Desperate Measures (7 page)

The nurse approached the draperies. When she pulled a cord on the side, the draperies moved, then stopped. She pulled harder,
but something prevented her from closing them all the way. From the deck, Pittman studied the room with increasing confusion.
The four bodyguards went after the counselors, as did the two ambulance attendants, leaving only the man with the stethoscope
and the female nurse. The latter dimmed the room’s lights, and now Pittman understood why there weren’t any arc lamps illuminating
the sundeck. The group didn’t want the glare of the outside lights intruding on the room after it was put into comparative
darkness. The red lights on the monitors were almost as bright as the muted glow of the lamps. In the dusky atmosphere, the
patient was being encouraged to rest. But that was about all Pittman did understand, and as he crouched in the darkness beside
the metal deck furniture, he wiped rain from his face, shivered from the cold, and asked himself what he should do.

You proved your suspicion. That
was
Jonathan Millgate they took from the hospital. You don’t know why, but you do know where they took him, and that’s all you
can do for now. It’s time to go. You’ll get pneumonia if you stay in this rain much longer.

That final thought made Pittman smile with bitterness. You almost killed yourself tonight, and now you’re worried about catching
pneumonia? Not yet. Your time isn’t up for another eight days.

And it won’t be pneumonia that kills you.

He watched the man with the stethoscope leave the dusky room. As the nurse continued inspecting Millgate’s monitors and tubes,
Pittman turned toward the stairs that led down from the sundeck. He heard a noise that paralyzed him.

It came from directly below him, a combination of a drone and a rumble. The roof of the sundeck vibrated beneath Pittman’s
wet shoes.

One of the motorized garage doors was being opened. Pittman’s heartbeat quickened. He crouched lower, making certain that
he wouldn’t be a silhouette against the roofline. Nonetheless, he was able to see light spill from the garage, revealing raindrops
on dark puddles as the door opened higher, then stopped, its motor becoming silent.

In the unnerving quiet, varied only by the hiss of the drizzle, Pittman suddenly heard the scrape of footsteps on concrete,
the creak of car doors being opened, the echo of voices.

“… priest,” an elderly man’s brittle voice said, taut with emotion.

“Don’t worry,” a second elderly voice said. “I told you the priest never arrived. Jonathan never spoke to him.”

“Even so.”

“It’s been taken care of,” the second aged voice emphasized, reminding Pittman of the rattle of dead leaves. “It’s safe now.
Secure.”

“But the reporters…”

“Have no idea where Jonathan is. Everything is under control. The best thing we can do is separate and get back to a pretense
of normalcy.”

Throughout, Pittman heard the sound of people getting into a vehicle. Now he heard the thunk of car doors being closed, the
sudden roar of an engine.

Headlights blazed. A dark limousine surged out of the garage and sped along the murky driveway, past trees and shrubs and
toward the gate that led from the estate.

Pittman’s bent legs cramped. He began to stand, then flinched when he heard further voices.

“The taxi,” another aged voice said.

“If you’re correct that we were followed…” This voice was crusty, yet filled with phlegm.

Pittman couldn’t make out the rest of the sentence. What he heard instead was a louder rumbling drone as a second garage door
rose. Other lights gleamed into the drizzle-misted night.

When the noise of the garage door stopped, Pittman strained to listen, hoping that the voices would continue.

“… a coincidence. A late commuter coming from Manhattan.”

“But in a taxi?”

“Perhaps the trains don’t run this late. There might be several explanations. Until we know for certain, I refuse to become
alarmed.”

“But we saw the headlights go past the gate as we drove toward the house.”

“You heard me send Harold to look into the matter. If it
was
the same taxi, it had less than a minute’s head start before Harold went after it. And if the taxi came from Manhattan, it
would be one of few, if any, in the area at this hour. Its city of origin would be marked on the vehicle. I’m certain that
Harold would intercept it well before it reached the thruway.”

“You’ll keep me informed.”

“Of course. Relax. Look at how your hands are shaking. Be calm, my friend. You didn’t use to worry this much.”

“I didn’t have as much to lose.”

“Nor did we all.”

