by Alan Glynn
I stood there for quite a while – in shock, I suppose – not thinking anything. I glanced over at the open door. The two Barnes & Noble bags were still outside in the hallway, sitting on the floor next to each other, looking as though they were patiently waiting to be carried inside.
Then the phone rang.
I wasn’t going to answer it, but when I noticed that they hadn’t yanked the phone cable out of the wall, as they had with the computer and the TV, I went over to it. I bent down and picked it up. I said hello, but it went dead immediately.
I stood up again. I went over and edged the two bags inside the door with my foot. Then I shut the door and leant back against it. I took a few deep breaths, swallowed, closed my eyes.
The phone rang again.
I went over and answered it as before, but – as before – it went dead. Then almost immediately it rang again.
I picked it up but didn’t say anything.
Whoever it was didn’t hang up this time.
Eventually, a voice said, ‘So, Eddie, this is it.’
‘Who is this?’
‘You went too far talking to Dave Morgenthaler. Not a good idea—’
‘Who the fuck is this?’
‘—so we’ve decided to pull the plug. But … just thought we’d let you know. Seeing as how you’ve been such a sport and all.’
The voice was very quiet, almost a whisper. There was no emotion in it, no hint of an accent.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this, of course – but at this stage, I almost feel that I know you.’
‘What do you mean pull the plug?’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed already that we’ve taken the stuff back. So, as of now, you can consider the experiment terminated.’
‘Experiment?’
There was silence for a moment.
‘We’ve been monitoring you ever since you showed up that day at Vernon’s, Eddie.’
My heart sank.
‘Why do you think you never heard back from the police? We weren’t sure at first, but when it became obvious to us that you had Vernon’s supply, we decided to see what would happen next, to conduct a little clinical trial, as it were. We haven’t had that many human subjects, you know …’
I stared out across the room, trying to cast my mind back, trying to identify signs, tells …
‘… and boy, what a subject you turned out to be! If it’s any consolation to you, Eddie, no one has ever done as much MDT as you have, no one’s ever taken it as far as you have.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I mean, we knew you really must’ve been hitting it hard when you cleaned up at Lafayette, but then when you moved in on Van Loon … that was amazing.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Of course, there was that little incident at the Clifden—’
‘Who are you?’ I repeated, dully now, almost mechanically.
‘—but tell me, what exactly did happen there?’
I put the phone down, and kept my hand on it, hard, as though by pressing it like that, he – whoever he was – would go away.
When the phone rang again, I picked it up at once.
‘Look, Eddie, no hard feelings, but we can’t risk having you talking to private detectives – not to mention Russian loansharks. Just know that you’ve been … a very useful subject.’
‘Come on,’ I said, a sense of desperation welling up in me all of a sudden, ‘is there no way … I mean, I don’t have to …’
‘Listen, Eddie—’
‘I didn’t give Morgenthaler anything, I didn’t tell him anything …’ – there was a crack in my voice now – ‘… couldn’t I just get …some kind of supply, some …’
‘Eddie—’
‘I’ve got money,’ I said, clutching the receiver tightly to stop my hand from trembling. ‘I’ve got a lot of money in the bank. I could—’
The line went dead.
I kept my hand on the receiver, just like I had the last time. This time, however, I waited a full ten minutes. But nothing happened.
I finally lifted my hand away and stood up. My legs were stiff. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, back and forth for a while. It felt like I was doing something.
Why had he hung up?
Was it because I had mentioned money? Would he be calling back in a while with a figure? Should I be ready?
How much did I have in the bank?
I waited another twenty minutes or so, but nothing happened.
Over the next twenty minutes again, I convinced myself that his hanging up on me had been some kind of a coded message. I’d offered him money, and now I was going to have to sweat it out until he called me back with a figure – which I’d better have ready.
I stared down at the phone.
