Limitless

After the question-and-answer session had been wrapped up, the crowd began to disperse, but then the place became more chaotic than ever. Journalists from Business Week and Time were floating around looking for people to get comments from, and executives were slapping each other on the back and laughing. At one point, Hank Atwood passed and slapped me on the back. He then turned, and with an outstretched arm pointed an index finger directly at me.

‘The future, Eddie, the future.’

I half smiled, and he was gone.

There was talk among the Van Loon & Associates people about going out somewhere for dinner, to celebrate, but I couldn’t have faced that. With the events of the day so far, I had assembled the possible makings of a full-blown anxiety attack, and I didn’t want to do anything stupid now that would actually precipitate one.

Without saying a word to anybody, therefore, I turned around and strolled out of the conference room. I crossed the atrium lounge and the lobby area and just walked right out of the hotel on to Fifty-sixth Street. It was a warm evening and the air was thick with the muffled roar of the city. I went over to Fifth Avenue and stood at the foot of Trump Tower, looking up the three blocks towards Fifty-ninth Street – at Grand Army Plaza and the corner of Central Park. Why did Dave Morgenthaler want to meet me there? Out in the open like that?

I turned and looked in the opposite direction, at the streams of traffic, dipping and rising, and at the parallel lines of the buildings, trailing towards some invisible point of convergence.

I started walking in this direction. It occurred to me that Van Loon might try to reach me, so I took out my cellphone and switched it off. I kept walking along Fifth, and eventually made a right on to Thirty-fourth Street. After a few blocks, I had reached what I supposed was my new neighbourhood – which was what? Chelsea? The Garment District? Who the fuck knew any more?

I stopped at a dingy-looking bar on Tenth Avenue and went inside.

I sat at the bar and ordered a Jack Daniel’s. The place was nearly empty. The barman poured me the drink and then went back to watching the TV set. It was bracketed high on to a wall just over the door leading to the men’s room, and there was a sitcom showing. After about five minutes – during which time he had laughed only once – the barman picked up the remote and started flicking through the channels. At one point I caught a sudden flash of the MCL-Parnassus logo, and I said, ‘Wait, go back to that for a second.’

He flicked back and then looked at me, still aiming the remote up at the TV set. It was a news report of the announcement with footage of the press conference.

‘Hold it there, for a minute,’ I said.

‘A second, now a minute, Jesus,’ he said, impatiently.

I glared at him.

‘Just this segment, all right? Thank you.’

He dropped the remote down on to the bar and held his hands up. Then we both turned our attentions back to the screen.

Dan Bloom was at the podium, and as the voice-over report described the scale and importance of the proposed merger, the camera panned slowly to the right, taking in all of the Abraxas executives sitting at the table. In the background, there was a clear view of the company logo, but that wasn’t all you could see. There were also several people in the background, standing, and one of them was me. As the camera moved from left to right, I passed across the screen from right to left, and then disappeared. But in those few seconds, you could see me clearly, like in a police line-up – my face, my eyes, my blue tie and charcoal grey suit.

The barman looked at me, obviously registering something. Then he looked back at the screen, but they had already returned to the studio. He looked at me again, with a dumb expression on his face. I lifted my glass and drained it.

‘You can change the channel now,’ I said.

Then I put a twenty on the bar, got up off my stool and left.

[ 26 ]

THE NEXT MORNING I TOOK A CAB to Fifty-ninth Street, and on the way I rehearsed what I was going to say to Dave Morgenthaler. In order to keep him interested, and to buy some time, I would have to promise that he could have a sample of MDT. Then I’d be in a position to make my approach to someone in Eiben-Chemcorp. I was also hoping that by talking to Morgenthaler I might be able to get some idea about who in Eiben-Chemcorp I could approach. I got to Grand Army Plaza at ten minutes to ten and walked around, occasionally glancing up at the hotel. In my head, I had already left Van Loon and the merger behind – at least for the moment.

At five minutes past, a taxi pulled up at the kerb and a tall, thin man in his early fifties got out. I recognized him immediately from the photos I’d seen in archive articles on the Internet. I walked towards him, and although he saw me approaching, he surveyed the vicinity for any other possible candidates. Then he looked back at me.

‘Spinola?’ he said.