Limitless (6 page)

‘You know what?’ he said, turning around to face me. ‘I’m going to ask you to do me a favour.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m in no shape to go out right now, as you can see, but I do have to go out later … and I need to pick up a suit at the
drycleaner’s
. So could I ask you to run down and pick it up for me? And maybe while you’re there you could pick us up some breakfast, too?’

‘Sure.’

‘And some aspirin?’

‘Sure.’

Standing there in front of me, in his shorts, Vernon looked skinny and kind of pathetic. Also, up close like this, I could see lines in his face and grey streaks in the hair around his temples. His skin was drawn. Suddenly, I could see where the ten years had gone. Doubtless, looking at me, Vernon was thinking – with suitable
variations
– the same thing. This gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach, and was compounded by the fact that I was trying to ingratiate myself with him – with my
dealer
– by agreeing to run down and pick up his suit and get him some breakfast. I was amazed at how quickly it all slotted back into place, this dealer-client dynamic, this easy sacrificing of dignity for a guaranteed return of a dime bag or a gram or an eightball or, in this case, a pill that was going to cost me the best part of a month’s rent.

Vernon walked across the room to the old bureau and got his wallet. As he was going through it – looking, presumably, for money and the dry-cleaning stub – I noticed a copy of the
Boston Globe
lying on the tinted-glass dining table. Their lead story was Defense Secretary Caleb Hale’s ill-advised comments about Mexico, but why – I asked myself – was a New Yorker reading the
Boston Globe
?

Vernon turned around and walked towards me.

‘Get me a toasted English with scrambled eggs and Swiss, and a side of Canadian bacon, and a regular coffee. And whatever you want yourself.’

He handed me a bill and a small blue stub. I put the stub in the breast pocket of my jacket. I looked at the bill – at the sombre,
bearded face of Ulysses S. Grant – and handed it back to him.

‘What, your local diner’s going to break a fifty for an English muffin?’

‘Why not? Fuck ’em.’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘Whatever. The drycleaner’s is on the corner of Eighty-ninth and the diner’s right beside it. There’s a paper store on the same block where you can get the aspirin. Oh, and could you get me a
Boston Globe
as well?’

I looked back at the paper on the table.

He saw me looking at it and said, ‘That’s yesterday’s.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and now you want today’s?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK,’ I said and shrugged. Then I turned and went along the narrow hallway towards the door.

‘Thanks,’ he said, walking behind me. ‘And listen, we’ll sort
something
out when you get back up, price-wise. Everything is
negotiable
, am I right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, opening the door, ‘see you in a few.’

I heard the door close behind me as I made my way down the hall and around the corner to the elevators.

On the ride down I had to resist thinking too much about how bad all of this was making me feel. I told myself that he’d had the shit kicked out of him and that I was just doing him a favour, but it brought me back to the old days. It reminded me of the hours spent waiting in various apartments, pre-Vernon, for
the guy
to show up and of the laboured small talk and of all the nervous energy invested in holding things together until that glorious moment arrived when you could hit the road, split … go to a club or go home – eighty bucks lighter, OK, but a whole gram heavier.

The old days.

Which were more than ten years ago.

So what the
fuck
was I doing now?

I left the elevator car, walked out through the revolving doors and on to the plaza. I crossed Ninetieth Street and headed in the direction
of Eighty-ninth. I came to the paper store about half-way along the block and went inside. Vernon hadn’t said what brand he wanted, so I asked for a box of my own favourites, Extra-Strength Excedrin. I looked at the newspapers laid out on the flat – Mexico, Mexico, Mexico – and picked up a
Globe
. I scanned the front page for anything that might give me a clue as to why Vernon was reading this paper, and the only possible item I could find related to an upcoming product liability trial. There was a small paragraph about it and a page reference for a fuller report inside. The international chemical corporation, Eiben-Chemcorp, would be defending charges in a Massachusetts court that its hugely popular anti-depressant, Triburbazine, had caused a teenage girl, who’d only been taking the drug for two weeks, to kill her best friend and then herself. Was this the company Vernon had said he was working for? Eiben-Chemcorp? Hardly.

