Desperate Measures (9 page)

He followed the rim of the pond, struggled up the opposite slope, and lunged over the top just before he heard angry voices
behind him. Something buzzed past his right ear. It sounded like a hornet, but Pittman knew what it was: a bullet. Another
hornet buzzed past him. No sound of shots. His hunters must have put silencers on their handguns.

He scurried down a slope, out of their line of fire. To his right, through the rain, he saw lights trying to overtake him.
To his left, he saw the same. His legs were so fatigued, they wanted to buckle. His heaving lungs protested.

Can’t keep this up much longer.

He fought to muster energy.

Have to keep going.

Too late, he saw the light-colored patch ahead of him. The grass dropped sharply. Unable to stop, he hurtled out into space,
flailed, and jolted down into another sand trap. The impact dropped him to his knees. He struggled upright, feeling the heaviness
of wet sand clinging to his trousers.

Spotlights bobbed, speeding nearer. With a final burst of energy, he struggled across the sand trap. His shoes sank into the
drizzle-softened sand. He left a deep, wide trail. Jesus, even if they don’t have my overcoat as a target, they’ll know from
my tracks which way I went when I reached the grass, he thought.

Tracks. Pittman’s skin prickled as he realized that this might be his only chance to save himself. The instant he raced out
of the sand onto the grass, he reversed his direction and hurried through the darkness along the edge of the sand trap toward
the top of the slope from which he had leapt. As he ran through the drizzle, he yanked his balled overcoat from beneath his
suit jacket.

The whine of an engine sounded terribly close. Spotlights bobbed above him. He came to where the grass dropped sharply toward
the sand. Careful not to disturb this section, he eased over the edge and lay sideways where the sand met the almost-vertical,
sharp downward angle of the earth. There, he spread his sand-colored overcoat across his head and suit jacket. He felt its
weight on his lower thighs, almost covering his knees. He bent his legs and drew them toward his body, tucking them under
the hem of the overcoat. His breathing sounded hoarse. He strained to control it.

Please, he kept thinking. Please.

With his overcoat covering his head, he heard drizzle patter onto him. He heard the whine of engines—close. The whine diminished
abruptly, as if the carts had come to a stop.

Vapor from Pittman’s breath collected under the overcoat. Dank moisture dribbled along his chin. The wet chill made him shiver,
although he compacted his muscles and struggled not to tremble.

Can’t let them notice me.

He shivered for another reason, anticipating the impact of a bullet.

Isn’t that what you wanted? If they shoot you, they’ll be doing you a favor.

But I want it to be
my
idea.

He silently prayed: If only his overcoat blended with the sand. If only the men stared straight ahead instead of looking down
at—

“There!”

Pittman’s heartbeat lurched.

“Tracks in the sand!”

“Toward that section of grass!”

Something made an electronic crackle: a walkie-talkie.

“Alpha to Beta! He’s headed in your direction! He’s reached the northeast quadrant!”

A garbled voice responded. The walkie-talkie made an electronic squawk. The whine of the engines intensified. Beneath the
smothering, moisture-laden overcoat, Pittman heard the carts speed away past the sand trap, toward the continuation of the
grass.

His clothes soaked from the wet sand he lay upon, Pittman waited, not daring to move. Despite the stifling buildup of carbon
dioxide beneath the overcoat, he forced himself to continue to wait. At last he relented, slowly moving the coat. As he inched
it off his face, inhaling the fresh, cool air, he squinted toward the darkness, afraid that he would see a man above him grin
and aim a pistol.

But he saw only the slope of the earth above him, darkness, and drizzle pelting his eyes. After the cloying stale air beneath
the coat, the rain made him feel clean. He eased upward, came to a trembling crouch, and saw the lights of the carts receding
in the murky distance. Careful to bunch his overcoat beneath his suit coat, he crept from the sand trap and headed in the
direction from which the carts had come. He was soaked, chilled. But for all his discomfort and apprehension, a portion of
his mind was swollen with exultation.

