Free The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover Page A

watched the white lines of the highway disappear under his car. He was still feeling jittery from the cocaine. He hated the stuff. Sure, it came on feeling good, silenced the voices and stilled the tongues, but it always left him edgy. Made him acutely aware of the existence of his skin.
    A creepy feeling, and why anyone took this shit for fun, was beyond him.
    Worse, it made him feel weak. It reminded him of so many of the people he used to see lined up at his soup kitchen, reminded him of lives broken by poverty and addiction.
    Trinity had the cruise control set at sixty. It’s the little things that trip you up—a speeding ticket, for example—and he was too smart for that. He kept it below the limit and didn’t stop until he reached the airport six miles southwest of Columbia, South Carolina, where he rented a car. Trinity’s car was a crystal-red Cadillac Escalade SUV with gold-plated trim, massive rims, and a Georgia vanity plate that read: TRINITY. Switching to a rental was a no-brainer.
    Now he left the airport in a nondescript sedan with South Carolina plates. He took Platt Springs Road to West Columbia,drove straight through downtown—Triangle City, the locals called it.
    Jimmy Swaggart had once owned the world, thought Trinity, and then he started acting like a complete idiot, picking up streetwalkers near downtown New Orleans methadone clinics, taking them to the hooker motels out on Airline and Chef Menteur, eventually giving most of his business to one girl.
    The man was just begging to be caught, and in due course, he was.
    Still, you had to give him major credit for his
I have sinned against you: I beg for your forgiveness
sermon—it was a truly masterful performance. And it worked; he got forgiveness. But just three years later, the spiritually rehabilitated, new-and-improved Brother Swaggart got busted with a hooker again, when cops pulled him over for a minor traffic violation.
    Despite his stupid behavior, Swaggart was actually a very smart man. He knew he couldn’t just go on television and turn on the waterworks for the cameras a second time and beg forgiveness. That shit only works once. No, the second time Swaggart got caught with his pants down, he went on television to address his critics, faced the camera and said simply:
The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.
    Ballsy move. Ballsy as hell. And it saved Swaggart’s ministry. Sure, he suffered a sharp decline in his flock, but he stayed in the game, and eighteen years on, he was still working the TV preacher grift, still making millions. Of course the haul would never be what it could’ve been had he been a little more careful with his hookers, but he made a good living.
    Trinity passed the girls on the corner without slowing and congratulated himself for being careful in all the ways Swaggarthad been reckless. He knew that if he were ever caught, there wasn’t a soul on earth who’d believe the truth.
    You paid a hooker to do what?? Sure you did…
    So he had to be careful.
    He continued north across the Saluda River, then slowed as he passed the Dreammakers strip club, but didn’t stop. Three blocks later, he pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House where a lot of the girls came for a bite to eat after their shifts ended at Dreammakers.
    Trinity cut the engine. He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a well-worn stainless steel flask. Swallowed a couple ounces of bourbon, screwed the top back on. Then, as he always did, he turned the flask over and searched for the message on the convex side. The engraved inscription worn faint by so many trips in and out of so many pockets over so many years. He had to tilt the flask and catch the light just so for it to reveal itself:
    To Pops—Happy 41 st Birthday—Love Danny
     
    The passage of years had tried but failed to erase the inscription, tried but failed to erase the pain of rejection by the boy he loved as a son. How many times had he resolved to throw the flask