"And Martti," he said, "Ole told me your wife is Tuuli Waanila." He pronounced it to rhyme with vanilla. "Why don't you bring her along, too? We-all would like to meet her."
I threw a glance in her direction. She'd been listening from her easy chair, and now was nodding enthusiastically. But the invitation had made me uncomfortable. "I don't know," I said, "she's pretty busy lately." Her expression changed instantly, and she started to get up, as if to come over. "Just a minute; let me talk to her."
I touched the hold key and, turning, reminded her that the Merlins were murder suspects. That I was investigating them, and they could be dangerous.
"Martti," she said, "I want to go." Her voice was not pleading; there was steel in it, honed to an edge. "If these people are more powerful than Ole Sigurdsson, I want to meet them."
I didn't find her logic compelling. I'd met Sigurdsson, and he hadn't done anything psychic at all. I was willing to bet the Merlins wouldn't either. On the other hand, her tone of voice was compelling as hell. I shrugged, and opened the line again. "She says she can make it," I told him. "She looks forward to meeting you. Ole made you sound pretty interesting."
The way he grinned out at me from the screen, I wondered if maybe the hold hadn't worked, and he'd watched and heard. But it had worked. The screen had been blank when I'd turned back to it.
After a minute we disconnected. I couldn't help but wonder, though, what Vic Merlin's real reason was for inviting her.
11
LONNIE THOMAS
Considering what Molly Cadigan had said about the church being dangerous, and how Fred Hamilton had agreed with her, and that I'd been followed lately, the next day I took a company car with Colorado plates. In California it's now legal for licensed investigation firms to register a vehicle in more than one state, as long as one of the states is California. I parked in the big lot on Campus, and arrived in the lobby of the Admin Building at 1:20, ten minutes early.
The receptionist—smiling, good-looking, and wearing a space-cadet uniform—called to a tall, skinny, teenaged kid wearing a uniform and a complete set of pimples. I guessed his IQ as about equal to his weight—in kilos, not pounds—maybe sixty. He led me to an office. The plaque beside the door read simply Central Communications. Inside, a not so pretty and sure as hell not smiling young woman wearing a dictation headset sat typing rapidly at a computer. Without slowing, or even looking at me, she told me to take a chair. There was a reading rack, but all it held was church promotion, and booklets supposedly written by Ray Christman.
I took one of the booklets, titled The Freedom Road. Beneath the typist's fingers, the keyboard sounded like a popcorn popper having an orgasm. I'd never seen anyone type so fast; I had to watch. Her fingers were a blur. How many typos per minute, I wondered? She sat ramrod straight, and while she typed, smoked steadily on a cigarillo, letting ashes dribble on her lap. Finally it was down nearly to the filter tip. She stopped just long enough to put it in a big ashtray that needed emptying—didn't even take time to butt it out—then lit another and started typing grimly again.
I wondered how the hell many letters or pages she typed in a day. There was a graph taped to the wall—hand-drawn!—showing an ascending curve. From where I sat, I couldn't see what it said, and it was behind her so I could hardly go over and look at it closely. Pages typed per day or week, maybe.
I gave my attention to The Freedom Road. The damned thing actually made sense, if you accepted the underlying premises. It made a certain amount even if you didn't, as good promotion should.
One-thirty came and went, and 1:40. By then she'd lit still another cigarillo. If Hamilton had been truthful about that ten dollars a week, she had to borrow to keep herself in smokes. Maybe they gave bonuses for production. "Does Mr. Thomas know I'm here?" I asked.
She actually stopped typing to look at me. As if I'd crawled out from under a rock. "He knows." Then she jabbed, and jabbed is the word, an intercom key and spoke to someone on her throat mike, an exchange of maybe eight seconds. "He'll be a few minutes late," she told me. "He's with someone important."
Having put me in my place, she began typing again. A couple of cigarillos later, another uniformed, teenaged boy hustled in with a large styrofoam cup of coffee for her; she accepted it without thanks or even a look, took a sip, then typed on furiously. I wondered how many empty styrofoam cups were in her wastebasket.
At 1:52 another young woman hurried in, a girl, really, in a form-fitting uniform guaranteed to raise your body temperature. Her eyes were on me as she came through the door. "Mr. Eberly? Come with me."
I followed her down the hall to a small elevator foyer, almost trotting to keep up. She poked impatiently at a button, as if pumping it formed a vacuum in the shaft that would pull the elevator in against all resistance. It arrived and took us to the seventh floor, where I stepped out into a penthouse with the quiet of sound insulation and the feel of humidified air conditioning. There she led me down a short hall to an office suite with no plaque on the door. Probably the only office up there, I decided. This had to be the penthouse that Hamilton had said held Christman's apartment and office. Apparently Thomas had moved in, at least into the office. As if he didn't expect Christman back.
I found myself in a small reception room. The receptionist was a tall and very handsome Hispanic lady, maybe forty-five years old, with raven hair, and the first smile I'd seen since the receptionist in the lobby. She too wore a headset, but not a uniform. There was a couch and a matching chair by one wall, and she gestured. "Please have a seat, Mr. Eberly. Mr. Thomas will be with you in a minute or two." I sat. She turned to a computer and began to type. I'd have thought she was really fast, if I hadn't been watching the typist downstairs. After a moment, a silent printer kicked a sheet of paper out into a basket beside her. She scanned it, then put it atop a stack on her desk and continued at her keyboard.
I took the compad out of my attaché case, put it in my jacket pocket to have it handy, then reopened The Freedom Road and began to read again. At 2:09, a buzzer brrrrted at her from her computer. She picked up a privacy receiver and listened, then got up and looked at me, smiling again. I got the impression that the smile was genuine, that she was actually friendly. And more—that she was somewhat the kind of person the church claimed to produce! "Mr. Thomas will see you now," she said, and led me to the door of what turned out to be a large, richly furnished office. When I stepped in, she stepped back out and closed the door behind me.
Thomas looked skeptically at me, and motioned toward a chair across a desk from his own. "All right, Mr. Eberly," he said when I'd sat down, "what do you want to know?"
He was a large man, about six-four and maybe 270 pounds—overweight but not obese, more beef than pork. I judged his age at forty-five. Like the typist's, his ashtray was full of butts.
"First, let me say I'm recording this." I touched my attaché case. "So I won't have to rely on notes."
He nodded curtly.
"Is it true that the Church of the New Gnosis has a standing offer of refunds for services given which the parishioner considers unsatisfactory?"
He could see what was coming. His face took a "that again" look. "That's right. And it's an offer we make good on."
I spoke carefully. "I've had people tell me they've applied for refunds and gotten the run-around. Endlessly. What's the truth about that?"