“Good night, Eustace.”

“Goodnight, Anthony.”

Despite the worry in their voices, the tone of the old men was strikingly affectionate.

Car doors thunked shut. An engine roared. Another dark limousine sped from the garage and along the murky driveway.

From above, crouching in the darkness of the sundeck, Pittman watched the taillights recede, then disappear, the sound of
the limousines fading into the silence of the night. With a final droning rumble, all the garage doors descended, cutting
off the lights inside. The gloom in the area intensified.

Pittman slowly straightened. His legs were stiff. His calves prickled as blood resumed its flow through arteries that had
been constricted. He turned toward the French doors for a final look at Jonathan Millgate helpless in his bed, surrounded
by monitors, bottles, and tubes.

Pittman’s pulse faltered.

Through the gaps in the draperies, what he saw seemed magnified by the glass panes in the French doors. At the same time,
he felt as if he watched helplessly from a great distance. The nurse had left the room, leaving Millgate alone. She had shut
the door. Millgate had not been asleep, contrary to what she evidently believed. Instead, he was attempting to raise himself.

Millgate’s features were twisted, agitated. The oxygen prongs had slipped from his nostrils. His IV tubes had become disengaged
from the needle in each of his arms. He pawed with both hands, trying to grasp the railings on his bed with sufficient strength
to raise himself. But he wasn’t succeeding. His face had become an alarming red. His chest heaved. Abruptly he slumped back,
gasping.

Even at a distance, through the barrier of the French doors, Pittman thought he heard Millgate’s strident effort to breathe.
Before Pittman realized, he stepped closer to the window. The warning buzzer on the heart monitor should have alerted the
nurse, he thought in dismay. She should have hurried back by now.

But as Pittman stared through the window, he was close enough that he knew he would have been able to hear an alarm, even
through the glass. Had the sound been turned off? That didn’t make sense. He studied the pattern of blips on the monitor.
From so many days of watching Jeremy’s monitors and insisting that the doctors explain what the indicators said, Pittman could
tell from Millgate’s monitor that his heartbeat was far above the normal range of 70 to 90 per minute, disturbingly rapid
at 150. Its pattern of beats was becoming erratic, the rhythm of the four chambers of his heart beginning to disintegrate.

A crisis would come. Soon. Millgate’s color was worse. His chest heaved with greater distress. He clutched at his blankets
as if they were crushing him.

He can’t get his breath, Pittman thought.

The oxygen. If he doesn’t get those prongs back into his nostrils, he’ll work himself into another heart attack.

The son of a bitch is going to die.

Pittman had a desperate impulse to turn, race down the steps, surge toward the estate’s wall, scurry over, and run, keep running,
never stop running.

Jesus, I should never have done this. I should never have come here.

He pivoted, eager to reach the stairs down from the sundeck. But his legs wouldn’t move. He felt as if he were held in cement.
His will refused to obey his commands.

Move. Damn it, get out of here.

Instead, he looked back.

In agony, Millgate continued to struggle to breathe. His pulse was now 160. Red numbers on his blood-pressure monitor showed
170/125. Normal was 120/80. The elevated pressure was a threat to anyone, let alone an eighty-year-old man who’d just had
a heart attack that placed him in intensive care.

Clutching his chest, gasping, Millgate cocked his head toward the French doors, his anguished expression fixed on the windows.
Pittman was sure Millgate couldn’t see him out in the darkness. The dim lights in the room would reflect off the panes and
make them a screen against the night. Even so, Millgate’s tortured gaze was like a laser that seared into Pittman.

Don’t look at me like that! What do you expect? There’s nothing I can do!

Yet again Pittman turned to flee.

Instead, surprising himself, Pittman reached into his pants pocket and took out his keys and the tool knife—similar to a Swiss
army knife—that he kept on his key ring. He removed two pieces of metal from the end of the knife. He was fully prepared to
shoot himself to death in eight days. But there was no way he was going to stay put and watch while someone else died—or run
before it happened and try to convince himself that he didn’t have a choice. Millgate was about to go into a crisis, and on
the face of it, the most obvious way to try to prevent that crisis was to reattach his IV lines and put the oxygen prongs
back into his nostrils.

