David Morrell - Desperate Measures

And a gym bag held a lot.

Trembling, Pittman put a fresh pair of underwear and socks into the bag. He shoved in an extra shirt, a tie, his black sweat suit, his running shoes, his electric razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo.

What else?

This isn’t summer camp you’re going to. You have to get out of here fast. That phone call was probably from someone working with the gunman.

Pittman hurried into the living room, frowned down at the corpse, and almost took the four hundred dollars from the dead man’s wallet.

That would look great to the police. After you killed him, you thought why not steal from him, too?

What about his gun?

What about it?

Do I take it?

Who do you think you are? John Wayne? You know enough about guns to shoot yourself, not anybody else.

As the phone started ringing again, Pittman grabbed his spare overcoat, opened his apartment door, peered out, saw no one, went into the dimly lit corridor, and locked the door behind him.

In his apartment, the phone kept ringing.

He hurried toward the elevator. But the moment he reached it, extending his right hand to press the down button, not yet touching it, he heard a buzz.

Creaking, the elevator began to rise from the ground floor.

Pittman felt pressure behind his ears.

He headed down the stairs but froze as he heard footsteps scraping far below him, coming up the concrete steps, echoing louder as they ascended from the ground floor.

Invisible arms seemed to pin his chest, squeezing him. One man in the elevator, another on the stairs. That would make sense. No one could come down without their knowing.

Pittman backed up, straining to be silent. Again in the corridor, he analyzed his options and crept up the stairs toward the next floor.

Out of sight, he heard the elevator stop and footsteps come out. They hesitated in the corridor. Other footsteps, those in the stairwell, came up to the third floor and joined whoever had gotten out of the elevator.

No one spoke as both sets of footsteps proceeded along the corridor. They stopped about where Pittman judged his apartment would be. He heard a knock, then another. He heard the scrape of metal that he recognized as the sound of lock-pick tools. A different kind of metallic sound might have been the click of a gun being cocked. He heard a door being opened.

“Shit,” a man exclaimed, as if he’d seen the corpse in Pittman’s apartment.

Immediately the footsteps went swiftly into a room. The door was closed.

I can’t stay here, Pittman thought. They might search the building.

He swung toward the elevator door on the fourth floor and pressed the down button. His hands shook as the elevator wheezed and groaned to his level.

Part of him was desperate to flee down the stairs. But what if the men came out and saw him? This way, he’d be out of sight in the elevator-unless the men came out in the meantime and decided to use the elevator, stopping it as it descended, in which case he’d be trapped in the cage with them.

But he had to take the risk. Suppose the men had left someone in the lobby. Pittman needed a way to get past, and the elevator was it. His face was slick with sweat as he got in the car and pressed the button for the basement. As the car sank toward the third floor, he imagined that he would hear a buzz, that the car would stop, that two men would get in.

He trembled, watching the needle above the inside of the door point to 3.

Then the needle began to point toward 2.

He exhaled. Sweat trickled down his chest under his shirt.

The needle pointed toward 1, then B.

The car stopped. The doors grated open. He faced the musty shadows of the basement.

The moment he stepped out, the elevator doors closed. As he shifted past a furnace, the elevator surprised him, rising. Turning, he watched the needle above the door: 1, 2, 3.

The elevator stopped.

Simultaneously, via the stairwell, he heard noises from the lobby: footsteps, voices.

“See anybody?”

“No. Our guys just went up.”

“Nobody came down?”

“Not that I saw. I’ve been here only five minutes. Somebody took the elevator to the basement.”

“Basement? What would anybody want down there?”

“A storage unit maybe.”

“Check it out.”

Pittman hurried beyond the furnace. In shadows, he passed locked storage compartments. He heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. He came to the service door from the basement. Sweating more profusely, he gently twisted the knob on the dead-bolt lock, desperate not to make noise. The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs.

Pittman opened the door, tensed from the squeak it made, slipped out into the night, shut the door, and broke into a run. The narrow alley, only five feet wide, led each way, to Twelfth Street or past another apartment building to Eleventh Street. Reasoning that the men who were chasing him would have a car waiting in front of his building on Twelfth Street, he darted past garbage cans toward Eleventh Street.

At the end, a stout wooden door blocked his way. Clumsy with fright, he twisted the knob on another dead bolt and tugged at the door, flinching when he heard a noise far along the alley behind him. He surged out onto Eleventh Street, straining to adjust his eyes to the glare of headlights and streetlights. Breathing hard in panic, he turned left and hurried past startled pedestrians. His goal was farther west, the din of traffic, the safety of the congestion on Seventh Avenue.

And this time, he did find an empty taxi.

Burt Forsyth wasn’t married. He considered his apartment a place only for changing his clothes, sleeping, and showering. Every night after work, he followed the same routine: several drinks and then dinner at Bennie’s Oldtime Beefsteak Tavern. The regulars there were like a family to him.

The bar, on East Fiftieth Street, was out of tone with the expensive leather-goods store on its left and the designer-dress store on its right. It had garish neon lights in its windows and a sign bragging that the place had a big-screen television. As Pittman’s taxi pulled to a stop, several customers were going in and out.

Another taxi stopped to let someone off. Pittman studied the man, then relaxed somewhat when the man went into the bar without looking in Pittman’s direction. After using the last of his cash to pay the driver, Pittman glanced around, felt somewhat assured that he hadn’t been followed, and hurried toward the entrance.

Pittman’s gym bag attracted no attention as he stood among patrons and scanned the crowded, dimly lit, noisy interior. It was divided so that the beefsteak part of the bar was in a paneled section to the right. A partition separated it from the serious drinking part of the establishment, which was on the left. There, a long counter and several tables faced a big-screen television that was always tuned to a sports channel. Pittman had been in the place a couple of times with Burt and knew that Burt preferred the counter. But when he studied that area, he didn’t see Burt’s distinctly rugged silhouette.

He stepped farther in, working his way past two customers who were paying their bill at a cash register in front. He craned his neck to check the busy tables but still saw no sign of Burt. Pittman felt impatient. He knew he had to get in touch with the police, but his sense of danger at his apartment had prompted him to run. Once he escaped, he had planned to use a pay phone to contact the police. As soon as he’d gotten in the taxi, though, he’d said the first words that came into his mind: “Bennie’s Tavern.” He had to sort things out.

He had to talk to Burt.

But Burt wasn’t in sight. Pittman tried to encourage himself with the thought that Burt might have made an exception and chosen to eat in the restaurant part of the bar. Or maybe he’s late. Maybe he’s still coming. Maybe I haven’t missed him.