Limitless (33 page)

I took the elevator down to the basement car park and walked the length of this huge interior space, past rows and rows of concrete pillars and parked cars. I made my way up a winding ramp to the concourse at the rear of the building. Fifty yards to the left of where I came out, a couple of trucks were making deliveries at a loading dock – probably to one or other of the Celestial’s several restaurants. I waited around for about five minutes, staying out of view, until a black, unmarked car arrived. I signalled to the driver and he stopped. I got into the back, with the briefcase and the holdall, and paused for a moment. After I’d taken a couple of deep breaths, I told the driver to get on to the Henry Hudson Parkway, going north. He pulled around by the side of the building and then turned left. The traffic lights at the next block were red, and when the car stopped I turned around to look back. There was a Mercedes parked at the kerb of the plaza. A few guys in leather jackets were standing next to it on the sidewalk, smoking. One of them was looking up at the building.

The lights changed, and as we were pulling away – suddenly – three police cars appeared out of nowhere. They pulled up at the kerb of the plaza and within seconds – the last thing I could make out – five or six uniformed cops were running over towards the main entrance to the Celestial.

I turned back around. I didn’t understand it. Since I’d left the apartment, there couldn’t have been enough time for anyone to
get up to it, get
into
it … call the cops and then for the cops to
arrive
…

It didn’t make sense.

I caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. He held my gaze for a couple of seconds.

Then we both looked away.

W
E CONTINUED NORTH.

As soon as we got on to Interstate 87, I felt a little less tense. I sat back in the car and stared out of the window, stared at the miles of highway flitting by and blending, slowly, into a continuous, hypnotic stream – a process which allowed me to smother any thoughts I was having about the last couple of days, the last couple of
hours
, and especially about what I had just done to Gennady. But after nearly forty minutes of this, I couldn’t help turning my mind to what I had decided to do next, to the immediate future – the only kind of future I seemed to have left.

I told the driver to cut over and drop me off in someplace like Scarsdale or White Plains. He considered this for a couple of minutes, looked around at his options, and eventually took me into the centre of White Plains. I paid him – and in the vague hope that he might keep his mouth shut, I gave him a hundred-dollar tip.

Carrying the holdall and the briefcase – one in either hand – I wandered around for a while until I found a taxi on Westchester Avenue, which I then took to the nearest car-rental outlet. Using my credit card, I rented a Pathfinder. Then I immediately got out of White Plains and continued north on Interstate 684.

I passed Katonah and took a left at Croton Falls for Mahopac. Off the highway now and driving through this quiet, hilly, woodland area, I felt displaced, but at the same time strangely serene – as though I had already passed over into some other dimension. Shifts in perspective and velocity intensified my growing sense of
unreality
. I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car for ages – and not, in
any case, out of the city, and at such speed, and never high up like this in one of these SUVs …

As I approached Mahopac itself, I had to slow down. I had to make an effort to refocus on what I was doing, and on what I was about to do. It took me a while to remember the address that Melissa had written down for me in the bar on Spring Street. It eventually came to me, and when I got into town, I stopped at a gas station to buy a map of the area so I could work out how to get to where she lived.

Ten minutes later I’d found it.

I cruised right on to Milford Drive and pulled up at the kerb in front of the third house on the left. The street was quiet and canopied with trees. I reached over to the back seat, where I’d put the holdall. I opened a side pocket of the bag and pulled out a small notebook and a pen. Then I took the briefcase from the passenger seat and placed it on my lap. I tore a page out of the notebook and wrote a few quick lines. I opened the briefcase, stared at the money for a moment and then secured the note inside so that it was clearly visible.

I got out of the car, pulling the briefcase after me and started walking along the narrow pathway towards the house. There was an area of grass on either side of the pathway and on one of them there was a small bicycle lying on its side. It was a single-storey, grey
clapboard
house, with steps leading up to it and a porch at the front. It looked like it could do with a lick of paint, and maybe a new roof.

I went up the steps and stood on the porch for a moment. I tried to peer inside, but there was a screen on the door and I couldn’t see properly. I crooked my index finger and rapped it on the frame of the door.

My heart was thumping.

After a moment, the door opened and standing before me was a spindly little girl of about seven or eight. She had long, dark, straight hair and deep brown eyes. I must have shown how surprised I was because she furrowed her eyebrows and said, officiously, ‘Yes?’

‘You must be Ally,’ I said.

