10
In the old days, Pittman would have gone to the area, formerly in the basement, where back issues of the newspaper were stored on microfilm. The master index would have contained file cards for “Millgate” and “Grand counselors,” and from them, Pittman would have learned which issues and pages of the newspaper to read on microfilm. That section of the newspaper where the microfilm was kept had been traditionally called the morgue, and although computer files had replaced microfilm, death was so much on Pittman’s mind that he still thought of himself as entering a morgue when he sat at his desk, turned on his computer terminal, and tapped the keys that would give him access to the newspaper’s data files.
Given Millgate’s secretive lifestyle, it wasn’t surprising that there wasn’t much information: only a few small items since Pittman had researched Millgate seven years earlier. Millgate and the other four grand counselors-still retaining immense political power, even though they no longer had direct ties with the government-had been feted at a White House dinner, where the President had given Millgate the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Millgate had accompanied the President on Air Force One to an international conference on world economics in Geneva. Millgate had established an institute for the study of post-Communist reconstruction in Russia. Millgate had testified before a Senate confirmation committee about his high regard for a Supreme Court nominee, who also happened to be the son of one of the grand counselors.
The phone rang.
Pittman picked it up. “Obituaries.”
A fifty-two-year-old woman had been killed in a fire, he learned. She was unmarried, without children, unemployed, not a member of any organization. Aside from her brother, to whom Pittman was speaking, there weren’t any surviving relatives. Thus, the obituary would be unusually slight, especially because the brother didn’t want his name mentioned for fear people to whom his sister owed money would come looking for him.
The barrenness of the woman’s life made Pittman more despondent. Shaking his head, dejected, he finished the call, then frowned at his watch. It was almost three o’clock. The gray haze that customarily surrounded him seemed to have thickened.
The phone rang again.
This time, Burt Forsyth’s gravelly voice demanded, “How’s the Millgate obit coming?”
“Has he…?”
“Still in intensive care.”
“Well, there isn’t much. I’ll have the obit finished before I go home.”
“Don’t tell me there isn’t much,” Burt said. “We both know better. I want this piece to be substantial. Seven years ago, you wouldn’t have given up so easily. Dig. Back then, you kept complaining about how you couldn’t find a way to see Millgate. Well, he’s a captive interview this time. Not to mention, there’ll be relatives or somebody waiting at the hospital to see how he’s doing. Talk to them. For Christ sake, figure out how to get into his room and talk to him.”
11
Pittman stood across from the hospital for quite a while. The building was soot gray. The mid-April day had been warm, but as the sun descended behind skyscrapers, cool shadows made Pittman cross his arms and hug himself.
This was the same hospital where Jeremy had died. Pittman had come to the corner across from the Emergency entrance, the same corner where he had often stood late at night after visiting Jeremy. From this corner, he had been able to see the window of Jeremy’s room on the tenth floor. Gazing up through the darkness for several hours, he had prayed that Jeremy wouldn’t be wakened by the need to vomit because of his chemotherapy.
Amid the din of traffic, Pittman now heard a siren. An ambulance veered from the busy street and rushed to a stop beneath the portal at the Emergency entrance. Attendants leapt out and urgently removed a patient on a gurney. Pedestrians glanced toward the commotion but kept walking swiftly onward.
Pittman swallowed, squinted up toward what he still thought of as Jeremy’s window, and turned away. Jonathan Millgate was in that hospital, in the adult intensive-care ward that was just down the sixth-floor hallway from the children’s intensive-care ward, where Jeremy had died. Pittman shook his head. He couldn’t tolerate going into the hospital, couldn’t make himself go up to that floor, couldn’t bear exposing himself to the torment on the faces of people waiting to hear about their loved ones. It would be all he could do not to imagine that he was one of them, not to sit down with them and wait as if for news of Jeremy.
It would be far too much.
So he went home. Rather than take a taxi, he walked. He needed to fill the time. As dusk increasingly chilled him, he stopped for several drinks-to fill the time. The elevator to his third-floor apartment creaked and wheezed. He locked himself in his apartment, heard laughter from a television show vibrate through thin walls from the apartment next to him, and had another drink.
To fill the time.
He sat in darkness. He imagined what it would have been like if Jeremy had lived. With basketball playoffs approaching, he would have spent the coming Saturday afternoon playing one-on-one with Jeremy. Afterward they’d have gone for pizza and a movie, or maybe to Tower Records-whatever they wanted to do. The future would have been theirs.
Pittman wept.
He turned on the kitchen light, opened the drawer where he’d put the.45, and took out the pistol.
Vaguely conscious that the time was 8:00 P.M., because the sitcom next door had ended and another was starting, he continued to stare at the.45. His eyes became like the lenses of a microscope, focusing intensely on the gleaming blue metal, magnifying the trigger, the hammer, the opening in the barrel from which the bullet would…
The next thing he was aware of, a new sound disturbed him, the smooth deep voice of a man who spoke in formal cadences. The voice came from the apartment next door. The voice was…
A television news announcer? Frowning, Pittman turned his gaze from the.45 and fixed it on the stove’s mechanical clock. Its numbers whirred, 10:03 becoming 10:04. Pittman frowned harder. He had so absorbed himself in the gun that he hadn’t been conscious of so much time passing. Hand trembling, he set down the.45. The news announcer on the television next door had said something about Jonathan Millgate.
12
“Haven’t seen you in a while, Matt.” The heavy man, an Italian, had gray hair protruding from the bottom of his Yankees baseball cap. He wore a Yankees baseball jersey as well, and he held a ladle with which he’d been stirring a large steaming pot of what smelled like chicken-noodle soup as Pittman came into the diner.
The place was narrow, with Formica-topped tables along one side, a counter along the other. The overhead fluorescent lights made Pittman blink after the darkness of the street. It was almost 11:00 P.M. AS Pittman sat at the counter, he nodded to the only other customer, a black man drinking a cup of coffee at one of the tables.
“You been sick?” the cook asked. “Is that why you haven’t been in?”
“Everybody keeps saying… Do I look sick?”
“Or permanently hungover. Look at how loose your clothes are. How much weight have you lost? Ten, fifteen pounds? And judging from them bags under your eyes, I’d say you haven’t been sleeping much, either.”
Pittman didn’t answer.
“What’ll it be for tonight?”
“To start with, a favor.”
The cook appeared not to have heard as he stirred the soup.
“I wonder if you could store this for me.”
“What?” The cook glanced at the counter in front of Pittman and sounded relieved. “That box?”
Pittman nodded. The box had once held computer paper. Now it concealed the.45 and its container of ammunition. He had stuffed the box with shredded newspaper so that the gun wouldn’t shift and make a thunking noise when the box was tilted. He had sealed the box many times with tape.