Desperate Measures (8 page)

But he was shocked as an aged clawlike hand grabbed his right wrist, making him gasp. Pittman swung in alarm and saw Millgate’s
anguished eyes staring at him.

Pittman clutched the old man’s fingers and worked to pry them off, surprised by the ferocity of the old man’s grip.

Jesus, if he yells…

“Duncan.” The old man spoke with effort, his voice thin and crackly, like cellophane being crumpled.

He’s delirious. He doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

“Duncan.” The old man seemed to plead.

He thinks I’m somebody else. I’ve been in here too long. I have to get out.

“Duncan.” The old man’s voice thickened, now sounding like crusted mud being stepped upon. “The snow.”

Pittman released the old man’s fingers.

“Grollier.” The old man’s throat filled with phlegm, making a grotesque imitation of the sound of gargling.

To hell with this, Pittman thought, then swung toward the French doors.

He was suddenly caught in a column of light. The entrance to the room had been opened. Illumination from the hall spilled
in, silhouetting the nurse. She stood, paralyzed for a moment. Abruptly she dropped a tray. A teapot and cup crashed onto
the floor. She screamed.

And Pittman ran.

Pittman’s brief time in the room had made him feel warm. As he raced onto the sundeck, the night and the rain seemed much
more chilling than they had only a few seconds earlier. He shivered and lunged through puddles, past the dark metal patio
furniture and toward the stairs that led down from the deck. At once he was blinded, powerful arc lamps glaring down at him
from the eaves of the mansion above the sundeck, reflecting off puddles. The nurse or a guard had switched on the lights.
From inside the building behind him, Pittman heard shouts.

He ran harder. He almost lost his balance on the stairs. Gripping the railing, flinching from a sliver that rammed into his
palm, he bounded down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he almost scurried in the direction from which he had come, toward
the tree-lined driveway and the gate from the estate. But he heard shouts from the front of the house, so he pivoted toward
the back, only to recoil from arc lights that suddenly blazed toward the covered swimming pool and the flower gardens. There,
too, he heard shouting.

With the front and rear blocked to him, Pittman charged to the side of the house, across concrete at the entrance to the large
garage, over spongy lawn, toward looming dark fir trees. Rapid footsteps clattered down the stairs from the sundeck.

“Stop!”

“Shoot him!”

Pittman reached the fir trees. A needled branch pawed his face, stinging him so hard that he didn’t know if the moisture on
his cheeks was rain or blood. He ducked, avoiding another branch.

“Where the—?”

“There! I think he’s over—!”

Behind Pittman, a bough snapped. Someone fell.

“My nose! I think I broke my fucking—!”

“I hear—!”

“In those bushes!”

“Shoot the son of a bitch!”

“Get him! If they find out we let somebody—!”

Another branch snapped. Behind him, Pittman’s hunters charged through the trees.

Just in time, Pittman stopped himself. He’d come to a high stone wall, nearly running into it at full force. Breathing deeply,
he fiercely studied the darkness to his left and then his right.

What am I going to do? he thought in a frenzy. I can’t assume I’ll find a gate. I can’t keep following the wall. Too obvious.
They’ll listen for the sounds I make. They’ll get ahead of me and behind me and corner me.

Turn back?

No! The police will soon arrive. The house has too many outside lights. I’ll be spotted.

Then what are you going to… ?

Pittman hurried toward the nearest fir tree and started to climb. The footsteps of his pursuers thudded rapidly closer. He
gripped a bough above him, shoved his right shoe against a lower branch, and hoisted himself upward along the trunk. Bark
scraped his hands. The fir tree smell of turpentine assaulted his nostrils. He climbed faster.

“I hear him!”

Across from the top of the wall, Pittman reached out along a branch, let his legs fall away from the tree trunk, and inched
hand over hand toward the wall. The branch dipped from his weight. Dangling, he kept shifting along. The bark cut deeper into
his hands.

“He’s close!”

“Where?”

Moisture dropped from the fir needles onto Pittman. Even greater moisture dropped from the branch to which he clung. Water
cascaded onto the ground.

“There!”

“That tree!”

