John Verdon: Think of a Number

Gurney sat quietly and waited for Mellery’s panic to exhaust itself.

“The references to drinking mean that it’s someone who knew me in the bad old days. If they have some sort of grudge-which it sounds like they do-they’ve been nursing it for a long time. It might be someone who lost track of me, had no idea where I was, then saw one of my books, saw my picture, read something about me, and decided to… decided to what? I don’t even know what these notes are about.”

Still Gurney said nothing.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to have a hundred, maybe two hundred, nights in your life you have no recollection of?” Mellery shook his head in apparent astonishment at his own recklessness. “The only thing I know for sure about those nights is that I was drunk enough-crazy enough-to do anything. That’s the thing about alcohol-when you drink as much I did, it takes away all fear of consequences. Your perceptions are warped, your inhibitions disappear, your memory shuts down, and you run on impulse-instinct without constraint.” He fell silent, shaking his head.

“What do you think you might have done in one of those memory blackouts?”

Mellery stared at him. “Anything! Christ, that’s the point- anything!”

He looked, Gurney thought, like a man who has just discovered that the tropical paradise of his dreams, in which he has invested every cent, is infested with scorpions.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was hoping for a Sherlock Holmes deduction, mystery solved, letter writer identified and rendered harmless.”

“You’re in a better position to guess what this is all about than I am.”

Mellery shook his head. Then a fragile hopefulness widened his eyes. “Could it be a practical joke?”

“If it is, it’s crueler than most,” replied Gurney. “What else comes to mind?”

“Blackmail? The writer knows something awful, something I can’t remember? And the $289.87 is just the first demand?”

Gurney nodded noncommittally. “Any other possibilities?”

“Revenge? For something awful I did, but they don’t want money, they want…” His voice trailed off pathetically.

“And there’s no specific thing you remember doing that would seem to justify this response?”

“No. I told you. Nothing I can remember.”

“Okay, I believe you. But under the circumstances, it may be worthwhile to consider a few simple questions. Just write them down as I ask them, take them home, spend twenty-four hours with them, and see what comes to mind.”

Mellery opened his elegant briefcase and withdrew a small leather notebook and a Montblanc pen.

“I want you to make a few separate lists, as best you can, okay? List number one: possible business or professional enemies-people with whom you were at any time in serious conflict over money, contracts, promises, position, reputation. List number two: unresolved personal conflicts-ex-friends, ex-lovers, partners in affairs that ended badly. List three: directly menacing individuals-people who have made accusations against you or threatened you. List four: unstable individuals-people you dealt with who were unbalanced or troubled in some way. List five: anyone from your past whom you have run into recently, regardless of how innocent or accidental the encounter may have seemed. List six: any connections you have with anyone living in or around Wycherly-since that’s where the X. Arybdis post-office box is, and that’s where all the envelopes were postmarked.”

As he dictated the questions, he observed Mellery shake his head repeatedly, as if to assert the impossibility of recalling any relevant names.

“I know how difficult this seems,” said Gurney with parental firmness, “but it needs to be done. In the meantime leave the notes with me. I’ll take a closer look. But remember, I’m not in the private-investigation business, and there may be very little I can do for you.”

Mellery stared bleakly at his hands. “Apart from making these lists, is there something else I should be doing myself?”

“Good question. Anything come to mind?”

“Well… maybe with some direction from you I could track down this Mr. Arybdis of Wycherly, Connecticut, try to get some information about him.”

“If by ‘track down’ you mean through his home address rather than his box number, the post office won’t give it to you. For that you need to get the police involved, but you refuse to do that. You could check the Internet White Pages, but that gets you nowhere with a made-up name-which this probably is, since he said in the note it wasn’t the name you knew him by.” Gurney paused. “But it’s an odd thing about the check, don’t you think?”

“You mean the amount?”

“I mean the fact that it wasn’t cashed. Why make such a point of it-the precise amount, who to make it out to, where to send it-and then not cash it?”

“Well, if Arybdis is a false name, and he has no ID in that name…”

“Then why offer the option of sending a check? Why not demand cash?”

Mellery’s eyes scanned the ground as if the possibilities were land mines. “Maybe all he wanted was something with my signature on it.”

“That occurred to me,” said Gurney, “but there are two difficulties with it. First, remember that he was also willing to take cash. Second, if the real goal was to get a signed check, why not ask for a smaller amount-say, twenty dollars or even fifty? Wouldn’t that increase the likelihood of getting a response?”

“Maybe Arybdis isn’t that smart.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s the problem.”

Mellery looked like exhaustion was vying with anxiety in every cell of his body and it was a close contest. “Do you think I’m in any real danger?”

Gurney shrugged. “Most crank letters are just crank letters. The unpleasant message itself is the assault weapon, so to speak. However…”

“These are different?”

“These may be different.”

Mellery’s eyes widened. “I see. You will take another look at them?”

“Yes. And you’ll get started on those lists?”

“It won’t do any good, but yes, I’ll try.”

In the absence of an invitation to stay for lunch, Mellery had reluctantly departed, driving a meticulously restored powder blue Austin-Healey-a classic open sports car on a perfect driving day to which the man seemed miserably oblivious.

Gurney returned to his Adirondack chair and sat there for a long while, nearly an hour, hoping that the tangle of facts would start to arrange themselves in some kind of order, some sensible concatenation. However, the only thing that became clear to him was that he was hungry. He got up, went into the house, made a sandwich of havarti and roasted peppers, and ate alone. Madeleine seemed to be missing, and he wondered if he’d forgotten some plan she might have told him about. Then, as he was rinsing his plate and gazing idly out the window, he caught sight of her meandering up the field from the orchard, her canvas tote full of apples. She had that look of bright serenity that was so often for her an automatic consequence of being in the open air.

She entered the kitchen and laid the apples down by the sink with a loud, happy sigh. “God, what a day!” she exclaimed. “On a day like this, being indoors a minute longer than you have to be is a sin!”

It wasn’t that he disagreed with her, at least not aesthetically, maybe not at all, but the difficult personal fact for him was that his natural inclinations tilted him inward in a variety of ways, with the result that, left to his own devices, he spent more time in the consideration of action than in action, more time in his head than in the world. This had never been a problem in his profession; in truth, it was the very thing that seemed to make him so good at it.