Desperate Measures

3

“We’d better hurry,” Jill said.

In the cool night air, she and Pittman started down the brick steps from the porch, about to reach the murky area beyond the lights on the lawn, when Pittman faltered, touching Jill’s arm. “More trouble.”

Jill tensed, seeing what he meant. “Our car.”

It was parked in front of the mansion. Revealed by streetlights, two rugged-looking men in windbreakers were staring at the front license plate on the Duster.

Pittman backed up. “They must have been watching the house.”

“Why would they…?” Jill retreated quickly up the steps toward the porch. At once she realized. “Eustace Gable knows his daughter is a threat. He must have arranged for the house to be watched in case we came here.”

“And the Vermont license plates on our car,” Pittman said. “They’re probably the only ones on the street. They connect us with our visit to Grollier Academy.”

As Pittman and Jill hurried toward the mansion’s front door, one of the men shouted, “Hey!” Pittman turned, seeing the man point at him. Simultaneously Pittman saw a dark Oldsmobile appear beyond the cars parked in front of the house. It skidded to a stop. Men scrambled out.

Pittman gripped the doorknob, praying that the servant hadn’t locked the door after they’d left. Exhaling with relief when he made the knob turn, he shoved the door open, lunged inside behind Jill, slammed the door, and locked it.

The noise caused startled voices in the room to the left. As Pittman swung toward that doorway, the servant loomed into view, Mrs. Page and Denning behind him.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Page asked. “Why did you come back?”

“I’m afraid we brought you trouble,” Pittman said. “There isn’t time to explain. We have to figure out how to-”

“Six of them.” Jill stared past the lace curtain of a high, narrow window next to the front door.

“Six?” Mrs. Page veered past Denning and the servant. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“They’re coming up the sidewalk,” Jill said.

Pittman stepped closer to Mrs. Page. “You’re in danger. What’s in back? How do we get out of here?”

“Danger?” Denning’s voice shook.

“They’re separating.” Jill strained to look out the window. “Two in front, two going along each side of the house.”

“Mrs. Page, those men are from your father,” Pittman said.

“My…?”

“The two in front just pulled out handguns,” Jill said.

“Mrs. Page, I think they intend to kill all of us,” Pittman said. “They’ll make it look as if I did it.”

“Kill us?” Mrs. Page looked horror-stricken. “Why?”

“Because your father’s afraid of what you might have told me. We have to get out of here.”

“Some of them will go to the back,” Jill said. “They’ve got the house sealed off.”

“My father would never try to kill me.”

“He killed your mother, didn’t he? Why wouldn’t he kill you?”

Mrs. Page’s eyes widened with shocked understanding.

“The two in front are coming toward the porch,” Jill said.

Pittman turned to the servant. “Did you do what Denning wanted and call the police?”

“No. Mrs. Page told me not to.”

“Then you’d better call them now.”

“There isn’t time!” Denning whined. “The police won’t get here before-”

Glass shattered at the back of the house. Denning whirled toward the sound.

Pittman reached beneath his sport coat and pulled out the.45, the sight of which made Denning’s face become the color of cement.

From the porch, someone tried to turn the doorknob.

“Jill,” Pittman warned, “get back.”

She hurried toward Pittman as he told the servant, “Switch off the lights in the hallway.”

The vestibule became dim, illuminated only by lamps in the room that they had left.

More glass shattered at the back of the house.

“Jill, if anybody tries to come through that door, do you think you can use the gun in your purse?”

“I’m so scared.”

“But can you?”

“Yes, if I have to.”

“Good.” Pittman rushed from the vestibule toward the rear of the house. “Find a place to hide,” he heard Jill saying.

“The car,” Mrs. Page said.

At the rear of the house, Pittman crouched in shadows, clutching his.45, concentrating to hear the sounds of someone climbing through a window.

“Yes, the car,” Denning said.

From the porch, shoulders slammed against the front door.

“The car? Forget it,” Jill said. “Some of those men are outside in the back. They’ll shoot us if we try to get to the garage.”

“You don’t understand,” Mrs. Page said. “It’s in the basement.”

Shoulders kept slamming against the front door.

“What are you talking about? The basement?” Jill sounded hoarse, her throat dry from fear. “What’s a car doing in the basement? What good would-?”

From a room at the back of the house, Pittman heard footsteps scraping on broken glass. He clutched his pistol tighter, aiming.

“The garage is down there,” Mrs. Page said. “The garage is under the house. If we get to the car, we’ll be safe.”

“No!” Jill said. “We’ll be trapped. If we try to drive away, they’ll shoot through the windows and doors and-”

“Why must you be so stupid? Listen to me. Listen to what I’m telling you.”

