The Trinity Game

at the head table.” He patted his belly and shook his head. “And you say, ‘Thanks, Lord, but I’m not hungry, I had a big lunch. Maybe next time.’” The crowd laughed right along with him, until his smile melted away and his expression became deadly serious. “My-oh-my, you had a big lunch. That is the Devil talking! See, the Devil’s got many tricks to play on you, my friends, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: his two favorites are doubt and procrastination. More lives have been lost, more opportunities missed, more fortunes squandered, more relationships destroyed, through doubt and procrastination, than by any other means. They are the Devil’s twin tools of sabotage.”

Trinity lashed out at the air with his Bible. “Get away, Satan! You can’t stop me from speaking the truth—I’m anointed by the blood of Christ!” Then he froze, his Bible in mid-strike.

He remained frozen far too long, and worried murmurs began spreading through the congregation.

His timing is usually perfect, thought Daniel, why is he doing this?

Trinity’s entire body shuddered once, froze again, and jerked to the left, sending him sprawling on the stage. He bounced back up, Bible in hand, but the prayer requests lay scattered at his feet.

Then the tongues began, unnatural sounds erupting from his mouth and his body lurching spasmodically around the stage.

Seeing it on the television screen, Daniel had convinced himself that this was just Trinity’s latest act. But it looked different in person. This was not the kind of performance his uncle would ever concoct. It looked too… real. Trinity was always smooth, and this was anything but. Worse than inelegant, it was ugly. There was just something wrong about it. Something profoundly wrong.

Daniel couldn’t watch another spasm, couldn’t listen to another eruption. He jumped from his seat and bolted for the exit, his skin crawling. Thinking: It has to be an act. It has to be…

Outside, he retrieved his camera from the car, stood in the sun and waited until the doors opened and Trinity’s flock flooded the bright parking lot, chattering happily about what a great service it had been, about how they felt the presence of God today, about hundred-fold paybacks and their imminent prosperity.

Daniel wanted to grab them by the shoulders, one by one, and say: Don’t you see? He’s a con man—you’re being played for chumps. You should be paying off your debts and going back to school to get a better job, or building a college fund so your children won’t have to struggle like you struggle—not giving it to some grifter.

But what good would it do? All those things took real work, real sacrifice. Trinity offered these people an easy escape, a way to tell themselves that they were doing something to improve their lot, while never really having to take responsibility for their lives. All they had to do was throw money at him.

Daniel couldn’t help these people. But he could bring down the con man. In his right hand he held the camera that contained digital surveillance photos he’d taken at Trinity’s Buckhead mansion. Photos that exposed the truth behind the phony Man of God sham.

Finally.

He waited for the crowd to thin out and went back inside. A burly security guard stopped him in the empty hallway.

“I’m sorry, sir, service is over for today. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“I need to speak with Reverend Trinity,” said Daniel.

The guard smiled indulgently. “Lots of folk need to speak with Reverend Trinity. If you fill out a prayer request form, I’ll be sure he gets it.”

“Just tell him that Daniel Byrne is here. He’ll see me.”

The security guard emerged from the dressing room, nodded politely, and left. Daniel stared at the door, took a deep breath. He reached for the knob, turned it, and stepped through the doorway.

Tim Trinity sat before a mirror framed by little round light bulbs, removing his stage makeup with cold cream. He caught Daniel’s eye in the mirror, finished his task with one last swipe across the chin, and dropped the cotton ball on the table. He sniffed sharply, as if he had a cold.

“The prodigal son returns. Never thought I’d live to see the day.” Trinity forced a smile, but the pain showed through.

When Daniel had walked out on his uncle at thirteen, it was with the firm intention of never speaking to the man again. But now, two decades later, he had to fight to hold his tongue. The weight of so much left unsaid, a weight he’d been carrying all these years. The urge to unload it, to say everything now, to dump the weight on Trinity, where it belonged. But what was the point? He was here to do a job, nothing more.

“Hello, Reverend.”

“Twenty years.” Trinity swiveled the chair and faced his nephew. Up close, without the benefit of stage makeup, he looked older. Still handsome, still had the salon tan, but the facelift had left his skin abnormally taut and shiny, and the broken veins of a drinker spiderwebbed across his cheeks and the left side of his nose. “You coulda at least said good-bye.”

“And you could’ve told me the truth, instead of playing me like one of your suckers.” He couldn’t help himself, it had to be said.

Trinity lit a cigarette. “Shit, I tried. When you started questioning things, I tried, but… Guess I shoulda told you from the start. But you were just a boy, and…” He cleared his throat. “And you believed, and it was beautiful. And when you looked at me…I couldn’t bring myself to let you down like that.”

“You think I wasn’t gonna get wise to the grift? You think I wouldn’t recognize the shills? The deaf man in Biloxi who showed up in a wheelchair in Mobile? The blind woman in Pensacola and the one who was arthritic in Gainesville?”

“Sure, I had shills,” said Trinity. “But you were there, and you saw the other ones. Some of those folks were really healed.”

“Power of suggestion,” said Daniel. “Placebo effect.”

“Right. And it works. And who cares, so long as people get better? What about Jesus? The man always said, ‘Your faith has healed you.’ He never once said, ‘I have healed you.’ You don’t think He sometimes put shills in the crowd to rev up people’s faith?”

Daniel said nothing.

“I was gonna tell you, I swear. I just didn’t get up the gumption in time. The other preachers’ kids still believed, and I guess I always told myself I had more time.” Trinity tapped his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. “Should’ve known better, you were always ahead of the others.”

“Had to grow up fast, thanks to you.”

“Hell, son, you were born old. Look, I did wrong by not telling you before you figured it out on your own, and I’m sorry for that, but you didn’t have to run off, we coulda talked about it.” He took a long drag on his smoke, blew it out, and looked up for a reaction, but Daniel gave him nothing. After a long moment Trinity said, “You remember the summer of ’85?”

Daniel remembered. He was nine years old. It was the only summer of his childhood they hadn’t spent on the road. “Yeah. You took the summer off from preaching. Bible study, you said. A lie, I’m sure.”

“It was a lie, at that,” said Trinity. “Wanna know what I did that summer? I got a job, is what I did. Selling homeowners insurance. See, that was the year I first saw real doubt in your eyes—serious doubt—so I figured to make a career change. For you.” Trinity reached into a pocket and held out a gold Cross pen to Daniel. “Look at that.” On the clip was a little plaque with a B-I logo. “Each month, Bedrock Insurance gave one to their top-producing salesman. I got three more just like it. I mean, I wrote up a ton of business that summer. Worked the poor neighborhoods…those were my people, I knew how to reach them.” He took the pen back from Daniel. “And then came your namesake.”

“My—?”

“Hurricane Danny. Made landfall in Lake Charles, but the Big Easy got drenched, couple hundred homes