The Program tr-2 Page 7

  "Kind of a shady meet, no? A nighttime summons to a by-the-hour motel the wrong side of Culver City?"

  "That's why you're here," Tim said.

  "And I thought it was my sunny disposition."

  Road construction slowed them to a crawl at the 405 interchange. In L.A., even a 3:00 A.M. drive can't deliver you from traffic.

  "He's got no wants, no warrants, for what that's worth, but his jittery-poodle routine doesn't fill me with trust. You think he's really scared of me or he's trying to sitting-duck my ass out in the parking lot?"

  "I think he's really scared of you. Or what you represent in his cult conditioning."

  Bear stared at him as if he'd shifted to Swedish. "Well, Dr. Phil, I still say we just haul him in and press the fuck out of him. Or are you gonna give me your bullshit about catching flies with honey?"

  "We push too hard, the guy could melt down all over your fine vinyl seats."

  The sky had lightened to slate by the time they pulled past the motel parking lot. Bear took the rig around the block once; everything looked clear.

  The jangling bells announcing Tim's entrance sent the papers in Reggie's hands flying. "Sorry. I'm a little jumpy."

  Though the carpet had been cleaned, it still squished beneath Tim's shoes. The place smelled like a bad sushi joint.

  Reggie flicked the bent red plastic hands of a smiley – faced I'll – Be – Back – By clock to 6:00 and propped it on the cheap blotter. He pulled the brown paper bag from the drawer and carried it out with him, tucked under an arm like a clutch purse. "I don't take them, the downers. I don't need to, as long as I know they're here with me."

  Reggie led them down the walk running along the lot's edge, key dangling from a plastic medallion with 5 stamped on it in flaking gold. Tim noticed he kept his eyes on Bear in the truck, only glancing away briefly to navigate. Through the reflections off the windshield, Bear offered a cheery wave, which turned to a middle finger when Reggie rotated to jiggle the key in the knob. Bear made his trademark "what the fuck?" head dip about the locale switch, aped by Boston beside him, but Tim gave them both the flat hand, indicating everything was okay.

  A few more tugs and pushes and the door swung open. An index card hanging from a length of yarn affixed to the ceiling slapped Reggie in the face when he stepped inside. It read: Lock Door Behind You.

  "Right," Reggie said, speaking to the card. He stepped aside, letting them in, then bolted the door.

  They were literally ankle deep in clothes and trash. The floor was likely carpeted, given the slight yield beneath Tim's feet; the bed and bureau he distinguished mostly by shape and location. A yellowed poster of the Department of Agriculture food pyramid sagged through its tacks, cheerfully declaiming, MEAT AND POULTRY – 2-3 SERVINGS A

  DAY.

  Keeping an eye on Reggie, Tim took a quick turn around the room, glancing into the bathroom and open closet.

  Reggie pulled back the comforter, dispersing unopened mail and cheeseburger wrappers, and sat. "I think there's a chair over there."

  Tim found it beneath a raincoat and a sweatshirt, which he set respectfully atop the TV before sitting.

  Upsetting a glass of water, Reggie grabbed a worn spiral notepad from the nightstand. He flipped through it, finger tracing down the pen-marked pages. "Damnit. I forgot to deposit my check today." He squeezed the bridge of his nose. "But it's okay. I can learn from this. There's a lesson here."

  "Reggie."

  "Oh, right. Right." He propped himself up on some pillows. "Tell me about the girl."

  "She's nineteen years old. Sensitive, vulnerable. A dreamer. Her parents are tougher than most but provided her more than the basics. A good worker – she was studying computer science at Pepperdine. She liked flowers, simple pleasures. Not the coolest girl in the dorm, maybe the last to get asked out, but the kind the guys'll regret ignoring when the ten-year swings around. Clean, pretty features, a touch goofy, but growing into herself every minute."

  Reggie closed his eyes, leaning back against the wicker headboard. "God, I know the type. Ripe and willing. There are so many of them. You can choke the life out of them, just like that." A groan colored his sigh. "When you exit or get deprogrammed or whatever the fuck you want to call it, they say, 'At the time you were doing the best you could with the information you had.' I tell myself that when I think about all the kids I recruited, all the people tangled up and dismantled in there because of me. I tell myself that, but I'm also full of shit." He was gone for a few minutes, and then his head tilted forward. "How long's she been in?"

