Butzburger didn't argue—he didn't even look as if he'd like to—and that was the end of our business conversation. All that was left was dessert. I don't think he enjoyed his cheesecake.
4
Tailed?
Back at the office, I phoned a few information sources. Most of them, though, I'd have to go out and contact personally. Almost all were loners on the fringe of the underworld, who lived with their ears open.
The best of them wasn't part of the fringe. She was on the inside—a Korean-American woman, "Miss Melanie." She was one I'd have to talk to in person. Melanie runs a large stable of expensive call girls—Asian, Eurasian, Anglo, Afro-American, and Chicanas. She even had her own clinical service. She also had the protection of the Korean mafia, probably paying for it with the services of her girls and with information the girls picked up. Information about rip-off possibilities, underworld activities—things like that. Occasionally she helped us out, for a healthy fee, with information about people or groups in competition with the Koreans.
One thing she never did though, she told me once. "Melanie," she said, referring to herself in the third person, "never does blackmail." It would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
When I'd finished my phone calls to information sources, I called up the directory to see if Gnostic Withdrawal Assistance still existed. It did. The same guy answered, and he still did business on the same basis at the same location. I told him I'd be there that afternoon, and that he probably wouldn't recognize me.
Then I had Larry, in our technical section, make me up—nothing ambitious, but misleading—and fit me out with some clothes. He darkened my complexion and my hair, and gave me brown eyes and a mustache. And a driver's license with a Turkish name. No one was going to talk Turkish to me, that was almost certain, and if I wanted to, I could swear in Finnish and pretend it was Turkish.
The makeup job didn't take long. Larry is fast. Afterward I called Tuuli, my wife, and told her I'd be home late. Probably very late. Then I went to Gnostic Withdrawal Assistance, and said I wanted to know about another missing person. He agreed to give my name and number to two recent exiles, plus Fred Hamilton again; Hamilton wasn't at his old number anymore. I also told him what I'd told Tuuli—that I'd be home late. They could leave a message on my phone.
The rest of the day I spent talking with assorted bartenders, pimps, hustlers, bail bondsmen, pawn brokers, and Miss Melanie. I wasn't optimistic, but I needed to cover all the bases. I stopped at Melanie's last. She gave me tea, and we agreed on charges.
Then I drove back to the office to get my personal car. It was full night by then, though with the sky-glow from street lights, headlights, windows, and signs, night in L.A. isn't very dark. Not like Hemlock Harbor, Michigan. As I drove my car out of the company lot, I noticed another, a late-model sea blue Hyundai, stopped across the street in the entrance of the Beverly Drugstore parking lot. The driver, it seemed to me afterward, had been black, with a close beard. I paused and waved for him to pull out first; he'd been there ahead of me. But he didn't move, so I pulled out. When I turned east on Beverly, so did he, which didn't have to mean a thing; I barely noticed. But when I turned north on Fairfax and he turned too, I wondered, so I doubled back west on Rosewood; if he'd done the same, I'd have been pretty sure. But he didn't. He had the chance but continued north on Fairfax.
He could have been innocent, or he could have recognized that I was testing him. Whatever. He was gone.
5
HAMILTON
Two calls were recorded on my phone when I got home, with numbers to call the next day, a Saturday. They were from two of the ex-Gnosties, but not Hamilton. I didn't really know why I wanted to talk with Hamilton anyway. He'd been out for three years. I guess because I'd liked his frankness and intelligence when I'd talked with him before.
Tuuli would bawl me out for working on weekends if I didn't really have to. So I waited till she went out for groceries, then called them back. The first exile had worked on the church's in-house magazine, and simply deserted. He was totally soured on the church, but totally devoted to Christman. When I told him the missing person I was interested in was Christman, he told me he was sure that Christman was too psychic to be abducted or physically harmed! His view was that the great guru had withdrawn from the church "to punish it for its degeneracy and aberrations."
He hadn't heard anything about a power struggle, though he was aware of the rash of expulsions and cancellations. I got the impression he wasn't very bright.
The second exile was a "technical compliances enforcer," who got kicked out when he refused to coerce the San Diego church to suspend counselors for what upper management had decided were technical errors. I had no idea at all what he was talking about. My reading hadn't dealt with "technical" aspects.
He was aware of two factions, one led by Lon Thomas, president of the church, and the other by a Frank Evanson, who was "the director of technical practices." The guy was very cynical about both the church and Ray Christman, whom he considered had abandoned "his crusade" and was only interested in how rich he could get. Nothing I'd read, including Christman's book for beginners, had said anything about a crusade, either.
The guy believed that Christman was probably dead, most likely assassinated by an insider with a grudge. He didn't think that either faction would have Christman killed, even if they wanted to, because "with Christman dead, the great moneymaking machine will grind to a halt." The claim that Christman had gone off to do research, he said, was a fraud, to hide his death. "But it won't work forever. When the church doesn't come through with procedures leading to Freed Being, people will get smart and see through it, and leave."
Killed by an insider with a grudge! He'd only been guessing, but it could be. And the church would probably hide it. I had virtually zero chance of finding out, from an organization like the Church of the New Gnosis.
When Tuuli got home, we took a commuter airbus to Santa Barbara. I love L.A., but in Santa Barbara the air is softer than anywhere else in the known universe. We strolled around and snacked and shopped, neither of us actually buying much. Tuuli likes to look, and I kind of do too. One place we went was Nielsen's Dairy, where we sat outside under an awning and had about a dozen different flavors of rich, rich ice cream. I could almost feel myself getting fat. Tuuli can eat like that and stay tiny, but that's not how it works with me at all.
When we got home, Fred Hamilton had called and left his number. A local number. I called him right away, Tuuli notwithstanding. He was living in West Hollywood, working as a stockbroker, and admittedly was out of touch with what was going on in the church.
I asked him how a would-be abductor might have gone about getting his hands on Christman.
"Look," he said, "I have a friend with me now, from out of town. Will tomorrow be all right? I'd like to meet you. We'll eat out somewhere, on me."
"Sure." Obviously he'd come a long way from the Gnostie exile who needed to bum a phone call, to ask his parents for bus fare.
"There's a little place on La Cienega," he said, "near Willoughby. Called Yolanda's. It's hard to miss; got a conspicuous sign, and tables with awnings out front for nice weather. Suppose I meet you there at noon, for brunch?"
"Um. Would earlier be possible? On Sundays my wife and I usually eat lunch together at home. It's gotten to be sort of a tradition."