She considered this for a moment and then decided to nod in the affirmative. She was wearing a red cardigan and pink leggings.

‘I’m an old friend of your mother’s.’

This didn’t seem to impress her much.

‘My name’s Eddie.’

‘You want to speak to my mom?’

I detected a slight impatience in her tone and in her body language, as though she wanted me to get on with it – to get to the point so she could get back to whatever it was she’d been doing before I came along to disturb her.

From somewhere in the background a voice said, ‘Ally, who is it?’

It was Melissa. All of a sudden this began to seem a lot more difficult than I had anticipated.

‘It’s a …
man
.’

‘I’ll …’ – there was a pause here, pregnant with momentary
indecision
, and maybe even a hint of exasperation – ‘… I’ll be there in a minute. Tell him … to wait.’

Ally said, informatively, ‘My mom’s washing my kid sister’s hair.’

‘That’d be Jane, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yeah. She can’t do it herself. And it takes ages.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because it’s so long.’

‘Longer than yours?’

She made a puffing sound, as if to say,
Whoa, mister, you’re nowhere near as informed as you think.

‘Well, listen,’ I said, ‘you’re obviously all busy here.’ I paused, and looked directly into her eyes, experiencing something like vertigo, but with both feet on the ground. ‘So why don’t I just leave this with you … and you can tell your mom I was here … and that I left
this
for her.’

Being careful not to seem in any way pushy, I leant forward a little and placed the briefcase on a rug just inside the door.

She didn’t move as I did this. Then she looked down suspiciously at the briefcase. I took a couple of steps back. She glanced up at me again.

‘My mom said you were to wait.’

‘I know, but I’m in a hurry.’

She assessed this for plausibility, intrigued now – whatever she’d been doing before I arrived apparently forgotten.

‘Ally, I’m coming.’

The urgency in Melissa’s voice cut into me and I knew I had to get away before she appeared. I’d been going to tell her not to open the suitcase until I left. Now it would make no difference.

I backed down the steps.

‘I’ve got to go, Ally. It was nice meeting you.’

She furrowed her eyebrows again, altogether unsure about what was going on now. In a small voice, she said, ‘My mom’s just coming.’

Stepping backwards, I said, ‘Will you remember my name?’

In an even smaller voice, she said, ‘Eddie.’

I smiled.

I could have stared at her for hours, but I had to break away and turn around. I got back to the car and climbed in. I started the engine.

Out of the corner of my eye, as I was pulling away, I was aware of a sudden movement at the door of the house. When I got to the first junction, and was about to turn left, I glanced into my rearview mirror. Melissa and Ally were standing – holding hands – in the middle of the street.

I made my way over towards Newburgh and then got back on to Interstate 87, heading north. I decided I would keep going until I got to Albany and then take it from there.

It was early afternoon as I arrived in the outskirts of the city. I drove around for a bit and then parked in a side street off Central Avenue. I sat in the car for twenty minutes, staring at the wheel.

But take
what
from here?

I got out and started walking, briskly, and not in any particular direction. As I moved, I replayed the scene with Ally over and over in my mind. Her resemblance to Melissa was uncanny and the whole experience had left me stunned – blinking at infinity, shuddering in sudden, unexpected spasms of benevolence and hope.

But as I moved, too, I could feel Gennady’s silver pillbox lodged in the pocket of my jeans. I knew that in a few hours’ time I would be opening the box, taking out the two tablets that were left in it, and swallowing them – a simple, banal sequence of movements that
was all too finite and bereft of anything even approaching
benevolence
or hope.

I wandered on, aimlessly.

After about half an hour, I decided there wasn’t much point in going any further. It looked like it was going to start raining soon, and in any case the unfamiliarity of these busy commercial streets was becoming a little disconcerting.

I stopped and turned around to go back towards the car. But as I did so I found myself staring into the window of an electrical goods store in which there were fifteen TV sets banked up in three rows of five. On each screen, staring directly out at me, was the face of Donatella Alvarez. It was a headshot. She was leaning forward slightly, her eyes big and deep, her long, brown hair casting one side of her face into shadow.

