Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

But then suddenly it was all over, the car-alarm was wailing plaintively down on Tenth Street and I was swinging my legs out of bed – taking deep breaths, feeling as though I’d seen a ghost.

Inevitably, the next image to take up residence inside my head was another one of Vernon, but it was a Vernon of ten or eleven years later – a Vernon with hardly any hair, and with facial features that were disfigured and bruised, a Vernon splayed out on the couch of another apartment, in another part of town…

I stared down at the rug on the floor beside my bed, at its intricate, endlessly replicating patterns, and shook my head very slowly from side to side. Since I’d starting taking the MDT pills a few weeks before, I had hardly given any real thought to Vernon Gant – even though, by any standards, my behaviour towards him had been appalling. After finding him dead I’d as good as ransacked his bedroom for God’s sake, and then stolen cash and property belonging to him. I hadn’t even gone to his funeral service – convincing myself, on no evidence whatsoever, that that was the way Melissa had wanted it.

I stood up from the edge of the bed and quickly walked into the living-room. I took two pills from the ceramic bowl on the wooden shelf above the computer – which I’d been refilling every day – and swallowed them. It was surely the case, too, that the stuff I’d taken rightly belonged to Vernon’s sister now – and whatever about the drugs, Melissa probably could have used that nine grand.

With a knot in my stomach, I reached behind the computers to switch them on. Then I glanced at my watch.

It was 4.58 a.m.

I’d easily be able to give her double that amount now, though – and maybe even a lot more if my second day of trading went well – but wouldn’t that be like paying her off in some way?

All of a sudden I felt sick.

This certainly wasn’t how I’d ever envisaged renewing my acquaintance with Melissa. I rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. I lowered myself to the floor and into position over the rim of the toilet bowl. But nothing happened, I couldn’t throw up. I remained there for about twenty minutes, breathing heavily, holding my cheek against the cold, white porcelain, until eventually the feeling passed – or, rather, feelings… because the weird thing was, when I stood up again to go back into the living-room and start work at my desk, I no longer felt sick – but I no longer felt guilty either.

Trading that day was brisk. I chose myself another little portfolio of stocks to work on, five middle-sized companies plucked from obscurity, and more or less cleaned up. Earlier on, over coffee, I’d seen references in several newspaper articles – and later, innumerable references on innumerable websites – to US-Cova and its extraordinary performance in the markets the previous day. Digicon and one or two others also got brief mentions, but no coherent picture emerged that could explain what had gone on, or that could link, in any way at all, the various companies concerned. A resounding Go figure appeared to be the general consensus of opinion, so even though the odds against someone randomly picking seven straight winners in a row were truly astronomical, it was still possible at that point, and in the absence of any other evidence, that my initial flush of success had just been a question of luck.

It soon became apparent, however, that something else was at work here. Because – just as on the previous day – whenever I came upon an interesting stock, something happened to me, something physical. I felt what I can only describe as an electric charge, usually just below the sternum, a little surge of energy that quickly rippled through my body and then seemed to spill out into the room’s atmosphere, sharpening colour definition and sound resolution. I felt as though I were connected to some vast system, wired in, a minute but active fibre, pulsating on a circuit board. The first stock I picked, for instance – let’s call it V – started moving up five minutes after I’d sent off the buy-order. I tracked it, while at the same time nosing around the various websites for other things to buy. With growing confidence, therefore, I found myself surfing stocks throughout the early part of the morning, leap-frogging from one to another, selling V at a profit and immediately sinking all of the proceeds from it into W, which in turn got sold off at just the right moment to finance a foray into X.

But as I grew confident, I also grew impatient. I wanted more chips to play with, more capital, more leverage. By mid-morning I had inched my way up to nearly $35,000, which was fine, but to make a proper dent in the market I’d probably need, as a starting point, at least double – but probably three or four times – that amount.

I phoned Klondike, but they didn’t provide leverage of more than 50 per cent. Not having much of a history with my bank manager, I didn’t feel like trying him . Neither did I imagine that anyone I knew would have $75,000 to spare, or that any legitimate loan company would shell out that kind of money over the counter – so , since I wanted the money now, and was fairly confident about what I could do with it, there appeared to be only one other course of action left open to me.

I PUT ON A JACKET and left the apartment. I walked along Avenue A, past Tompkins Square Park and down towards Third Street to a diner I often used. The guy behind the counter, Nestor, was a local and knew everything that went on in the neighbourhood. He’d been serving coffee and muffins and cheeseburgers and tuna melts here for twenty years, and had observed all of the radical changes that had taken place, the clean-ups, the gentrification, the sneaky encroachment of high-rise apartment buildings. People had come and gone, but Nestor remained, a link to the old neighbourhood that even I remembered as a kid – Loisaida, the Latino quarter of store-front social clubs, and old men playing dominoes, and salsa and merengue blaring out of every window, and then later the Alphabet City of burned-out buildings and drug pushers and homeless people living in cardboard shelters in Tompkins Square Park. I’d often chatted to Nestor about these changes, and he’d told me stories – a couple of them pretty hair-raising – about various local characters, old-timers, storekeepers, cops, councillors, hookers, dealers, loansharks. But that was the thing about Nestor, he knew everyone – even knew me , an anonymous single white male who’d been living on Tenth Street for about five years and worked as some kind of journalist or something. So when I went into his place, sat at the counter and asked if he knew anyone who could advance me some cash, and fast – extortionate interest rates no obstacle – he didn’t bat an eyelid, but just brought over a cup of coffee and told me to sit tight for a while.

When he’d served a few customers and cleared two or three tables, he came back to my end of the counter, wiped the area around where I was sitting and said, ‘Used to be Italians, yeah? Mostly Italians, until… well…’

He paused.

Until what? Until John Gotti took it in the ass and Sammy the Bull went in the Witness Protection Program? What? Was I supposed to guess ? That was another thing about Nestor, he often assumed I knew more than I did. Or maybe he just used to forget who he was talking to.

‘Until what ?’ I said.

‘Until John Junior took over. It’s a fucking mess these days.’

I was close.

‘And now?’

‘The Russians. From Brighton Beach. They used to work together, them and the Italians, or at least didn’t work against each other, but now things are different. John Junior’s crews – apparently – couldn’t turn over a cigar stand.’