The Trinity Game (4 page)

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.”

N
ick 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.”

Father Nick drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Yes, I’m sorry. Anyway, I played the Trinity tape backward. It sounded like English on Quaaludes. I sped it up by a quarter, then a third.” He stopped rubbing the stump and his hand swept up in a triumphant gesture. “And there it was! Trinity was speaking English backward at two-thirds normal speed. Amazing. I recorded every broadcast since. Whenever he does his tongues act, they manifest the same phenomenon.”

“Thank you, Giuseppe,” said Father Nick. “That’ll be all.”

The abrupt dismissal set Giuseppe to rubbing his stump even faster as he took his leave. Nick watched him go and didn’t look at Daniel until the door had closed behind.

Daniel shrugged. “So Trinity’s upped his game, learned a new parlor trick.”

“And he’s very good at it, which makes him dangerous,” said Nick, pulling a mini tape recorder from the case file. “Listen. This is what it sounds like.” He pressed play.

The crowd noise in the background was now strange, but Tim Trinity’s voice sounded natural. He was saying, “…on the south coast of Georgia, there will be an unexpected thunderstorm tomorrow in the late afternoon. So all you folks down by Brunswick, all the way up to Darien, be sure to pack an umbrella…”

Father Nick clicked the tape off.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Daniel. “If this were anybody but you, I’d expect the door to fly open and the
Candid Camera
people to come in.”

“I told you it was gonna get weird,” said Nick.

“OK, weird. But a
weather report
?”

“Not exactly the kind of message you’d expect from God.”

“Not exactly. What else does he say?”

“He says a lot of trivial crap. A few bigger things too, things that are going to get him noticed. Nothing earth shattering. Thing is, he makes predictions. Sometimes he’s gonna be right—law of averages. He lucked out on that weather report, for example. We checked. And he guessed the winner of the Superbowl. He also gets things wrong, but it’s like reading your horoscope in the paper. You forget all the days it didn’t make sense and remember the times it resonated.”

“OK, so he’s got a new con,” said Daniel, “but I don’t see our interest here. We already know he’s a fake, and he’s not even Catholic.”

“Think about it, Daniel. Think about how it’ll play out if Trinity isn’t exposed as a fake. He’ll just keep going on like this, and soon he’ll have a pretty big record of correct prophecy. And when he
does, he’ll reveal how to decode what he’s saying. People will go crazy. Not a few people,
millions
of people. Catholics, Protestants, Mormons—it won’t matter. People are hungry for miracles, and they’ll be led away from God—they’ll follow a false prophet. We need him debunked before that happens. Question is can I trust it to you? I know things ended badly between you two, and I don’t want you to take the case if you don’t think you can handle it. This can’t be personal. It isn’t about what happened between you and your uncle.”

Twenty years ago, when Daniel was just thirteen, Tim Trinity had been the closest thing to a father that Daniel had ever known. A lot of water under the proverbial bridge since then, but some wounds never fully heal.

“Personal involvement won’t be an issue,” Daniel said. “I have no problem exposing Tim Trinity as a fraud.”

Nick removed his reading glasses. “Then we may just be able to outflank Conrad after all. I can sell His Eminence on my need to assign the case to you, based on your knowledge of Trinity. And if you can nail this case shut fast, I think it’ll convince him that you’re indispensable to the ODA.”

“Thank you.”

“Just don’t make me look like an idiot for assigning it to you.” Father Nick pushed the file folder across the desk. “Transcripts are in the case file—you can read them on the flight to Atlanta.”

Daniel took the folder, stood, and walked to his boss’s four-centuries-old oak office door. Carved in the wood was Saint John, the Baptist, kneeling in the Jordan with his arms open, while Jesus instructed him to fulfill all righteousness.

And a voice came out of the heavens, “You are my beloved Son; in You I am well-pleased.”

A
fter completing his morning prayers, Daniel skipped rope for fifteen minutes, working up a good sweat. Then he donned the gloves and worked out on the heavy bag that hung in the corner of his bedroom, enjoying the electric jolt that ran up his arm each time he landed a particularly vicious blow. The bag bucked and the chains rattled and the feeling of power spurred Daniel on. He put even more into his punches, employing his legs, his lower body, and the bag bucked harder and the chains rattled louder. He kept at it until his shoulders and wrists begged for mercy and the muscles of his arms began to twitch from fatigue.