Desperate Measures (4 page)

As he left the murky bar, his head aching from the harsh assault of afternoon sunlight, Pittman felt searing anger intrude
on his cold despair. He had always resented aristocrats and their supposition that money and social stature made them the
equivalent of royalty. He resented the disdain with which they felt themselves unaccountable for their actions. During his
peak as a national affairs reporter, his best stories had been exposés of criminal activity by those in high places, and Jonathan
Millgate would have been the highest target Pittman had ever brought down.

I should have been more persistent.

Pittman’s flare of anger abruptly died. Ahead, at a noisy intersection where pedestrians were stopped for a red light, he
noticed a tall, lanky boy with long hair, slight shoulders, and narrow hips moving his feet slightly to the beat of imagined
music. The boy looked to be about fifteen. He wore a rumpled denim jacket that had an emblem of a rock star. His jeans were
faded. His running shoes, high-topped, were dyed green and had names written on them. From the back, the boy reminded Pittman
so much of Jeremy that he felt as if a hand had squeezed his heart. Then the boy turned his head to speak to a companion,
and of course, the boy looked nothing at all like Jeremy, whose jaw had not been as strong as this boy’s and whose complexion
hadn’t been as clear and whose teeth had needed braces. Imperfect physically, but perfect as a son. It wasn’t just that Jeremy
had never gotten into trouble, or that his grades had been excellent, or that he had been respectful. As important as these
things were, what Pittman missed most about Jeremy was his captivating personality. The boy had been blessed with a wonderful
sense of humor. He had always been so much fun to be around, never failing to make Pittman feel that life was better because
of his son.

But not anymore, Pittman thought.

The brief angry fire he’d felt when thinking about Millgate no longer had significance. That was from another time, another
life—before Jeremy had become ill. Pittman resented what Burt was trying to do. It was an insult to Jeremy’s memory for Burt
to assume that an assignment about Jonathan Millgate could distract Pittman from his grief.

I ought to tell him to stuff it.

No. Keep your word. When you end this, it has to be cleanly. You can’t be obligated to anyone.

In the old days, Pittman would have gone to the area, formerly in the basement, where back issues of the newspaper were stored
on microfilm. The master index would have contained file cards for “Millgate” and “Grand counselors,” and from them, Pittman
would have learned which issues and pages of the newspaper to read on microfilm. That section of the newspaper where the microfilm
was kept had been traditionally called the morgue, and although computer files had replaced microfilm, death was so much on
Pittman’s mind that he still thought of himself as entering a morgue when he sat at his desk, turned on his computer terminal,
and tapped the keys that would give him access to the newspaper’s data files.

Given Millgate’s secretive lifestyle, it wasn’t surprising that there wasn’t much information: only a few small items since
Pittman had researched Millgate seven years earlier. Millgate and the other four grand counselors—still retaining immense
political power, even though they no longer had direct ties with the government—had been feted at a White House dinner, where
the President had given Millgate the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Millgate had accompanied the President
on
Air Force One
to an international conference on world economics in Geneva. Millgate had established an institute for the study of post-Communist
reconstruction in Russia. Millgate had testified before a Senate confirmation committee about his high regard for a Supreme
Court nominee, who also happened to be the son of one of the grand counselors.

The phone rang.

Pittman picked it up. “Obituaries.”

A fifty-two-year-old woman had been killed in a fire, he learned. She was unmarried, without children, unemployed, not a member
of any organization. Aside from her brother, to whom Pittman was speaking, there weren’t any surviving relatives. Thus, the
obituary would be unusually slight, especially because the brother didn’t want his name mentioned for fear people to whom
his sister owed money would come looking for him.

The barrenness of the woman’s life made Pittman more despondent. Shaking his head, dejected, he finished the call, then frowned
at his watch. It was almost three o’clock. The gray haze that customarily surrounded him seemed to have thickened.

The phone rang again.

This time, Burt Forsyth’s gravelly voice demanded, “How’s the Millgate obit coming?”

“Has he…?”

“Still in intensive care.”

“Well, there isn’t much. I’ll have the obit finished before I go home.”

