“Well,” he said.
“It wasn’t the first one I tried,” she said, “but it didn’t take me long to get to it. I erased the message I’d left, and while I was at it I erased a message from some jerk who wanted to sell you a time-share in the Bahamas.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I got in the habit of invading your privacy. When you were out of town, I checked your messages for you.”
“One time I checked,” he remembered, “and there was some kind of nuisance message, not a time-share but about as inviting, and I didn’t bother to erase it. And then when I got home it wasn’t there.”
“It must have been one of the ones I erased. I figured I’d spare you the aggravation.”
“And there were messages from Maggie?”
“ ‘Hi, it’s me. I was just thinking of you. Don’t bother to call back.’ If you weren’t supposed to call back, what did you need to hear it for?” She reached for her glass of tea. “That was the first one. And there were one or two others in the same vein over the months. Then when you were in Baltimore she left three or four messages, including one along the lines of ‘I know you’re there and you’re not answering the phone and please don’t pick up now because it would just make it obvious what a neurotic bastard you are.’ Then a long pause, during which I guess you were supposed to pick it up, and then she called you a name and hung up.”
“What kind of a name?”
“All I remember is it wasn’t a compliment. Then an apology, and a request that you call. And another saying ignore the preceding message. I figured you’d better ignore them all, and I made them go away.”
“And this was when I was in Baltimore.”
“And while you were on jury duty.”
“You called during the day, while I was on jury duty.”
“A couple of times.”
“Just a couple of times?”
“Well, daily, actually. At this point I was just checking for messages from her, and most of the time there weren’t any, but I didn’t want you hearing from her, or talking to her.”
“You’d already decided she was a loose end.”
“Well, it was getting obvious, Keller.”
“Bait,” he said.
“We’d have to take her out anyway, you know. I don’t think it’s something you want to do yourself, or am I wrong?”
“I went to bed with the woman,” he said.
“And sent her flowers, if I remember correctly.”
“I liked her, Dot. She had an interesting way of seeing things.”
“The ones you pick,” she said, “always have an interesting way of seeing things.”
“The ones I pick?”
“This one,” she said, “and the dog walker one with all the earrings. Call me judgmental, but I think we’d be safe classing them both as kooks.”
“Maybe.”
“ ‘Let’s keep this superficial, so don’t send me any more flowers, and we’ll just meet a couple of times a month and go to bed.’ “
“ ‘And by the way, you’ve got a murderer’s thumb.’ “
“Any more superficial, Keller, and she’d have had you stay home altogether and just send her a monthly teaspoon of sperm. I have to say she did you a favor, keeping you at a distance. It might be harder on you otherwise, closing the account.”
“Bait,” he said.
“The word seems to bother you. Call it sushi, if you like that better. It amounts to the same thing.”
“I guess I’ll get used to the idea.”
“Or look at it this way,” she said. “She’s the lemon fate handed you. And what you’re doing, you’re making lemonade.”
Back at his apartment, the first thing Keller did was check his answering machine. He pressed the Play button, and the robotic voice said, “You. Have. No. Messages.”
And what did that mean? That no one had left a message? Or that, while he was on his way home, Dot had called and wiped the machine clean?
The first thing to do, he thought, was change his number, and to something less obvious than four-four-four. Like what? He ran three-number combinations through his head, trying to find one that was clunkier and less memorable than the others. Three-eight-one? Two-nine-four? Any number, he decided, displayed special qualities if you thought about it long enough. And, if he managed to find one that was genuinely unremarkable, one a person just couldn’t hold in his mind, then how would he remember it himself?
Besides, Dot could dig it out by trying numbers at random. How many combinations were there, anyway? He seemed to remember from high school math that there was a formula for this sort of thing, but, like most of high school math, it had long since found its way out of his memory bank.
He sat down at his desk, picked up a pencil and realized you didn’t need a formula. The numbers started at zero-zero-zero and ran to nine-nine-nine. A thousand combinations, that’s how many there were. Ten times ten times ten, that was the formula, if formulas were important to you. It sounded like a lot, a thousand, but when you thought about it you realized it wasn’t so much after all.
Years ago he’d done a job for the old man that involved a briefcase. He hadn’t thought of it in years, but he remembered now that the briefcase had been locked, not with a key but with a three-number code, one of those triple dials where you had to line up the numbers correctly to get the case open. He’d used a pair of pruning shears instead, cutting right through the leather flap, but it struck him now, years and years later, that he could have opened the case without ruining it. It would have taken more time, but it wouldn’t have taken forever.
More like two hours, he realized. Maybe even less than that. If you were systematic about it, you could easily try ten or fifteen combinations a minute. Ten a minute was a hundred minutes, and what did that amount to? An hour and forty minutes?
The pruning shears had taken no time at all. Of course it had taken him a while to find the shears, and before that he’d sawed at the flap ineffectually with a kitchen knife. But that was beside the point. A thousand combinations wouldn’t take long, not with a briefcase lock and not with a telephone answering machine, either. You’d dial the number and let the machine pick up, and then you’d punch in as many of your three-number codes as you could in the thirty seconds or so that the message played. Then you’d call back and do it again. You might make a lot of calls, but so what? You wouldn’t be leaving any messages. And, even if you did, sooner or later you’d get the right combination. And then you’d have a chance to erase them.
So changing his combination wouldn’t help. And how would Dot feel if she called up and punched in four-four-four and nothing happened? It would be a slap in the face, and not a very effective one, either, because she could run the combinations until she cracked the code.
Of course he could tell her ahead of time. “I realized anybody could do what you did and get my messages,” he could say, “so I changed the number.” She’d say it was a good idea. And, if she asked what the new number was, he’d say something about it being so unmemorable he couldn’t remember it himself. “But I’ve got it written down,” he’d say, and let it go at that.
And, if she wanted to, she’d get the new number. However you looked at it, he couldn’t keep her out of his answering machine. Unless…
Well, he could change his phone number. Get a new number, an unlisted one. With seven digits, well, that added up to ten million combinations, and it would take forever and cost a fortune, because you’d get nine million wrong numbers while you were at it.
But if he got a new number, there wouldn’t be any messages to protect. Because no one would be able to call him. Including Dot, who was his most frequent caller in the first place.
Maybe he should just leave everything the way it was. Dot had probably been right to check his machine, just as she’d been right to check out the astrologer. He’d liked Louise, she was a nice woman, but if she was going to turn into Chatty Cathy the minute somebody mentioned a murderer’s thumb, well, that made her a definite loose end.