  "Three months or so. Involved another month or two before that."

  "There's still time. She could get out less damaged."

  "Less damaged than who?"

  His smile genuine but dead in the eyes, Reggie made a gun with his hand and pointed the barrel at his reflection in the spotted mirror on the opposite wall. "Nightmares, panic attacks, fainting, blackouts, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, involuntary body shaking, episodes of dissociation, migraines. I'm a walking case study."

  "But you're walking."

  Reggie swallowed hard. "Look, the thing is, when you're…like this, it's hard to talk to anyone. It's embarrassing. To be seen, even."

  "I'll be patient with you."

  Reggie sniffed a couple of times and cleared his throat. Rather than look up, he flicked his hand inward – bring it on.

  "Were you and Ernie in a cult together?"

  A nod.

  "What's the name of the cult?"

  He snapped upright, eyes darting to the windows, the door. "I'm not talking specifics. No way, man. You can leave right now."

  "Okay. Relax. We can take this at your pace. You won't give me any names? The cult leader, members?"

  "They'll come after me. I'm the only one, you know. Me and Ernie, but what's Ernie anymore?"

  "You're the only what?"

  "The only nonsuicide. Not that I haven't tried." Reggie pushed up his sleeve, revealing a white worm of a scar on the underside of his forearm. "I slit my wrists, tried to hang myself."

  "Both attempts since you've been out?"

  "About twenty minutes apart, actually. I'm a fast clotter." He let out a shaky laugh. "Then the fucking knot didn't hold. The rope slid, left me dangling with my wrists scabbing up and my toes on the ground. I had to call for help. Isn't that the most pathetic fucking thing you've ever heard?" He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Whew. Haven't had a chuckle like that since I don't know when. Yeah, we all kill ourselves, pretty much."

  Tim felt a stab of concern. "Did a girl join that group recently?"

  Reggie waved a finger at him like a schoolmarm.

  Tim wanted to see if Leah's name would draw a reaction, but giving it up entailed too many risks. "Why do you kill yourselves? Or try?"

  "Shit, you're a babe in the woods, asking a question like that. Look around, man. You see anything appealing? I had money lined out -my dad's in land development. I used to drive a Porsche. Now I'm this. Here. My family's had it with me, and I don't blame them. They did their part already when I limped my ass back home fifteen months ago, so they can wash their hands of me now in good conscience. I want to pay them back for the cost of the deprogramming, but I can't even do that. It's all I can do to drag myself down four doors and work the counter. They're still in my head, man. They implant shit in your cells. They replace your identity. Problem is, once you're out, it's tough finding your old one. That's why no one leaves."

  "You miss the cult?"

  "Fuck, yeah I do. Part of it. It's like getting high. The meditation felt like melting into a river. You get hooked on it, that peacefulness, you know? Even when everything else is going to hell, you still felt like you were part of something special. And like it was a part of you."

  He'd relaxed a little; Tim wanted to keep him talking. "How do new members join?"

  "We find them. You have to bring in a certain number of Neos -that's what we call them – or you're a failure. I so
rta had…sorta had a breakdown, under the pressure of it. I had a chronic 'need' to be weak and dysfunctional. You can imagine how that went over."

  "What do you look for in a Neo?"

  Reggie threw up his hands. "I'm done talking."

  Using cult lingo back to Reggie was clearly a bad call. Tim had been trying to make Reggie talk to him like an insider but had only succeeded in putting him on guard by indicating how closely he was listening. Good job, Columbo.

  "Listen," Tim said, "I'm not pressing you for any specifics here. I just need to know how it works. In general."

  He regarded Tim warily. "I'll talk in general."

  "So tell me how you pick new recruits."

  "It's all about dosh, though no one says that directly. People 'reliant on money' are among those most in need of being liberated, you see. I was no good at picking them out. You'd think I'd be better at it, but every guy I thought was a big roller we'd find out was a poseur."

  "Where would you recruit?"

