Desperate Measures

5

Pittman’s heartbeat faltered. “What the…?”

The man set down the magazine. “Is your name Matthew Pittman?”

“What the hell do you think you’re…?”

The man was in his late thirties. Thin, he had short brown hair, a slender face, a sharp chin. He wore a plain gray suit and shoes with thick soles. “I’m with the police department.” He opened a wallet to show his badge and ID. He stood, his expression sour, as if he’d much sooner be doing something else. “Detective Mullen. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I asked the super to let me in.”

Pittman felt pressure in his chest. “You can’t just… You don’t have a right to… Damn it, have you got a warrant or something?”

“Why? Have you done something that makes you think I’d need a warrant?”

“No. I…”

“Then why don’t you save us both a lot of time. Sit down. Let’s discuss a couple of things.”

“What things? I still don’t…”

“You look cold. Your clothes look like they’ve been wet.”

Pittman hurriedly thought of an acceptable explanation. “Yeah, a waiter spilled water on my jacket and pants and…”

The detective nodded. “Same thing happened to me two weeks ago. Not water, though. Linguini. You’d better change. Leave the door to your bedroom open a bit. We can talk while you get dry clothes. Also, you look like you could use a shave.”

“I’ve been trying to grow a beard,” Pittman lied. In the bedroom, listening to the detective’s voice through the slightly open door, he nervously took off his clothes, threw them in a hamper, then grabbed fresh underwear and socks from his bureau drawer.

He had just put on a pair of brown slacks when he saw the detective standing at the door.

“I wonder if you could tell me where you were last night.”

Feeling threatened, his nipples shrinking, Pittman reached for a shirt. “I was home for a while. Then I went for a walk.”

The detective opened the door wider, making Pittman feel even more threatened. “What time did you go for the walk?”

“Eleven.”

“And you came back…?”

“Around one.”

The detective raised his eyebrows. “Kind of dangerous to be out walking that late.”

“I’ve never had any trouble.”

“You’ve been lucky. Anybody see you?”

Pittman almost mentioned the cook at the diner, but then he realized that if the detective talked to the cook, the cook would mention the box Pittman had left, and the detective might find the handgun. Pittman’s permit allowed him to keep the.45 only in his apartment. It would look suspicious that he had hidden the weapon somewhere else.

“Nobody saw me.”

“Too bad. That makes it difficult.”

“For what? Look, I don’t like your barging in here, and I don’t like being questioned when I don’t know what this is all about.” Pittman couldn’t hide his agitation. “Who’s your superior at your precinct? What’s his telephone number?”

“Good idea. I think we ought to talk to him. Matter of fact, why don’t we both go down and talk to him in person?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“After I phone my lawyer.”

“Oh?” the detective said. “You think you need a lawyer now?”

“When the police start acting like the gestapo.”

“Aw.” The detective shook his head. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. Put on your shoes. Get a coat. Let’s take a ride.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” Pittman couldn’t get enough air.

“You didn’t go for a walk last night. You took a taxi up to an estate in Scarsdale and broke in.”

“I did what? That’s crazy.”

The detective reached into his suit coat pocket and brought out an envelope. He squinted at Pittman, opened the envelope, and removed a sheet of paper.

“What’s this?”

“A Xerox of a check,” the detective said.

Pittman’s stomach cramped when he saw that it was a copy of the check he had written to the taxi driver the previous night. How the hell had the police gotten it?

The detective’s expression became more sour as he explained. “An ambulance driver heading from Manhattan to the Scarsdale estate last night says a taxi followed him all the way. He got suspicious and wrote down the ID number on the light on the taxi’s roof. So after we were contacted about the break-in at the estate, we tracked down the cabbie. He says the guy who hired him to drive up to that estate wrote a check to pay for the ride. This check. With your signature at the bottom. With your name and address printed at the top.”

Pittman stared at the copy of the check.

“Well, are you going to admit it, or are you going to make me go to the trouble of bringing you and the cabbie face-to-face so he can identify you?”

Pittman exhaled tensely. Given what he intended to do seven days from now, what difference did it make? So I broke into a house to save an old man’s life, he thought. Is that so big a crime? What am I trying to hide?

All the same, he hesitated. “Yes. It was me.”

“There. Now don’t you feel better?”

“But I can explain.”

“Of course.”

“After I call my lawyer.”

Pittman passed the detective at the door to the bedroom and entered the living room, heading for the telephone.

“We’re not going to have to go through that, are we?” The detective stalked after him. “This is a simple matter.”

“And I want to keep it simple. That’s why I want to call my lawyer. So there aren’t any misunderstandings.”

Pittman picked up the phone.

“I’m asking you not to do that,” the detective said. “I have just a few questions. There’s no need for an attorney. When you were with the old man, did he say anything?”

Pittman shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Did he say anything?”

“What’s that go to do with…? So what if…?”

The detective stepped closer, his face stern. “Did… the… old… man… say… anything?”

“Gibberish.”

“Tell me.”

Pittman continued to hold the phone. “It didn’t make any sense. It sounded like Duncan something. Then something about snow. Then… I don’t know… I think he said Grollier.”

The detective’s features tightened. “Did you tell anybody else?”

“Anybody else? What difference would…? Wait a minute. This doesn’t feel right. What’s going on here? Let me see your identification.”

“I already showed you.”

“I want to see it again.”

The detective shrugged. “This is all the identification I need.”

The detective reached beneath his suit coat, and Pittman stiffened, his pulse speeding at the sight of the gun the detective pulled out. The gun’s barrel was unusually long. Pittman suddenly realized that it wasn’t a barrel but a silencer attached to the barrel.

Policemen didn’t carry silencers.

“You meddling shit, you give me any more trouble and I’ll put a goddamn bullet up your nose. Who else did you tell?”

The tip of the silencer snagged. As the man’s gaze flickered down toward his suit coat, Pittman reacted without thinking, a reflexive response. Despite his self-destructive intentions, he had no control over his body’s need to defend itself against sudden fear. Startled, in a frenzy, he swung the phone with all his might, cracking its plastic against the man’s forehead.

The man lurched backward. Blood streaked his brow. He cursed, struggling to focus his vision, raising the pistol.

Terrified, Pittman struck again, smashing the man’s nose. More blood flew. The man fell backward. He walloped onto a coffee table, shattered its glass top, crashed through, and slammed against the floor, his upturned head ramming against the metal rim of the table.

Staring at the pistol in the man’s hand, Pittman raised the phone to strike a third time, only to discover that he’d stretched the extension cord to its limit. Trembling, he dropped the phone and searched desperately around for something else with which to hit the man. He grabbed a lamp, about to throw it down at the man’s head, when at once he realized that the man wasn’t moving.