Limitless (7 page)

I dialled the number. It started ringing.

Shit
.

This was all unfolding a bit too quickly.

Rinnnnnggg
.

Click
.

Hum
.

Answering machine. Fuck, what did I do?

The next half minute of my life was as intense as anything I could remember in the previous thirty-six years. First, I had to listen to what was undeniably Melissa’s voice saying,
I’m not here right now, please leave a message
, though in a tone I found disconcertingly unfamiliar, and then I had to respond to her recorded voice by
recording my own voice saying that her brother –
who was here with me in the room
– was dead. Once I’d opened my mouth and started speaking, it was too late, and I couldn’t stop. I won’t go into the details of what I said to her, mainly because I can’t remember what I said, not exactly anyhow – but whatever … the point is that when I’d finished and had put the phone down, the strangeness of it all hit me suddenly and I was overwhelmed for a few moments by an uneasy mix of emotions … shock, self-disgust, grief, heartache … and my eyes filled up with tears …

I took a few deep breaths in an effort to control myself, and as I stood at the window, looking out over the city’s blur of architectural styles, one thought kept running through my mind: at this time yesterday I hadn’t even bumped into Vernon yet. Until that very moment on Twelfth Street I hadn’t spoken to him in nearly ten years. Neither had I spoken to his sister, or really thought that much about her – but now here I was in the space of less than a day getting myself re-entangled in her life and in a period of my own life that I thought had gone for ever. It was one of those imponderables of existence that months, even years, can go by without anything
significant
happening, and then suddenly a cluster of hours comes along, or even of minutes, that can blow a hole in time a mile wide.

I turned away from the window – flinching at the sight of Vernon on the couch – and walked over towards the kitchen area. It had been ransacked as well. The cupboards had been opened and gone through, and there were broken plates and pieces of glass all over the floor. I looked back at the mess in the living-room, and my stomach sank yet again. Then I turned and went along the hallway to the door on the left, which led into the bedroom, and it was the same in there – drawers had been pulled out and emptied, the mattress had been upturned, there were clothes everywhere, and a large cracked mirror lay on the floor.

I wondered why it had been necessary to make such a mess, but in my confused state – and obvious as it was – it still took me a couple of minutes to get it … of course, the intruder had been looking for something. Vernon must have opened the door to him
– which also meant he’d known him – and when I came back I must have interrupted him. But what had he been looking for? I felt a quickening of my pulse even as I formed the question.

I reached down and lifted up one of the emptied drawers. I stared into it and flipped it over. I did the same with the other drawers, and it wasn’t until I was going through some shoe-boxes on a high shelf in the closet a couple of minutes later that I realized two things. First, I was leaving my finger-prints all over the place, and second, I was actually searching Vernon’s bedroom. Neither of these things was a good idea, not by any stretch of the imagination – but the question of leaving finger-prints in the bedroom was especially
worrisome
in the short term. I had given the cops my name and when they arrived I fully intended telling them the truth – or at least most of the truth – but if they found out that I’d been poking around in here, my credibility would surely be undermined. I could be charged with disturbing a crime scene maybe, or with evidence-tampering, or I might even be implicated in the crime itself, so I immediately began retracing my steps, using the sleeve of my jacket to wipe over as many of the objects and surfaces I had touched as possible.

Standing in the doorway a few moments later, I looked back into the room to check that I hadn’t missed anywhere. For some reason which I can’t explain, I then looked up at the ceiling – and in doing this I noticed something quite odd. The ceiling was a grid of smallish square panels and one of them, directly above the bed, seemed to be slightly out of alignment. It looked as if it had recently been disturbed.

At the same time as I noticed this, I heard a police siren in the distance, and I hesitated for a moment, but then I went over to the bed, stood on it and reached up to the loose panel. I pushed it out of position and peered into the dimness above, where I could just barely make out pipes and ducts and aluminum casing. I stuck my hand up and felt inside and around the edges. My fingers came into contact with something. I reached in further, straining my arm muscles, and grabbed whatever it was, pulling it down out of the square hole. It was a large, brown padded envelope, which I let fall on to the upturned mattress.

Then I paused and listened. There were two sirens wailing now, maybe three, and they were definitely in the vicinity.