  "Anywhere you can catch normal people at a tough time in their lives. Airports are good – get them coming to a new city, out of their element. They're eager to connect. Funeral homes sometimes, catch them when they've just lost a parent – they've likely just come into some dough. You try to find them when they're looking for something. Singles services, church mixers, job fairs. We worked the high-end drug-rehab centers for a while, but that didn't pan out so hot. We had trouble with the snownoses – they were trust-funders, a lot of them, but they backslid too much, and the Teacher -" Reggie stopped, terrified by his slip.

  Tim knew that recognition had shown on his own face, which probably wasn't helping matters for Reggie. He waited patiently.

  Reggie took a moment to regain his composure. "And our leader hates messes. Oh, we also hit rich-kid schools like Loyola or SC."

  Tim leaned forward. "Tell me about the schools."

  Reggie smiled, his tongue poking in the space left by a missing incisor. "This one Pro had a great gig, working the registrar's office at Loyola for a few months. When kids came in to drop a class, she'd work them up: Having a tough time here on campus? Your parents don't understand why you can't keep up with your schedule? Things stressful? They were a needy bunch – smart and rich, too. More likely to accept an invite."

  "An invite to what?"

  "Shit, how'd you get put on this case? You have no clue how this works."

  "Educate me."

  Reggie stood and paced a few turns, stray papers crinkling underfoot. "It's a spiral, man, a flushing toilet. You snare 'em and drag 'em inward."

  "What're the criteria?"

  "If you have money. If you listen well. If you please him."

  One male leader, Tim noted.

  Reggie sat down, shoulders humped, exhausted. "He's real selective about who gets to move to the Inner Circle – that's why he's had so much luck with people staying on board. He'd never run the risk of people leaving and revealing him for who he is – he'd fucking kill them first. He's building a tight, loyal core to take on the world."

  "You see any evidence of his killing anyone who betrayed him?"

  "He never had to kill anyone. The couple of us he booted out are such fucking messes there's not much threat anyone would listen if we did talk." Reggie picked at a button on his shirt. "Or that we'll survive very long. As long as I mind my own business, I'm safe from him." He snickered. "Not like Oprah's banging down my door anyway."

  "So the recruits. What do you do with them?"

  Reggie was up on his feet again, walking in circles. "We'd pick the best ones and try to get them to move into or near our house. We'd get the twenty-four-hour thing going, really start taking apart their minds and putting them back together."

  Tim recalled the jarring difference between Leah's dorm room on an affluent campus and the dump in Van Nuys. Her "full dance card" after the move.

  "How do they get you to sign over your money?"

  "Oh, that trick he's got down. That's the whole point of it, really. Never mind that you wind up with nothing on the balance sheet but tens of thousands of dollars in gift tax you didn't know existed." Reggie smiled crookedly. "That's right. I'm a cool hundred grand in the hole. And since mind control doesn't exist – did you know that? Legally, mind control doesn't even exist, stupid asshole lawmakers -then what are you gonna do? It's not illegal to coax someone to give away all their money. Nothing to stop willing victims like me from ending up here."

  "If I'm looking to find this girl and get her out, can I expect to run across muscle?"

  "You can bet on it. He likes having big guys around. They help him feel taller."

  Was the leader short? Tim didn't want to pry, since specifics seemed to set Reggie off. "The girl sold all her possessions three weeks ago and moved out of her apartment. No forwarding information. Do you think she's in the cult house?"

  "Probably. The next step would be living with the leader, wherever he is now. Either way your nameless girl just entered a new world of trouble. They have their claws into her around the clock now. It's gonna be a rapid downhill from here."

  "She get much time alone?"

  He snorted. "No one gets much time alone. That's the whole point. You have a Gro-Par with you twenty-four/seven, group activities, le -"

  "Gro-Par?"

  A nervous glance around the room, as if invisible culties were in attendance.

  "Growth Partner." Reggie ran his hand along the underside of his nose. "Yeah, no alone time at all. Why? You gonna try to nab her? Good luck. She'll fucking hate you for it. And she'll be right to." His pacing had taken on an agitated quality – he slogged through clothes and trash, hands jiggling, sentences running together. "Shit, you don't stand a chance anyway. They'll spot a Common-Censor like you a mile away. They're on the lookout, all the time. He sinks it into your brain to avoid outsiders. He says they come to kidnap you and take you back to your miserable former life. You gonna prove him right?"