Pittman’s shoes touched the top of the wall. He swung his legs toward it, felt a solid surface, no razor wire or chunks of
glass along the top, and released his grip, sprawling on the top of the wall.

The gunshot was deafening, the muzzle flash startlingly bright. A second shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without
thinking, flipping sideways off the top of the wall. Heart pounding, he dangled. The rough wall scraped against his overcoat.
He didn’t know what was below him, but he heard one of his pursuers trying to climb the tree.

Another man shouted, “Use the gate!”

Pittman let go. His stomach swooped as he plummeted.

Exhaling forcefully, Pittman struck the ground sooner than he anticipated. The ground was covered with grass, mushy from rain.
He bent his knees, tucked in his elbows, dropped, and rolled, trying desperately to minimize the impact. That was the way
a skydiver he had once interviewed had explained how parachutists landed when they were using conventional equipment. Bend,
tuck, and roll.

Pittman prayed it would work. If he sprained an ankle, or worse, he would be helpless when his pursuers searched this side
of the wall. His only hope would be to hide. But where? As he had swung toward the top of the wall, his impression of the
dark area behind it had been of unnerving open space.

Fortunately he had an alternative to being forced to try to hide. Using the momentum of his roll, he surged to his feet. His
hands stung. His knees felt sore. But that discomfort was irrelevant. What mattered was that his ankles supported him. His
legs didn’t give out. He hadn’t sprained or broken anything.

On the other side of the barrier, Pittman’s hunters cursed and ran. Noises in a tree suggested that one of them continued
to climb toward the top of the wall.

His chest heaving, Pittman charged forward. The murky lawn seemed to stretch on forever. In contrast with the estate from
which he’d just escaped, there weren’t any shrubs. There were hardly any trees.

What the hell
is
this place?

It felt unnatural, eerie. It reminded him of a cemetery, but in the darkness, he didn’t bump into any tombstones. Racing through
the drizzle, he noticed a light patch in the lawn ahead and used it as a destination. At once the ground gave away, a sharp
slope that caused him to tumble in alarm, falling, rolling.

He came to a stop on his back. The wind had been knocked from him. He breathed heavily, wiped wet sand from his face, and
stood.

Sand. That explained why this section of the ground had been pale. But why would… ?

A tingle ran through him. My God, it’s a golf course. There’d been a sign when the taxi driver brought him into the subdivision:
SAXON WOODS PARK AND GOLF CLUB.

I’m in the open. If they start shooting again, there’s no cover.

Then what are you hanging around for?

As he oriented himself, making sure that he wasn’t running back toward the wall, he saw lights to his left. Specterlike, they
emerged from the wall. Pittman had heard one of his pursuers talk about a gate. They’d reached it and come through. His first
instinct was to conclude that they had found flashlights somewhere, probably from a shed near the gate. But there was something
about the lights.

The tingle that Pittman had felt when he realized that he was on a golf course now became a cold rush of fear as he heard
the sound of motors. The lights were too big to come from flashlights, and they were in pairs like headlights, but Pittman’s
hunters couldn’t be using cars. Cars would be too heavy, losing traction, spinning their wheels until they got stuck in the
soft wet grass. Besides, the motors sounded too small and whiny to belong to cars.

Jesus, they’re using golf carts, Pittman realized, his chest tightening. Whoever owns the estate has private carts and access
to the course from the back of the property. Golf carts don’t have headlights. Those are handheld spotlights.

The carts spread out, the lights systematically covering various sections of the course. As men shouted, Pittman spun away
from the lights, darted from the sand trap, and scurried into the rainy darkness.

Before Jeremy’s cancer had been diagnosed, Pittman had been a determined jogger. He had run a minimum of an hour each day
and several hours on the weekend, mostly using the jogging path along the Upper East Side, next to the river. He had lived
on East Seventieth at that time, with Ellen and Jeremy, and his view of exercise had been much the same as his habit of saving
5 percent of his paycheck and making sure that Jeremy took summer courses at his school, even though the boy’s grades were
superior and extra work wasn’t necessary. Security. Planning for the future. That was the key. That was the secret. With his
son cheering and his wife doing her best to look dutifully enthusiastic, Pittman had managed to be among the middle group
that finished the New York Marathon one year.