I reached back up to the ceiling and repositioned the loose panel as best I could. Then I got down off the bed and picked up the envelope. I quickly ripped it open and tossed the contents out on to the mattress. The first thing I saw was a little black notebook, then a thick roll of bills – I think they were all fifties – and, finally, a large plastic container with an air-lock seal across the top, a bigger version of the one Vernon had produced from his wallet in the bar the previous afternoon. Inside it were – I don’t know – maybe three hundred and fifty, four hundred,
five hundred
of the tiny white pills …

I stared down at them, with my mouth open – stared down at what was possibly as many as five hundred doses of MDT-48. Then I shook my head and started doing rapid calculations. Five hundred, say, by five hundred … that was, what … $250,000? A mere three or four of these things, on the other hand, and I could have my book finished in a week. I looked around me, acutely aware all of a sudden that I was in Vernon’s bedroom, and that the sirens – which had been getting louder as I opened the envelope – were now winding down, and in unison.

After another moment of hesitation I gathered all the stuff up off the mattress and put it back into the envelope. Carrying it under my arm, I went into the living-room and over to the window. Way down at street level I could see three police cars clustered together, their blue lights rotating. There was a buzz of activity now as uniformed officers appeared out of nowhere, as passers-by stopped to look and comment, and as the cross-street traffic on Ninetieth began clogging up.

I rushed over to the kitchen and searched for a plastic bag. I found one from the local A & P and stuffed the envelope into it. I went down the hallway and out the main door, making sure that I left it open. At the far end of the corridor – in the opposite direction from the elevators – there was a large metal door I’d seen earlier, and I ran towards it. The door opened on to the emergency stairs. To the left of the stairs, there was a small area where the garbage chute was
located, and a concrete alcove with a broom and some boxes in it. I dithered for a second, before deciding to run up the stairs to the next level, and then up to the next level again. There were four or five unmarked cardboard boxes stacked in the alcove. I put the plastic bag in behind these boxes, and without looking back I ran down the stairs again, taking the steps two or three at a time. I stumbled out through the metal door, still running, and back into the corridor.

With a couple of yards to go, I heard the elevator doors opening, and then a rising tide of voices. I got to the door of the apartment and slipped in. I went as fast as I could down the hallway and into the living-room – where of course at the shock of seeing Vernon again my heart lurched violently sideways.

Totally out of breath now, I stood in the middle of the room, panting, wheezing. I put my hand on my chest and leant forward, as though trying to ward off a coronary. Then I heard a gentle tap on the door outside and a circumspect voice saying, ‘Hello … hello,’ – a pause, and then – ‘police.’

‘Yep,’ I said, my voice catching a little between breaths, ‘in here.’

Just to be busy, I picked up the suit I’d dropped earlier, and the bag with the breakfast in it. I placed the bag on the glass table and the suit on the near side of the couch.

A young cop in uniform, about twenty-five years old, appeared from the hallway. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, consulting a tiny note-book, ‘… Edward Spinola?’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling guilty all of a sudden – and compromised, and like a bit of a fraud, and a low-life – ‘yes … that’s me.’ 

O
VER THE NEXT TEN OR FIFTEEN MINUTES
, the apartment was invaded by what seemed like a small army of uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives and forensics technicians.

I was taken aside – over to the kitchen area – and quizzed by one of the uniforms. He took my name, address, phone number and asked me where I worked and how I knew the deceased. As I answered his questions, I watched Vernon being examined and photographed and tagged. I also watched two plainclothes guys hunkering down beside the antique bureau, which was still on its side, and sifting through the papers on the floor all around it. They passed documents and letters and envelopes to each other, and made comments that I couldn’t hear. Another uniform stood by the window talking into his radio, and another one again was in the kitchen looking through the cupboards and the drawers.

There was a dream-like quality to the way the whole process unfolded. It had a choreographed rhythm of its own, and even though I was in it, standing there answering questions, I didn’t really feel a part of it – and especially not when they zipped Vernon up in a black bag and wheeled him out of the room on a gurney.

A few moments after this happened, one of the plainclothes
detectives
came over, introduced himself to me and dismissed the uniformed officer. His name was Foley. He was medium height, wore a dark suit and a raincoat. He was balding and overweight. He fired some questions at me, stuff about when and how I’d found the body, which I answered. I told him everything, except the part about
the MDT. As evidence to back up what I’d been saying, I pointed at the dry-cleaned suit and the brown paper bag.

