Desperate Measures

17

“Hey, what’s all them sirens about?” a stoop-shouldered, beard-stubbled man asked. He was slumped on a metal bench, holding what was obviously a pint of alcohol concealed in a paper bag. His overcoat had no elbows. His hair was mussed. He had two missing front teeth. Pittman had the sense that the man, who looked sixty, was possibly thirty.

“Damned if I know.” Exhausted, Pittman sat next to him.

The man didn’t respond for a moment. “What?”

“The sirens.”

“Huh?”

“You asked about the sirens, what was causing them.”

“They’re disturbin’ my peace ’n’ quiet.”

“Mine, too.”

“Hey, I din’t say you could sit there.”

Siren wailing, dome lights flashing, a police car raced around the park and sped north on Broadway.

“Another one,” the man said. “Disturbin’ my… Damn it, you’re still sittin’ there.” The man clutched his bottle. “My bench. I din’t say you could…”

Another police car wailed by.

“Take it easy,” Pittman said.

“Yur tryin’ to steal my bench,” the man said louder.

“I told you, take it easy.”

“Where’s a policeman?”

“I’ll pay rent.”

“What’s ’at?”

“I’ll pay rent. You’re right. This is your bench. But I’ll pay to share it with you. How does ten dollars sound?”

“Ten…?”

“And I’ll trade you my overcoat for yours.”

The woman who had screamed when Pittman scrambled from the bodies would tell the police that the man with the gym bag had been wearing a tan overcoat. The coat that Pittman wanted to trade for was dark blue.

“Trade?”

“I want to share the bench.”

The man looked suspicious. “Les see your money.”

Pittman gave him the ten-dollar bill he’d gotten from the cook at the diner, the last cash he had, except for a few coins.

“And the coat.”

Pittman traded with him. The man’s coat stank of perspiration. Pittman set it beside him.

Switching his bottle from hand to hand, the man struggled into the coat. “Nice.”

“Yep.”

“Warm.”

“Yep.”

“My lucky day.” The man squinted at Pittman, raised the bottle to his lips, upended it, drank the remainder of its contents, and dropped the bottle behind him onto the grass. “Goin’ for another bottle. Guard the bench.”

“It’ll be here when you get back.”

“Damn well better be.”

The man staggered from the park, heading south on Broadway.

As another police car wailed by, Pittman slumped lower on the bench, hoping to blend with the park’s other residents.

The night’s chill in combination with the aftermath of adrenaline made him hug himself, shivering. Urgent thoughts assaulted his mind.

Burt had said he suspected a detective was watching him from a table in the restaurant. Maybe it wasn’t a detective, Pittman thought. Maybe it was the gunman, who followed Burt from the restaurant, hoping I’d be in touch with him.

But the gunman didn’t need to kill Burt. Burt wasn’t a threat to him. In the darkness, Burt wouldn’t have been able to identify him.

Pittman felt colder. In the shadowy park, he hugged himself harder. The son of a bitch, he didn’t have to kill Burt!

A movement to Pittman’s right distracted him. Still slumped on the bench, he turned his head, focusing sharply on two figures moving toward him. They didn’t wear uniforms. They weren’t policemen, unless they were working under cover. But they didn’t move with the authority of policemen. They seemed to creep.

Predators. They must have seen me give money to the guy who was on this bench. Now they want money, too.

Pittman sat up. The figures came closer.

If there’s trouble, I’ll attract the police.

Pittman stood to walk away, but the shambling figures reached him. He braced himself for an attack.

“Goddamn it,” a slurred voice said. “Git away from him. He’s mine. I foun’ him. He’s rentin’ my bench.”

The figures glared at the man in Pittman’s overcoat, who was coming back with a bottle in a paper bag.

“Din’t you hear me? Git.” The man fumbled in his grimy pants and pulled out a church key-style bottle opener. He jabbed its point at them. “Move yur asses away from my bench. ’S mine. Mine and his.”

The sullen figures hesitated, then shifted back toward the shadows from which they had risen.

“Bastards.” The man slumped onto the bench. “They’da taken my bench in a minute. Gotta keep watchin’.”

“That’s the truth.”

The man drank from his bottle. “Lie down.”

“What?” Pittman asked suspiciously.

“Git some sleep. You look beat.”

Pittman didn’t move.

“I won’t let those bastards git to you. I always stay up, guardin’ my bench.”