Pittman heard Mrs. Page’s high-heeled shoes on the vestibule’s hardwood floor. A door opened, echoing.

“Stop,” Jill said.

“Down here,” Mrs. Page insisted.

“I’m going with you,” Denning said.

A man’s footsteps scurried across the vestibule, joining the urgent rapping sound of high-heeled shoes descending stairs.

“Wait for me!” The servant quickly followed.

“Matt!” Jill shouted.

From the back of the mansion, Pittman heard other footsteps scraping on broken glass. A shadow moved. Pittman fired, his ears ringing from the.45’s fierce blast. The recoil threw him off balance. From the darkness at the back of the house, he saw what seemed to be a spark. Simultaneously he felt more than heard a bullet strike the wall next to him. For a frenzied moment, he feared that the blast from his.45 had deafened him. In a greater frenzy, he realized that he hadn’t heard the shot from the back of the house because the gunman had used a silencer. The ringing in Pittman’s ears had obscured the muffled spit. He fired again, squirming backward, flinching from the impact of four soundless bullets striking the wall where he’d been crouching.

“Matt!” Jill screamed.

We don’t have a chance, Pittman thought, scurrying faster backward. We can’t possibly kill all six of them.

“Jill, come on!”

“Where!”

“The basement!”

As Jill rushed past him, hurrying down the stairs that the others had used, Pittman fired once more toward the back of the house, spun and fired toward the front door, then charged into the stairwell and slammed the door shut.

Not that the closed door would do him any good, he suddenly realized. It did have a lock, but the knob for the bolt was on the opposite side. He couldn’t possibly keep the gunmen from coming through.

Fear made him nauseous. Lights in the stairwell revealed stone steps that led to a concrete floor. Jill had already reached the bottom. Pittman backed down, aiming toward the closed door. He saw the knob being turned and fired, his ears ringing worse as the powerful bullet splintered the door, walloping through, a man on the other side screaming.

The two men at the front door had been a diversion, Pittman thought. They had pounded on the door to drive everyone toward the back of the house, where the men who’d broken in waited with silenced pistols. The slight commotion at the front probably hadn’t attracted much attention from the street. The silenced pistols couldn’t be heard outside the mansion.

No one knows what’s happening in here! Pittman thought. The servant was supposed to have phoned the police, but Pittman hadn’t seen him do it. Had the servant been distracted by fear? Nobody realizes we need help! We’re trapped down here! The only way someone outside can know we’re in danger is…

The blast from Pittman’s.45. That could be heard outside. As he continued to stare up toward the door to the basement, he saw the knob being turned, and he fired again, his ears suffering from the pistol’s torturous blast, the confines of the basement magnifying the roar.

Someone outside is bound to hear, Pittman told himself. Although the ringing in his ears was excruciating, he prepared to fire yet again. But suddenly a warning instinct told him that he was almost out of ammunition. How many times had he fired? He strained to remember. Six. He had only one round left. If they try to rush us…

Jill, he thought. She hasn’t fired yet. Her pistol’s still fully loaded. He spun toward her, wanting to trade weapons, and froze in surprise at the sight of the car in the basement. Its length and height were totally unexpected. It was a silver Rolls-Royce, its paint and chrome gleaming from obvious daily care. Someone had backed it in. A pulley in the ceiling led to a garage door that could be raised electronically.

Pittman’s surprise was offset by dismay when he saw how panicked Mrs. Page, Denning, and the servant were. They had scurried into the car, slamming the doors, evidently locking them. Jill was straining to open the driver’s door while Mrs. Page struggled to shove a key into the car’s ignition switch.

“Mrs. Page, unlock the door! Let me in!” Jill’s shout was muffled by the ringing in Pittman’s ears.

Pittman redirected his attention toward the door at the top of the stairs. Again the knob turned. Again he fired. The ejection slide on top of his pistol stayed back, indicating that the weapon was empty.

No! He shoved the.45 into his coat pocket and ran toward Jill. “I need your gun!”

She was so preoccupied, pounding on the driver’s door, trying to get into the Rolls-Royce, that she didn’t seem to notice when Pittman took the pistol.

It held more ammunition than the.45. As a consequence, Pittman felt briefly confident. But then he realized that he was still trapped. If Mrs. Page started the car, opened the automatic garage door, and sped away, it wasn’t possible for Jill and himself to defend themselves against six gunmen.

The door at the top of the stairs opened slightly. Pittman fired, the recoil from the 9 mm less violent than that from the.45. It was obvious what the gunmen were doing-holding back, staying on either side of the door, taunting Pittman by moving it, trying to entice him into wasting all his ammunition.