Nonetheless, he still had to get out of the area, off this golf course, away from the estate. The carts might return at any
time. Although his legs were unsteady, he managed to lengthen his stride and increase its frequency.

Enveloped by the night and the rain, he almost faltered with increased dread when it occurred to him that without a way to
keep his bearings, he might wander in a circle until his pursuers came upon him. Immediately, in the distance to his left,
he saw moving lights, but not those on the carts. These were larger, brighter. Their beams probed deeper through the rain.
The headlights of a car, or maybe a truck. They moved parallel to him, then disappeared.

A road.

“Car trouble.”

“Man, look at you shiver,” the motel clerk said.

“Got soaked finding a pay phone to call a tow truck. The garage says my car won’t be ready till the afternoon. I need a place
to get dry.”

“I guess you’re not from around here.” The clerk was paunchy, in his forties. He had thick red beard stubble and strained
features from working all night.

Pittman shook his head. “I’m on the road a lot, selling college textbooks. Left New Haven last night for a meeting in New
York.”

“Looks like you’re not going to make it.”

“I didn’t have to be at the meeting till Monday. Figured I’d spend the weekend having a good time. Shit.”

Pittman gave the clerk his credit card and filled out the registration form, making sure to claim a New Haven address. He
felt strange lying, but he knew he had to. The clerk needed a reasonable explanation for Pittman’s drenched appearance, and
the truth certainly wasn’t acceptable.

“Here’s your card back. Here’s your key.”

Pittman sneezed.

“Man, you need to get out of those wet clothes.”

“That’s all I’ve been thinking of.”

The name had been appealing: Warm Welcome Motel. Pittman had found it among several other motels a half hour after he’d hurried,
shivering, from the golf course area. Houses had been dark, streetlights widely separated. Whenever he saw headlights, he
had darted toward the shelter of bushes or a backyard before he could be seen. He’d had a vague idea of which way the thruway
was. Fear had spurred him.

Now, as he locked the motel door behind him, the last of his energy drained from him. He sank into a lumpy chair and sipped
the cardboard cup of bitter but wonderfully hot coffee that he’d bought from a noisy machine at the end of the concrete-block
hallway. The room’s carpet was green and worn. He didn’t care. The walls were an unappealing yellow. He didn’t care about
that, either, or about the hollow beneath the dingy orange cover of the mattress on the bed. All he cared about was heat.

Need to get warm.

His teeth chattered.

Need a hot bath.

He turned the room’s thermostat to seventy-five, then stripped off his wet clothes. After arranging his trousers, shirt, and
suit coat on hangers, he left the closet door open in hopes they would dry. He put his soaked shoes near the baseboard radiator,
draped his socks and underwear over the back of a chair, and twisted the hot-water faucet on the bathtub.

For an instant, he was afraid that the water would be only tepid. Instead, it sent steam billowing around him. He leaned over
the gushing tap, luxuriating in the heat. Only when the tub was nearly full did he add any cold water, just enough so he wouldn’t
scald himself as he settled into the exquisitely hot bath. He slid down until the steaming water came up to his chin. The
tub was so full that water trickled into the overflow drain. By shifting sideways, he managed to tuck his knees under so he
was almost completely submerged.

He exhaled with pleasure and felt heat penetrate his skin, his muscles, his bones, dissipating the heavy chill that had gathered
at his core. Gradually his arms and legs stopped quivering. He closed his eyes and realized that he hadn’t enjoyed a physical
sensation so much since…

His mind balked but finally permitted the thought.

…since the night Jeremy had died. He had felt so guilty being alive while Jeremy was dead that he hadn’t been able to tolerate
even the simplest, most basic of pleasures. The taste of a good meal had become repugnant—because Jeremy would never again
be able to enjoy that sensation. The soothing feel of clean sheets, the freshness of a morning breeze, the comfort of sunlight
streaming through a window: Any positive sensation was abhorrent—because Jeremy would never be able to share them.

