Desperate Measures

14

While she dressed quickly, Pittman used bandages and surgical tape to bind the gunmen’s arms and legs. Hearing police sirens, he and Jill ran nervously from her apartment. Neighbors, frightened by the gunshot, peered from partially open doors, then slammed and locked the doors when they saw Pittman charging along the hallway.

He reached the elevator but then thought better. “We might be trapped in there.” Grabbing Jill’s hand, he rushed toward the stairs. She resisted only a moment, then hurried with him. Her apartment was on the fifth floor, and they rapidly reached the third floor, then the second.

On the ground floor, they faltered, hearing sirens approaching.

“Where does that door lead?” Pittman breathed deeply, pointing toward a door at the end of the corridor behind him. It was the only one that didn’t have a number on it. It had a red light over it. “Is that an exit?”

“Yes, but-”

“Come on.” He tugged at Jill’s sleeve and moved quicky along the hallway, through the door, and outside into the shadowy bottom of an air shaft. Garbage cans lined its walls.

“It’s a dead end!”

“I tried to tell you.” Jill turned to run back into her apartment building. “There’s nowhere to-”

“What about that?” Pittman pointed toward a door directly across from him. He rushed over to it, twisted its knob, and groaned when he found that it was locked. Doing his best to control his shaky hands, he pulled out his tool knife and used the lock picks, exhaling with relief when he shoved the door open. It led into a hallway in the apartment building behind Jill’s. The moment he and Jill were inside, he shut the door and turned the knob on the dead bolt. By the time the police got it open, he and Jill would be out of the area. As they hurried onto Eighty-sixth Street, Pittman imagined the police cars arriving at Jill’s apartment building on Eighty-fifth Street.

Two blocks to the east was an entrance to Central Park. Jill’s casual clothes-sneakers, jeans, and a sweater-made it easy for her to run. She clutched her purse close to her side. At the hospital, Pittman had sensed from her comfortable, graceful movements that she was an athlete, and now her long legs stretched in an easy runner’s rhythm, proving that he’d been right.

They slowed briefly to avoid attracting attention, then increased speed again after they entered Central Park, racing east beyond the children’s playground, then south past grown-ups playing baseball on the Great Lawn. Finally, below the Delacorte Theater, Belvedere Lake, and Belvedere Castle, they chose one of the many small trails that led through the trees in the section of the park known as The Ramble.

It was almost two in the afternoon. The sun continued to be strong for April, and sweat beaded Pittman’s forehead as well as made his shirt cling to his chest while he and Jill rounded a deserted section of boulders and gradually came to a stop.

In the distance, there were other sirens. Leaning against a tree whose branches were green with budding leaves, Pittman tried to catch his breath. “I… I don’t think we were followed.”

“No. This is all wrong.”

“What?”

Jill’s expression was stark. “I’m having second thoughts about this. I shouldn’t be here. At my apartment, I was scared.”

“And you’re not scared now?” Pittman asked in dismay.

“Those men breaking in… When you shot one of them… I’ve never seen anybody… The way you were talking… You confused me. I think I should have waited for the police to come.” Jill drew her fingers through her long blond hair. “You should have waited. The police can help you.”

“They’d put me in jail. I’d never get out alive.”

“Have you any idea how paranoid you sound?”

“And apparently you think it’s normal for gunmen to break into your apartment. I’m not being paranoid. I’m being practical. Since Thursday night, everywhere I’ve gone, people have been trying to kill me. I’m not about to let the police put me in a cell, where I’ll be an easy target.”

“But the police will think I’m involved in this.”

“You are involved. Those men would have killed you. You can’t depend on the police to keep you safe from them.”

Jill shook her head in bewilderment.

“Listen to me,” Pittman said. “I’m trying to save your life.”

“My life wouldn’t have needed to be saved if you hadn’t come to my apartment.”

The remark made Pittman flinch, as if he’d been slapped. Although he heard children laughing on another trail, the trail he was on was suddenly very silent.

“You’re right,” he said. “I made a mistake.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Pittman nodded. “I am, too.” He walked away. Draped over his left arm was his overcoat, heavy with his.45 and one of the gunmen’s pistols with ammunition magazines from the others in his pockets.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Pittman didn’t answer.

“Wait.”

But Pittman didn’t.

“Wait.” Jill caught up to him. “I said I was sorry.”

“Everything you said was true. The odds are that those men would have left you alone if I hadn’t shown up. For certain, Father Dandridge would still be alive if I hadn’t gone to see him. Millgate might still be alive, and my friend Burt would be alive, and…”

“No. Pay attention to me.” Jill grabbed his shoulders and turned him. “None of this is your fault. I apologize for blaming you for what happened at my apartment. You meant no harm. You only came there because you needed help.”

Pittman suddenly heard voices, rapid footsteps, what sounded like runners on the trail ahead. He stepped to the side, among bushes, his hand on the pistol in his overcoat pocket. Jill crowded next to him. Three joggers-two young men and a slender woman, all wearing brightly colored spandex outfits-hurried past, talking to one another.

Then the trail was quiet again.

“You’d be safer if you didn’t stay with me,” Pittman said. “Maybe you’re right. Phone the police. Tell them I forced you to go with me. Tell them you’re afraid to show yourself because you think the men who broke into your apartment have friends who’ll come after you. You might even tell them I’m innocent, not that they’ll believe you.”

“No.”

“You won’t tell them I’m innocent?”

“I won’t tell them anything. The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with you. The police would question me and let me go. But I’d still be in danger. Or maybe I could convince them to put me in protective custody. But for how long? Eventually I’d be on my own, in danger again.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Stay with you.”

“Me?”

“Tell me how I can help.”