“My only excuse for a family is my ex-wife, and I wouldn’t ask her for anything,” Pittman said. “As for my friends, well, I have to assume the police will be watching them in case I show up.”
“So you came to me.”
“I kept asking myself who I knew to get help from but who the police wouldn’t know about. Then it occurred to me-all the people I interviewed over the years. Some of them have the kind of expertise I need, and the police would never think I’d go to them.”
Sean nodded in approval of Pittman’s reasoning. “But I don’t know what advice I can give you. There’s a bathroom and a shower in back. You can spend the night here. For sure,
“There has to be something you can tell me.”
“If they catch you, you’ve already got a brilliant defense.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Insanity,” Sean said.
“
“All that business about your being suicidal. I assume that’s another exaggeration.”
Pittman didn’t respond.
“You mean it’s true?” Sean asked in surprise.
Pittman stared at his Coke can.
“Your son died,” Sean said, “and you fell apart.”
“That’s right.”
“My sister died when I was twenty-five. She was a year younger than me. Car accident,” Sean said.
“And?”
“I nearly drank myself to death. God, I loved her.”
“Then you understand,” Pittman said.
“Yes. But it’s a little different now, isn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“When you’re tired and hungry and scared.”
“I feel like I’m being selfish. My son was wonderful. And here I’m thinking about myself.”
“I don’t presume to tell you how to grieve. But I will tell you this-you can’t go wrong if you do what your son would have wanted you to do. And right now, he’d have been telling you to look out for your ass.”
30
The shower was primitive, just a nozzle over a plastic stall with a drain in the concrete floor. There wasn’t any soap, shampoo, or a towel. Pittman was pleased that he’d had the foresight to put a toilet kit in his gym bag. He found two steel chairs that he put near the shower’s entrance, draping his sport coat over one, his slacks over the other. There wasn’t any door to the shower, and after he came out to dry himself with his dirty shirt, he discovered that, as he had hoped, the steam from the shower had taken some of the wrinkles out of his jacket and pants. He put on fresh underwear and socks, decided to save his remaining clean shirt by putting on his black cotton sweat suit, and returned to Sean among the crates.
Sean had opened a cabinet, revealing a television, and was watching CNN. “They sure like you.”
“Yeah, pretty soon I’ll have my own series.”
“Well,” Sean said, opening another beer. “From the newspaper and now this, I have a pretty good idea of their side. What’s yours?” He put his feet on the coffee table.
For the second time that day, Pittman explained.
Sean listened intently, on occasion asked a question, and tapped his fingers together when Pittman finished. “Congratulations.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been a thief since I was twelve. I’ve spent half my life in prison. I’ve had to go underground three times because of a misunderstanding with the mob. I’ve been married to four women, two of them simultaneously. But I have never ever had the distinction of being in as much trouble as you are. And all this happened since two nights ago?”
“Yes.”
“Worthy of the
“At least
“Not so fast. Who sent the gunman to your apartment?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why would someone want to make it seem that you killed Millgate?”
“I have no-”
“Damn it, don’t you think you’d better
“Accidentally.”
“I’m sure that makes a difference to him.… Ever since then, you’ve been running.”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“You wasted time going to this computer expert. Why was it a waste of time? Because your only purpose was to find a way to get in touch with me. Why? Because you want advice on how to keep running. Sorry.”
“What?”
“In the first place, you don’t need that kind of advice. You’ve been doing damned well on your own. In the second place, if all you do is keep running, the only thing you’ll accomplish is to get tired. Then you’ll make a mistake, and they’ll grab you.”
“But there’s no alternative.”
“Isn’t there? Reverse direction. Hunt instead of being hunted. God knows, you’ve got plenty of targets.”
“Hunt? That’s easy enough for you to say.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to leap for joy at my advice. From what you’ve told me, it seems to me that you’ve been running away since your son died. Running from everything.”
The suggestion that Pittman was a coward made his face became hot with anger. He wanted to get his hands on Sean and punch the shit out of him.
“Touched a nerve, did I?”
Pittman inhaled, straining to calm himself.
“I guess you don’t like the advice I’m giving you,” Sean said. “But it’s the only advice I’ve got. I’m an expert. I’ve been running from things all my life. Do what I say, not what I do.”
Pittman stared, then parted his lips in a bitter smile.
“What’s funny?” Sean asked.
“All this talk about running. For twenty years, I ran every day. All that time. Where was I going?”
“To the finish line, pal. And if you’re still thinking about killing yourself, if I were you I’d want to go out a winner, not a loser. You can destroy yourself-that’s your business. But don’t let the bastards do it for you.”
Pittman felt his face get hot again. But this time it wasn’t because he was angry at Sean. Instead, his fury was directed elsewhere. “Bastards. Yes.”
For a moment, he didn’t move or speak, didn’t breathe. His powerful emotion held him in stasis. Then he squinted at Sean. “When my son died…” he began to say, then hesitated.
Sean studied him, obviously curious about what Pittman intended to say.
“When my son died, I can’t describe how angry I was-at the hospital, at his doctors. Jeremy’s death wasn’t their fault. It’s just that I desperately needed somebody to be angry at. If somebody had made a mistake, then in a bizarre way Jeremy’s death would have made sense. Medical carelessness. The alternative is to accept that Jeremy died because of a cosmic crapshoot, that he was unlucky, that he just happened to get a type of rare, untreatable cancer. That kind of thinking-there’s no pattern or point; the universe is arbitrary-can drive a person crazy. When I finally accepted that Jeremy’s doctors weren’t to blame, I still needed someone to be angry at. So I chose God. I
