John Verdon: Think of a Number

In any event, he had no immediate desire to go out, nor was it something he felt like talking about, arguing about, or feeling guilty about. He raised a diversionary subject.

“What was your impression of Mark Mellery?”

She answered without looking up from the fruit she was transferring from her bag to the countertop, or even pausing to consider the question.

“Full of himself and scared to death. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex. Afraid the bogeyman is coming to get him. Wants Uncle Dave to protect him. By the way, I wasn’t purposely eavesdropping. His voice carries well. I bet he’s a great public speaker.” She made this sound like a dubious asset.

“What did you think of the number business?”

“Ah,” she said with dramatic affectation. “‘The Case of the Mind-Reading Stalker.’”

He stifled his irritation. “Do you have any idea how it might have been done-how the writer knew what number Mellery would choose?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t seem perplexed by it.”

“But you are.” Again she spoke with her eyes on her apples. The tiny ironic grin, increasingly present these days, tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“You have to admit it’s quite a puzzle,” he insisted.

“I suppose.”

He repeated the key facts with the edginess of a man who cannot understand why he is not being understood. “A person gives you a sealed envelope and tells you to picture a number in your mind. You picture six fifty-eight. He tells you to look in the envelope. You look in the envelope. The note inside says six fifty-eight.”

It was clear that Madeleine was not as impressed as she ought to be. He went on, “That’s a remarkable feat. It would appear to be impossible. Yet it was done. I’d like to figure out how it was done.”

“And I’m sure you will,” she said with a small sigh.

He gazed through the French doors, past the pepper and tomato plants wilted from the season’s first frost. (When was that? He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t seem to focus on the time factor.) Beyond the garden, beyond the pasture, his gaze rested on the red barn. The old McIntosh apple tree was just visible behind the corner of it, its fruit dotted here and there through the mass of foliage like droplets of impressionist paint. Into this tableau there intruded a nagging sense of something he ought to be doing. What was it? Of course! His week-old promise that he would fetch the extension ladder from the barn and pick the high fruit Madeleine couldn’t get to by herself. Such a small thing. So easy for him to do. A half-hour project at most.

As he rose from his chair, buoyed by good intentions, the phone rang. Madeleine picked it up, ostensibly because she was standing next to the table on which it rested, but that was not the real reason. Madeleine often answered the phone regardless of who was closer to it. It had less to do with logistics than with their respective desires for contact with other people. For her, people in general were a plus, a source of positive stimulation (with exceptions such as the predatory Sonya Reynolds). For Gurney, people in general were a minus, a drain on his energy (with exceptions such as the encouraging Sonya Reynolds).

“Hello?” said Madeleine in that pleasantly expectant way she greeted all callers-full of the promise of interest in whatever they might have to say. A second later her tone dropped into a less enthusiastic register.

“Yes, he is. Just a moment.” She waved the handset toward Gurney, laid it on the table, and left the room.

It was Mark Mellery, and his agitation level had risen.

“Davey, thank God you’re there. I just got home. I got another of those damn letters.”

“In today’s mail?”

The answer was yes, as Gurney assumed it would be. But the question had a purpose nonetheless. He had discovered over years of interviewing countless hysterical people-at crime scenes, in emergency rooms, in all sorts of chaotic situations-that the easiest way to calm them was to start by asking simple questions they could answer yes to.

“Does it look like the same handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“And the same red ink?”

“Yes, everything’s the same except the words. Shall I read it to you?”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Read it to me slowly and tell me where the line breaks are.”

The clear questions, clear instructions, and Gurney’s tranquil voice had the predictable effect. Mellery sounded like his feet were getting back on solid ground as he read aloud the peculiar, unsettling verse-with little pauses to indicate the ends of lines:

“I do what I’ve done

not for money or fun

but for debts to be paid ,

amends to be made .

For blood that’s as red

as a painted rose .

So every man knows

he reaps what he sows.”

After jotting it down on the pad by the phone, Gurney reread it carefully, trying to get a sense of the writer-the peculiar personality lurking at the intersection of a vengeful intent and the urge to express it in a poem.

Mellery broke the silence. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking it may be time for you to go to the police.”

“I’d rather not do that.” The agitation was returning. “I explained that to you.”

“I know you did. But if you want my best advice, that’s it.”

“I understand what you’re saying. But I’m asking for an alternative.”

“The best alternative, if you can afford it, would be twenty-four-hour bodyguards.”

“You mean walk around my own property between a pair of gorillas? How on earth do I explain that to my guests?”

“‘Gorillas’ may be a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Look, the point is, I don’t tell lies to my guests. If one of them asked me who these new additions are, I’d have to admit that they are bodyguards, which would naturally lead to more questions. It would be unsettling-toxic to the atmosphere I try to generate here. Is there any other course of action you can suggest?”

“That depends. What would you want the action to achieve?”

Mellery answered with a sour little laugh. “Maybe you could discover who’s after me and what they want to do to me, and then keep them from doing it. Do you think you could do that?”

Gurney was about to say, “I’m not sure whether I can or not,” when Mellery added with sudden intensity, “Davey, for Chrissake, I’m scared shitless. I don’t know what the hell is going on. You’re the smartest guy I ever met. And you’re the only guy I trust not to make the situation worse.”

Just then Madeleine passed through the kitchen carrying her knitting bag. She picked up her straw gardening hat from the sideboard along with the current issue of Mother Earth News and went out through the French doors with a quick smile that seemed to be switched on by the bright sky.

“How much I can help you will depend on how much you help me,” said Gurney.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I already told you.”

“What? Oh… the lists…”

“When you’ve made progress, call me back. We’ll see where we go from there.”

“Dave?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You’ve given me some hope. Oh, by the way, I opened that envelope today very carefully. Like they do on TV. So if there are fingerprints, they wouldn’t be destroyed. I used tweezers and latex gloves. I put the letter in a plastic bag.”

Gurney wasn’t really comfortable with his agreement to get involved in Mark Mellery’s problem. Certainly he was attracted by its mystery, by the challenge of unraveling it. So why did he feel uneasy?