would get in the computer. The police
will be looking for it. We’ve got to keep driving.”

“You really know how to show a girl a good time. I think I’ll pull a blanket over my head and assume a fetal position.”

“Good idea. Get some more rest.”

“You, too. We’ll need it if we’re going to try to get close to the grand counselors.”

“Not just yet.”

“But I thought you said we were going to Washington.”

“Right. But I need to see somebody else there.”

“Who?”

“A man I interviewed a long time ago.”

It was after dark when they reached Washington’s Beltway, headed south on I-95, then west on 50 to Massachusetts Avenue. Despite
his exhaustion, Pittman managed to drive skillfully through the dense traffic.

“You seem to know your way around the city,” Jill said.

“When I was working on the national affairs desk, I spent a lot of time down here.” Pittman rounded Dupont Circle and took
P Street west into Georgetown.

“Reminds me of Beacon Hill,” Jill said.

“I suppose.” Pittman glanced at the narrow wooded street. The paving was cobblestone. Ahead, it changed to red brick. Federal
and Victorian mansions were squeezed next to one another. “Never been here?”

“Never been to
any
place in Washington. New York was about as far from my parents as I felt I needed to get.”

“Georgetown’s the oldest and wealthiest district in the city.”

“The remaining grand counselors live here?”

Pittman shook his head. “This is too ordinary for them. They live on estates in Virginia.”

“Then who did you come here to see?”

“A man who hates them.” Pittman headed south on Wisconsin Avenue. Headlights and streetlights made him squint. “The guy I’ve
been trying to phone every time we stopped along the road. Bradford Denning. He’s elderly now, but in his prime, he was a
career diplomat. A mover and shaker in the State Department during the Truman administration. According to him, he would eventually
have become secretary of state.”

“What happened that he didn’t?”

“The grand counselors. They didn’t like him being in competition with them, so they got him out of their way.”

“How on earth did they manage that?”

“To hear Denning tell it—this was during the McCarthy witch-hunt era—they spread persistent rumors that Denning was soft on
communism.”

“In the early fifties, that would have ruined a diplomat.”

“It certainly ruined Denning. He found it impossible to undo the damage, was given less and less responsibility in the State
Department, and finally had to resign. He claims that his isn’t the only career the grand counselors ruined by claiming that
somebody was a Communist sympathizer. The grand counselors then ingratiated themselves with the incoming Eisenhower administration,
replaced the diplomats they’d attacked, and went on to control the highest diplomatic offices. That lasted until 1960 when
the Democrats regained the White House with Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to work with friends and family rather than career diplomats.
For three years, the grand counselors stood on the sidelines. But after Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson, who had disliked
Kennedy, was eager to assert himself by getting Kennedy’s people out of the State Department and the White House staff. He
welcomed the grand counselors back into diplomatic power. For the second time in their careers, they had managed the trick
of being accepted by different political parties. In fact, by then they seemed to transcend the two-party system, so that
when Nixon and the Republicans came back into power at the end of the sixties, the grand counselors had no difficulty in continuing
to maintain their influence. So it went. In periods of intense international strain, various later Presidents continued to
ask for their advice.”

“And Denning?”

“Had what to most people would have seemed a productive life. He taught college. Wrote for political journals. Contributed
editorial columns to the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
. But he always felt cheated, and he never forgave the grand counselors. In fact, he devoted most of his spare time to researching
a book about them, an exposé of their ruthlessness.”

“Is that how you know about him? Because of the book?”

“No. The book was never published. Near the end of his research, his house caught fire. All his notes were destroyed. After
that, he was a defeated man. Seven years ago, when I was preparing to write a story about Millgate, one of the few people
who agreed to talk to me told me about Denning. I came down here to Washington to see him. But he’d been drinking, and what
he had to say was all innuendo—he’d once had proof, he insisted, but it went up in the fire—and I finally realized I couldn’t
quote him. I never wrote the story, anyhow. After I was arrested and my jaw was broken by those two prisoners in jail, my
editor assigned me to something else.”