I didn’t want to use it, so I took out my cellphone and rang Howard Lewis, my bank manager. He was on another call. I left a message for him to call me back on this number. I said it was urgent. Five minutes later, he returned the call. Between what I’d made trading recently and money I’d borrowed from Van Loon for the decorating and furnishing of the apartment, there was just over $400,000 in the account. Since Van Loon had gotten involved in my financial affairs on a personal level, Lewis had reverted to his earlier obsequious mode, so when I told him that I needed half a million dollars in cash – and as quickly as possible – he was flustered but at the same time so eager to please that he promised to have the money ready for me first thing in the morning.
I said OK, I’d be there. Then I closed up the phone, switched it off and put it back in my pocket.
Half a million dollars. Who could turn that down?
I paced around the room, avoiding the mess in the centre. Every now and again, I glanced over at the phone on the floor.
When it started ringing again, I leapt towards it, bent down and picked it up in what seemed like a single movement.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Spinola? It’s Richie, down at the desk?’
Shit.
‘What? I’m busy.’
‘I just wanted to check that everything was all right. I mean, about that—’
‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine. There’s no problem.’
I hung up.
My heart was pounding.
I stood up again and continued pacing around the room. I considered tidying up the mess, but decided against it. After a while I sat down on the floor, with my back to the wall and just stared out across the room, waiting.
I stayed in that position for the next eight hours.
*
Normally, I would have taken a dose of MDT in the afternoon, but since that hadn’t been possible, I was overtaken with fatigue by late evening – something I identified as the earliest stage of the withdrawal process. As a result of this, I actually managed to get some sleep – even if it was fitful and disturbed. I had no bed, so I stacked up some blankets and a duvet on the floor and used that to sleep on. When I awoke – at about five in the morning – I had a dull headache and my throat was dry and raspy.
I made a cursory effort to tidy the mess up, just for something to do, but my mind was too clogged with anxiety and fear, and I didn’t get very far.
Before I went to the bank, I took two Excedrin tablets. Then I rooted out my answering machine from one of the smashed wooden crates. It didn’t look as if it had sustained too much damage, and when I connected it up to the phone on the floor, it appeared to be working. I got my briefcase from another crate, put on a coat and left – avoiding eye-contact with Richie at the desk down in the lobby.
In the cab on the way to the bank, with the empty briefcase resting on my lap, I experienced a wave of despair, a sense that the hope I was clinging to was not only desperate, but clearly – and absolutely – unfounded. As I looked out at the traffic and at the passing, streaming façade of Thirty-fourth Street, the notion that things could somehow be reversed, at this late stage, suddenly seemed, well … too much to hope for.
But then at the bank, as I watched an official stack my briefcase full with solid bricks of cash – fifty and hundred dollar bills – I regained a certain amount of confidence. I signed any relevant documents there were, smiled politely at the fawning Howard Lewis, bid him good morning and left.
In the cab on the way back, with the now full briefcase resting on my lap, I felt vaguely excited, as if this new scheme couldn’t fail. When the guy phoned, I’d be ready with an offer – he’d have a proposal … we’d negotiate, things would slip neatly back into place.
*
As soon as I got up to the apartment, I put the briefcase down on the floor beside the telephone. I left it open, so I could see the money. There were no messages on the answering machine, and I checked my cellphone to see if there were any on that. There was one new one – from Van Loon. He understood I needed a break, but this was no way to go about taking one. I was to call him.
I powered off the phone and put it away.
By midday, my headache had become quite severe. I continued taking Excedrin tablets, but they no longer seemed to have any effect. I took a shower and stood for ages under the jet of hot water, trying to soothe the knots of tension out of my neck and shoulders.
The headache had started as a band across my forehead and behind my eyes, but by mid-afternoon it had worked its way out to every part of my skull and was pounding like a jackhammer.