The suit was laid out flat on the couch and was just up from where Vernon’s body had been. It was wrapped in plastic film, and looked eerie and spectral, like an after-image of Vernon himself, a visual echo, a tracer. Foley looked at the suit for a moment, too, but didn’t react – clearly not seeing it the way I saw it. Then he went over to the glass table and picked up the brown paper bag. He opened it and took out the items inside – the two coffees, the muffin, the Canadian bacon, the condiments – and laid them out along the table in a line, like the fragments of a skeleton displayed in a forensics laboratory.

‘So, how well did you know this … Vernon Gant?’ he asked.

‘I saw him yesterday for the first time in ten years. Bumped into him in the street.’

‘Bumped into him in the street,’ he said, nodding his head and staring at me.

‘And what line of work was he in?’

‘I don’t know. He used to collect and deal furniture when I knew him.’

‘Oh,’ Foley said, ‘so he was a
dealer
?’

‘I—’

‘What were you doing up here in the first place?’

‘Well …’ I cleared my throat at this point, ‘… like I said, I ran into him yesterday and we decided to meet up – you know, chew over old times.’

Foley looked around. ‘Chew over old times,’ he said, ‘chew over old times.’ He obviously had the habit of repeating lines like this, under his breath, half to himself, as though he were mulling them over, but it was clear that his real intention was to question their credibility, and to undermine the confidence of whoever he was speaking to at the time.

‘Yes,’ I said, letting my irritation show, ‘chew over old times. Anything wrong with that?’

Foley shrugged his shoulders.

I had the uneasy feeling that he was going to circle around me
for a while, pick holes in my story, and then try to extract a
confession
of some kind. But as he spoke, and fired more questions at me, I noticed that he’d begun eyeing the coffee and the wrapped-up muffin on the table, as though all he wanted or cared about in the world was to sit down and have some breakfast, and maybe read the funny papers.

‘What about family, next of kin?’ he said, ‘you have anything on that?’

I told him about Melissa, and how I’d phoned and left a message on her answering machine.

He paused and looked at me. ‘You left a
message
?’

‘Yes.’

He actually did mull this one over for a moment and then said, ‘The sensitive type, huh?’

I didn’t respond, although I certainly wanted to – wanted to
hit
him. But at the same time I could see his point. Even from the remove of a mere thirty or forty minutes, what I’d done by leaving that message now seemed truly awful. I shook my head and turned away towards the window. The news itself was bad enough,
obviously
– but how much worse was it going to be for her hearing it from
me
, and on an answering machine? I sighed in frustration, and noticed that I was still shaking a little.

I eventually looked back at Foley, expecting some more questions, but there weren’t any. He had taken the plastic lid from the regular coffee and was opening the foil wrapper on the toasted English muffin. He shrugged his shoulders again and threw me a look that said,
What can I tell you? I’m hungry
.

After another twenty minutes or so, I was led out of the apartment and taken in a car to the local precinct to make an official
statement
. No one spoke to me on the way, and with different thoughts vying for space in my mind, I paid very little attention to my
immediate
surroundings. When I next had to speak I was in a large, busy office, sitting across a desk from another overweight detective with an Irish name.

Brogan.

He went over the same ground as Foley had, asked the same questions and showed about as much interest in the answers. I then had to sit on a wooden bench for about half an hour while the
statement
was being typed up and printed out. There was a lot of activity in the room, all sorts of people coming and going, and I found it hard to think.

I was eventually called back over to Brogan’s desk and asked to read and sign the statement. As I went through it, he sat in silence, playing with a paper clip. Just before I got to the end of it, his
telephone
rang and he answered it with a
yeah
. He paused for a few seconds, said
yeah
once or twice more and then proceeded to give a brief account of what had happened. I was very tired at this point and didn’t really bother to listen, so it wasn’t until I heard him utter the words
Yes, Ms Gant
that I jolted up and started paying
attention
.

Brogan’s matter-of-fact report went on for a another few moments, but then all of a sudden he was saying, ‘Yeah, sure, he’s right here. I’ll put him on to you.’ He held the phone out and signalled me to take it. I reached over, and in the two or three seconds it took to position the handset at my ear, I felt what I imagined to be untold quantities of adrenalin entering my bloodstream.

‘Hi … Melissa?’

‘Yeah, Eddie. I got your message.’

Silence.

‘Listen, I’m really sorry about that, I was in a panic – I …’

‘Don’t worry. That’s what answering machines are for.’

‘Well … yeah … OK.’ I looked over at Brogan, nervously. ‘And I’m really sorry about Vernon.’

