Desperate Measures Read Online Free PDF Page B

thunking noise when the box was tilted. He had sealed
     the box many times with tape.
    “Just a place to store this,” Pittman said. “I’ll even pay you for…”
    “No need,” the cook said. “What’s in it? How come you can’t keep it at your place? There’s nothing funny about this, is there?”
    “Nah. It’s just a gun.”
    “A
gun
?”
    Pittman smiled at his apparent joke. “I’ve been working on a book. This is a copy of the printout and the computer discs.
     I’m paranoid about fires. I’d ask my girlfriend to help, but she and I just had a fight. I want to keep a duplicate of this
     material someplace besides my apartment.”
    “Yeah? A book? What’s it about?”
    “Suicide. Let me have some of that soup, will you?”
    Pittman prepared to eat his first meal in thirty-six hours.

13
    He’d packed the gun and left it with the cook at the diner because his experience of losing time while he stared at the weapon
     had taught him there was every chance he might shoot himself before he made good on his promise to work for Burt Forsyth until
     the
Chronicle
died. The effort of getting through this particular day, the bitterness and emptiness he had felt, had been so intense that
     he couldn’t be certain of his resolve to keep himself alive for eight more days. This way, in the event of overwhelming despair,
     he would have a chance of regaining control by the time he reached the diner, got the box, and went to his apartment.
    For now, he had to do what Burt Forsyth intended—to distract himself. Jonathan Millgate meant nothing to him. Pittman’s career
     meant nothing. The
Chronicle
meant nothing. But Burt Forsyth
did
. In honor of Jeremy, Pittman felt compelled to keep the promise he had made. For eight more days.
    Despite his reluctance, he went back to the hospital. This time, he took a taxi. Not because he was in a hurry. After all,
     he still had a great deal of time to fill and would have preferred to walk. But to get to the hospital, he would have had
     to pass through several neighborhoods that became dangerous at this hour. He found it bitterly ironic that in doing his best
     to postpone his death for eight more days, he had to be extra careful about not dying in the meanwhile.
    He returned to the hospital because of the television announcer’s reference to Millgate. Through the thin walls of his apartment,
     he had listened to the news report. Pittman’s expectation was that Millgate had died and a brief summary of his public-service
     career was being provided. Burt Forsyth would be annoyed about that—Millgate dying before Pittman finished the obituary in
     time for tomorrow morning’s edition of the newspaper. But the TV news story had not been about Millgate’s death. To the contrary,
     Millgate was still in intensive care, as the announcer had pointed out.
    Instead, the story had been about another possible scandal in Millgate’s background. To the government’s dismay, a copy of
     a Justice Department special prosecutor’s report had been leaked to the press this evening. The report, a first draft never
     intended for publication, implicated Millgate as a negotiator in a possible covert attempt—unsanctioned by Congress—to buy
     nuclear weapons from the chaos of governments in what used to be the Soviet Union.
    An unsubtantiated charge against him. Solely an in-house assessment of where the Justice Department’s investigation might
     eventually lead. But the gravity of the news announcer’s voice had made the grave allegation sound like established fact.
     Guilty until proven innocent. This was the second time in seven years that Jonathan Millgate had been implicated as a go-between
     in a major arms scandal, and Pittman knew that if he failed to investigate this time, if he didn’t at least make an attempt
     to get a statement from Millgate’s people, Burt Forsyth would accuse him of reneging on his bargain to do his best for the
Chronicle
during the brief time