Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

“A new variation on past-posting,” added Pete DeFazio. Heads nodded around the boardroom table as the others murmured their agreement.

William Lamech knew that the hardest part would be getting them to believe it. Nobody rises to the top of a sports book by being a pigeon, and these were twelve of the sharpest and most skeptical minds in the gambling business. Before playing the DVD and the decoded backward audio, he’d warned them it would seem incredible.

“It’s not past-posting,” said Lamech, “I had the broadcast dates verified independently. He’s actually predicting the outcomes. And he’s always right.” He paused to let it sink in. “I know how you feel—I couldn’t believe it either, at first. And I still don’t know how he’s doing it. But he is doing it, and if this breaks public...” Lamech zapped the television off. He took his time, made eye contact around the long glass table. “You all know me. I don’t play jokes. This is for real.”

DeFazio whistled through his teeth. “Goddamn,” he said. “Where’d you get this?”

“Couple days ago, one of my bookies in Atlanta. Customer of his—some kid, audio engineer with a gambling problem—stumbled on it, brought it to the bookie, hoping to settle his debt with it. He didn’t believe the kid, naturally, but the kid played the tapes for him, and he was smart enough to call me in on it. It checked out.”

“What’s Trinity’s game?” said Darwyn Jones from the other end of the table. Next to Lamech, Jones was the smartest man in the room. Maybe just as smart. “You think it’s a shakedown?”

“He hasn’t contacted us,” said Lamech.

“Who’s backing him?” asked Passarelli.

“We don’t know,” said Lamech.

“Well, that’s just great.”

“Goddamn,” repeated DeFazio. “We can’t just wait. I mean, he predicted the fuckin’ Superbowl .” He picked up the sheet of paper on the table before him—his copy of the decoded transcript—and read it over. “He got it exactly . He even nailed the over/under. And he said it ten days before game time. If that had gotten out…”

Jared Case broke the silence. “It woulda killed us. Our margins are tight enough in this economy.”

“We need to act now,” said DeFazio.

“Act how, exactly?” said Sam Babcock.

“I think,” said Darwyn Jones, “that William has an idea.” All eyes shifted to Lamech.

“I do.” Lamech sipped some Perrier; made them all wait for it. “We’re in the information business, gentlemen. So let’s get some. The preacher must have his own sins, everyone does. Let’s find out what they are, and see what leverage that gives us with Trinity.”

“I like it,” said Darwyn Jones.

Once again, heads began to nod around the table.

“You think the preacher will play ball?” said Case.

“I don’t know the man, and I don’t know what leverage we’ll find. But one way or another I think I can convince him it would be better to work with us than against us.”

“And if he refuses?”

“If he refuses…we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.” Lamech gave the men a reassuring smile. “But one way or another, we will silence Tim Trinity.”

Atlanta, Georgia…

It was starting again. Tim Trinity felt it bearing down on him, like the dull ache before a heavy rain, pressure building inside his head, scrambling his thoughts, blurring his focus. Then the voices, quiet at first, but growing steadily louder and more critical. It always started like this, and he knew the tongues would be on him if he didn’t take action soon.

How long since he’d called his connection? He checked his watch. Ten minutes. How long did he say it would take? Half an hour. OK, another twenty minutes to wait. He could hold off the tongues another twenty minutes, couldn’t he?

He did, barely. Pacing furious circles around the living room of his Buckhead mansion, sweating profusely, peeking out between the front curtains every minute or two. By the time his dealer arrived, he was twitching and starting to babble. But he got the transaction done fast, and the dealer didn’t stay for conversation.

Trinity’s movements were becoming spastic, but he managed his way into the den, got the small Ziploc baggie open, and poured two parallel white lines onto the coffee table. He rolled a twenty-dollar bill into a straw and shoved it into his left nostril. Snorted the first line and was immediately rewarded with an icy explosion of cocaine clarity, coating the inside of his skull from front to back.

The voices faded away.

The pressure dissipated.

His head cleared.

He switched to his right nostril and snorted the second line.

The Second Line. No parade permit, no responsibilities, just twirl your umbrella and dance all the way to the French Quarter. The second line. Laissez les bon temps roulez…

But no. The cocaine was medicinal, not recreational. And New Orleans was the past. It wouldn’t be the same anyway, even if he could go back.

Not after that bitch, Katrina.

When the voices began, in the aftermath of the hurricane, Trinity put it down to a delayed stress reaction. It seemed everyone who stayed through the storm was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Why should he be immune? Cops and firefighters and doctors and nurses stayed because they were required to stay. The infirm also stayed, some abandoned in their homes or at the entrance of overcrowded hospitals, others attended by loved ones who couldn’t bear to leave them behind. And then there were those simply too stupid, too crazy, too lazy, too stoned, or too poor to leave.

Trinity fell into another category. Too greedy. He’d stayed for Andrew in ’92, and it earned him a lot of credibility with the po’ folk . He figured if he rode out Katrina, he could be on-scene for the reopening of his soup kitchen in the Lower Ninth Ward, and he could snag some good press. Hell, if he played this right, he might even get interviewed by Anderson Cooper or that Soledad babe, get on CNN.

Something to shove up the ass of the IRS, next time those fuckers questioned his legitimacy .

But it didn’t play out like that.

New Orleanians are no strangers to weather, and while Katrina remained a category three storm, there was much talk about who would be hosting the hurricane party on each block. But as the storm passed through the Gulf, she gained strength, and talk turned to evacuation.

Trinity never seriously considered leaving. He owned a six-thousand-square-foot stone mansion in Lakeview, and he could ride out anything nature cared to send his way. He did urge his congregation to evacuate, and they did. But before they got out, he conscripted a half dozen of their strapping teenage boys. The boys hauled 120 jugs of Kentwood Springs water from the neighborhood Rite Aid to Trinity’s mansion. They boarded up the massive ground floor windows and helped him secure the storm shutters on the second and third floors. They sandbagged the front of Trinity’s three-car garage. When the boys’ parents picked them up, Trinity gave each a thousand dollars in cash, for “traveling money.”

On August 28, 2005, Katrina was upgraded to category five. At ten a.m., just twenty hours before the storm would make landfall, Mayor Ray Nagin held a press conference and made the evacuation mandatory. The National Guard was being called in, and the Louisiana Superdome was being set up as a shelter-of-last-resort for those who couldn’t get out in time. About ten thousand would take refuge there, and many of them would later wish they hadn’t.