‘Yeah. Me too. Jesus.’ Her voice was slow and tired-sounding. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Eddie, it didn’t surprise me that much. It was a long time coming.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say to
that
.

‘I know it sounds hard, but he was involved in some …’ She paused here, and then went on, ‘… some
stuff
. But I suppose I’d better keep my mouth shut on
this
line, right?’

‘Probably be a good idea.’

Brogan was still playing with the paper clip, and looked like he was listening to an episode of his favourite serial on the radio.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard your voice, though,’ Melissa went on, ‘and I almost didn’t get the message. I had to replay it twice.’ She paused, and for a couple of beats longer than seemed natural. ‘So … what were you doing at Vernon’s?’

‘I ran into him on Twelfth Street yesterday afternoon,’ I said,
practically
reading from the statement in front of me, ‘and we agreed to meet earlier today at his apartment.’

‘This is all so weird.’

‘Is there any chance we could meet up? I’d like to—’

I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Like to what?

She let the silence hang there between us.

Eventually, she said, ‘I reckon I’m going to be very busy over the next while, Eddie. I’m going to have to arrange the funeral and God knows what else.’

‘Well, can I help you with any of that? I feel—’

‘Don’t. You don’t have to feel anything. Just let me give you a call when … when I have some time. And we can have a proper
conversation
then. How about that?’

‘Sure.’

I wanted to say more, ask her how she was, keep her talking, but that was it. She said, ‘OK … goodbye,’ and then we both hung up.

Brogan flicked the paper clip away, leant forward in his chair and nodded down at the statement.

I signed it and gave it back to him.

‘That it?’ I said.

‘For the moment. If we need you again, we’ll call you.’

Then he opened a drawer in his desk and started looking for
something
.

I stood up and left.

Down on the street I lit a cigarette and took a few deep pulls on it.

I looked at my watch. It was just after three-thirty.

This time yesterday none of this had started yet.

Pretty soon I wasn’t going to be able to entertain that thought any more. Which I was glad about in a way, because every time I did entertain it I fell into the annoying trap of thinking that there might be some kind of a reprieve available, almost as if there were a period of grace in these matters during which you could go back and undo stuff, get a moral refund on your mistakes.

I walked aimlessly for a few blocks and then hailed a cab. Sitting in the back seat, and going towards mid-town, I rewound the
conversation
with Melissa in my head and played it over a few times. Despite what we’d been talking about, the tone of the conversation had at least felt normal – which pleased me inordinately. But there
was
something different in the timbre of her voice, something I’d also detected earlier when I listened to the message on her answering machine. It was a thickness, or a heaviness – but from what? Disappointment? Cigarettes? Kids?

What did
I
know?

I glanced out of the back-seat window. The numbers on the
cross-streets
– the Fifties, Forties, Thirties – were flitting past again, as though levels of pressure were being reduced to allow me to
re-enter
the atmosphere. The further we got from Linden Tower, in fact, the better I felt – but then something struck me.

Vernon had been into some stuff, Melissa had said. I think I knew what that meant – and presumably as a direct consequence of this stuff he had been beaten up and later murdered. For my part, while Vernon lay dead on a couch, I had searched his bedroom, found a roll of bills, a notebook and five hundred tablets. I had hidden these items and then lied to the police. Surely that meant
I
was now into some stuff, too.

And could also be in danger.

Had anyone seen me? I didn’t think so. When I got back up from the diner to Vernon’s apartment the intruder had been in the bedroom and had fled immediately. All he could have seen was my back, or at most caught a glimpse of me when I turned around, as I had of him – but that had just been a dark blur.

He or anyone, however, could have been watching from outside Linden Tower. They could have spotted me coming down with the
police, followed me to the precinct –
be following me now
.

I told the driver to stop.

He pulled over on the corner of Twenty-ninth and Second. I paid him and got out. I looked around. No other car – or cars – appeared to have stopped at the same time as we had, although I suppose I could have missed something. In any case, I walked briskly in the direction of Third Avenue, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. I made my way to the subway station on Twenty-eighth and Lexington and took a 6 train down to Union Square and then an L train west as far as Eighth Avenue. I got out there and caught a cross-town bus back over to First.

I was going to take a taxi from here and loop around for a bit, but I was too close to home, and too tired – and I honestly didn’t believe at this point that I
had
been followed – so I just gave in, dropped below Fourteenth Street and walked the remaining few blocks to my building.