I took the paper and the Excedrin, paid for them, and went back out on to the street.

Next, I headed for the diner, which I saw was called the DeLuxe Luncheonette and was one of those old-style places you find in most parts of the city. It probably looked exactly the same thirty years ago as it did today, probably had some of the same clientele, as well, and was therefore, curiously, a living link to an earlier version of the neighbourhood. Or not. Maybe. I don’t know. In any case, it was a greasy spoon and being around lunchtime the place was fairly crowded, so I stood inside the door and waited for my turn to order.

A middle-aged Hispanic guy behind the counter was saying, ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it. I mean, what is this all about? They don’t have enough problems here, they’ve got to go down there making more problems?’ Then he looked to his left, ‘
What
?
’

There were two younger guys at the grill speaking Spanish to each other and obviously laughing at him.

He threw his hands up.

‘Nobody cares any more, nobody gives a damn.’

Standing beside me, there were three people waiting for their orders in total silence. To my left, there were some other people
sitting at tables. The one nearest to me had four old guys at it drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. One of them was reading the
Post
and I realized after a moment that the guy behind the counter was addressing his remarks to him.

‘Remember Cuba?’ he went on. ‘Bay of Pigs? Is this going to turn into another Bay of Pigs, another fiasco like that was?’

‘I don’t see the analogy,’ the old guy reading the
Post
said. ‘Cuba was because of Communism.’ He didn’t take his eyes off the paper during this, and he also spoke with a very faint German accent. ‘And the same goes for US involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In the last century there was a war with Mexico because the US wanted Texas and California. That made sense, strategic sense. But this?’

He left the question hanging and continued reading.

Very quickly the guy behind the counter wrapped up two orders, took money for them and some people left. I moved up a bit and he looked at me. I ordered what Vernon had asked for, plus a black coffee, and said that I’d be back in two minutes. As I was going out, the guy behind the counter was saying, ‘I don’t know, you ask me, they should bring back the Cold War …’

I went to the dry-cleaner’s next door and retrieved Vernon’s suit. I lingered on the street for a few moments and watched the passing traffic. Back in the DeLuxe Luncheonette, a customer at another table, a young guy in a denim shirt, had joined in the conversation.

‘What, you think the government’s going to get involved in
something
like this
for no reason
? That’s just crazy.’

The guy reading the
Post
had put his paper down and was straining to look around.

‘Governments don’t always act in a logical way,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they pursue policies that are contrary to their own
interests
. Look at Vietnam. Thirty years of—’

‘Aw, don’t bring that up, will you?’

The guy behind the counter, who was putting my stuff in a bag now – and seemed to be talking
to
the bag – muttered, ‘Leave the Mexican people alone, that’s all. Just leave them alone.’

I paid him and took the bag.

‘Vietnam—’

‘Vietnam was a mistake, all right?’

‘A mistake? Ha. Eisenhower? Kennedy? Johnson? Nixon? Big mistake.’

‘Look, you—’

I left the DeLuxe Luncheonette and walked back towards Linden Tower, holding Vernon’s suit up in one hand and his breakfast and the
Boston Globe
in the other. I had an awkward time getting through the revolving doors and my left arm started aching as I waited for the elevator.

On the ride back up to the seventeenth floor I could smell the food from the brown paper bag, and wished that I’d got something for myself besides the black coffee. I was alone in the elevator and toyed with the idea of appropriating one of Vernon’s strips of Canadian bacon, but decided against it on the grounds that it would be too sad, and – with the suit on a wire hanger – also a little
difficult
to manoeuvre.

