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“How interesting?”
“Enough that when I woke my editor up two hours ago,
he agreed to give me two weeks off from my column to re-
search them and a five-day, front-page, lower-right-corner
feature series if I come up with what I think I will.”
“And what do you think you’ll come up with?”
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SACRED / 87
Angie said. She glared at him over her cup of coffee, her face
puffy and hair hanging in her eyes, not at all happy to greet
the day.
“Well…” He flipped his steno notebook open on the table.
“I’ve only perused the diskettes you gave me, but, Christ,
these people are dirty. Their ‘therapy’ and its ‘levels,’ from
what I can see, involves a systematic breakdown of the psyche
followed by a fast buildup. It’s very similar to the American
military’s concept of break-’em-down-so-you-can-build-’em-
back-up approach to soldiers. But the military, to give them
their due, is up front about their technique.” He rapped his
notebook on the table. “These mutants, however, are another
story.”
“Example,” Angie said.
“Well, do you know about the levels—Level One, Two,
et cetera?”
I nodded.
“Well, within each of these levels is a set of steps. The
names of these steps vary depending on what level you’re
at, but they’re all essentially the same. The object of these
steps is ‘watershed.’”
“Watershed is Level Six.”
“Right,” he said. “Watershed is the alleged goal of
everything. So, to reach Total Watershed, you have to have
a bunch of little watersheds first. Such as, if you’re a Level
Two—a Desolate, say—you go through a series of therapeutic
developments, or ‘steps,’ by which you reach ‘watershed’
and are no longer Desolate. Those steps are: Honesty,
Nudity—”
“Nudity?” Angie said.
“Yes. Emotional, not physical, though that’s accepted.
Honesty, Nudity, Exhibition, and Revelation.”
“Revelation,” I said.
88 / DENNIS LEHANE
“Yes. The ‘watershed’ of Level Two.”
“What’s it called in Level Three?” Angie said.
He checked his notes. “Epiphany. You see? It’s the same
thing. In Level Four, it’s called the Unveiling. In Five, it’s
Apocalypse. In Six, it’s called the Truth.”
“How biblical,” I said.
“Exactly. Grief Release is selling religion under the pretext
of psychology.”
“Psychology,” Angie said. “Which is, in and of itself, a re-
ligion.”
“True. But it isn’t an organized one.”
“The high priests of psychology and psychoanalysis don’t
pool their tips is what you’re saying.”
He tapped his coffee mug into my own. “Exactly.”
“So,” I said, “what’s their objective?”
“Grief Release?”
“No, Rich,” I said. “Burger King. Who are we talking
about?”
He sniffed his coffee. “Is this the extra-caffeine kind?”
“Richie,” Angie said. “Please.”
“Grief Release’s objective, as far as I see it, is to recruit for
the Church of Truth and Revelation.”
“You’ve proved their connection?” Angie said.
“Not so as I can print it yet, but, yeah, they’re in bed to-
gether. The Church of Truth and Revelation as far as we all
know is a Boston church. Correct?”
We nodded.
“So how come their management company is out of
Chicago? And their real estate broker? And the law firm
which is currently petitioning the IRS for religious tax-exempt
status on their behalf?”
“Because they like Chicago?” Angie said.
“Well so does Grief Release,” Richie said. “Because
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those same Chicago firms handle all their interests, too.”
“So,” I said, “how long to link the two in newsprint?”
He leaned back in his chair, stretched and yawned. “Like
I said, at least two weeks. Everything’s buried in dummy
corporations and blinds. At this point, I can infer a connec-
tion between Grief Release and the Church of Truth and
Revelation, but I can’t prove it in black and white. The
Church, anyway, is safe.”
“But Grief Release?” Angie said.
He smiled. “I can bury them cold.”
“How?” I said.
“Remember what I told you about all the steps in each
separate level being essentially the same? Well, if you look
at it from a benevolent point of view, they’ve found a tech-
nique that works and they just utilize it with different degrees
of subtlety depending on the level of grief the particular
person is suffering.”
“But if you look at it less benevolently.”
“As any good newspaperman should…”
“Goes without saying…”
“Then,” Richie said, “these people are first-class grifters.
Let’s look at the Level Two steps again, bearing in mind that
all the other steps in the other levels are the same thing under
different names. Step One,” he said, “is Honesty. Essentially
what it says—you come clean with your primary counselor
about who you are, why you’re there, what’s really bugging
you. Then you move onto Nudity, which is stripping your
entire inner self bare.”
“In front of whom?” Angie said.
“Just your primary counselor at this point. Basically all the
little embarrassing shit you hid during Step One—you killed
a cat as a child, fucked around on your wife,
90 / DENNIS LEHANE
embezzled funds, whatever—it’s all supposed to come out
during Step Two.”
“It’s supposed to roll off your tongue,” I said. “Just like
that?” I snapped my fingers.
He nodded, got up, and refilled his coffee cup. “There’s a
stratagem the counselors use in which the client disrobes, as
it were, in pieces. You start by admitting something ba-
sic—your net worth, perhaps. Then the last time you told a
lie. Then maybe something you did in the last week which
you feel shitty about. And on and on. For twelve hours.”
Angie joined him at the coffee maker. “Twelve hours?”
He grabbed some cream from the fridge. “More if neces-
sary. I’ve got documentation on those discs of these ‘intensive
sessions’ lasting nineteen hours.”
“Is it illegal?” I said.
“For a cop it is. Think about it,” he said and sat back down
across from me. “If a cop in this state interrogates a suspect
for one second over twelve hours, he’s violated the suspect’s
civil rights and nothing that suspect says—before or after the
twelve-hour point—is admissible in court. And there’s a good
reason for that.”
“Ha!” Angie said.
“Oh, not one you law-and-order types like all that much,
but let’s face it: If you’re being interrogated by a person in
a position of authority for more than twelve hours—person-
ally I think ten should be the limit—you’ll stop thinking
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