He looked up and you could see it in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Look, I scam people? Yes. Right. I do. But most of these assholes? They come in bitching about malaise or chronic fatigue syndrome, how they’ll never get over having wet the bed as a child. I say, fuck ’em. They obviously have too much time and too much money on their hands, and if some of that money can help the Church, all the better.” He stared up at Angie with a cold defiance that gradually warmed or weakened into something else. “Desiree Stone wasn’t like that. She came to us for help. Her whole fucking world caved in on her in a period of, like, two weeks and she was afraid she was going to crack up. You might not believe this, but the Church could have helped her. I really think that.”

Angie shook her head slowly and turned her back to him. “Save us some time, here, Manny. Jeff Price’s story about his family getting killed by carbon monoxide poisoning?”

“Bullshit.”

I said, “Someone infiltrated Grief Release recently. Someone like us. You know who I’m talking about?”

He was genuinely confused. “No.”

“John?”

John shook his head.

“Any leads on Price’s whereabouts?” Angie said.

“How do you mean?”

“Come on,” I said. “Manny. You can wipe out my credit and bank account, at night, in less than twelve hours, I’d say it’d be pretty hard to hide from you people.”

“But that was Price’s specialty. He came up with the whole concept of counter-ops.”

“Counter-ops,” I said.

“Yeah. Get to your opponent before they can get to you. Silence dissent. Do what the CIA does. All the information gathering, the sessions, the PIN test, that was all Price’s idea. He started that back in Chicago. If anyone can hide from us, he’s the guy.”

“There was that time in Tampa,” John said.

Manny glared at him.

“I’m not getting burned,” John said. “I’m not.”

“What time in Tampa?” I said.

“He used a credit card. His own. He must have been drunk,” John said. “That’s his weakness. He’s a drinker. We have a guy, all he does, day in day out, is sit by a computer linked up to all the banks and credit companies Price has accounts with. Three weeks ago, this guy, he’s staring at the computer screen one night and it starts making noise. Price used his credit card at a motel in Tampa, the Courtyard Marriott.”

“And?”

“And,” Manny said, “we had guys there in four hours. But he was gone. We don’t even know if it was him. The desk clerk told us it was a chick used the card.”

“Desiree maybe,” I said.