Michael Crichton - Disclosure

Forget that phone.

Walking beside him, Fernandez sighed. "We still have things we can develop. It's not over yet. You've still got things, right, Alan?"

"Absolutely," Alan said. "We've hardly begun. We haven't gotten to Johnson's husband yet, or to her previous employer. There's lots of stones left to turn over and see what crawls out."

Forget that phone.

"I better check in with my office," Sanders said, and took out his cellular phone to dial Cindy.

A light rain began to fall. They came to the cars in the parking lot. Fernandez said, "Who's going to drive?"

"I will," Alan said.

They went to his car, a plain Ford sedan. Alan unlocked the doors, and Fernandez started to get in. "And I thought that at lunch today we would be going to have a party," she said.

Going to a party…

Sanders looked at Fernandez sitting in the front seat, behind the rain spattered windshield. He held the phone up to his ear and waited while the call went through to Cindy. He was relieved that his phone was working correctly. Ever since Monday night when it went dead, he hadn't trusted it completely. But it seemed to be fine. Nothing wrong with it at all.

The couple was going to a party and.she made a call on a cellular phone. From the car…

Forget that phone.

Cindy said, "Mr. Sanders's office."

And when she called, she got an answering machine. She left a message on the answering machine. And then.she hung up.

"Hello? Mr. Sanders's office. Hello?"

"Cindy, it's me."

"Oh, hi, Tom." Still reserved.

"Any messages?" he said.

"Uh, yes, let me look at the book. You had a call from Arthur in KL, he wanted to know if the drives arrived. I checked with Don Cherry's team; they got them. They're working on them now. And you had a call from Eddie in Austin; he sounded worried. And you had anothercall from John Levin. He called you yesterday, too. And he said it was important."

Levin was the executive with a hard drive supplier. Whatever was on his mind, it could wait.

"Okay. Thanks, Cindy."

"Are you going to be back in the office today? A lot of people are asking."

"I don't know."

`John Conley from Conley-White called. He wanted to meet with you at four."

"I don't know. I'll see. I'll call you later."

"Okay." She hung up.

He heard a dial tone.

And then she had hung up.

The story tugged at the back of his mind. The two people in the car. Going to the party. Who had told him that story? How did it go?

On her way to the party, Adele had made a call from the car and then.she had hung up.

Sanders snapped his fingers. Of course! Adele! The couple in the car had been Mark and Adele Lewyn. And they had had an embarrassing incident. It was starting to come back to him now.

Adele had called somebody and gotten the answering machine. She left a message, and hung up the phone. Then.she and Mark talked in the car about the person Adele had just called. They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes. And later they were very embarrassed…

Fernandez said, "Are you just going to stand there in the rain?"

Sanders didn't answer. He took the cellular phone down from his ear. The keypad and screen glowed bright green. Plenty of power. He looked at the phone and waited. After five seconds, it clicked itself off; the screen went blank. That was because the new generation of phones had an autoshutdown feature to conserve battery power. If you didn't use the phone or press the keypad for fifteen seconds, the phone shut itself off. So it wouldn't go dead.

But his phone had gone dead in Meredith's office.

Why?

Forget that phone.

Why had his cellular phone failed to shut itself off? What possible explanation could there be? Mechanical problems: one of the keys stuck, keeping the phone on. It had been damaged when he dropped it, when Meredith first kissed him. The battery was low because he forgot to charge it the night before.

No, he thought. The phone was reliable. There was no mechanical fault. And it was fully charged.

No.

The phone had worked correctly.

They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes.

His mind began to race, with scattered fragments of conversation coming back to him.

"Listen, why didn't you call me last night?"

"I did, Mark."

Sanders was certain that he had called Mark Lewyn from Meredith's office. Standing in the parking lot in the rain, he again pressed L-E-W on his keypad. The phone turned itself back on, the little screen flashingLEWYNand Mark's home number.

"There wasn't any message when I got home."

`I talked to your answering machine, about six-fifteen."

`I never got a message. "

Sanders was sure that he had called Lewyn and had talked to his answering machine. He remembered a man's voice saying the standard message, "Leave a message when you hear the tone."

Standing there with the phone in his hand, staring at Lewyn's phone number, he pressed theSENDbutton. A moment later, the answering machine picked up. A woman's voice said, "Hi, you've reached Mark and Adele at home. We're not able to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we'll call you back." Beep.

That was a different message.

He hadn't called Mark Lewyn that night.

Which could only mean he hadn't pressed L-E-W that night. Nervous in Meredith's office, he must have pressed something else. He had gotten somebody else's answering machine.

And his phone had gone dead.

Because…

Forget that phone.

`Jesus Christ," he said. He suddenly put it together. He knew exactly what had happened. And it meant that there was the chance that

"Tom, are you all right?" Fernandez said.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just give me a minute. I think I've got something important."

He hadn't pressed L-E-W.

He had pressed something else. Something very close, probably one letter off: With fumbling fingers, Sanders pushed L-E-L. The screen stayed blank: he had no number stored for that combination. L-E-M. No number stored. L-E-S. No number stored. L-E-V.

Bingo.

Printed across the little screen was:

And a phone number for John Levin.

Sanders had called John Levin's answering machine that night.

John Levin called. He said it was important.

I'll bet he did, Sanders thought.

He remembered now, with sudden clarity, the exact sequence of events in Meredith's office. He had been talking on the phone and she said, "Forget that phone," and pushed his hand down as she started kissing him. He had dropped the phone on the windowsill as they kissed, and left it there.

Later on, when he left Meredith's office, buttoning his shirt, he had picked up the cellular phone from the sill, but by then it was dead. Which could only mean that it had remained constantly on for almost an hour. It had remained on during the entire incident with Meredith.

In the car, when Adele finished the call,.she hung the phone back in the cradle, She didn't press theENDbutton, so the phone line stayed open, and their entire conversation was recorded on the persona answering machine. Fifteen minutes of jokes and personal commentary, all recorded on his answering machine.

And Sanders's phone had been dead because the line stayed open. The whole conversation had been recorded.

Standing in the parking lot, he quickly dialed John Levin's number. Fernandez got out of the car and came over to him. "What's going on?" Fernandez said. "Are we going to lunch, or what?"

`Just a minute."

The call went through. A click of the pickup, then a man's voice: `John Levin."

`John, it's Tom Sanders."

"Well, hey there, Tom boy!" Levin burst out laughing. "My man! Are you having a red-hot sex life these days, or what? I tell you, Tom, my ears were burning."