The Trinity Game

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 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.