David Morrell - Desperate Measures

“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.

Pittman stood on the corner across from the hospital’s Emergency entrance. It was after midnight. A drizzle intensified the April night’s chill. He buttoned his wrinkled London Fog topcoat and felt dampness even through the soles of his shoes. The drizzle created misty halos around gleaming streetlights and the brighter floodlights at the Emergency entrance. By contrast, the lights in some of the hospital rooms were weak, making Pittman feel lonely. He stared up toward what had been Jeremy’s window on the tenth floor, and that window was dark. Feeling even more lonely, he crossed the street toward the hospital.

At this hour, traffic was slight. The Emergency area was almost deserted. He heard a far-off siren. The drizzle strengthened, wetting the back of his neck. When Jeremy had been sick, Pittman had learned about the hospital in considerable detail-the locations of the various departments, the lounges that were most quiet in the middle of the night, the areas that had coffee machines, the places to get a sandwich when the main cafeteria was closed. Bringing Jeremy to the hospital for chemotherapy, he had felt uncomfortable at the main entrance and in the lobby. The cancer had made Jeremy so delicate that Pittman had a fear of someone in a crowd bumping against him. Given Jeremy’s low blood-cell counts, a bruise would have taken a considerable time to heal. In addition, Pittman had felt outraged by the stares of people in the lobby, who seemed shocked to see a skinny, bald fifteen-year-old, his face gaunt, his hairless scalp tinted blue from blood vessels close to the surface. Terribly sensitive about his son’s feelings, Pittman had chosen an alternate route, in the back, a small entrance around the corner to the left of the Emergency area. The door was used primarily by interns and nurses, and as Pittman discovered, the elevators in this section were faster, perhaps because fewer people used them.

Retracing this route created such vivid memories that he sensed Jeremy next to him as he passed a private ambulance parked outside this exit. It was gray. It had no hospital markings. But through a gap in curtains drawn across the back windows, Pittman saw a light, an oxygen unit, various medical monitors. A man wearing an attendant’s white coat was checking some equipment.

Then Pittman was beyond the ambulance, whose engine was running, although its headlights were off. He noticed a stocky man in a dark suit drop the butt of a cigarette into a puddle and come to attention, seeing Pittman. You must really have needed a cigarette, Pittman thought, to stand out here in the rain.

Nodding to the man, who didn’t nod back, Pittman reached for the doorknob and noticed that the light was out above the entrance. He stepped inside, went up four steps to an echoey concrete landing, and noticed another stocky man in a dark suit, this one leaning against the wall next to where the stairs turned upward. The man’s face had a hard expression with squinted, calculating eyes.