Sickeningly, his heartbeat surged as he wondered why the police hadn’t arrived. Surely a neighbor must have heard the shots and phoned for help. Why were the police taking so long?

Jill kept pounding on the driver’s door. “Let me in!”

Abruptly Mrs. Page pushed a button that caused the locks to disengage, making a thunking sound. She opened the door. “I can’t get the car to start!”

“My father owns one of these! Let me try! Move over!” Jill shoved at her, squirming behind the steering wheel.

Pittman ran to the car and saw that Denning was scrunched next to Mrs. Page and Jill. He yanked opened the passenger door, dragged Denning out, and shoved him into the backseat with the servant.

As Pittman dove into the back with them, he yelled to Jill, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Jill slammed her door and turned the ignition key. “It doesn’t work!”

“Try again!”

“It doesn’t want to turn all the way!”

Pittman scurried from the car and aimed toward the stairs. “Hurry!”

“The key!” Jill said. “This isn’t the right key!” Hands shaking, she sorted through other keys on a ring.

Even with his protesting ears, Pittman heard sounds on the stairs. Shadows, then shoes came rapidly into view. He fired. Splinters from concrete spattered the shoes. The gunmen scrambled back out of sight.

Jill shouted, “Got it!”

The Rolls-Royce’s engine roared.

“Hurry!” Pittman fired once more at the stairs and dove back into the car. “Lock all the doors!”

Jill pressed a button that engaged the locks. She pressed another button. With a rumble, the garage door began to rise.

Pittman glanced in dismay through the car’s rear window. The gunmen were charging down the stairs.

“They’ll shoot out the windows!” Pittman yelled. “Stay down!”

“They can’t!” Mrs. Page shouted.

A bullet struck the rear window, ricocheting.

“My husband was afraid of terrorists!”

“What?”

Jill revved the Rolls-Royce, speeding forward as the garage door rose above the hood. With a crunch, the car’s roof struck the rising garage door. But the Rolls kept hurtling from the garage. It soared up an incline and jounced down onto ground level. Through the windshield, Pittman saw three of the gunmen crouched in a shadowy lane behind the house. They were waiting, aiming toward the car. He couldn’t hear the shots from their silenced weapons, but the upward jerk of the pistols showed that the gunmen were firing. Bullets struck and deflected off the hood and the windshield.

“What the-?”

“The windows are bulletproof!” Mrs. Page said. “The whole car is! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Jill swerved, increasing speed, veering past the gunmen, who now fired at the side of the car.

Pittman felt the vibrating impact of the eerily muffled bullets hitting the Rolls.

Jill struggled with the steering wheel. “This thing handles like it’s a tank!”

“At the time, I thought my late husband was insane to want an armored car!”

A gunman appeared ahead of them, firing directly at the windshield, diving for cover as Jill sped past. She swerved from the narrow tree-lined lane and reached the side of the house, aiming the Rolls along the brick driveway toward the street. There hadn’t been time to turn on the headlights, but the glare of lights in the shubbery at the front combined with the glow of streetlights, showing that the dark Oldsmobile the gunmen had arrived in was parked directly in front of the exit from the driveway. There wasn’t any way past it. Other cars were parked everywhere along the curb, preventing the Rolls from veering off the driveway, across the sidewalk, and onto the street.

“Brace yourselves!”

Jill tightened her grip on the steering wheel, directing the Rolls toward the front fender of the Oldsmobile blocking the driveway. “I hope this is a tank!”

In the backseat, preparing himself for the collision, Pittman felt the Rolls increase speed. The Oldsmobile grew alarmingly, seeming to fill the windshield. The Rolls struck it with such force that the Oldsmobile jerked sideways.

Pittman felt as if his chest had been punched. His head snapped back. Next to him, Denning slammed onto the floor. As the Rolls kept heaving forward, ramming the Oldsmobile farther sideways, the servant groaned. In the front seat, Mrs. Page shoved her hands against the dashboard to absorb the shock.

Even though Pittman’s ears kept ringing, he couldn’t help hearing the crunch of metal and the crash of glass. The Oldsmobile had been jolted sufficiently sideways that the Rolls slammed past it, scraping an Infiniti parked at the curb but hurtling forward, reaching the street and streaking across it. Jill stamped the brake pedal. But the heavily armored car barely slowed. Jill swung the steering wheel to avoid the cars parked on the opposite side of the street. But the Rolls-never meant to be so heavy-responded sluggishly. One of the cars across the street seemed suddenly huge. The Rolls struck it, more glass shattering, metal crumbling. The Rolls rebounded, its distinctive winged woman hood ornament and thickly slatted, shiny grill falling onto the pavement.

