Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

‘I’m fine. Look, it was a once off. It’s not going to happen again.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How did the meeting go?’

This time Van Loon paused. I was out on a limb now.

‘Well it was a little awkward, Eddie,’ he said eventually, ‘I’m not going to lie to you. I wished you’d been there.’

‘Did he seem convinced?’

‘In outline, yeah. He says he feels it’s something he can bring to the table, but you and me are going to have to sit down with him and go over the numbers.’

‘Great. Sure. Of course. Whenever.’

‘Hank’s gone to the coast, but he’ll be back in town on… Tuesday I think, yeah, so why don’t you come into the office some time on Monday and we can set something up.’

‘Great – and listen, Carl, I’m sorry again, I really am.’

‘You sure you don’t want to see my doctor? He’s-’

‘No, but thanks for the offer.’

‘Think about it.’

‘OK. I’ll see you on Monday.’

I remained standing by the phone for a couple of minutes after the call to Van Loon, staring down at an open page of my address book.

I had a nervous, jumpy feeling in my stomach.

Then I picked the phone up and dialled Melissa’s number. As I waited for her to answer I could have been back in Vernon’s apartment – up on the seventeenth floor, still at the beginning of all of this, still in those last shining moments before I recorded a message on her answering machine and then went rooting around in her brother’s bedroom…

‘Hello.’

‘Melissa?’

‘Eddie. Hi.’

‘I got your message.’

‘Yeah. Look… erm…’ – I got the impression that she was composing herself – ‘… what I said on the message, that just occurred to me today. I don’t know. My brother was an asshole. He’d been dealing this weird designer thing for quite a while. And it occurred to me about you . So I started worrying.’

If Melissa had been drinking earlier on in the day, she seemed subdued now, hungover maybe.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, Melissa,’ I said, having decided on the spot that this was what I was going to do. ‘Vernon didn’t give me anything. I’d met him the day before he… er… the day before it happened. And we just talked about stuff… nothing in particular.’

She sighed, ‘OK.’

‘But thanks for your concern.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

Awkward, awkward, awkward.

Then she said, ‘How are you ?’

‘I’m fine. Keeping busy.’

‘What have you been up to?’

This was the conversation we would be having in these circumstances – here it was – the inevitable conversation we would be having in these circumstances…

‘I’ve been working for the last few years as a copywriter.’ I paused. ‘For Kerr & Dexter. The publishers.’

It was the truth, technically, but that’s all it was.

‘Yeah? That’s great.’

It didn’t feel great, though – or like the truth, my days as a copywriter for Kerr & Dexter suddenly seeming distant, unreal, fictional.

I didn’t want to be on the phone to Melissa any more. Since we’d renewed our acquaintance – however fleetingly – I felt that I had already entered into a consistent pattern of lying to her. Going on with the conversation could only make that worse.

I said, ‘Look, I wanted to call you back and clear that up… but… I’m going to get off the phone now.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s not that-’

‘Eddie?’

‘Yes?’

‘This isn’t easy for me either.’

‘Sure.’

There wasn’t anything else I could think of to say.

‘Goodbye then.’

‘Bye.’

In need of immediate distraction, I flicked through my address book for Gennady’s cellphone number. I dialled it and waited.

‘Yeah?’

‘Gennady?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s Eddie.’

‘Eddie. What you want? I busy.’

I stared at the wall in front of me for a second.

‘I’ve got a treatment done for that thing. It’s about twen-’

‘Give me this in the morning. I look at it.’

‘Gennady…’ He was gone. ‘ Gennady? ’

I put the phone down.

Tomorrow morning was Friday. I’d forgotten. Gennady was coming for the first repayment on the loan.

Shit.

The money I owed wasn’t the problem. I could write him out a cheque straightaway for the whole amount, plus the vig, plus a bonus for just being Gennady, but that wouldn’t do it. I’d told him that I had a treatment ready. Now I had to come up with one, had to have one for the morning – or else he’d probably stab me continuously until he developed something akin to tennis elbow.

I wasn’t exactly in the mood for this sort of thing, but I knew it would keep me busy, so I went online and did some research. I picked up relevant terminology and worked out a plot loosely based on a recent mafia trial in Sicily, a detailed account of which I found on an Italian website. By some time after midnight – with suitable variations – I’d knocked out a twenty-five-page, scene-by-scene treatment for Keeper of the Code , a story of the Organizatsiya.

After that, I spent a good while searching through magazines for real estate ads. I had decided that I was going to phone some of the big Manhattan realtors the following morning and finally kickstart the process of renting – maybe even of buying – a new apartment.

Then I went to bed and got four or five hours of what passed for sleep these days.

Gennady arrived at about nine-thirty. I buzzed him in, telling him I was on the third floor. It took him for ever to walk up the stairs, and when he finally materialized in my living-room he seemed exhausted and fed up.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me and looked around. Then he looked at his watch.

I had printed out the treatment and put it in an envelope. I took this from the desk and handed it to him. He held it up, shook it, seemed to be estimating how much it weighed. Then he said, ‘Where the money?’

‘Er… I was going to write you a cheque. How much was it again?’

‘A cheque ?’

I nodded at him, suddenly feeling foolish.

‘A cheque ?’ he said again. ‘You out of your fucking mind? What you think, we are a financial institution ?’

‘Gennady, look-’

‘Shut up. You can’t come up with the money today you in serious fucking trouble, my friend – you hear me?’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘I cut your balls off.’

‘I’ll get it. Jesus . I wasn’t thinking.’

‘A cheque ,’ he said again, with contempt. ‘Unbelievable.’

I went over to my phone and picked it up. Since those first couple of days at Lafayette, I had developed extremely cordial relations with my obsequious and florid-faced bank manager, Howard Lewis, so I phoned him and told him what I needed – twenty-two five in cash – and asked if he could possibly have it ready for me in fifteen minutes.

Absolutely no problem, Mr Spinola.

I put the phone down and turned around. Gennady was standing over at my desk, with his back to me. I mumbled something to get his attention. He then turned to face me.

‘Well?’

I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Let’s go to my bank.’

We took a cab, in silence, to Twenty-third and Second, where my bank was. I wanted to make a reference to the treatment, but since Gennady was obviously in a very bad mood, I judged it better not to say anything. I got the cash from Howard Lewis and handed it over to Gennady outside on the street. He slipped the bundle into the mysterious interior of his jacket. Holding up the envelope with the treatment in it, he said, ‘I look at this.’