I paced around the room for hours, trying to absorb the pain – glaring at the phone, willing it to ring. I couldn’t understand why that guy hadn’t called me back yet. I looked at the money. That was half a million dollars there, lying on the floor, just waiting for someone to come along and take it …
*
By early evening, I found that walking around didn’t help much any more. I was having intermittent bouts of nausea now and was shivering all over, fairly constantly. It was easier, I decided, to lie on the makeshift bed of stacked blankets and a duvet, tossing and turning, and occasionally clutching my head in a vain attempt to ease the pain. As it got dark, I drifted in and out of a feverish sleep. At one point, I woke up retching – desperately trying to empty my already empty stomach. I coughed up blood on to the floor and then lay flat on my back again, staring up at the ceiling.
That night – Thursday night – was interminable, and yet in one sense I didn’t want it to end. As the veil of MDT lifted further, my sense of horror and dread intensified. The torment of uncertainty gnawed away at the lining of my stomach and I kept thinking, What have I done? I had vivid dreams, hallucinations almost, in which I repeatedly seemed to come close to an understanding of what had happened that night at the Clifden Hotel – but then, since I was unable to separate what my fevered mind was concocting from what I was actually remembering, it was never close enough. I saw Donatella Alvarez calmly walking across the room, like before, in a black dress, blood pouring down the side of her face – but it was this room, not the hotel room, and I remember thinking that if she’d taken such a serious blow to the head, she wouldn’t be calm, or walking around. I also dreamt that the two of us were on a couch together, entangled in each other’s arms, and I was staring into her eyes, aroused, excited, engulfed in the flames of some nameless emotion – but at the same time it was my old couch we were on, the one from the apartment on Tenth Street, and she was whispering in my ear, telling me to short-sell tech stocks now, now, now. Later, she was sitting across the table from me in Van Loon’s dining-room, smoking a cigar and talking animatedly, ‘… because you norteamericanos don’t understand anything, nothing …’ – and then I seemed to be reaching out in anger for the nearest wine bottle …
Versions of this encounter passed through my mind continually during the night, each one slightly different – not a cigar, but a cigarette or a candle, not a wine bottle, but a cane or a statuette – each one like a shard of coloured glass hurtling in slow-motion through space after an explosion, each one vainly promising to form into a solid memory, into something objective and recollectable … and reliable …
At one point, I rolled off the duvet, holding my stomach, and crawled across the floor through the glistening darkness to the bathroom. After another fit of retching, this time into the toilet bowl, I managed to get up on to my feet. I leant over the wash-basin, struggled with the faucets for a moment and then threw some cold water on my face. When I looked up, my reflection in the mirror was ghostlike and barely visible, with my eyes – clear and moving – the only sign of life.
I dragged myself back into the living-room, where the dim shapes on the floor – the smashed boxes, the crumpled clothes, the open briefcase full of money – looked like irregular rock formations on some strange and dusky blue terrain. I slumped back against the wall nearest to the telephone and slid down into a sitting position on the floor. I stayed there for the next couple of hours, as daylight seeped in around me, allowing the room to reconstitute itself before my eyes, unchanged.
And I came to some accommodation with the pain in my head, as well – so long as I remained absolutely still, and didn’t move, didn’t flinch, it obligingly receded into a dull, thumping, mindless rhythm …
[ 27 ]
WHEN THE PHONE RANG BESIDE ME, just after nine o’clock, it felt like a thousand volts of electric current piercing my brain.
I reached over – wincing, my hand shaking – and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Spinola? It’s Richie, at the desk.’
‘Hhhn.’
‘There’s a Mr … Gennady here to see you? Shall I send him up?’
Friday morning.
This morning. Well, yesterday morning by now.
I paused.
‘Yeah.’
I put the phone down. He might as well see me – see what he would be in for shortly.
I struggled to get up off the floor – each movement I made like another charge of electric current through my brain. When I eventually got up I noticed that I was standing in a small pool of my own piss. There were blood and mucus stains on my shirt and I was trembling all over.
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.
