Limitless (15 page)

After a couple of minutes, in any case, Frank Pierce muttered his excuses and left without saying goodbye to either Kevin or myself.

Van Loon then seemed happy enough to let the conversation drift on for a while. We discussed Mexico and the probable effects the government’s apparently irrational stance was going to have on the markets. At one point, still fairly agitated, I caught myself reeling off a comparative list of per capita GDP figures for 1960 and 1995, stuff I must have read somewhere, but Van Loon cut me short and more or less implied that I was being shrill. He also contradicted a
few things I said and was clearly right in each case to do so. I saw him looking at me once or twice, too – strangely – as if he were on the point of calling security over to have me ejected from the building.

But then, a bit later, when Kevin had gone to the bathroom, Van Loon turned to me and said, ‘I think it’s time we got rid of this clown.’ He indicated back to where the bathrooms were, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Kevin’s a great guy, don’t misunderstand me. He’s an excellent negotiator. But sometimes.
Jesus
.’

Van Loon looked at me, seeking confirmation that I agreed with him.

I half smiled, unsure of how to react.

So here it came again, that
thing
, that anxious, needy response I’d somehow triggered in all of the others – in Paul Baxter and Artie Meltzer and Kevin Doyle.

‘Come on, Eddie, drink up. I live five blocks from here. We’re going back to my place for dinner.’

As the three of us were walking out of the Orpheus Room, I was vaguely aware that no one had paid the check or signed anything or even nodded to anyone. But then something occurred to me. Carl Van Loon
owned
the Orpheus Room, in fact owned the entire building – an anonymous steel-and-glass tube on Fifty-fourth between Park and Lexington. I remembered reading about it when the place had first opened a few years before.

Out on the street, Van Loon summarily dismissed Kevin by telling him that he’d see him in the morning. Kevin hesitated, but then said, ‘Sure, Carl. See you in the morning.’

We made eye contact for a second but both of us pulled away in embarrassment. Then Kevin was gone and Van Loon and I were walking along Fifty-fourth Street towards Park Avenue. He hadn’t had a limousine waiting after all, and then I remembered reading something else, an article in a magazine about how Van Loon often made a big thing of walking – and especially walking in his ‘quarter’, as though that somehow meant he was a man of the people.

We got to his building on Park Avenue. The brief trip from the lobby up to his apartment was indeed just that, a trip, with all of the elements in place: the uniformed doorman, the swirling turquoise marble, the mahogany panels, the brass radiator-grills. I was surprised by how small the elevator-car was, but its interior was very plush and intimate, and I imagined that such a combination could give the experience of being in it, and the accompanying sensation of motion – if you were with the right person – a certain erotic charge. It seemed to me that rich people didn’t think up things like this, and then decide to have them – things like this, little serendipitous
accidents
of luxury, just
happened
if you happened to have money.

The apartment was on the fourth floor, but the first thing that caught your attention as you stepped into the main hall was a marble staircase sweeping majestically up to what had to be the fifth floor. The ceilings were very high, and decorated with elaborate
plaster-work
, and there were friezes around the edges which took your eyes gradually downwards to the large, gilt-framed paintings on the walls.

If the elevator-car was the confessional box, the apartment itself was the whole cathedral.

Van Loon led me across the hallway and into what he called ‘the library’, which is exactly what it was – a dark, book-lined room with Persian rugs, an enormous marble fire-place and several red leather couches. There were also lots of expensive-looking ‘pieces’ of fine French furniture about the place – walnut tables you wouldn’t ever put anything on and delicate little chairs you wouldn’t ever sit in.

‘Hi, Daddy.’

Van Loon looked around, slightly puzzled. He obviously hadn’t expected anybody to be in here. On the far side of the room, barely visible against a wall of leather-bound books, there was a young woman holding open a large volume in her two hands.

‘
Oh
,’ Van Loon said, and then cleared his throat. ‘Say
hello
to Mr Spinola, darling.’

‘Hello Mr Spinola, darling.’

The voice was quiet but assured.

Van Loon clicked his tongue in disapproval.

‘
Ginny.
’

I felt like saying to Van Loon,
That’s OK, I don’t mind your daughter calling me ‘darling’. In fact, I kind of like it.

My second erotic charge of the evening had come from Virginia Van Loon, Carl’s nineteen-year-old daughter. In her younger and more vulnerable years, ‘Ginny’ had spent quite a bit of time on the front pages of the daily tabloids for substance abuse and poor taste in boyfriends. She was Van Loon’s only child by his second wife, and had quickly been brought to heel by threats of disinheritance. Or so the story had gone.