I stood frozen on the sidewalk, people passing behind and around me. Then I stepped a little closer to the window and watched as the news report continued with exterior shots of Actium and the Clifden Hotel. I moved along the window and stepped inside the door so I’d be able to hear the report as well as see it – but the sound was quite low and with the traffic passing behind me all I could hear were fragments. Over a shot of Forty-eighth Street, I thought I caught something about ‘… a statement issued this afternoon by Carl Van Loon’. Then, ‘… a re-appraisal of the deal in the light of negative publicity’. And then – I was really straining to hear now – something like ‘… share prices adversely affected’.

I looked around in exasperation.

There was another display of TV sets tuned to the same channel in an alcove at the back. I quickly walked the length of the store, past VCRs and DVDs and stereos and ghetto-blasters, and just as I got to the other end, they were cutting to a piece of footage from the MCL–Abraxas press conference, the one with the camera gliding across the top of the room from left to right. I waited, my stomach jumping, and then after a couple of seconds …
there
I was
, on the screen, in my suit, gliding from right to left, staring
out. There was a curiously vacant look on my face that I didn’t remember from the first time I’d seen this …

I listened to the report, but was barely able to take it in. Someone at Actium that night – probably the bald art critic with the salt-and-pepper beard – had seen the footage on the news, and it had jogged his memory. He’d recognized me as Thomas Cole, the guy who’d been sitting opposite Donatella Alvarez at the restaurant, and who’d later been speaking to her at the
reception
.

After the press-conference footage, they cut to a reporter standing in front of the Celestial Building. ‘Following up this new lead,’ the reporter said, ‘police then came to Eddie Spinola’s
apartment
here on the West Side to question him, but what they found instead was the body of an unidentified man, believed to be a member of a Russian crime organization. This man had apparently been stabbed to death, which means that Eddie Spinola …’ – they cut back to the footage from the press conference – ‘… is now wanted by police for questioning in relation to
two
high-profile murders …’

I turned around and walked swiftly back to the other end of the store, avoiding eye-contact with anyone. I stepped out on to the
sidewalk
and turned right. As I passed along by the window-front, I was acutely aware of the multiple screens showing yet another re-run of the press-conference footage.

On my way to the car, I stopped at a pharmacy and bought a large container of paracetamol. Then I stopped at a liquor store and bought two bottles of Jack Daniel’s.

After that, I got back on the road, still heading north, and left Albany as fast as I could.

I avoided the Interstate highways and took secondary roads, passing through Schenectady and Saratoga Springs and then up into the Adirondacks. I took a random, circuitous route, and wove my way towards Schroon Lake, oblivious of the natural beauty that was all around me, my head buzzing instead with an endless succession of
garbled images. I veered over into Vermont, staying on secondary roads and worked my way up through Vergennes and Burlington, and then over towards Morrisville and Barton.

I drove for seven or eight hours, pulling in only once, for gas, at which point I also took the last two pills in the silver box.

I stopped at the Northview Motor Lodge at around ten o’clock. There was no point in driving any further. It was pitch dark now, and where was I going to go in any case? On up to Maine? New Brunswick? Nova Scotia?

I checked into the motel using a false name, and paid for the room in cash. In advance.

Two nights.

After I got over the initial shock of the décor and colour schemes in the room, I lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

According to the TV news bulletin I’d seen earlier, I was now a wanted murderer. That wasn’t quite how I saw myself, but given the circumstances I knew I’d have a pretty difficult time bringing anyone else around to my point of view.

It’s a long story
, I’d have to say.

And then I’d have to tell it.

Whether or not I had realized it at the time, I realized now that this was why I’d packed my laptop computer in the holdall. The last coherent thing I would ever do would be to tell my story, and leave it behind for someone else to read. I lingered on the bed for quite a while, thinking things through. But then I
remembered
that I didn’t have that much time left in which to
be
coherent.

I got off the bed, therefore. I switched on the TV set, but kept the sound down. I took out the laptop from the bag, as well as one of the bottles of Jack Daniel’s. I put the plastic container of
paracetamol
tablets on the little bedside table. Then I sat down here in this wicker armchair, and with the sound of the ice-machine humming in the background, I got started.

It’s now Saturday morning, early, and I’m beginning to feel tired. This is one of the first signs of withdrawal from MDT – so it’s just as well that I’ve more or less finished here.

But finished what?

Is this a true and honest account of how I came close to doing the impossible, to realizing the unrealizable … to becoming one of the best and the brightest? Is it the story of a hallucination, a dream of perfectibility? Or is it simply the story of a human lab rat, someone who was tagged and followed and photographed, and then discarded? Or is it – even more simply again – the last confession of a murderer?