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made by a pin or perhaps the tip of a key.
    “The numbers aren’t likely to be in the correct order,” Jeanette said.
    Nudger held the phone out in brighter light that slanted through the window. There seemed to be no distinction between the scratches; they were all approximately the same length, about two inches, and even slashed at the same angle.
    “There are only four digits,” he said. “We’ll try them in various sequences with the six-six-six prefix.”
    Using a pen and paper from the desk to keep track of what sequences he’d tried, Nudger sat on the ridiculously small stool in the hall and began punching the phone’s buttons.
    What he got each time was a recording politely but acidly berating him for dialing incorrectly and suggesting that he please try again. He felt just like Beaver Cleaver being reprimanded by his TV series mother.
    He kept trying, as the honey-voiced recording had urged.
    On the fifth attempt he got a dial tone. He hung up the phone and jotted down the four numbers in the sequence that had accomplished this and slipped the paper into his pocket, immensely pleased with himself.
    Jeanette was smiling down at him, apparently impressed at last. Nudger’s ego inflated a couple of more pounds per square inch.
    “Everything’s elementary if approached in a simple-enough fashion,” she said, shrinking him once more to doltish proportions.
    “That’s me,” Nudger told her, “I’m simple and I work cheap.”
    “Don’t be hard on yourself,” Jeanette said. “Remember the model T Ford. Reliable if not swift. The favorite of millions.”
    They left Jenine’s depressing apartment and Nudger drove Jeanette back to her car, parked outside his office.
    His spirits perked up as he pulled to the curb in front of the building and switched off the engine; he was lucky enough to get the parking space with the broken meter. Fortune’s wheel on the upswing?
    “It smells terrific around here,” Jeanette said, as he walked with her to her very practical blue sedan.
    “That’s the doughnut shop located directly below my office,” Nudger told her. “Don’t be fooled by the aroma.”
    “That’s always been my philosophy,” she said, unlocking and opening her car door. Before getting behind the steering wheel she asked, “What now?”
    “As I am an investigator,” Nudger said, “I will commence to investigate. I’m going to find out more about those numbers; I’m well connected at the phone company.”
    She lowered her neat frame and scooted onto the seat, fishing in her oversized white vinyl purse for her keys. “You’ll call me?”
    “When I have something worth saying.”
    Her face was as placid and unexpressive as ever as she drove away. She could have been one of the gang on Mount Rushmore.
    Nudger realized suddenly that a cool drizzle was falling on him and that it was past lunchtime. Probably he should have invited the unresponsive Jeanette to dine with him. That would have been the gentlemanly and professional thing to do, even though he didn’t want to take time for lunch.
    Dodging traffic, he crossed the street, but before trudging up the narrow flight of stairs to his office, he ducked into Danny’s Donuts. He would assuage hunger and at the same time do penance for his lack of manners by eating an iced Danny’s Dunker Delite, and so kill two birds with one stone.
    Chewing antacid tablets as if they were addictive, Nudger left his office and bounced across St. Louis in his dented vintage Volkswagen beetle to his appointment with Sam Fisher, a phone company programmer who made most of his income with his lucrative side business.
    “So whose phone do you want bugged, Nudge?” Fisher asked, as Nudger settled into a chair in Fisher’s semi-private, glassed-in office. The place was like an aquarium.
    Nudger’s stomach did a quick somersault and he glanced around nervously at the scores of employees milling about beyond the clear glass walls of the cubicle. He felt as if