“Don’t tell me there isn’t much,” Burt said. “We both know better. I want this piece to be substantial. Seven years ago, you
wouldn’t have given up so easily. Dig. Back then, you kept complaining about how you couldn’t find a way to see Millgate.
Well, he’s a captive interview this time. Not to mention, there’ll be relatives or somebody waiting at the hospital to see
how he’s doing. Talk to them. For Christ sake, figure out how to get into his room and talk to
him
.”

Pittman stood across from the hospital for quite a while. The building was soot gray. The mid-April day had been warm, but
as the sun descended behind skyscrapers, cool shadows made Pittman cross his arms and hug himself.

This was the same hospital where Jeremy had died. Pittman had come to the corner across from the Emergency entrance, the same
corner where he had often stood late at night after visiting Jeremy. From this corner, he had been able to see the window
of Jeremy’s room on the tenth floor. Gazing up through the darkness for several hours, he had prayed that Jeremy wouldn’t
be wakened by the need to vomit because of his chemotherapy.

Amid the din of traffic, Pittman now heard a siren. An ambulance veered from the busy street and rushed to a stop beneath
the portal at the Emergency entrance. Attendants leapt out and urgently removed a patient on a gurney. Pedestrians glanced
toward the commotion but kept walking swiftly onward.

Pittman swallowed, squinted up toward what he still thought of as Jeremy’s window, and turned away. Jonathan Millgate was
in that hospital, in the adult intensive-care ward that was just down the sixth-floor hallway from the children’s intensive-care
ward, where Jeremy had died. Pittman shook his head. He couldn’t tolerate going into the hospital, couldn’t make himself go
up to that floor, couldn’t bear exposing himself to the torment on the faces of people waiting to hear about their loved ones.
It would be all he could do not to imagine that he was one of them, not to sit down with them and wait as if for news of Jeremy.

It would be far too much.

So he went home. Rather than take a taxi, he walked. He needed to fill the time. As dusk increasingly chilled him, he stopped
for several drinks—to fill the time. The elevator to his third-floor apartment creaked and wheezed. He locked himself in his
apartment, heard laughter from a television show vibrate through thin walls from the apartment next to him, and had another
drink.

To fill the time.

He sat in darkness. He imagined what it would have been like if Jeremy had lived. With basketball playoffs approaching, he
would have spent the coming Saturday afternoon playing one-on-one with Jeremy. Afterward they’d have gone for pizza and a
movie, or maybe to Tower Records—whatever they wanted to do. The future would have been theirs.

Pittman wept.

He turned on the kitchen light, opened the drawer where he’d put the .45, and took out the pistol.

Vaguely conscious that the time was 8:00
P.M.
, because the sitcom next door had ended and another was starting, he continued to stare at the .45. His eyes became like
the lenses of a microscope, focusing intensely on the gleaming blue metal, magnifying the trigger, the hammer, the opening
in the barrel from which the bullet would…

The next thing he was aware of, a new sound disturbed him, the smooth deep voice of a man who spoke in formal cadences. The
voice came from the apartment next door. The voice was…

A television news announcer? Frowning, Pittman turned his gaze from the .45 and fixed it on the stove’s mechanical clock.
Its numbers whirred, 10:03 becoming 10:04. Pittman frowned harder. He had so absorbed himself in the gun that he hadn’t been
conscious of so much time passing. Hand trembling, he set down the .45. The news announcer on the television next door had
said something about Jonathan Millgate.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Matt.” The heavy man, an Italian, had gray hair protruding from the bottom of his Yankees baseball
cap. He wore a Yankees baseball jersey as well, and he held a ladle with which he’d been stirring a large steaming pot of
what smelled like chicken-noodle soup as Pittman came into the diner.

The place was narrow, with Formica-topped tables along one side, a counter along the other. The overhead fluorescent lights
made Pittman blink after the darkness of the street. It was almost 11:00
P.M.
AS Pittman sat at the counter, he nodded to the only other customer, a black man drinking a cup of coffee at one of the tables.

“You been sick?” the cook asked. “Is that why you haven’t been in?”

