Limitless

‘Maybe so, but it doesn’t make it any less true.’

As I was trying to formulate an answer to this, the door opened behind me and Van Loon came back into the room.

‘Well, Eddie, did she keep you entertained?’

He walked briskly over to a coffee table in front of one of the couches and threw a thick folder of papers on to it.

‘Yes,’ I said, and immediately turned back to look at her. I tried to think of something to say. ‘So, what are you doing, I mean … these days?’

‘These days.’ She smiled. ‘Very diplomatic. Well, these days I suppose I’m a … recovering celebrity?’

‘OK, sweetheart,’ Van Loon said, ‘enough. Skedaddle. We’ve got business to do here.’

‘Skedaddle?’ Ginny said, raising her eyebrows at me interrogatively. ‘Now there’s a word.’

‘Hhmm,’ I said, pantomiming deep thought, ‘I would say that the word skedaddle is very probably … of unknown origin.’

She considered this for a moment and then, gliding past me on her way over towards the door, whispered loudly, ‘A bit like yourself, Mr Spinola … darling.’

‘Ginny.’

She glanced back at me, ignoring her father, and was gone.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Van Loon looked over at the library door for a moment to make sure that his daughter had closed it properly. He picked up the folder again from the coffee table and said he was going to be straight with me. He had heard about my circus tricks down at Lafayette and wasn’t particularly impressed, but now that he’d had the chance to meet me in person, and talk, he was prepared to admit that he was a little more curious.

He handed me the folder.

‘I want your opinion on these, Eddie. Take the folder home with you, have a look through the files, take your time. Tell me if you think any of the stocks you see there look interesting.’

I flicked through the folder as he spoke and saw long sections of dense type, as well as endless pages of tables and charts and graphs.

‘Needless to say, all of this stuff is strictly confidential.’

I nodded of course.

He nodded back, and then said, ‘Can I offer you something to drink? The housekeeper’s not here I’m afraid – and Gabby’s … in a bad mood – so dinner’s a non-starter.’ He paused, as though trying to think of a way out of this dilemma, but quickly gave up. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, ‘I had a big lunch.’ Then he looked at me, obviously expecting an answer to his original question.

‘Scotch would be fine.’

‘Sure.’

Van Loon went over to a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room and as he poured two glasses of single malt Scotch whisky, he spoke back at me, over his shoulder.

‘I don’t know who you are, Eddie, or what you’re game is, but I’m sure of one thing, you don’t work in this business. I know all the moves, and so far you don’t seem to know any – but the thing is, I like that. You see, I deal with business graduates every day of the week, and I don’t know what it is – they’ve all got this look, this business-school look. It’s like they’re cocky and terrified at the same time, and I’m sick of it.’ He paused. ‘What I’m saying is this, I don’t care what your background is, or that maybe the nearest you’ve ever come to an investment bank is the business section of the New York Times. What matters’ – he turned around with a glass in each hand, and used one of them to indicate his belly – ‘is that you’ve got a fire in here, and if you’re smart on top of that, then nothing can stand in your way.’

He walked over and handed me one of the glasses of Scotch. I put the folder down on to the couch and took the glass from him. He held his up. Then a phone rang somewhere in the room.

‘Shit.’

Van Loon put his glass down on the coffee table and went back in the direction he’d just come from. The phone was on an antique writing desk beside the drinks cabinet. He picked it up and said, ‘Yeah?’ There was a silence and then he said, ‘Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Put him through.’

He covered the phone with his hand, turned to me and said, ‘I’ve got to take this call, Eddie. But sit down. Have your drink.’

I smiled briefly in acknowledgement.

‘I won’t be long.’

As Van Loon turned away again, and receded into a low-level murmur, I took a sip from the whisky and sat down on the couch. I was glad of the interruption, but couldn’t figure out why – at least not for a few seconds. Then it occurred to me: I wanted time to think about Ginny Van Loon and her little rant about the stock market and how it had reminded me so much of the kind of thing Melissa might have said. It seemed to me that despite obvious differences between them, the two women shared something – a similar, steely intelligence, as well as a style of delivery modelled on the heat-seeking missile. By referring to her father at one point as ‘Carl Van Loon’, for instance, but at all other times as ‘Daddy’, Ginny had not only displayed a sophisticated sense of detachment, she had also made him seem silly and vain and isolated. Which – by extension – was precisely how I now felt, too.