The restaurant-on East Seventy-ninth Street-was small and unassuming: a linoleum floor, plain booths, red plastic tablecloths. But the veal scallopini, which Pittman recommended, was excellent, and the modestly priced house Burgundy was delicious.
A few tables had been set out on the sidewalk, and Pittman sat in the sunlight with Jill, enjoying the last of his salad.
“That’s your second helping,” Jill said. “I didn’t think you’d ever get full.”
“I told you I was hungry. This is the first decent meal I’ve had in quite a while. Mostly I’ve been eating on the run. You didn’t like the food?”
“It’s wonderful. But the restaurant doesn’t exactly announce itself. How on earth did you ever find this place?”
Pittman bit into the final piece of garlic bread. “I used to live around here.” The memory made him solemn. “When I was married.”
“Past tense?” Jill set down her wineglass.
“Grief and connubial bliss don’t seem to go together.”
“Now I guess I’m the one who’s snooping.”
“There isn’t much to tell. My wife was stronger than I was. That doesn’t mean she loved Jeremy less, but after he died, I fell apart. Ellen didn’t. I think she was afraid I was going to be like that for the rest of my life. She’d lost her son, and now she was losing… I scared her. One thing led to another. She divorced me. She’s married again.”
Jill almost touched his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Pittman shrugged. “She was smart to get out. I was going to be like that for the rest of my life. Last Wednesday night, I had a gun in my hand, ready to… And then the phone rang, and the next thing…”
Jill’s eyes widened with concern. “You mean the newspapers weren’t exaggerating? You have been feeling suicidal impulses?”
“That’s a polite way to put it.”
Jill’s brow furrowed with greater concern.
“I hope you’re not going to try to be an amateur psychoanalyst,” Pittman said. “I’ve heard all the arguments. ‘Killing yourself won’t bring Jeremy back.’ No shit. But it’ll certainly end the pain. And here’s another old favorite: If I kill myself, I’ll be wasting the life that Jeremy would have given anything to have. The trouble is, killing myself wouldn’t be a waste. My life isn’t worth anything. I know I’ve idealized Jeremy. I know that after his death I’ve made him smarter and more talented and funnier than he actually was. But Jeremy was smart and talented and funny. I haven’t idealized him by much. A straight-A student. A sense of humor that never failed to amaze me. He had a droll way of seeing things. He could make me laugh anytime he wanted. And he was only fifteen. The world would have been his. Instead, he got cancer, and no matter how hard the doctors and he fought it, he died. Some gang member with a handgun is holding up a liquor store right now. That scum is alive, and my son is dead. I can’t stand living in a world where everything is out of balance that much. I can’t stand living in a world where everything I see is something Jeremy will never see. I can’t stand remembering the pain on Jeremy’s face as the cancer tortured him more and more each day. I can’t stand…”
Pittman’s voice trailed off. He realized that he’d been speaking faster and louder, that some of the customers in the restaurant were looking at him with concern, that Jill had leaned back as if overwhelmed by his emotion.
Spreading his hands, he mutely apologized.
“No,” Jill said. “I won’t try to be an amateur psychoanalyst.”
“Sometimes everything builds up inside me. I say more than I mean to.”
“I understand.”
“You’re very kind. But you didn’t need me to dump it all on you.”
“It’s not a question of being kind, and you obviously needed to get it out of you.”
“It’s not, though.”
“What?”
“Out of me. I think…” Pittman glanced down at the table. “I think we’d better change the subject.”
Jill folded her napkin, neatly arranging the edges. “All right, then. Tell me about what happened Thursday night, how you got into this.”
“Yes,” Pittman said, his anger changing to confusion. “And the rest of it.”
It took an hour. This time Pittman spoke discreetly, keeping his voice low, pausing when anyone walked by. The conversation continued after Jill paid the waiter and Pittman strolled with her along Seventy-ninth Street.
“A nightmare.”
“But I swear to God it’s all true,” Pittman said.
“There’s got to be a way to make sense of it.”
“Hey, I’ve been trying my damnedest.”
“Maybe you’re too close. Maybe you need someone else to see it from a different angle. Let’s think this through,” Jill said. “We know Millgate’s associates took him from the hospital because a reporter got his hands on a secret Justice Department report that implicated Millgate in a covert attempt to buy nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. Millgate’s people were afraid of reporters showing up at the hospital and managing to question him.”
“They were also afraid of Father Dandridge,” Pittman said. “More so. Millgate’s people were afraid of something Millgate had told Father Dandridge in confession. Or of something Millgate might have told Father Dandridge if the priest had been able to see him Thursday night.”
“Then you followed Millgate to the estate in Scarsdale. You got into his room to help him, but the nurse came in unexpectedly and saw you doing it.”
“She also heard Millgate tell me something. Duncan. Something about snow. Then Grollier.” Pittman shook his head. “But Father Dandridge told me that Grollier wasn’t anyone’s last name. It was the prep school Millgate went to.”
“Why would that be important enough to kill anybody?”
They reached Fifth Avenue, and Pittman faltered.
“What’s the matter?” Jill asked.
Pittman stared to the right toward a crowd going up and down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vendors, buses, and taxis contributed to the congestion in front. Several policemen on horseback maintained order.
“I guess,” Pittman said, “I feel exposed.” He glanced down at the weapon-laden overcoat draped over his left arm and guided her back along Seventy-ninth Street. “I want to find out about Grollier prep school.”
“How are you going to do that? The only place I can think of with that information is the library. Or someone at a college. But it’s Sunday. All those places are closed.”
“No, there might be another way.”