Then Jeremy had gotten sick.

And Jeremy had died.

And Pittman and Ellen had started arguing.

And Ellen had left.

And Ellen had remarried.

And Pittman had started drinking heavily.

And Pittman had suffered a nervous breakdown.

He hadn’t run in over a year. For that matter, he hadn’t done any exercise at all, unless nervous pacing counted. But now
adrenaline spurred him, and his body remembered. It didn’t have its once-excellent tone. It didn’t have the strength that
he’d worked so hard to acquire. But it still retained his technique, the rhythm and length and heel-to-toe pattern of his
stride. He was out of breath. His muscles protested. But he kept charging across the golf course, responding to a pounding
in his veins and a fire in his guts, while behind him lights bobbed in the distance, motors whined, and men shouted.

Pittman’s effort was so excruciating that he cursed himself for ever having allowed himself to get out of shape. Then he cursed
himself for having been so foolhardy as to get into this situation.

What the hell did you think you were doing, following the ambulance all the way out here? Burt wouldn’t have known if you
hadn’t bothered.

No. But
I’d
have known. I promised Burt I’d do my best.

For eight more days.

What about breaking into that house? Do you call that standard journalistic procedure? Burt would have a fit if he knew you
did that.

What was I supposed to do, let the old man die?

As Pittman’s stiffening legs did their best to imitate the expert runner’s stride that had once been second nature to him,
he risked losing time to glance back at his pursuers. Wiping moisture from his eyes, he saw the drizzle-haloed spotlights
on the golf carts speeding toward him in the darkness.

Or some of the carts. All told, there were five, but only two were directly behind him. The rest had split off, one to the
right, the other to the left, evidently following the perimeter of the golf course. The third was speeding on a diagonal toward
what Pittman assumed was the far extreme of the course.

They want to encircle me, Pittman realized. But in the darkness, how can they be sure which way I’m going?

Rain trickled down his neck beneath his collar. He felt the hairs on his scalp rise when he suddenly understood how his pursuers
were able to follow him.

His London Fog overcoat.

It was sand-colored. Just as Pittman had been able to see the light color of the sand trap against the darkness of the grass,
so his overcoat was as obvious to his pursuers.

Forced to break stride, running awkwardly, Pittman desperately worked at the belt on his overcoat, untying it, then fumbling
at buttons. One button didn’t want to be released, and Pittman yanked at it, popping it loose. In a frenzy, he had the coat
open. He jerked his arm from one sleeve. He freed his other arm. His suit coat had been somewhat dry, but now drizzle soaked
it.

Pittman’s first impulse was to throw the overcoat away. His next impulse, as he entered a clump of brush, was to drape the
coat over a bush to provide a target for the men chasing him. That tactic wouldn’t distract them for long, though, he knew,
and besides, if…
when
… he escaped, he would need the coat to help keep him warm.

The brushy area was too small to be a good hiding place, so Pittman fled it, scratching his hands on bushes, and continued
charging across the murky golf course.

Glancing desperately back over his shoulder, he saw the glare of the lights on the carts. He heard the increasingly loud whine
of their engines. Rolling his overcoat into a ball and stuffing it under his suit jacket, he strained his legs to their maximum.
One thing was in his favor. He was wearing a dark blue suit. In the rainy blackness, he hoped he would blend with his surroundings.

Unless the lights pick me up, he thought.

Ahead, a section of the golf course assumed a different color, a disturbing gray. Approaching it swiftly, Pittman realized
that he’d reached a pond. The need to skirt it would force him to lose time. No choice. Breathing hard, he veered to the left.
But the wet, slippery grass along the slope betrayed him. His left foot jerked from under him. He fell and almost tumbled
into the freezing water before he clawed his fingers into the mushy grass and managed to stop himself.

Rising frantically, he remembered to keep his overcoat clutched beneath his suit jacket. With an urgent glance backward, he
saw a beam of light shoot over the top of the slope down which he’d rolled. The whine of an engine was very close. Concentrating
not to lose his balance again, Pittman scurried through the rainy darkness.