Limitless

When I trawled through what information I’d managed to find on other people named in Vernon’s client list, I saw the first of two distinct patterns emerging. In each case I looked at, there was – over the previous three or four years – a sudden and unexplained leap forward in the career of the person concerned. Take Theodore Neal. After two decades of churning out unauthorized showbiz biographies and hack magazine work, Neal suddenly produced a brilliant and compelling life of Ulysses S. Grant. Described as ‘a breathtaking and original work of scholarship’, it went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award. Or Jim Rayburn, the chief of struggling recordlabel, Thrust, who in one six-month period discovered and signed up hip-hop artists J. J. Rictus, Human Cheese and F Train – and then within another six months had a full mantelpiece of Grammy and MTV awards to his name.

There were others – middle management grunts fast-tracking it to CEO, defence attorneys mesmerizing juries to achieve unlikely acquittals, architects designing elaborate new skyscrapers over lunch, on the backs of cocktail napkins …

It was bizarre, and through the band of pain pulsating behind my eyes I had only one thought: MDT-48 was out there in society. Other people were using it in the same way that I’d been using it. What I didn’t know was how much they were taking, and how often. I’d been taking MDT indiscriminately, one, two, occasionally even three at a pop, but I had no idea if I really needed that many, and if taking that many actually rendered the hit more intense or made it last any longer. It was like with cocaine, I supposed, in that after a while it was just a question of gluttony. Sooner or later, if the drug was there, gluttony became the controlling dynamic in your relationship to it.

So the only way I was going to find out about dosage was to contact someone on the list – just phone them up and ask them what they knew. It was when I did this that the second and more disturbing pattern began to emerge.

I put it off until the following day-because of my headache, because I was reluctant to call up people I didn’t know, because I was scared of what I might find out. I kept popping Excedrin tablets every few hours, and although they took the edge off the pain, there was still a dull and fairly constant thumping sensation behind my eyes.

I didn’t imagine I’d have any luck getting through to Deke Tauber, so the first name I selected from the list was that of a CFO in a medium-sized electronics company. I remembered his name from an article I’d read in Wired.

A woman answered the phone.

‘Good morning,’ I said, ‘may I speak to Paul Kaplan, please?’

The woman didn’t respond, and in the brief silence that followed I considered the possibility that we’d been disconnected. To check, I said, ‘Hello?’

‘Who is this, please?’ she said, her tone both weary and impatient.

‘I’m a journalist,’ I said, ‘from Electronics Today magaz—’

‘Look … my husband died three days ago.’

‘Oh—’

My mind froze. What did I say now? There was silence. It seemed to go on for ever. I eventually said, ‘I’m very sorry.’

The woman remained silent. I could hear muffled voices in the background. I wanted to ask her how her husband had died, but I was unable to form the words.

Then she said, ‘I’m sorry … thank you … goodbye.’

And that was that.

Her husband had died three days ago. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. People died all the time.

I selected another number and dialled it. I waited, staring at the wall in front of me.

‘Yes?’

A man’s voice.

‘May I speak to Jerry Brady, please?’

‘Jerry’s in …’ He paused, and then said, ‘who’s this?’

I’d chosen the number at random and realized now that I didn’t know who Jerry Brady was – or who I should be, calling him up on a Sunday morning like this.

‘It’s … a friend.’

The man hesitated, but then went on, ‘Jerry’s in the hospital … – there was a slight shake in his voice – ‘ … and he’s really sick.’

‘Oh my god. That’s awful. What’s wrong with him?’

‘That’s just it, we don’t know. He started getting these headaches a couple of weeks ago? Then last Tuesday – no … Wednesday – he collapsed at work …’

‘Shit.’

‘ … and when he came to he said he’d been having dizzy spells and muscular spasms all day. He’s been in and out of consciousness ever since, trembling, throwing up.’

‘What have the doctors said?’

‘They don’t know. I mean, what do you want, they’re doctors. All the tests they’ve done so far have been inconclusive. I’ll tell you something, though …’

He paused here, and clicked his tongue. I got the impression from his slightly breathless tone that he was dying to talk to someone but at the same time couldn’t quite ignore the fact that he had no idea who I was. For my part I wondered who he was – a brother? A lover?

I said, ‘Yeah? Go on …’