Alan Glynn: The Dark Fields aka Limitless

I looked down at the briefcase full of money, and then back at the phone. How could I have been so stupid, so vain? I looked over at the windows. It was a bright day. I walked over to the door, very slowly, and opened it.

I turned, and took a few paces back into the room, and then turned again to face the door. At my feet, there was a large, crushed box, its spilt contents – saucepans, pots, various kitchen implements – splayed out like intestines on the floor.

I stood there, an old man suddenly – feeble, stooped, at the mercy of everything around me. I heard the elevator opening, and then footsteps, and then a couple of moments later Gennady appeared in the doorway.

‘ Whoa … fuck! ’

He looked around in shock – at me, at the mess, at the sheer size of the place, at the windows – obviously unable to decide if he was disgusted or impressed. He was wearing a pin-striped two-button suit, a black shirt and no tie. He’d shaved his head and was sporting a three-day stubble on his chiselled face.

He looked me up and down a couple of times.

‘What the fuck’s wrong with you ?’

I mumbled something in response.

He came a little further into the room. Then, side-stepping the mess on the floor, he made his way over to the windows, irresistibly drawn to them, I suppose – just as I had been on that first visit here with Alison Botnick.

I didn’t move. I felt nauseous.

‘This is certainly a change from that shit-hole you had on Tenth Street.’

‘Yeah.’

I could hear him behind me, pacing along by the windows.

‘Shit, you can see everything.’ He paused. ‘I heard you’d found yourself quite a place, but this is amazing.’

What did that mean?

‘There’s the Empire State. The Chrysler Building. Brooklyn. I like this. You know, maybe I’ll get a place here myself.’ I could tell from his voice that he had turned around now. ‘In fact, maybe I’ll take this place, move in here . How’d that be, jerkoff?’

‘That’d be great, Gennady,’ I said, half turning around, ‘I was going to look for a room-mate anyway, you know – to help with the repayments.’

‘Listen to this, a comedian with shit stains on his pants. So, Eddie, what the fuck’s going on here?’

He walked around the other side of the mess and came back into view. He stopped when he saw the briefcase of money on the floor.

‘Jesus, you really don’t like banks, do you?’

With his back to me, he bent down and started looking at the money, taking wads of it out and flicking through them.

‘There must be three or four hundred thousand dollars here.’ He whistled. ‘I don’t know what you’re into, Eddie, but if there’s much more where this came from, you might want to think of investing some of it. My import company’s going to be up and running soon, so if you want in for some points… you know, we can talk about a price.’

Talk about a price?

Gennady didn’t know it, but he was going to be dead soon – in a few days’ time, after his supply of MDT had run out.

‘Well,’ he said, straightening up again and turning around, ‘when am I going to meet this dealer of yours?’

I looked at him, and said, ‘You’re not going to meet him.’

‘ What ?’

‘You’re not going to meet him.’

He paused, breathing out through his nose. Then he stood looking at me for about ten seconds. The expression on his face was like that of a thwarted child – but a thwarted child with a switchblade in his pocket. Slowly he took it out and flicked it open.

‘I thought this might happen,’ he said, ‘so I did some homework. Found out a few things about you, Eddie. Been keeping an eye on you.’

I swallowed.

‘You’ve been doing pretty well recently, haven’t you? With your business associates and merger deals.’ He turned and started pacing across the room. ‘But I don’t think Van Loon or Hank Atwood would be too happy to hear about your association with a Russian loanshark.’

I looked at him, starting to feel a little thwarted myself.

‘Or about your history of substance abuse. Wouldn’t play too well in the press either.’

My history of substance abuse? That was history. How could he know anything about that?

‘It’s incredible what you can find out about someone’s past, isn’t it?’ he said, as though reading my thoughts. ‘Employment records, credit history – even personal stuff.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

As he said this, he turned and walked quickly back to where I was standing. He held the knife up near my nose and waved it from side to side.

‘I could re-arrange the elements of your face, Eddie, nicely, creatively, but I’d still want the answer to my question.’ He stared into my eyes, and repeated it, this time in a whisper, ‘ When am I going to meet this dealer of yours? ’

I had nowhere to go, and very little to lose. I whispered back, ‘You’re not.’

There was a brief pause, and then he punched me in the stomach with his left hand – just as swiftly and efficiently as he’d done once before in my old apartment. I doubled up and fell back on to some boxes, wheezing and clutching myself with both arms.

Gennady then took off again, pacing back and forth across the room.

‘You didn’t think I was going to start with the face, did you?’

The pain was simultaneously awful and something I felt at a curious remove from. I think I was too concerned about how my privacy had been invaded, about how Gennady had managed to dig up my past.

‘I’ve got a whole file on you. This thick. It’s all out there, Eddie, information – for the taking, detail like you wouldn’t believe.’

I looked up. He had his back to me now and was waving his hands about. Just then something caught my eye – something sticking out of the smashed box of kitchen implements in front of me.

‘So what I want to know, Eddie, is this: how do you propose to explain all those years of mediocrity to your new friends at the top? Eh? Writing that turgid shit for K & D? Teaching English in Italy without a work permit? Fucking up the colour separations at Chrome magazine?’

As he was speaking, I reached over to the box. Sticking out of it was the wooden handle of a long, steel carving knife. I took hold of it and eased it out of the box, my head pounding from the effort of trying to control the shake in my hand – to say nothing of having to lean across in the first place. I then struggled up on to my feet, being careful to keep the knife behind my back.

Gennady turned around.

‘And you were married once, as well, weren’t you?’

He came across the room towards me. I was dizzy now, seeing him in double as he approached, the background white and pulsating. But despite this unsteadiness, I seemed to know what I was doing – everything was clear and in place, anger, humiliation, fear. There was a logic to it all, an inevitability. Was this how it had been up on the fifteenth floor? I didn’t see how it could have been, but I also knew that I would never find out.

‘But that didn’t work out either, did it?’

He stopped for a moment, and then came a few steps closer.

‘What was her name again?’

He held the knife up and waved it in my face. I could smell his breath. My heart and head were pounding in unison now.

‘Melissa.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘ Melissa … and she’s got, what, two kids?’

I widened my eyes suddenly and looked over his shoulder. When he turned to see what I was looking at, I took a deep breath and brought the carving knife around. In a single, swift movement, I drove the point of it into his belly and grabbed the back of his neck with my other hand for leverage. I pushed the knife in as hard as I could, trying to direct it upwards. I heard a deep, gurgling sound and felt his arms flailing up and down, helplessly, as though they’d been cut adrift from the rest of his body. I gave a final shove to the knife and then had to let go. It had taken a huge effort to do this much and I just staggered backwards, trying to catch my breath. Then I leant against one of the windows and watched as Gennady stood in the same position, swaying, staring at me. His mouth was open and both his hands were clasping the wooden handle of the knife – the only part of it that was still visible.