Maybe I’m wrong and he’ll die anyhow. But by God, if he does, it won’t be because I didn’t try. Millgate’s death won’t be
my responsibility.

Thinking of the .45 in the box at the diner, Pittman thought, What have I got to lose?

He stepped to the French doors and hesitated only briefly before he put the two metal prongs into the lock. The tool knife
from which he had taken the prongs had been a gift from a man about whom Pittman had once written an article. The man, a veteran
burglar named Sean O’Reilly, had been paroled from a ten-year prison sentence, one of the conditions being that he participate
in a public-awareness program to show homeowners and apartment dwellers how to avoid being burglarized. Sean had the slight
build of a jockey, the accent of an Irish Spring commercial, and the mischievously glinting eyes of a leprechaun. His three
television spots had been so effective that he’d become a New York City celebrity. That was before he went back to prison
for burglarizing the home of his attorney.

When he had interviewed him at the height of his fame, Pittman had suspected that Sean would end up back in prison. In elaborate
detail, Sean had explained various ways to break into a house. Pittman’s enthusiasm for information had prompted Sean to elaborate
and dramatize. The interview had lasted two hours. At its end, Sean had presented Pittman with a gift—the tool knife he still
carried. “I give these to people who really understand what an art it is to be a burglar,” Sean had said. What made the knife
especially useful, he explained, was that at the end of the handle, past miniature pliers, screwdrivers, and wire cutters,
there were slots for two metal prongs: lock-picking tools. With glee, Sean had taught Pittman how to use them.

The lesson had stuck.

Now Pittman worked the prongs into the lock. It was sturdy—a dead bolt. It didn’t matter. One prong was used to free the pins
in the cylinder, Sean had explained. The other was used to apply leverage and pressure. Once you did it a couple of times,
the simple operation wasn’t hard to master. With practice and Sean watching, Pittman had learned how to enter a locked room
within fifteen seconds.

As he freed one pin and shoved the first prong farther into the cylinder to free the next, Pittman stared frantically through
the French door toward Millgate’s agonized struggle to breathe.

Pittman increased his concentration, working harder. He had worried that when he opened the door, he would trigger an alarm.
But his worry had vanished when he’d noticed a security-system number pad on the wall next to the opposite entrance to the
room. From his interview with the Bugmaster, Pittman remembered that owners of large homes often had their security company
install several number pads throughout their homes. These pads armed and disarmed the system, and it made sense to have a
pad not just at the front door but at all the principal exits from the dwelling.

But in this case, the security company had installed the pad in the wrong place—within view of anyone who might be trying
to break in through the French doors. From Pittman’s vantage point, as he freed another pin in the cylinder of the lock, he
could see that the illuminated indicator on the number pad said
READY TO ARM
. Because so many visitors had been coming and going, the system had not yet been activated.

Pittman felt the final pin disengage. Turning the second metal prong, he pivoted the cylinder, and the lock was released.
In a rush, he turned the latch and pulled the door open.

The opposite door was closed. No one could hear Pittman as he hurried into the dusky room. Millgate was losing strength, his
effort to breathe less strenuous. Pittman reached him and eased the prongs for the oxygen tube into Millgate’s nostrils.

The effect was almost magical. Within seconds, Millgate’s color had begun to be less flushed. His agitation lessened. A few
more seconds and the rise and fall of Millgate’s chest became more regular, less frenzied. Throughout, Pittman was in motion.
He grabbed the IV tubes that Millgate had inadvertently jerked from the needles in his arms. As Pittman inserted the tubes
back onto the base of each needle, he noticed that liquid from the tubes had trickled onto the floor. How would the nurse
account for that when she came back into the room? he wondered. Then he noticed the water tracks that he had brought in from
the rain, the moisture dripping off his overcoat.

I have to get out of here.

A final look at the monitors showed him that Millgate’s blood pressure, respiration rate, and heartbeat were becoming less
extreme. The old guy’s going to make it a while longer, Pittman thought. Relieved, anxious, he turned to leave the room.