From the backseat, jolted by the two collisions, Pittman watched Jill in dismay as she tugged the car’s gearshift into reverse and stared behind her. Working the steering wheel, she tried to maneuver the car so that it wasn’t positioned diagonally across the street, blocking both lanes. Too late. Pittman was suddenly knocked sideways by the jolt of another collision. A car coming along the street hadn’t been able to stop in time to avoid hitting the Rolls. Headlights glaring, a car coming in the opposite direction squealed to a stop before it struck the other side of the Rolls.

No! Pittman thought. We’re boxed in!

Drivers got out of the cars. Alarmed by the din of the multiple collisions, men and women hurried out of houses on both sides of the street. Pedestrians watched in shock. The sidewalks became rapidly crowded. Horns blaring, cars lined up in each direction, blocked by the accidents.

“What are we going to do?” Denning whimpered.

“One thing’s sure. We’re not going anywhere in the Rolls,” Jill said.

“Get out of the car,” Pittman said.

“They’ll shoot us,” the servant said.

“We can’t stay here. Hurry. Everybody out.” Pittman helped Denning rise from where he’d been thrown to the floor. “Are you all right? Mrs. Page, what about you?” Pittman shoved his door open. “Mrs. Page, I asked if you’re all right.”

Stunned, slumped in the front seat, Mrs. Page groaned.

Jill leaned over, examining her.

Outside the car, Pittman rushed forward and opened the passenger door. “How is she?”

The drivers of the cars that blocked the Rolls crowded toward Pittman.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” a man yelled. “You came out of nowhere.”

“She’s shaken up,” Jill said. “But I don’t see any bleeding.”

“We have to get away from here!” Denning wailed.

Pittman spun to study the driveway next to the mansion. Past the commotion of numerous onlookers, he saw solemn-faced men wearing windbreakers running down the shadowy driveway, dispersing into the crowd.

“Jesus, buddy!” a bystander said, stumbling back in terror, pointing toward Pittman’s right hand.

Pittman didn’t understand why the man behaved as he did. Then, squinting down at his right hand, Pittman saw that he still clutched the pistol he had taken from Jill.

The panicked man who’d seen the pistol bumped against the driver of one of the cars that had struck the Rolls. Now the driver, too, saw the pistol and reacted the way the first man had, stumbling to get away.

“Jesus, he’s got a gun!” somebody yelled.

A woman screamed.

The crowd around Pittman bumped into one another in a frenzied effort to get away from the gun.

Pittman kept darting his gaze past them, toward the driveway and sidewalk at Mrs. Page’s mansion. The solemn-faced men wearing windbreakers were no longer in view. He scanned the panicked bystanders, afraid that the gunmen might be using them for cover, stalking nearer.

“She’s all right,” Jill said abruptly behind him.

Pittman spun, seeing Mrs. Page next to Jill.

“Let’s get out of here!” Denning yelled.

“The Duster.” Pittman ran toward the front of the mansion where he had parked it. He pulled out his car keys and unlocked the driver’s door, frantically opened it, then pulled the passenger seat forward, wishing that the Duster had four doors.

Denning scurried into the front. Jill and the servant helped Mrs. Page into the back, throwing Pittman’s gym bag and Jill’s suitcase onto the floor. Pittman pushed the passenger seat back into place, hurried behind the steering wheel, slammed his door, started the car, and sped away from the curb. In the opposite lane, ten cars were backed up, headlights gleaming, drivers and passengers leaning out in confusion. But Pittman’s lane was completely empty, the Rolls and the car that had hit it blocking traffic behind him.

“Stay down!” Pittman yelled to Jill and the others. “If those gunmen are still in the area…!”

He sped through a murky intersection, steered sharply to avoid a pedestrian, shuddered, and turned on his headlights. In the sudden glare, flat-faced brick town houses with cars parked along curbs were a blur on either side of the Duster.

“We got lucky!” Denning blurted. “The crowd scared them away!”

“Maybe,” Pittman said.

“What do you mean maybe?” Denning peered behind him. “I don’t see any headlights! No one’s following us!”

“I agree with you. I think we got away,” Pittman said. “At least for now. What I meant was, I’m not sure they were scared by the crowd.”

Denning shook his head in confusion.

“I have a hunch that if it suited their purposes,” Pittman said, “they’d have shot us right there in the street. In the dark and the panic, who’d be able to identify them?”

“Then why didn’t they?”

