Christopher McCarthy’s assistant leads me into a large corner office where McCarthy sits behind a beveled glass and chrome desk that has only one piece of paper on it. Though we’re indoors, McCarthy’s wearing sunglasses with tinted blue lenses. He’s dressed in an expensive brown silk suit, monogrammed pink dress shirt with a white collar and cuffs, and pink tie. In this era of sunscreen and skin cancer, he has a deep tan.

He gives me the once-over, and I know why—I’m wearing a polo shirt and blue jeans. Back when my law firm still existed, the Assembly insisted that its lawyers wear suits to meetings. He stands, and when we shake hands I smell his spicy cologne, perfumy and cloying.

“Have a seat,” he says in the stentorian, mocking tone of a talk-radio host. His voice scrapes at my nervous system, just as it did back at the law firm when he’d walk into the lobby and assault the receptionist with a loud, “Hello there, Kay, I’ll show myself back.”

I sit across from him in a sleek chair with a hard, uncomfortable back.

“One moment,” he says. He picks up his phone and buzzes his secretary. “If Jillian Jackson calls, put her through.” It’s his way of letting me know that he won’t interrupt his day for someone as insignificant as I am. He replaces the handset in the cradle. “It’s been a long time. I’m always interested in my former lawyers.”

“I was never your lawyer. Though God knows you asked Harmon to assign me to your cases often enough.”

He’s always had this peculiar tightening of the right corner of his mouth that at first looks like a smirk. Only when it repeats do you realize that it’s a nervous tic. Now, his lips twitch twice in succession. “So you’re here to talk about that unfortunate Rich Baxter, huh?”

“The Assembly accused him of stealing and had him thrown in jail. Then he died. He didn’t steal and he didn’t kill himself.”

“What’s your interest in this?”

I can’t tell him that Raymond Baxter has hired me to defend the estate against a future Assembly lawsuit. If he knew that, he wouldn’t tell me anything. “After Rich was arrested, he hired me as his lawyer. I want to clear his name. He was my friend.”

“From what I hear, you and he were hardly friends.”

“He was my friend,” I repeat. “I thought you might be interested in helping me find the people who’re really ripping off your organization. And who murdered Rich.”

“Rich Baxter was diseased. He was offered the cure—faith in the Fount and in its teachings—but he flouted it. He embezzled from the Assembly. A tremendous amount of money that had been earmarked for good works, and he stole it. He consorted with prostitutes. He was a drug abuser. The Assembly offers salvation. Baxter had every opportunity to save himself, but he fell. He let his church and his family down. Of course, misguided, empty people like you and his father—Raymond Baxter’s your client, right?—can’t accept the truth of that.”

“How do you . . . ?”

“How do we know what?” he says, taunting me. “You mean that Raymond Baxter hired you?”

I don’t respond, though I’d very much like to know how the Assembly learned this confidential information.

“Do you think secrets really exist, Stern? Belief in secrets is a superstition, a figment of the imagination of those who don’t accept the Fount, who can’t see beyond their own limited reality. People like you and Raymond Baxter. Only the ignorant believe in secrets, because secrets seem to explain away their lack of enlightenment. There’s only one true secret—the mystery of the Fount.”

“I suppose that’s why everyone knows that the TCO is a shill for the Assembly even though you try to keep that secret?”

He doesn’t react to my lame attempt at a counterpunch. I feel as though he’s gripped my spine and twisted it violently. I have built my life on secrets. But this is how they manipulate you, how they lure you into the fold or frighten you into silence—by pretending to possess some extrasensory power that lets them see inside you. Like all false prophets and petty grifters, they have no power unless their target believes. I refuse to believe.

“Rich was murdered,” I say. “He discovered something incriminating about your church or someone in it and he was killed for it.”

“If you and Baxter so much as wink at the news media about a false accusation like that, you’ll be hit with a lawsuit so large that in the end you’ll be working for the Assembly for the rest of your lives. However long those lives are.”

“I thrive on lawsuits, remember? That’s what I do. And I assume you’re not making a physical threat with that last remark.”

He’s not smiling anymore. His lips are pressed together, drained of color.

And at that moment, I’m sure that Raymond Baxter is right—the Assembly intends to come after Rich’s estate. They’re just biding their time while they build a case. That’s how the Assembly approaches a lawsuit—like a well-coordinated military campaign. “How about some cooperation,” I say. “To our mutual benefit.”

“Why would we need your help with anything?”

“Because I’m better than you at getting to the truth.”

He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “You are an arrogant man. You always were, with your self-righteous refusal to work on our matters as if you were superior to us, when you were the one dwelling in the darkness.” With his shaded eyes and his impeccable tan and his perfect hair, he’s machinelike. “You’re to stay away from us.”

I get up to leave.

“Wait.” He points a finger at me and jabs it in the air. “You and your client must stop harassing Monica Baxter. No matter how contaminated her husband was, she’s still a grieving widow, and she doesn’t deserve such treatment.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll spell it out for you. Mrs. Baxter has gotten anonymous e-mails claiming that her husband was murdered.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Harassing a widow while she’s in mourning. I would have thought as a protégé of Harmon Cherry these tactics would be beneath you. That’s something he never would have tolerated. Stop the e-mails. If you don’t, there will be consequences. The Assembly protects its own.”

“That’s the second time you’ve threatened me. And your second grave mistake.”

The side of his mouth begins to twitch almost nonstop. Without saying another word, I walk out.