I remember once being in the West Village with Melissa, for instance, about 1985 or 1986 – in Caffe Vivaldi – when she got up on her high horse about the

proposed Van Loon Building. Van Loon had long wanted to regain the title of World’s Tallest for New York, and was proposing a glass box on the site of the old St

Nicholas Hotel on Forty-eighth Street. It had been designed at over fifteen hundred feet, but after endless objections was eventually built at just under a thousand.

‘What is this shit with skyscrapers?’ she’d said, holding up her espresso cup, ‘I mean, haven’t we gotten over it yet?’ OK, the skyscraper had once been the supreme

symbol of corporate capitalism, indeed of America itself – what Ayn Rand referring to the Woolworth Building as seen from New York Harbour had called ‘the finger

of God’ – but surely we no longer needed it, no longer needed people like Carl Van Loon coming along trying to imprint their adolescent fantasies on the city skyline.

For the most part, in any case – she went on – the question of height had been irrelevant, a red herring, as skyscrapers had merely been commercial billboards for the

likes of sewing-machine companies and retailers and car manufacturers and newspapers. So what was this one going to be? A billboard for fucking junk bonds? Jesus.

Melissa, on occasions such as this, had wielded her espresso cup with a rare elegance – suitably indignant, but never spilling a drop, and always ready if necessary to

flip the axis and start laughing at herself.

‘Eddie.’

She always calmed down in the same way, too – no matter how animated she’d become. She would lean her head slightly forward, maybe swirling whatever coffee

was left in the cup, and go still and quiet, diaphanous strands of hair settling gently across her face.

‘Eddie?’

I turned around in my seat, away from the bar. Kevin was standing there, staring at me.

I held out my hand.

‘Kevin.’

‘Eddie.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

As we shook hands, I tried to edge that image of Melissa from my mind. I asked him if he wanted a drink – an Absolut on the rocks – and he did. A few minutes of

small talk followed, and then Kevin started priming me for the meeting with Van Loon.

‘He’s … mercurial – one day he’s your best friend and the next he’ll look right through you, so don’t be put off if he’s a little weird.’

I nodded.

‘Oh, and – I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this – but … don’t pause or hesitate when you’re answering him, he hates that.’

I nodded again.

‘You see, he’s really caught up at the moment in this MCL-Parnassus thing with Hank Atwood and … I don’t know.’

One of the largest media conglomerates in the world, with cable, film studio and publishing divisions, MCL-Parnassus was the kind of company that business

journalists liked to describe as ‘a megalith’ or ‘a behemoth’.

‘What’s going on with Atwood?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure exactly, it’s all still under wraps.’ Then something occurred to him. ‘And don’t ask him – whatever you do.’

I could see that Kevin was having second thoughts about setting this thing up. He kept looking at his watch, as if he were working to a deadline and time was running

out. He drained the last of the vodka from his glass at about ten to eight, ordered another one, and then said, ‘So, Eddie, just what exactly are you going to be telling

him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, shrugging my shoulders, ‘I suppose I’ll tell him about my adventures in day-trading, and give him a run-down of all the major positions

I’ve held.’

Kevin seemed to be expecting something more than this – but what? Since I couldn’t offer him any satisfactory explanation for my success-rate, other than to refer

to some inexplicable ability I seemed to have developed, all I ended up saying was, ‘I’ve been lucky, Kevin. I mean – don’t get me wrong – I’ve worked at it, and I do

a lot of research, but … yeah, things have gone my way.’

As far as Kevin was concerned, however, this kind of ill-defined bullshit clearly wasn’t going to be enough – even if he couldn’t bring himself to say as much out

loud. It was then I realized that there was an underlying anxiety in everything he had been saying up to that point, a fear that unless he had some inside track on my

trading strategy, and consequently some leverage with Van Loon, he was just going to end up handing me over to Van Loon – and that then, effectively, he would be

out of the picture.

But there wasn’t much I could do about that.

For my part, I felt pretty good. I’d eaten a plate of pasta in bianco after my disturbing spell of dizziness the previous evening. Then I’d taken some vitamin pills and

diet supplements and gone to bed. I’d slept for about six hours, which was as much, if not more, than I’d managed in a month. I was still on two doses of MDT a day,

but I now felt fresher and more in control – and more confident – than ever before.

*

Van Loon swept into the Orpheus Room as though he were being filmed in an elaborate tracking shot and this was just the last stage in a sequence that had taken him all

the way from his limousine outside on the street. Tall, lean and a bit stooped, Van Loon was still quite an imposing figure. He was sixtyish and tanned, and the few wisps

of hair he had left were a distinguished silvery-white. He shook my hand vigorously and then invited us both to join him over at his regular table in the corner.

I hadn’t seen him ordering anything or even making eye contact with the barman, but a couple of seconds after we’d sat down – me with my club soda and Kevin

with his Absolut – Van Loon was served what looked like the perfect Martini. The waiter arrived, placed the glass down on the table and withdrew, all with a lightness

of touch – silence and near invisibility – that was clearly reserved by management for a certain … class of customer.

‘So, Eddie Spinola,’ Van Loon said, looking me directly in the eyes, ‘what’s your secret?’

I could feel Kevin stiffen beside me.

‘Medication,’ I said at once, ‘I’m on special medication.’

Van Loon laughed at this. Then he picked up his Martini, raised it to me and said, ‘Well, I hope it’s a repeat prescription.’

This time I laughed, and raised my club soda to him.

But that was it. He didn’t pursue the matter any further. To Kevin’s obvious annoyance, Van Loon then went on to talk about his new Gulfstream V, and the

problems he’d been having with it, and how he’d spent sixteen months on a waiting list just to get the damned thing. He addressed all of these remarks directly to me,

and I got the impression – because it was too pointed to be accidental – that he was deliberately excluding Kevin. I took it for granted, therefore, that we wouldn’t be

going back to the subject of what my ‘secret’ might be, and we – or rather Van Loon – simply talked about other things … cigars, for example, and how he’d recently

tried to buy JFK’s humidor, unsuccessfully as it had turned out. Or cars – his latest being a Maserati that had set him back nearly ‘two hundred large’.