Desperate Measures

11

At the bottom of the hollow-sounding wooden stairs, Pittman passed a coat room, a pay phone, and a door marked DOLLS. He went into a door marked GUYS. A thin man with a gray mustache was coming out of a toilet stall. The man put on a blue suit coat and stepped next to a longhaired young man in a leather windbreaker at a row of sinks to wash his hands. The burly man whom Pittman had followed downstairs was standing to the left at a urinal, his back to Pittman.

“Burt.”

The man looked over his shoulder and reacted with surprise, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

Pittman walked toward him. “Look, I can explain why I wasn’t at work today. There’s something I need to talk to you about. Believe me, it’s serious.”

The other men in the rest room listened with interest.

“Don’t you realize it isn’t safe?” Burt said. “I tried to tell you on the phone today.”

“Safe? You sounded like you were giving me the brush-off. A meeting. Important people. Sure.”

Urgent, Burt pulled up his zipper and pushed the urinal’s lever. As water gushed into a drain, he threw his cigarette into the urinal and pivoted. “For your information, those important people were-” Burt noticed the two men standing at the sinks, watching him, and gestured. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Impatient, Pittman followed him out the door and along the hallway. They stopped at its end, a distance from the rest rooms and the stairs that led down.

Burt whispered hoarsely, “Those important people were the police.”

“What?”

“Looking for you.”

“What?”

“Haven’t you listened to the radio? You didn’t see the evening news?”

“I haven’t had time. When I got back to my apartment, a man-”

“Look, I don’t know what you did last night, but the cops think you broke into a house in Scarsdale and murdered Jonathan Millgate.”

“WHAT?” Pittman stepped backward against the wall.

The man with the leather windbreaker came out of the men’s room, glanced curiously at Pittman and Burt, then went up the stairs.

Frustrated, Burt waited until the man disappeared. “Look,” he said quietly, sternly to Pittman, “we can’t talk here. The police might be watching me in case you try to get in touch. In fact, I have a hunch one of them’s at a table next to mine.”

“Where then? When can we talk?”

“Meet me at eleven o’clock. Madison Square Park. The entrance on Fifth Avenue. I’ll make sure I’m not followed. Damn it, what did you get yourself into? I want to know what’s going on.”

“Believe me, Burt, you’re not the only one.”