Desperate Measures Read Online Free PDF

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