The Trinity Game

destroyed. Including thirty-three I’d personally written up. And guess what? Bedrock welched, some technicality written into the fine print. Didn’t pay out a goddamn dime to those folks. I quit the next day and gassed up the Winnebago again.” He placed the pen back in his pocket. “I keep it as a reminder. Sure, I’m a grifter, but there ain’t no clean way to get rich, and my grift never hurt anyone. Not like that.”

Daniel wanted to say, It hurt me, but the words caught in his throat. “It hurts plenty of people,” he said.

Trinity stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray. “OK, Danny. You come here to tell me I’m a scumbag? Mission accomplished.”

Daniel shook his head. “Not a social call. I’m here on business.”

“Thought you’d become a priest.”

“I am a priest.”

“But…” Trinity gestured to his neck.

“I work out of uniform most of the time.”

“Lucky you. So what does the Catholic Church want with a man like me?”

“We want to know how you’re doing it,” said Daniel.

“Doing what?”

“The tongues.”

Trinity’s eyes went wide. “What do you know about that?”

“We’re on to you. I also know about the cocaine…which is a new low, even for you.” He’d planned to confront his uncle with the surveillance photos, but now he’d lost the taste for it.

“Yeah, I’m using, but that’s because of the fucking voices,” said Trinity. “What do you know about the tongues?”

“How are you doing it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What about the predictions?”

“The hell are you talking about? What predictions?”

Trinity was a skilled liar, but there was no mistaking real desperation in the man’s voice. “Your tongues act. You play it backwards, speed it up, it’s English. You’re making predictions. And they’re coming true.”

Trinity’s face went ashen and he slumped back into his chair. “Jesus…Fucking…Christ,” he said, between ragged breaths. “No. No, that’s just not—no, it isn’t…it’s just not possible…”

Daniel smiled without any humor. “You can do better than that.”

“No, you’re lying. You must be lying…” Trinity’s confusion looked genuine, but then, he was good at this. “You gotta believe me, Danny, I don’t know anything about any predictions.”

“Given that my entire childhood was based on a lie, you’ll understand if I choose not to believe you,” said Daniel. He turned to leave.

“No, wait! Please. Something strange is—I-I don’t know what the hell is happening to me.”

Daniel watched in silence as his uncle reached for a bottle of bourbon on the dressing table, uncorked it, and poured with a shaking hand, the bottle’s neck rattling against the edge of the glass. Trinity put the bottle down and steadied the glass with both hands as he drank. He looked nothing like the big and powerful man from Daniel’s childhood memories, nothing like the confident preacher on stage in front of a crowd.

“See, it’s not just the tongues,” said Trinity. He tapped on the side of his head with an index finger. “It’s also the voices.” A tear tumbled down his right cheek. “I’m scared, son. You gotta help me. I’m shit-scared.”

Could this all be an act? It didn’t seem like one.

Daniel took the chair across from Trinity. “I still think you’re full of shit, but I’ve been sent here to find out what’s going on with you, so I’ll listen. Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out. And be warned: if it turns out you’re running some con, I promise you will be one sorry-assed con man.”

William Lamech sat in his expansive office, twenty-three floors above the Las Vegas Strip. The glass city shimmered beneath him as the sun moved into the western sky. He pushed a button on a control panel set into his desktop, and the floor-to-ceiling windows automatically darkened to a comfortable level. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It was the third of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of prediction. He’d forgotten the other two, but he enjoyed this one and it pleased him to remember it.

The phone on his desk trilled softly, and he answered it.

“Mr. Lamech, it’s me.”

“Go ahead.”

“That priest you said to watch for, he’s here. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Well, he doesn’t look like a priest. I mean, he’s a young guy, doesn’t look like a square. And he ain’t dressed like a priest. But it’s the name you gave me, Daniel Byrne.”

“You’re not Catholic, are you?”

“Baptist.”

“Well, they don’t all look like Max Von Sydow.”

“Uh…yes, sir. I guess not. One other thing, might not be important…”

“Yes?”

“He’s the preacher’s nephew.”

The preacher’s nephew. It brought Lamech forward in his chair. “Interesting. Where is he now?”

“I took him to Trinity’s dressing room, and they talked for about an hour. Then he left. I got his license plate.”

“OK, good work. Keep your eyes and ears open, call me back whenever anything similarly interesting jumps out at you.”

“Yes, sir. And, uh, Mr. Lamech?”

“Yes?”

“I just, you know, I’ve been with the company eight years, I’m dependable, loyal, competent. And…”

Lamech smiled to himself. “Ambitious.”

“Yes, sir. Ambitious. I just want you to know, I could do more. So whatever you need, just keep me in mind.”

“I see. We all have our jobs to do, but opportunities for advancement occasionally arise, and you don’t get if you don’t ask.”

“That’s exactly it, sir. I mean, I love my job, but you don’t get if you don’t ask.”

William Lamech respected the ambitions of young men. “All right, good to know. No promises, but I’ll keep it in mind, in case something comes up in future.”

He hung up, leaned back in his chair. The preacher’s nephew. Hell of a coincidence, and why would the brain trust at the Vatican send the man’s flesh and blood anyway? Seemed like a major conflict of interest.

The computer speakers on his desk pinged. He put on his reading glasses and clicked the mouse, opened the new e-mail, and read the decoded transcript of the preacher’s latest tongues act.

“Holy crap,” he said. He grabbed the phone, punched in three numbers. “Steve, it’s Lamech. Grab a pen. Do not take any of the following bets on the Gotham Stakes—Mr. Smitten to win, Executive Council to place, Sweet Revenge to show. Got it? I don’t care what the line is, you do not take those bets. Good.” He placed the receiver back in its cradle.

So now the preacher was predicting the ponies. And just two months until the Kentucky Derby.

Goddamn.

The time for prudence was quickly coming to an end. If the Gotham Stakes prediction came true and they had