Think Of a Number (2010) (4 page)

Gurney nodded, unconvinced.

“Besides,” Mellery went on, “the idea of the local police grabbing hold of this and launching a full-scale investigation, questioning people, coming up to the institute, badgering present and former guests—some of our guests are sensitive people—stomping around and raising all sorts of hell, poking into things that are none of their business, maybe getting the press involved … Christ! I can just see the headlines—‘Spiritual Author Gets Death Threats’—and the turmoil that would raise.…” Mellery’s voice trailed off, and he shook his head as if mere words could not describe the damage the police might cause.

Gurney responded with a look of bafflement.

“What’s wrong?” Mellery asked.

“Your two reasons for not contacting the police contradict each other.”

“How?”

“You didn’t contact the police because you were afraid they wouldn’t do anything. And you didn’t contact them because you were afraid they would do too much.”

“Ah, yes … but both statements are true. The common element is my fear of the matter’s being handled ineptly. Police ineptness might take the form of a lackadaisical approach or a bumbling bulls-in-the-china-shop approach. Inept lassitude or inept aggressiveness—you see what I mean?”

Gurney had the feeling he’d just watched someone stub his toe and turn it into a pirouette. He wasn’t quite buying it. In his experience
when a man gave two reasons for a decision, it was likely that a third reason—the real one—had been left unstated.

As if tuned to the wavelength of Gurney’s thought, Mellery said suddenly, “I need to be more honest with you, more open about my concerns. I can’t expect you to help me unless I show you the whole picture. In my forty-seven years, I’ve led two distinctly different lives. For the first two-thirds of my existence on this earth, I was on the wrong path, going nowhere good but getting there fast. It started in college. After college it got worse. The drinking increased, the chaos increased. I got involved in dealing drugs to an upmarket clientele and became friends with my customers. One was so impressed with my ability to spin a line of bullshit that he gave me a job on Wall Street selling bullshit stock deals over the phone to people greedy and stupid enough to believe that doubling their investment in three months was a real possibility. I was good at it, and I made a lot of money, and the money was my rocket fuel into lunacy. I did whatever I felt like doing, and most of it I can’t remember, because most of the time I was blind drunk. For ten years I worked for a succession of brilliant, thieving scumbags. Then my wife died. You wouldn’t have known, but I had gotten married the year after we graduated.”

Mellery reached for his glass. He drank thoughtfully, as though the taste were an idea forming in his mind. When the glass was half empty, he placed it on the arm of the chair, stared at it for a moment, then resumed his story.

“Her death was a monumental event. It had a greater effect on me than all the events of our fifteen years of marriage combined. I hate to admit this, but it was only through her death that my wife’s life had any real impact on me.”

Gurney got the impression that this neat irony, spoken as haltingly as though it had just come to mind, was being delivered for the hundredth time. “How did she die?”

“The whole story is in my first book, but here’s the short ugly version. We were on vacation on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. One evening at sunset, we were sitting on a deserted beach. Erin
decided to go for a swim. She’d usually go out about a hundred feet and swim back and forth parallel to the shore, as if she were doing laps in a pool. She was religious about exercise.” He paused, letting his eyes drift shut.

“Is that what she did that night?”

“What?”

“You said that’s what she
usually
did.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, I
think
that’s what she did that night. The truth is, I’m really not sure because I was drunk. Erin went in the water; I stayed on the beach with my thermos of martinis.” A tic had appeared at the corner of his left eye.

“Erin drowned. The people who discovered her body, floating in the water fifty feet from shore, also discovered me, passed out on the beach in a drunken stupor.”

After a pause he continued in a strained voice, “I imagine she had a cramp or … I don’t know what … but I imagine … she may have called to me—” He broke off, closed his eyes again, and massaged the tic. When he opened them, he looked around as if taking in his surroundings for the first time.

“This is a lovely place you have,” he said with a sad smile.

“You said her death had a powerful effect on you?”

“Oh, yes, a powerful effect.”

“Right away or later?”

“Right away. It’s a cliché, but I had what is called ‘a moment of clarity.’ It was more painful, more revelatory than anything I’ve experienced before or since. I saw vividly for the first time in my life the path I was on and how insanely destructive it was. I don’t want to liken myself to Paul being knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus, but the fact is, from that moment on I did not want to take another step down that path.” He spoke these words with resounding conviction.

He could teach a sales course called Resounding Conviction
, mused Gurney.

“I signed myself in to an alcohol detox because it seemed the right thing to do. After detox I went into therapy. I wanted to be sure
I’d found the truth and not lost my mind. The therapist was encouraging. I ended up going back to school and getting two graduate degrees, one in psychology and one in counseling. One of my classmates was the pastor of a Unitarian church, and he asked me to come and talk about my ‘conversion’—that was his word for it, not mine. The talk was a success. It grew into a series of lectures that I gave at a dozen other Unitarian churches, and the lectures turned into my first book. The book became the basis of a three-part series for PBS. Then that was distributed as a set of videotapes.

“A lot of stuff like that happened—a stream of coincidences that carried me from one good thing to another. I was invited to do a series of private seminars for some extraordinary people—who also happened to be extraordinarily wealthy. That led to the founding of the Mellery Institute for Spiritual Renewal. The people who come there love what I do. I know how egomaniacal that sounds, but it’s true. I have people who come back year after year to hear essentially the same lectures, to go through the same spiritual exercises. I hesitate to say this, because it sounds so pretentious, but as a result of Erin’s death I was reborn into an amazing new life.”

His eyes moved restlessly, giving the impression of being focused on a private landscape. Madeleine came out, removed their empty glasses, and asked if they wanted refills, which they declined. Mellery mentioned again what a lovely place they had.

“You said that you wanted to be more honest with me about your concerns,” prompted Gurney.

“Yes. It has to do with my drinking years. I was a blackout drinker. I had serious
memory
blackouts—some lasting an hour or two, some longer. In the final years, I had them every time I drank. That’s a lot of time, a lot of things I’ve done, that I have no recollection of. When I was drunk, I wasn’t choosy about who I was with or what I did. Frankly, the alcohol references in those nasty little notes I showed you are the reason I’m so upset. My emotions the past few days have been bouncing back and forth between upset and terrified.”

Despite his skepticism, Gurney was struck by something authentic in Mellery’s tone. “Tell me more,” he said.

During the ensuing half hour, it became clear that there was not a lot more Mellery was willing or able to tell. He did, however, return to one point that obsessed him.

“How in the name of God could he have known what number I would think of? I have gone over in my mind people I’ve known, places I’ve been, addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, dates, birthdays, license plates, even prices of things—anything with numbers—and there’s nothing I associate with six fifty-eight. It’s driving me crazy!”

“It might be more useful to focus on simpler questions. For instance …”

But Mellery wasn’t listening. “I have no sense that six fifty-eight means anything at all. But it must mean something. And whatever it means, someone else knows about it. Someone else knows that six fifty-eight is significant enough to me that it would be the first number I would think of. I can’t get my mind around that. It’s a nightmare!”

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?”