Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

Daniel had seen his uncle’s act thousands of times and had hoped never to see it again. “What’s the point of this, Nick?”

Nick kept his eyes on the television. “Keep watching.”

Trinity held the Bible to his chest. “And just like that—glory be to God—the Devil disappeared, leaving behind only the stench of a goat.” He smiled and waved away the stench with the Good Book, and the camera cut away to the congregation as they laughed on cue.

It was not the megachurch of a Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar, but Trinity’s flock was not small. Daniel estimated about five thousand in attendance, give or take a few lost souls.

Trinity let the laughter play out just the right length of time, then turned serious. “I know in my heart, my life was saved last night. Saved by God, so I could bring you this truth about sin . See, most folks think sin is bad behavior. You break God’s laws, and you have committed sin. But that is a mis -understanding of sin’s true nature. Those bad behaviors are not sin, not in the true sense. They are the result of sin. Sin is not something you do. In reality, sin is a demonic force that acts upon you, causing you to break God’s laws.”

Trinity flipped a few pages and glanced at his Bible. “Romans 3:9—we are under the power of sin, 6:6 and 6:17—we are enslaved by sin, and 5:13—‘sin was in the world before the law.’” He waved a finger in the air and grinned like Clarence Darrow on closing summation to the jury, knowing he’d proved his case. “In the world, before the law. If sin was in the world before the law, then it is not caused by breaking the law, it precedes the law. You see? Sin is a demonic force that has power over us, enslaves us, and causes us to break God’s laws. Get back, Devil! Powers and principalities!” Trinity swatted the air again with his Bible. “Glory to God, I am telling the truth today! Sin is a demonic force that causes all our suffering.”

Pacing the stage again. “People ask me, they say, ‘Reverend Tim, do you mean that poverty is a sin?’— thwack —YES! Poverty is a sin. God don’t want you to be poor of spirit, and He don’t want you to be poor of material comforts. God loves you—why would He want you to suffer? And poverty is suffering. Only the Devil wants you to be poor.” The toothy smile flooded his face once more. “But here is the good news: If you really want to live in abundance—abundance is yours for the taking! Word of God. All you have to do is act in faith . When you act in faith, God will return it to you one-hundred-fold . But you must sow your seed, or you cannot expect to reap the harvest of God’s riches.”

Trinity stopped pacing, dropped the smile, looked straight into the camera lens. “I’m calling on you, right now , to make a thousand-dollar vow of faith to this television ministry. You know who you are—I’m talking to you. You don’t have a thousand dollars right now, in the material world, but that’s OK—you vow it, and you start paying on it, in faith, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, five hundred dollars at a time…and as you pay on your vow, God will take the measure of your faith, and He will begin to work miracles in your life! Word of God! Hallelujah! ”

Father Nick lowered the volume as Trinity assured viewers they could use any major credit card to sow their seeds of faith. “You know him better than anyone,” he said and gestured at the screen.

“ Knew him,” said Daniel. “Twenty years ago.”

“Just tell me what you see.”

“I don’t see anything. It’s the same old snake oil, and he still sells the crap out of it. Just a fancier package…nicer suit, bigger watch, better hairdo. The man knows his scripture, and the way he twists it, it always comes out Send Me Money . That’s all I see.” He searched for something else to say. What did he see? “He’s got a lot more followers now. Oh, and he’s had a facelift.”

“Really?”

“He’s sixty-four, and he’s a drinker. He’s had a facelift.”

“What else?”

Then it hit him. “Ah, he’s not speaking in tongues anymore. He used to sprinkle a lot of gibberish in with the rest of the pitch.”

“Watch.” Nick paused the video. “He still does the tongues routine, but not as often. And it’s different now.” He hit play.

Trinity continued his money pitch for another minute or two. Then he froze, mid-sentence, like an epileptic having a petit mal seizure. He stood stock-still for a few seconds. Then his lips began to twitch. His entire body lurched to the left. Then jerked again, harder, like he’d just stuck his finger in a light socket.

And the tongues began. It was still gibberish, but Nick was right—it had changed. The tongues that Trinity used to speak sounded like a bad parody of some West African language, spiced with a little Japanese inflection. But what Daniel heard now was very different. The sounds coming from Trinity’s mouth were not like any language Daniel had ever heard. In fact, like nothing he’d ever heard. He couldn’t even imagine how to make them.

Father Nick shut off the television. “What do you think?”

“It’s different, all right,” said Daniel. “Very dramatic. Weird. I don’t know how he does it.”

“It goes way beyond just sounding weird,” said Father Nick. He put on his reading glasses and moved a thick file folder to the center of his desk blotter, then reached for the telephone. “Here’s where it gets really weird.”

Nick picked up the telephone receiver, punched a single button, and spoke to his secretary. “George, send Giuseppe in.”

As the door behind him opened, Daniel turned in his seat and nodded hello. The ODA’s top linguist, Father Giuseppe Sorvino had consulted on a handful of Daniel’s cases over the last decade. They only knew each other slightly, but he’d struck Daniel as very bright, and also deeply sad. He’d lost his left arm below the elbow five years earlier while working on something in Israel, but he never talked about it. Whatever the cause of the sadness, it was evident long before.

Giuseppe wore the left sleeve of his jacket folded, the cuff pinned to the outside of the shoulder. This always struck Daniel as strange. Why not just have the sleeve cut and cuffed at the elbow? It was as if Giuseppe were holding out hope that the forearm might suddenly grow back and sprout a new hand. Then he could just let down the sleeve and get on with life.

Father Nick gestured and Giuseppe sat in the empty chair next to Daniel.

“Tell him,” said Nick.

Father Giuseppe bobbed his head and let out an embarrassed smile. “Sometimes on my lunch breaks I like to watch the television evangelists who pretend possession by the Holy Spirit. They are very bad at it, always good for a laugh—”

Nick cut in. “Please, Giuseppe, we don’t need the lunch break. Just what you learned.”

The linguist’s face flushed a little. “Yes, sir. So I was watching Tim Trinity’s tongues act on my lunch break, and I suddenly realized his tongues had a definite linguistic structure. I recorded it and played with the tape, you know, speeding it up, slowing it down, noting patterns.” He rubbed his stump with the palm of his right hand as he spoke. It always seemed to itch more when he was nervous. “Then I remembered the rumor that went around the world when I was a kid. Remembered playing Beatles albums backward on the turntable in search of messages about Paul being dead. Backmasking, they call it. Putting those messages on records.”