Flaherty pulled himself up in his chair. 'How grateful?'

Dooher clasped his hands in front of him. 'Settle for six hundred thousand, if it goes that high.'

'Lord…'

'And a gag order. No press conferences. No "conscience of the community" nonsense. Trang pockets two hundred thousand dollars. Mrs Diep gets a nice return on her fifty grand and her broken heart. Everybody's happy.'

The Archbishop shook his head. Tm not. We start at six hundred?' Dooher tried to keep his tone light. 'Jim, this is Mark Dooher you're talking to. We start by offering to break Trang's legs. Hopefully we stop a long way before six.'

Flaherty nodded. 'A long way if you can.'

Dooher bowed slightly from the waist. 'I understand,' he said. 'I'll take care of it.'

'You're not actually seeing her.'

'Wes, I ran into her at church. That's all.'

'At church. That's very good.' Wes Farrell lowered his voice a notch. 'The night after your party, which she happened to attend because her boyfriend got himself invited? Markus, we're running into a critical coincidence factor here.'

Wes Farrell had his feet up on the desk in his small office. Behind him, through wooden slats, rain beat against the window. Dooher was continuing with the fairy-tale version of his story about Christina, and Farrell finally stopped him.

'This is all good stuff, Mark. I mean it. And because I am your longstanding friend, I believe every word of it. However, I will offer one word of advice, lawyer to lawyer.'

'What?'

'Don't try it on anybody else. It sounds suspiciously like a rationalizing crock, although I know in my heart of hearts – because you would never lie to me – that it couldn't possibly be. How did she look?'