“Everybody keeps saying… Do I look sick?”

“Or permanently hungover. Look at how loose your clothes are. How much weight have you lost? Ten, fifteen pounds? And judging
from them bags under your eyes, I’d say you haven’t been sleeping much, either.”

Pittman didn’t answer.

“What’ll it be for tonight?”

“To start with, a favor.”

The cook appeared not to have heard as he stirred the soup.

“I wonder if you could store this for me.”

“What?” The cook glanced at the counter in front of Pittman and sounded relieved. “That box?”

Pittman nodded. The box had once held computer paper. Now it concealed the .45 and its container of ammunition. He had stuffed
the box with shredded newspaper so that the gun wouldn’t shift and make a thunking noise when the box was tilted. He had sealed
the box many times with tape.

“Just a place to store this,” Pittman said. “I’ll even pay you for…”

“No need,” the cook said. “What’s in it? How come you can’t keep it at your place? There’s nothing funny about this, is there?”

“Nah. It’s just a gun.”

“A
gun
?”

Pittman smiled at his apparent joke. “I’ve been working on a book. This is a copy of the printout and the computer discs.
I’m paranoid about fires. I’d ask my girlfriend to help, but she and I just had a fight. I want to keep a duplicate of this
material someplace besides my apartment.”

“Yeah? A book? What’s it about?”

“Suicide. Let me have some of that soup, will you?”

Pittman prepared to eat his first meal in thirty-six hours.

He’d packed the gun and left it with the cook at the diner because his experience of losing time while he stared at the weapon
had taught him there was every chance he might shoot himself before he made good on his promise to work for Burt Forsyth until
the
Chronicle
died. The effort of getting through this particular day, the bitterness and emptiness he had felt, had been so intense that
he couldn’t be certain of his resolve to keep himself alive for eight more days. This way, in the event of overwhelming despair,
he would have a chance of regaining control by the time he reached the diner, got the box, and went to his apartment.

For now, he had to do what Burt Forsyth intended—to distract himself. Jonathan Millgate meant nothing to him. Pittman’s career
meant nothing. The
Chronicle
meant nothing. But Burt Forsyth
did
. In honor of Jeremy, Pittman felt compelled to keep the promise he had made. For eight more days.

Despite his reluctance, he went back to the hospital. This time, he took a taxi. Not because he was in a hurry. After all,
he still had a great deal of time to fill and would have preferred to walk. But to get to the hospital, he would have had
to pass through several neighborhoods that became dangerous at this hour. He found it bitterly ironic that in doing his best
to postpone his death for eight more days, he had to be extra careful about not dying in the meanwhile.

He returned to the hospital because of the television announcer’s reference to Millgate. Through the thin walls of his apartment,
he had listened to the news report. Pittman’s expectation was that Millgate had died and a brief summary of his public-service
career was being provided. Burt Forsyth would be annoyed about that—Millgate dying before Pittman finished the obituary in
time for tomorrow morning’s edition of the newspaper. But the TV news story had not been about Millgate’s death. To the contrary,
Millgate was still in intensive care, as the announcer had pointed out.

Instead, the story had been about another possible scandal in Millgate’s background. To the government’s dismay, a copy of
a Justice Department special prosecutor’s report had been leaked to the press this evening. The report, a first draft never
intended for publication, implicated Millgate as a negotiator in a possible covert attempt—unsanctioned by Congress—to buy
nuclear weapons from the chaos of governments in what used to be the Soviet Union.

An unsubtantiated charge against him. Solely an in-house assessment of where the Justice Department’s investigation might
eventually lead. But the gravity of the news announcer’s voice had made the grave allegation sound like established fact.
Guilty until proven innocent. This was the second time in seven years that Jonathan Millgate had been implicated as a go-between
in a major arms scandal, and Pittman knew that if he failed to investigate this time, if he didn’t at least make an attempt
to get a statement from Millgate’s people, Burt Forsyth would accuse him of reneging on his bargain to do his best for the
Chronicle
during the brief time remaining to it. For Burt and what Burt had done for Jeremy, Pittman forced himself to try.