Tires protesting, Pittman swerved the Duster around a corner, speeding south on Thirty-fourth Street. Slow down, he warned himself. You can’t let the police stop you. Sweating, he reduced speed and blended with traffic.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Denning complained. “If you don’t think they were frightened by the crowd, why didn’t they shoot us when we got out of the Rolls? What do you mean, it didn’t suit their purpose?”

“The idea wasn’t just to kill us all,” Pittman said. “You’re right. I am Matthew Pittman. The police want me for murdering Jonathan Millgate. But I swear to you, I didn’t do anything to him. If anything, I was trying to help him.” Pittman explained what had happened at the Scarsdale estate. “I’ve been on the run ever since. What Millgate told me is dangerous enough to all of them that they’re desperate to kill me before I figure out what it means.”

Driving, Pittman stared nervously ahead, seeing the lights and traffic of Pennsylvania Avenue. “To prevent me from finding out, they also killed several people I went to for information. They made it look as if I had killed those people. That’s why the newspapers create the impression I’m on a homicidal rampage. But I haven’t killed anyone. No, that’s wrong. I have to be totally honest with you. God help me, I did kill. I had to defend myself against a man in my apartment, against a man who tried to shoot me on a street in Manhattan, and against a man who threatened Jill in her apartment.”

“That’s my real name,” Jill told Mrs. Page. “Those men think I know something, too.”

“But the rest of us,” Mrs. Page said. “Why would they want to-?”

“Those men work for your father and presumably the other grand counselors,” Pittman said. He reached Pennsylvania Avenue and turned to the right onto brightly lit M Street. Traffic was dense. “Your father knows how much you hate him. He knows you want to destroy him. You’re a logical person for us to go to and ask for help.”

Denning objected. “You weren’t aware of her. If it hadn’t been for me…”

“But Eustace Gable doesn’t know that,” Pittman said. “What he does know is that I’m a former reporter. He might have been afraid that I’d use my sources to learn about Mrs. Page and go to her-which is exactly what happened tonight. My guess is, he had a man watching the house in case we showed up. When we did, the man telephoned for help.”

Ahead, Pittman saw the gleaming lights of Francis Scott Key Bridge and steered left onto it, following traffic across the Potomac into Virginia. “I’m supposed to be on a killing spree, some kind of vendetta against the grand counselors. They’d have made it seem that I’d killed you. Why would I have done it? Who knows? The authorities think I’m insane, after all. Maybe, because I couldn’t find Eustace Gable, I vented my rage on his daughter. But Eustace Gable was worried about his daughter. He sent men to see if she was safe. They caught me after I’d killed her. Shots were exchanged. Jill and I didn’t survive. End of story. End of the threat to the grand counselors. And with no one to prove otherwise, the police would have gone along with that explanation.”

“The police,” Mrs. Page said. “We have to go to the police.”

“You can,” Pittman said. “I think they’ll listen to you. With your money and prestige, they’ll do their best to protect you. But your father will do everything in his power to discredit you, to make people think you’re insane. Which is more acceptable to the authorities, that I’m a maniac or that your distinguished father was so determined to keep a secret that he didn’t care if his daughter was killed?”

“My distinguished father,” Mrs. Page said with disgust.

“And there’s always a risk that your father will arrange to have an accident happen to you while you’re in protective custody,” Pittman said. “Seven years ago, Jonathan Millgate arranged to have the Boston police arrest me for suspicion of burglary while I was investigating him. Two men working for him broke my jaw while I was in jail.”

“That’s why we haven’t given ourselves up,” Jill said. “If Matt surrenders to the police and tries to tell his story, he doesn’t think he’ll be safe. He won’t be believed.”

“The evidence is against me. My chances are a whole lot better if I stay free and do what I can to prove I’m innocent.”

“How?” Mrs. Page asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that. But I can’t do it alone. Will you help?”

“Tell me what you need.”

“I’m still figuring out all the details. But I know this much right now. At your house, people saw the gun in my hand. They saw us put you in our car. They’ll almost certainly have seen our Vermont license plates. What happened can be interpreted as a kidnapping. The police will be looking for us, and they’ll be counting on our Vermont license plates to make it easy for them.” Across the Potomac, opposite Washington, Pittman drove along Fort Myer Drive in Rosslyn, Virginia. “I need to find a nice big bar with a crowded parking lot.”

“Yes,” Denning said. “I could use a stiff drink.”

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Pittman said. “I want to steal somebody’s Virginia license plates. After they’re on, we’re going to a pay phone. I want you to call your father, Mrs. Page. There are several things I want you to say to him.”

“But I don’t have his private number. He refuses to give it to me.”

“No problem. I’ve got the number,” Pittman said.

“You do? How?”

“Someone I once interviewed gave it to me.”