Gregg Hurwitz - The Program

"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?"