Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

I took out Vernon’s little notebook again and examined it. I had no desire to go through the same routine as before, but I nevertheless felt that if there was any hope left in this situation it had to lie somewhere in among these numbers. I decided to call a few of the ones that had been crossed out and didn’t have replacements written in above or below them. Maybe I would discover that they belonged to people who were still alive, and weren’t even sick, people who would talk to me, ex-clients. Or maybe – more likely – I would find out that the reason they were ex-clients was because they were dead. But it was worth a try.

I called five numbers. The first three were no longer in service. The fourth number didn’t reply or have an answering machine. The fifth one picked up after two rings.

‘Yep?’

‘Hello. May I speak to Donald Geisler please?’

‘Speaking. What do you want?’

‘I was a friend of Vernon Gant’s. I don’t know if you know but he was killed a while back and I was-’

I stopped.

He’d hung up.

It was a response, though. And clearly the guy wasn’t dead. I waited ten minutes and called again.

‘Yep?’

‘Please don’t hang up. Please .’

There was a pause, during which Donald Geisler didn’t hang up. Or say anything.

‘I’m looking for some help,’ I said, ‘some information maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Where did you get this number?’

‘It was… among Vernon’s things.’

‘ Shit! ’

‘But there’s noth-’

‘Are you a cop ? Is this an investigation of some kind?’

‘No. Vernon was an old friend of mine.’

‘I don’t like this.’

‘In fact, he was my ex-brother-in-law.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’

‘Look, this is about-’

‘Don’t say it on the phone.’

I stopped again. He knew .

‘OK, I won’t. But is there any way that I could talk to you? I need your help. I mean, you obviously know-’

‘ You need my help? I don’t think so.’

‘Yes, because-’

‘Look, I’m going to hang up now. So don’t phone me back. In fact, don’t ever try to contact me again, and-’

‘Mr Geisler, I might be dying.’

‘Oh, Christ .’

‘And I need-’

‘ Leave me alone, all right? ’

He hung up.

My heart was thumping.

If Donald Geisler didn’t want to talk to me, there wasn’t much I could do about it. He mightn’t have been able to help in any case, but it was still frustrating to make such brief contact with someone who obviously knew what MDT was.

Not in the mood any more to go on with this, I put the black notebook away. Then, in an effort to distract myself, I returned to my desk and picked up a document that I’d printed out earlier from a financial website.

I opened it and started reading.

The document was a highly technical article about anti-trust legislation and by page three my attention had already drifted. After a while I stopped reading, put the article down and lit up a cigarette. Then I just sat there for ages, smoking, staring into space.

Later, in the afternoon, I made a trip to the bank. Gennady was coming the next morning for the second payment on the loan and I wanted to be ready for him. I withdrew over $100,000 in cash, my intention being to pay off the whole loan straightaway – the repayments, the vig, everything. That way I could get him off my back. If Gennady had taken the five MDT pills – and that was the only plausible explanation for the fact that they were missing – I certainly didn’t want him coming around to my apartment every Friday morning.

As I was waiting for them to get the cash ready, my balding and overweight bank manager, Howard Lewis, invited me into his office for a little chat. This walking heart-attack seemed to be concerned that after my initial flurry of activity with Klondike and Lafayette – resulting, admittedly, in some fairly substantial deposits – things had been, ‘… well, quiet .’

I looked across the desk at him in disbelief.

‘… and then there are these rather large cash withdrawals, Mr Spinola.’

‘What about them?’ I said, my tone adding, as if it’s any of your fucking business.

‘Nothing in themselves, Mr Spinola, of course, but… well, in the light of that piece in last Friday’s Post about-’

‘ What about-? ’

‘Look, it’s all very… irregular. I mean, these days you can’t be too-’

‘In the light of my time at Lafayette, Mr Lewis,’ I said, barely able to contain my irritation, ‘I am currently in negotiations for a position as a senior trader at Van Loon & Associates.’

He looked back at me, breathing out slowly through his nose, as if what I’d said confirmed his worst fears about me.

His phone rang, and he scooped it up, a muscle on his face quivering slightly by way of apology. As he dealt with the call, I glanced around. Until that point, I’d been feeling quite indignant, but this cooled somewhat when I saw my reflection in the back panel of a silver photo-frame on Lewis’s desk. It was a partially distorted image, but nothing could conceal how scruffy I looked. I hadn’t shaved that morning and I was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt – implausible for a senior trader at Van Loon & Associates, even on a day off.

Howard Lewis finished his call, pressed another button on his phone, listened for a moment and then looked at me with a blank expression on his face.

‘Your withdrawal is ready, Mr Spinola.’

Gennady arrived at nine-thirty the following morning. I’d just woken up about twenty minutes before he arrived and I was still feeling groggy. I’d intended to be up earlier, but from about seven on I’d kept waking and then falling back to sleep again, slipping in and out of dreams. When I finally managed to get out of bed, the first thing I did was take my MDT pill. Then I removed the bowl from the shelf above the computer. After that, I put on a pot of coffee and just stood around in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, waiting.

There were two possibilities. Either Gennady had done the pills – and if he’d done one he’d have done them all. Or, for some reason, he hadn’t done the pills. I reckoned that when I saw him I would know fairly quickly which one it was.

‘Morning,’ I said, studying him closely as he made his way in from the hallway.

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Then I watched him as he silently surveyed my apartment. At first, I thought he was looking for the missing ceramic bowl, but then I realized that he was just registering how different the place was from the last time he’d been here. Looking around with him, following his eye, I registered the changes for myself. The apartment was a mess. Papers and documents and folders were strewn about the place. There was an empty pizza box on the couch and there were a couple of Chinese takeout cartons on my desk beside the computer. There were beer cans and coffee mugs everywhere, and full ashtrays and CDs and empty CD covers and shirts and socks.

‘You some kind of fucking pig?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You can’t get decent help these days.’

He furrowed his brow at this, slightly puzzled, and I knew straightaway that he wasn’t on MDT – not right now at any rate.

‘Where the money?’

After he said this I noticed him glancing over at the shelf above the computer. When he didn’t see what he was looking for, he stepped a little closer to the desk and continued his discreet search.

‘I want to pay off the whole thing now,’ I said.