And one of the sensations that had made Pittman feel especially guilty was the warmth of a shower. Jeremy had enjoyed spending
what had seemed to Pittman (before Jeremy got sick) an undue amount of time in the shower. After Jeremy’s funeral, Pittman
had suddenly discovered that he felt repelled by the thought of a shower. Since he needed to clean himself, he had moderated
the problem by keeping the temperature of the water as neutral as he could manage. Just because he had to bathe didn’t mean
that he had to enjoy it.

Now, for the first time since Jeremy’s death, Pittman was surprised to discover that he was allowing himself to experience
a pleasurable sensation. He told himself that the sensation was necessary, that he absolutely needed to get warm. After all,
he had once done a story about participants in a wilderness survival course, and one of the dangers that the instructors had
kept emphasizing was that of becoming wet and chilled and dying from hypothermia. So, yes, he could grudgingly allow a positive
sensation under this circumstance.

But the truth was, his enjoyment wasn’t just tolerated; he relished it. For the first time in longer than he cared to remember,
he appreciated the feelings of his body.

But thoughts of Jeremy caused a black pall of gloom to sink over his mind again. He found it bleakly ironic that despite his
eagerness to commit suicide, his escape from the estate had prompted him to endure such intense fear for his life.

You should have let them do you a favor and shoot you.

No. Pittman angrily echoed a thought from a few hours earlier. It has to be
my
idea, not theirs. When I go out, it’ll be
my
way, at a time and place of my own choosing. I’ve got my own deadline, eight days from now, and I damned well intend to stick
to it. Not sooner.

His anger became melancholy as he remembered the reason that he hadn’t already killed himself. I promised Burt. For what Burt
did for Jeremy.

Then melancholy became confusion as thoughts about Burt reminded Pittman of why he had followed the ambulance. He imagined
the questions that Burt would demand answers for.

Why had Millgate been taken from the hospital? Why had he been driven to the estate in Scarsdale? Why had the guards at the
estate not just pursued Pittman but instead tried to kill him?

As soon as Pittman was off the property, the risk the guards thought he posed would have been at an end. Pittman could understand
them wanting to capture him and turn him over to the police. But to want to kill him? Something was very wrong.

After draining the tub and refilling it with more hot water, Pittman finally felt that the chill within him had been smothered.
He pulled the plug and got out of the tub to towel himself vigorously. Again he caught himself enjoying a sensation and checked
the impulse. After wrapping himself with a blanket, he turned off the lights and peered past the blind on the room’s window.
It looked out onto the motel’s rain-puddled parking lot. He saw a car come in and worried that it might be the police, who,
alerted by the guards at the estate, would be out looking for him.

But the car didn’t have any dome lights on its roof and it wasn’t marked. Pittman wondered then if the car might belong to
the estate, that this might be some of the guards searching the area for him, talking to clerks at various motels. Only when
he saw a woman get out of the car and enter a room on the other side of the parking lot did his tension ease.

The police. At the golf course, he hadn’t heard any sirens. Did that mean the police had not been alerted? he wondered. How
would the guards have explained shooting at a prowler after the prowler had reached a public area?

And the guards, would they still be hunting him? They might check the local motels, sure. But wasn’t it more logical for them
to assume that their quarry would want to get as far away as possible?

Besides, they don’t know who I am or what I look like.

Pittman’s knees buckled from fatigue. Shivering, he crawled into bed and gradually became warm again. He told himself that
he would sleep for a couple of hours. Burt usually got to the newspaper around eight. Pittman would call, tell Burt what had
happened, and get instructions.

I’d better tell the desk clerk to wake me around eight, Pittman thought. In the dark, he reached for the telephone. But his
arm felt weighted down. He drifted.

Pittman woke slowly, groggily, his eyelids not wanting to open. At first he thought it was the bright sunlight through the
room’s thin blind that had wakened him. Then he suspected it was the din of thruway traffic rattling the window. Sore from
his exertion the night before, he sat up and rubbed his legs. Finally he left the warmth of the bed and relieved himself in
the bathroom. When he returned to the bed, wrapping a blanket around him, he felt sufficiently awake to phone Burt. But when
he reached toward the bedside phone, he noticed the red numbers on the digital clock beside it: 2:38.