“You weren’t invited.” %147 “Whoa, whoa.” Gorman raised his arms, his professional smile ed in place. “Lots of people here weren’t specifically invited; we just the word out. I certainly have no objection to Lieutenant Gunther ng here. Have a seat.” I found a seat near the door. Looking around, I noticed the crowd relatively young-couples and individuals in their twenties and rties.
There were also several reporters with cameras, whose roles in this were not going to make things any easier for the police. I also saw Laura there, which surprised me; I hadn’t thought she’d interested in Gorman’s rap. She glanced over and gave me an embarsed smile. In my mind’s eye, I’d endowed her with more sense than e part of this crowd. It made me realize how little I knew her, and I’d presumed we shared some basic assumptions. “I was telling everyone a little about cults in general, Lieutenant nther-may I call you Joe?” “Joe’s okay.” I saw several of the reporters stare at me before erishly scribbling in their notebooks.
So much for maintaining a -profile.
“I was explaining how cultists, no matter how different they may ear on the surface, usually operate similarly in their recruitment and octrination. They focus on people that are essentially unhappy or certain in the first place, and then exploit these characteristics to win recruits over. Have you ever dealt with a cult before, Joe?” He was a slick son of a gun, I had to give him that. While Greta uld have preferred to throw me out a closed window, Gorman was ing to embarrass me to death.
I chose my words carefully, sounding like a press release. “Not cifically. I have dealt with individuals with some of that in their kground.” “No doubt you found them disoriented, often depressed, at odds h how to cope with their lives?” “That fits almost everyone I know.”
There were a few snickers. Gorman smiled more broadly. “Good int, and it applies just as aptly to cult recruiters. But where the police stly deal with aggressive types, cult recruiters go after the passive es.
They don’t want people who think they can conquer the world; y want people they can mold.” He held up a finger for emphasis. he irony is that in some cults, the goal is to create conquerors-but Iy as soldiers, never as leaders.” He was addressing the crowd by now, no longer just me, and the ence in his voice betrayed the practiced rhythm of an actor saying lines for the hundredth time.
I looked at the faces in the crowd as he talked about Sarris’s %148
megalomania, his preying on those weaker than himself, and a bevy of other Psychology I 01 catchphrases. The reporters were mostly bored; some of the crowd looked interested, and several more-Laura not among them, I chose to think seemed positively entranced. Greta was the easiest of these to spot, since she was facing me. She smiled when his sentences encouraged it, nodded just perceptively when he hit a standard chord note, frowned when he spoke of the duplicity of those who’d subvert others to support their own egos.
It was an interesting phenomenon, since none of these local people were related to anyone in the Order. For me, the message became darker the more I listened to it. Gorman was stoking intolerance, not sympathy for the downtrodden, and yet he was using the same fuel, the same words he would have used on the parents of lost children.
And it was working. As he progressed, drawing more and more comparisons to the “cult” at hand, his explanations became less professorial and more impassioned; he let up on the theys and increased the 3’ous as he built up the threat of the cults to the people living near them. The number of captivated faces around me grew. The paranoia that Greta had been displaying since the moment I’d seen her three days ago was Iegitimized as fear in the face of real danger. As Gorman spoke, the Order gradually metamorphosed into a human toxic waste dump, planted in disguise among welcoming, friendly people, but designed and destined to leach out beyond its boundaries, infecting and polluting the minds and hearts of those who so innocently gave it harbor. It was a feat of elocution that set my hair on end. Greta stood after Gorman had finished talking. There was no applause. There was no shuffling, no coughing, no whispering to be heard. These people were caught up, believing that what they valued was at stake, and that salvation from their nemesis was at hand. “Most of you know me,” she said. “I’ve been in this town all my life. I’ve served most of you food and drink, or at least drink, and I’ve even cleaned up after a few of you. I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with-some people call me bitchy, and maybe they’re right. On the other hand, nobody in this town can call me a pushover, and they can’t say that I ever stood around and let something happen I thought was crap.
“Well, this cult is crap. It came in here all smiles and sweet talk, buying its way into the town, dumping gifts on the fire department and the school and whatever, just like Paul Gorman was saying. But then their true colors showed, and now look what’s happened-a fire, a murder, an innocent man being railroaded by the cops for killing a guy he barely knew-” %151 She waited a moment after the door had shut. “Hi.” Her expresn was wary. “Hi yourself” “I thought you were pretty good in there.” “Not good enough.” “Paul Gorman’s pretty slick.” “I’m glad you think so. I got the feeling half the people in there re ready to carry him out on their shoulders.” She made a rueful face.
“Maybe they were. The fact they showed for the meeting in the first place shows how uncomfortable they are th all this.” “Are you uncomfortable?” She smiled. “Me? A little-I’m mostly curious. And I have too uch time on my hands. Dangerous thing for a woman, they say.”
I ignored the oneliner. “But you must have thoughts about this.” “Sure I do. I think people have a right to do what they want if they n’t hurt other people. But I don’t know if that’s what’s happening re.” “What about Greta?” She made a face. “I think Greta’s full of it. She runs a lousy siness, and now she’s losing money. It’s her own fault. If they’d ened a McDonald’s, she would have been in the same fix.” I found myself laughing at the image of Greta bringing in Gorman rid Gannet of the Golden Arches. I felt my earlier ill humor slipping ay.
Looking at Laura, smiling, I was suddenly grateful that she’d been ere to lift my spirits. “You had dinner yet?” “No, I was about to head home and put something on. You terested?” Something in her tone prompted me to be cautious. “No, let me at you. Your choice.” She hesitated, “Well, there’s ‘ ‘ ”’ She stopped and gave me a ‘schievous look. “How about the Kingdom Restaurant?” My astonishment showed.
“Is that all right?” She looked suddenly doubtful. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised. I would have thought you’d never set in the place.” She grinned. “I haven’t.” %152 The Kingdom Restaurant was, to the average tourist eye, quite charming.
The interior contained lots of wood-beams, rafters, exposed floors-and plenty of greenery, plants hung from almost every available overhead spot. There was a fire crackling in a large hearth, surrounded by a semicircle of comfortable-looking rocking chairs. The lighting was muted, mostly supplied by candles, including one at each of the gingham-covered tables-a city dweller’s dream come true.
Not that there were too many tourists there. The timing was lousy for them, or for anyone else outside a twenty-mile radius: It was too cold but with no compensating snow; it was fall but the colorful leaves were gone. Of New England’s many unofficial seasons, “T’Aint Season, this pause-before-the-snow-flies, was a general bust, except, of course, for the huiiters. There were three of them in “Day-Glo” dress parked at a table near the front window.