Driving, Pittman brooded. Thinking of his reassignment had reminded him of Burt Forsyth, not only his editor but his closest
friend. The fight in the construction area off Twenty-sixth Street was brutally vivid in Pittman’s memory, Burt stepping back
as the gunman came into the shadows, the gunman shooting at Pittman, then at Burt.

Grief felt like arms around his chest, squeezing him breathless. They didn’t need to kill Burt, he thought. The bastards.

“You look awfully angry,” Jill said.

“Don’t you think I’ve got reason to be?”

“Without a doubt. But it’s surprising.”

“How so?”

“When you came to my apartment Sunday, the emotion you communicated was desperation. Your motive was passive—a reaction to
being threatened. But anger’s an active emotion. It’s… Let me ask you a question. If somehow a truce could be arranged and
the police wouldn’t be after you and the grand counselors would leave you alone, would you walk away?”

“After everything those bastards have put me through? No way.”

Jill studied him. “Yes, you’ve definitely changed.”

“You have no idea how much. This is Wednesday. Remember, a week ago tonight, I was ready to kill myself.”

Jill didn’t react, just kept staring at him.

“Say something.”

“I keep forgetting how deeply upset you were,” Jill said.

“Still am. None of this changes my grief for Jeremy.”

“Yes. You’ll continue to grieve for the rest of your life.”

“That’s right.”

“But if you wanted to die as much as you say you did, why didn’t you let the grand counselors do the job for you? No. In the
last week, something happened to you to make you want the rest of your life to go on as long as possible.”

“You.”

Jill touched his shoulder with affection. “But you’d been on the run for a couple of days before you showed up at my apartment.
You had plenty of opportunity to give in to your despair. You know what I think?”

Pittman didn’t answer.

“Fear made you feel alive again. While we’ve been driving, you told me how you sometimes have the sense that Jeremy’s with
you, that he talks to you.”

Pittman nodded. “You think it’s foolish to believe that?”

“On the contrary, I’ll go you one better. I think Jeremy’s been pushing you into fighting back. I think he wants you to decide
to live for something.”

Pittman’s voice was husky with emotion. “That would be nice to believe.” His throat ached as he squinted ahead toward the
bright lights and congested traffic in the area of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street.

Jill sounded puzzled. “What’s the problem ahead? An accident?”

Affected by the intensity of what they’d been discussing, Pittman was grateful to change the subject. “No, it’s always this
crowded. Wisconsin Avenue and M Street are where the action is in Georgetown—bars, restaurants, nightclubs, shops selling
everything you can imagine as long as it’s expensive.”

“Denning lives around here?”

“Not at all. He couldn’t possibly afford it. He lives on his college pension, which isn’t very much. No, when I finally got
in touch with him on the phone, I told him I was a journalist doing a story on Anthony Lloyd’s death. I told him so many diplomats
and politicians were canonizing Lloyd that I thought a dissenting opinion would give my story depth. I asked him if I could
take him to dinner. He was more than happy to accept. He said he planned to go to a memorial service for Anthony Lloyd”—Pittman
hesitated—“and then sit down to eat a big meal with me to celebrate.”

The restaurant, Il Trovatore, was spacious and soothingly lit, the tables far enough apart that politicians and personalities
could discuss delicate topics without being easily overheard. As Pittman walked in with Jill, he glanced to the right toward
the bar and recognized a well-known senator. A network news anchorman was eating dinner with an important-looking man at a
table to the left. From somewhere, a piano was playing soft jazz. The clink of silverware against plates and the murmur of
voices blended with the subtle level of the music, cloaking individual conversations.

“Yes, sir?” The maître d’ had pinched nostrils, wore a white dinner jacket, and looked disapprovingly at Jill’s sweater, jeans,
and sneakers.

“We have a reservation in Bradford Denning’s name.” Pittman had phoned to make the reservation during one of their stops along
the interstate en route to Washington.