‘Look, Ginny,’ Van Loon said, ‘I’ve got to go and get something from my office, so I want you to entertain Mr Spinola here while I’m gone, OK?’

‘Of course, Daddy.’

Van Loon turned to me and said, ‘There are some files I want you to have a look at.’

I nodded at him, not having a clue what he was talking about. Then he disappeared and I was left standing there, peering across the dimness of the room at his daughter.

‘What are you reading?’ I said, trying not to remember the last time I’d asked someone that question.

‘Not
reading
exactly, I’m looking something up in one of these books Daddy bought by the yard when he moved in here.’

I edged over to the centre of the room in order to be able to see her more clearly. She had short, spiky blonde hair and was wearing trainers, jeans and a pink sleeveless top that left her midriff exposed. She’d had her belly-button pierced and was sporting a tiny gold hoop that glistened occasionally in the light as she moved.

‘What are you looking up?’

She leant back against the bookcase with studied abandon, but the effect was spoilt somewhat by the fact that she was struggling to keep the enormous tome open, and balanced, in her hands.

‘The etymology of the word
ferocious
.’

‘I see.’

‘Yeah, my mother’s just told me that I have a ferocious temper, and I
do
– so, I don’t know, to cool down I thought I’d come in here and check out this dictionary of etymology.’ She hiked the book up
for a second, as though displaying it as an exhibit in a court room. ‘It’s a strange word, don’t you think?
Ferocious
.’

‘Have you found it yet?’ I nodded at the dictionary.

‘No, I got distracted by
feckless
.’

‘
Ferocious
literally means “wild-eyed”,’ I said, moving around the biggest of the red leather couches in order to get even closer to her. ‘It comes from a combination of the Latin word
ferus
, which means “fierce” or “wild”, and the particle
oc
-, which means “looking” or “appearing”.’

Ginny Van Loon stared at me for a second and then slammed the book closed with a loud
thwack
.

‘Not bad, Mr Spinola, not bad,’ she said, trying to suppress a grin. Then, as she struggled to get the dictionary back into its place on the shelf behind her, she said, ‘You’re not one of Daddy’s business guys, are you?’

I thought about this for a second before answering. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I am. We’ll see.’

She turned around again to face me and in the brief silence that followed I was aware of her eyeing me up and down. I became uncomfortable all of a sudden and wished that I’d gotten around to buying another suit. I’d been wearing this one every day for quite some time now and had begun to feel a bit self-conscious in it.

‘Yeah, but you’re not one of his
regular
guys?’ She paused. ‘And you don’t …’

‘What?’

‘You don’t look too comfortable … dressed like that.’

I looked down at my suit and tried to think of something to say about it. I couldn’t.

‘So what do you do for Daddy? What
service
do you provide?’

‘Who says I provide a service?’

‘Carl Van Loon doesn’t have friends, Mr Spinola, he has people who do things for him. What do
you
do?’

None of this – strangely enough – came across as snotty or
obnoxious
. For a girl of nineteen, she was breathtakingly self-possessed, and I felt compelled simply to tell her the truth.

‘I’m a stock-market trader, and I’ve been very successful recently.
So I’m here – I think – to provide your father with some …
advice
.’

She raised her eyebrows, opened her arms and did a little curtsey, as if to say
voilá
.

I smiled.

She reverted to leaning back against the bookcase behind her, and said, ‘I don’t like the stock market.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because it’s so profoundly
un
interesting a thing to have taken over so many people’s lives.’

I raised
my
eyebrows.

‘I mean, people don’t have drug-dealers any more, or
psychoanalysts
– they have
brokers
. At least with getting high or being in analysis, it was about
you
–
you
were the subject, to be mangled or untangled or whatever – but playing the markets is like surrendering yourself to this vast, impersonal
system
. It just generates and then feeds off …
greed
…’

‘I—’

‘… and it’s not as if it’s your own individual greed either, it’s the same greed as everyone else’s. You ever been to Vegas, Mr Spinola? Ever seen those big rooms with the rows and rows of slot machines?
Acre
s
of them? I think the stock market today is like that – all these sad, desperate people planted in front of machines just
dreaming
of the big score they’re going to make.’

‘Surely that’s easy for you to say.’

‘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 your 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
.’