Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

Despite his stupid behavior, Swaggart was actually a very smart man. He knew he couldn’t just go on television and turn on the waterworks for the cameras a second time and beg forgiveness. That shit only works once. No, the second time Swaggart got caught with his pants down, he went on television to address his critics, faced the camera and said simply: The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.

Ballsy move. Ballsy as hell. And it saved Swaggart’s ministry. Sure, he suffered a sharp decline in his flock, but he stayed in the game, and eighteen years on, he was still working the TV preacher grift, still making millions. Of course the haul would never be what it could’ve been had he been a little more careful with his hookers, but he made a good living.

Trinity passed the girls on the corner without slowing and congratulated himself for being careful in all the ways Swaggart had been reckless. He knew that if he were ever caught, there wasn’t a soul on earth who’d believe the truth.

You paid a hooker to do what?? Sure you did…

So he had to be careful.

He continued north across the Saluda River, then slowed as he passed the Dreammakers strip club, but didn’t stop. Three blocks later, he pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House where a lot of the girls came for a bite to eat after their shifts ended at Dreammakers.

Trinity cut the engine. He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a well-worn stainless steel flask. Swallowed a couple ounces of bourbon, screwed the top back on. Then, as he always did, he turned the flask over and searched for the message on the convex side. The engraved inscription worn faint by so many trips in and out of so many pockets over so many years. He had to tilt the flask and catch the light just so for it to reveal itself:

To Pops—Happy 41 stBirthday—Love Danny

The passage of years had tried but failed to erase the inscription, tried but failed to erase the pain of rejection by the boy he loved as a son. How many times had he resolved to throw the flask away? How many drunken nights had he actually tossed the damned thing in the trash, only to dig it out by the harsh light of the hangover morning?

Tim Trinity wiped his eyes, returned the flask to his pocket.

Thinking: Fuck it.

He looked at his watch. It was almost one thirty a.m. Dreammakers closed at one. He lit a cigarette, climbed out of the car, and leaned back against the door like a man with time to kill and money to spend.

“Lookin’ for some company?” She was a bottle-blonde, with an inch of brunette showing at the roots. A silver crucifix bounced around her cleavage as she chewed gum.

“Might be, at that.” Trinity offered an encouraging smile. “Just one thing I need to know.”

The girl sighed. “Hand job’s twenty-five, blow job’s fifty, a hundred for—”

“That’s not where I was going,” said Trinity.

“Oh.” The girl looked skeptical. “What’s the one thing you need to know?”

Trinity pointed to her necklace with his cigarette.

“Do you believe in God?”

“How much you wanna spend?” said the girl as the motel room door clicked shut. Trinity pulled a roll from his pocket and peeled off five bills. Hundreds. The girl backed away. “Wait a second,” she said.

Trinity held up his hands— let me explain —and sat on the edge of the bed. “You keep your clothes on, and so do I. No sex. I ain’t even gonna touch you.”

The girl glanced at the money, and when she looked back to Trinity, her eyes showed more curiosity than fear. In the light of the hotel room, her makeup couldn’t quite hide the bruise under her left eye. Her fingernails were chewed beyond short, and there was a crack pipe burn on the side of her left index finger.

She said, “So what do you want for five hundred bucks?”

“OK, just hear me out,” said Trinity. “You’re a hooker…a stripper…whatever. Point is you sell your ass to strange men in the Waffle House parking lot. So I figure your life has gotta pretty much suck. No offense. Not judging, just laying it out there. Fact is God has not been good to you. And you still believe in the Lord, right?”

“So?”

“So I’m a wealthy man. Got everything I could possibly need. You could say God’s been very good to me.” Trinity let out a long breath. “And I don’t believe in Him.”

The girl shrugged. “We both gonna have to answer for our sins on judgment day. Don’t matter if you believe or not. It’s real, and it’s gonna happen.”

And that, to Tim Trinity, was simply awesome. That a girl like this could be so unshaken in faith. Unbelievable. “See?” he said. “That’s why I need your help. Your belief is so strong.”

“But what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to pray for me. See, some very weird shit is goin’ down in my life, and I can’t find a rational explanation. I mean, I’ve tried everything, and it’s startin’ to look like prayer’s all I got left to try. But I can’t pray for myself, ’cause I don’t believe.”

The girl stood quietly for a minute, then said, “Start to pray, and you’ll start to believe.”

Trinity shook his head.

The girl reached out, took the money. “Want me to pray for your soul?”

“No,” said Trinity. If people had souls, he knew his was way beyond saving. “I want you to ask God to please stop fucking with my head.”

No heavy bag in the Ritz-Carlton’s workout room. No speedbag, either. So Daniel contented himself with push-ups, crunches, and skipping rope. He spent the workout thinking about the strange contact from whoever was calling himself PapaLegba.

Probably someone who knew Daniel was from New Orleans, hence the chosen screen name. Someone with the resources to hack into Daniel’s computer and take control of his Instant Messenger program. But who? And why?

Could be Conrad Winter, tossing a wrench in the works, trying to trip Daniel up.

Or not. There was no way to know for sure, given the available evidence, and Daniel resolved to put it out of his mind, not to get distracted by it, not to let it make him paranoid. He had a job to do.

He took a quick sauna and headed back to the room for a shower and breakfast.

As he downed the last of his coffee, an e-mail came in. From Gerry, the audio engineer at Emory. The e-mail he’d been waiting for.

From: gerrymander@emory.edu

To: d-byrne@live.com

Subject: What we’ve learned…

Padre,

You only asked me to do three broadcasts, but I kinda got carried away…took it on as a personal project. So I did all of ’em (transcripts and audio files attached). Bad news, though. I ran every possible test on the audio (AND video) of your fake holy man, and I gotta tell ya, there’s no electronic manipulation here. The guy is really doing it. Kinda freaking me out, but I’ve got no explanation. Never seen anything like it. If you need anything else, let me know.

-Gerry

So Trinity had figured out a trick that had never been done before. Well, why not? There were many monikers you could hang on the man—childish, egocentric, immoral—but you could never call him stupid.

Daniel double-clicked on one of the attached transcript files, and it opened on his screen. Another weather report, Trinity warning of torrential rains in Charleston.

Torrential. Daniel couldn’t remember seeing that word in the transcripts Nick had given him. He opened the corresponding audio file from Gerry, listened. Torrential —no mistaking it. He checked the broadcast date, pulled the corresponding transcript from his case file. In Giuseppe’s transcript, Trinity never said torrential…because in the transcript, Trinity called for sunshine. And it was one of the predictions Trinity had supposedly gotten wrong.