I got out of the elevator, walked along the corridor and around the corner. As I approached Vernon’s apartment, I noticed that the door was slightly open. I edged it open further with my foot and stepped inside. I called out Vernon’s name and went along the hallway to the living-room, but even before I got there I sensed that
something
was wrong. I braced myself as the room came into view, and started back in shock when I saw what a complete mess the place was in. Furniture had been turned over – the chairs, the bureau, the wine-rack. Pictures on the wall were askew. There were books and papers and other objects tossed everywhere, and for a moment it was extremely difficult to focus on any one thing.

As I stood there in a state of paralysis, holding up Vernon’s suit and the brown paper bag and the
Boston Globe
, two things happened. I suddenly locked on to the figure of Vernon sitting on the black leather couch, and then, almost simultaneously, I heard a sound behind me – footsteps or a shuffling of some kind. I spun around, dropping the suit and the bag and the newspaper. The hallway was dark, but I saw a shape moving very quickly from a door on the left over to the main door on the right, and then out into the corridor. I hesitated, my heart starting to beat like a jack-hammer. After a
moment, I ran along the hallway and out through the door myself. I looked up and down the corridor but there was no one there. I rushed on as far as the end and just as I was turning the corner into the longer corridor I heard the elevator doors sliding closed.

Partly relieved that I wasn’t going to have to confront anyone, I turned and walked towards the apartment, but as I did so the figure of Vernon on the couch suddenly flashed back into my head. He was sitting there – what … pissed off at the state of his living-room? Wondering who the intruder was? Calculating the cost of having the bureau repaired?

Somehow none of these options sat easily with the image I had in my mind, and as I got closer to the door I felt a stabbing
sensation
in my stomach. I went in and made my way down to the
living-room
, pretty much knowing at this stage what I was about to see.

Vernon was there on the couch, all right, in exactly the same
position
as before. He was sitting back, his legs and arms splayed out, his eyes staring directly ahead of him – or rather, appearing to stare, because clearly Vernon wasn’t capable of staring at anything any more.

I stepped closer and saw the bullet-hole in his forehead. It was small and neat and red. Despite having always lived in New York City I’d never actually seen a bullet-hole before, and I paused over it in horrified fascination. I don’t know how long I stood there, but when I finally moved I found that I was shaking, and almost
uncontrollably
. I simply couldn’t think straight, either, as though some switch in my brain had been flipped, causing my mind to deactivate. I shifted on my feet a couple of times, but these were false starts, and led nowhere. Nothing was getting through to the control centre, and whatever it was that I should have been doing I wasn’t doing – which meant, therefore, that I was doing nothing. Then, like a meteor crashing to earth, it hit me: of course, call the fucking police, you idiot.

I looked around the room for the telephone and eventually saw it on the floor beside the upturned antique bureau. Drawers had been removed from the bureau and there were papers and
documents
everywhere. I went over to the phone, picked it up and dialled
911. When I got through to someone I started babbling and was quickly told,
Sir – please … calm down
, and was then asked to give a location. I was immediately put through to someone else, someone in a local precinct presumably, and I babbled some more. When I finally put the phone down, I
think
I had given the address of the apartment I was in, as well as mentioning my own name and the fact that someone had been shot dead.

I kept my hand on the receiver of the phone, clenching it tightly, possibly in the mistaken belief that this was still actually doing
something
. The thing was, I had a lot of adrenalin to deal with now, so after a bit of rapid reflection I decided that it would be better to keep busy, to do something requiring concentration, and that
pointedly
not
looking at Vernon’s body on the couch would probably be a help as well. But then I realized that there was something I had to do in any case, regardless of my mental state.

I started shuffling through the papers around the upturned bureau and after a couple of minutes found what I was looking for, Vernon’s address book. I flicked it open to the M section. There was one number on this page, and it was Melissa’s. She was Vernon’s next of kin.

Who else was going to tell her?

I hadn’t spoken to Melissa in I couldn’t remember how long – nine, ten years – and here now in front of me was her telephone number. In nine or ten seconds I could be talking to her.