Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

No. That poor bastard. I wouldn’t want to be him a few hours from now, on a sad, cold, December night in Nowhere, Wyoming.

The arithmetical process of elimination. Our two primary suspects and Esteban were three of the solutions to the case, but they weren’t all of the solutions, and I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable until I had dealt with every possibility, no matter how remote. At this last stage of the game I knew I was going to have to see about Ricky’s golf cart. I probably should have investigated this one first, but I’d been putting it at the back of my mind. It would be a ridiculous way for a man to die. Run over by a purple golf cart whose speed topped out at ten kph, but all ways to die were equally absurd and somehow in all this craziness it wouldn’t have been inappropriate.

The Scientology Drop-In Center was next to Donna Karan.

I decided to drop in.

Metallic walls, massive air-conditioning pods, dark, uncomfortable-looking chairs around an ebony coffee table. Scientology magazines, newsletters, booklets, and of course various texts by L. Ron Hubbard. The reception desk was a long curve of black marble. I’d never seen black marble before and I was impressed.

I stood there and ran my fingers along the grain.

The receptionist looked up.

Pretty, with a Stepford hairdo and dress, she had a glazed Hero of the Revolution expression about her.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if I could see Toby Armstrong. I’m an insurance inves-”

“Oh yes. Toby’s available right now if you want to go in. It will have to be brief, he’s auditing at two. IV Room number two, first on the left.”

IV Room #2.

Toby was sitting behind a desk, surfing the Web on a tiny silver Toshiba laptop. He was skinny with a raggedy gold sweater, blond hair, and a sallow, distant expression. His eyes were black, tired, and startled when I came in unannounced. He quickly pulled down the cover on the Toshiba.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes, I read that you crashed a golf cart at-”

Toby stood and offered me his hand. It was moist, limp, the nails dirty and bitten to the quick. He rubbed his face, sat back down, and reached into a drawer under his desk. He brought out a long white booklet and a pencil and passed them across to me. He didn’t appear to have taken in what I had begun to say. “I suppose they told you that this is going to have to be quick. I’ve got an audit at two,” he muttered.

“So they said.”

He stood again, his left eye twitched alarmingly for a moment, and then, abruptly, he left the office.

“Wait a minute,” I said. I went to the door and tried to follow him but it was locked from the outside.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” I called out.

The door opened and the receptionist came back in. She was holding a glass of water.

“Oh, please take a seat, Miss…”

“Martinez.”

“Please take a seat, Miss Martinez. Just fill out that questionnaire and Toby will be back in to see you in a moment. And do drink the water, it’s very dry in here.”

She gave me a winning American smile and I found myself sitting.

The door closed.

I drank the water, opened the questionnaire.

I faked the career history and personal data pages, info dumping a fictional CV I was quite proud of. Inez Martinez 3.0 was a young Latina from Denver, who had become an insurance agent after attending Harvard University. Hmm, was that credible? Harvard, well, it was too late now. I’d made her magna cum laude and a member of the basketball team.

I started answering the other questions. It was amusing. A distraction.

They grew increasingly weirder as the pages turned.

Q. 43: “If your mother divorced your father and married someone of a different race would you A) Be angry? B) Be happy? C) Be worried about the opinion of others? D) Have no opinion?” I wrote D.

Q. 89: “When you are hunting and the quarry enters your sights, do you squeeze the trigger with A) Satisfaction? B) Regret? C) Joy? D) Emptiness?” I wrote D again, thinking about nightmares of dead men in the desert.

Q. 100: “If it were proven that there was life on Mars would you A) Move there? B) Stay on Earth? C) Question the findings of the scientists? D) Reevaluate your religious beliefs?”

Q. 102: “Where are you most at ease: A) The nonsmoking section of a cinema? B) A discotheque? C) An airport departure lounge? D) An airport arrivals lounge?”

I had just finished question 200 and closed the booklet when Toby came back in.

“That was good timing,” I said.

He took the booklet. “No, I was watching you through the monitor. Enjoy your vitamin water?”

I had barely touched the glass and now I was relieved.

“Vitamin water?”

“Drink it, it’s good for you. B Complex mostly, one hundred mg of niacin and lots of other good stuff. High potency, not like that crap in 7-Eleven. Better than coffee. Drink up.”

“Uh, no thanks.”

Toby began drawing a line through my answers, forming a kind of chart.

“Well, this will give us some idea,” he said. “If I wasn’t pressed for time, we could do the proper thousand-question test; that’s the real deal.”

“Uhm, look, Toby, I’m an insurance invest-”

“Ah, you’re from Denver! Denver, Denver, Denver!” Toby exclaimed, his eyes wide, his fist pounding the table.

“What about it?”

“Denver holds a special place in our pantheon. Is that the right word? No matter. It was in Denver that Battlefield Earth takes place, surely Denver’s claim to fame as a city.”

He leaned across to me and his eyes now took on a furtive expression.

“Do you want me to spill? Do you think you can handle it?”

“Spill.”

“There are some of us who don’t think it’s a novel at all.”

“No?”

“No. Not a novel, but a…” he lowered his voice. “Prediction.”

“Ah, I see.”

“That’s just between us.”

“Of course.”

“That’s why some of us think Mr. Cruise has moved to Colorado. And when Xenu returns… No, forget that, I’ve said too much, but let’s just say that the rumors about Mr. Cruise’s bunker aren’t just rumors.”

I leaned back in the chair while Toby finished his chart. When he was done he passed it across the table and began explaining it. It looked like the stock market index after a turbulent week, but according to Toby the fluctuations weren’t the problem, the problem was that the high points and the low points were in the wrong places. My life was a mess, I was rudderless, confused, clearly unhappy; however, there was an answer. He further explained that the Church of Scientology could help me iron out these personality defects, with the assistance of vitamin water, the thousand-question audit, and motivated people like Toby.

After this little speech he began biting his nails and, when he thought I wasn’t looking, exploring his ear canal with the eraser on the top of the pencil.

When he began nibbling at the eraser I decided that as amusing as this all was, I’d had just about enough of it.

I was a serious person, here on serious business.

I gave him my card and heavy hit him with words like “dead Mexican” and “hit and run” and “intoxication” and “manslaughter” and “leaving the scene” of an accident.

He was already fragile, on edge. He began to simper and, sipping my vitamin water, confessed that he had been drunk the night of the golf cart incident, but he’d only been trying to drive from the Scientology Center on Pearl Steet to his apartment on Arapahoe, that there was no way he could get up the mountain, and in any case everyone had been given strict instructions to stay away from Mr. Cruise’s estate and not to invade his personal space. The sheriff’s department hadn’t cared.