  "I hope not." He weathered Reggie's stare. "Anything you can…Anything you're comfortable telling me about the leader?"

  "I'm not going there."

  "Give me something, Reggie. Doesn't have to be his Social Security number. His tastes, proclivities, sexual preferences…?"

  Reggie rolled his head to one side, then back, lost in some internal debate. "He only fucks virgins. Or at least girls whose cherries he's popped – his Lilies. He won't fuck a girl if anyone else has."

  Tim thought of Katie Kelner's sneering reference to Leah's being "the big V" and felt his stomach roil. "Does he rape them?"

  Reggie's fingers pressed into his temples as he walked, as if staving off a migraine. "Define 'rape.' Define 'force.' Define 'free will.' No, he doesn't rape them, technically. He convinces them. But they don't have a choice."

  "What does that mean?"

  "If you don't get it, I can't explain it to you." Reggie's tone was so cold and definitive that Tim just stared at him for a few minutes. Reggie broke the standoff by falling back on the bed, pushing fists into his temples. "Look, I've got a massive headache coming on. I can't do this anymore."

  "Where do they -"

  "I can't do this anymore!" Reggie lay still, his breath coming in jerks – he was either crying or in intense pain. When he spoke again, his voice was apologetic. "I can't…I'm just done, man. I can't anymore. It puts me back."

  "Okay. It's okay. Thank you." Tim rose to leave.

  "Can you turn off the light?"

  "The light's off."

  "Wait. Can you…? I can't figure out…" Reggie fumbled for the notebook, accidentally knocking it back between the nightstand and the wall. "Shit. That's my nighttime list. What should I do?"

  Tim stared at him, nonplussed.

  "What am I supposed to do? Like, before bed?"

  "Brush your teeth?"

  "Right, that's right." Reggie pushed himself up off the bed. "Hang on. Just stay a second. Please." Then, from the bathroom, "How much toothpaste?"

  "Just enoug
h to cover the bristles." This type of caretaking, while a bizarre variation, wasn't entirely unfamiliar to Tim. Two months ago, on Ginny's birthday – the year anniversary of her death – any movement had felt torpid and fatiguing. That night, as on a handful before, he and Dray had nursed each other through the rote movements of living.

  "Can I go to the bathroom?"

  "Yes."

  The sound of Reggie pissing; he hadn't bothered to close the door. He came back and stood before the bed, staring at it, blinking. He'd remembered to remove his shirt, revealing a torso so wasted each rib was visible, but he was still wearing his jeans. He muttered to himself, confused, utterly backslid into dependency.

  Tim flapped the comforter once, hard, scattering the trash to the floor. He pulled back the sheets. "Get in."

  Reggie slid beneath the covers.

  Tim pulled them up, dropping them so they fell across Reggie's chest. Reggie's eyes were bulging now. "Can I have the TV on? I need the light and movement."

  "Yes." It took Tim a moment to locate the TV – it sat draped beneath a ratty bath mat. The antenna was snapped, so the picture came up a confusion of blurs and warped voices. Tim tried to adjust the stub, but Reggie called out, "It's fine like that. Makes me feel like I have a bit of company."

  When Tim reached the door, Reggie said, "Hey, Sheriff."

  Tim turned, resisting the urge to correct him. Reggie had pulled the sheets up above his chin; his eyes peered out, sunken and fearful. "You'd better get that girl out of there as soon as fucking possible."

  Chapter nine

  Leah opened her eyes and felt a flutter of anxiety, as she had every morning for the last three months. And, as she had every morning for the last three months, she willed away her weakness, controlling her thoughts as she had been taught.

  She told herself that her doubts were the last vestiges of her Old Programming.

  That she could maximize her growth by minimizing her negativity.

  That she needed to let go and Get with The Program.

  It was a great honor to be invited to join the Inner Circle up at the ranch, just twenty-two days ago, and she wasn't about to screw it up. She'd sacrificed way too much for that. She stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling of her shared bedroom, the wrinkles of concern smoothing from her face, her heart rate slowing to normal. The space resembled a state-college dorm room – two beat-up wooden beds, drawers beneath, a single dresser, a closet with a splintering door that wouldn't close. Periwinkle paint covered the cinder-block walls, fading in patches where the sun hit it through the lone window.