Free Damage Control by John Gilstrap Page A

moneymaking machine. Have you ever watched one of their broadcasts?”
    Dom smirked. “Um, no.”
    “Well, I have. Every other verse of the Bible is followed by a plea for money. There’s the Building Fund, the Outreach Fund, the Prayer Circles, and on and on and on.”
    “I wonder what happened to their fund-raising after the good Pastor Mitchell was caught in her dalliances,” Venice thought aloud. She turned to her keyboard and started typing.
    Over the course of the past year, Jackie Mitchell had spent more time as a punch line than a preacher, following some Internet videos that showed her providing extra-special counseling to a young male member of her flock in one of Scottsdale’s finest hotels. Over and over again. The righteously aggrieved Mr. Mitchell—the pastor’s husband—had not only left her, but had recently started taking to the airwaves to pronounce her a fraud.
    Pastor Mitchell had many defenders among her congregation, of whom more than a few had written op-ed pieces for the newspapers. But as far too many celebrities had learned the hard way, once you earn a slot in Jay Leno’s nightly monologue, your future is more or less sealed in poo.
    “Uh-oh,” Venice said. “Oh, my God, this can’t be true.”
    “What?” Dom and Gail asked together.
    Venice scowled and shook her head. “Is this even possible?” She looked at the others and typed some more. “Check the screen,” she said. As she spoke, she pushed a button on the master control panel that she alone knew how to operate, and the lights dimmed. Not all the way, but enough to make the screen more prominent. Given the technology of the room, Dom imagined that she could make it snow in here, too, if she’d wanted. Or maybe not.
    She tapped a few more keys. The map of Mexico dissolved to a screen full of numbers arranged in neat columns. “These are the bank records for the Crystal Palace.”
    Dom’s jaw dropped. “How did you get those?”
    Venice raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”
    “Actually, I don’t.”
    “Me either,” Gail said. “When the feds finally figure out what we do, I want to have some shred of plausible deniability.”
    “According to Google, the Crystal Palace scandal first broke about fourteen months ago, just after they’d committed to a multimillion-dollar building project, and contracted for three more years of television time.” She looked to the others. “I guess you know that unlike commercial television, where the networks pay for the programs they broadcast, these religious shows have to pay for their own time.”
    Dom hadn’t realized it because he’d never given it any thought. Now that he did, it made sense.
    As Venice went on, she used the cursor as a pointer. “If I’m doing the math right, for the two years previous to that time, they averaged an income of four-point-three million dollars a month, with expenses of just about four-point-three million a month. They were just breaking even. I haven’t had time to find out where all that money went, but it’s probably not important for our purposes. At least not yet. Now look at this.”
    She clicked, and the records scrolled at a dizzying speed, stopping on another set of numbers. “Here are the records for the first month after the scandal broke. Expenses stayed at four-point-three million, but revenues dropped to three-point-six million.” She clicked again. “The month after that, they brought in two point seven. Fast forward a few more months, and they’re getting only eight hundred twenty thousand dollars. The month after that, two-eighty. They’re hemorrhaging cash.”
    Gail made a face. “I don’t understand—”
    “I’m not done yet,” Venice said. She scrolled month by month. “Look here. That trend continued month after month, not a single deposit over three hundred thousand. Until three months ago, when they started making four million again, and then five. Last month it was five-point-nine million