The Trinity Game (27 page)

You almost had me, until you included the tax guy…

“You need to take this seriously. Something bad is going to happen tomorrow. Look at me, Tim.”

So he sat up and looked…and liked what he saw. A black woman—at least as black as he was white—her features spinning tales of North Africa. High forehead, almond eyes, prominent cheekbones, full lips, sharp chin. Skin dark and smooth. Emerald-green eyes. Thin frame, delicate shoulders, voluptuous swelling at the breasts and hips. She wore a fire-red head wrap and a light summer dress of the same color. Around her neck a large silver crucifix and about a hundred beaded necklaces. Around her wrists, seven bracelets, cowrie shells strung on leather.

“I have much to teach you,” she said, “but your life is on the line. Stay alive tomorrow, and come to me.”

I don’t know how to find you…

“You will. Remember—there’s only one God, everything else is metaphor.”

But you said everyone was God…

“Both are true.” She knelt beside him, took his face in her hands, kissed him softly on the lips. “Good luck.”

And she was gone.

J
ulia had promised Herb she’d play well with others and promised herself she’d hold her tongue. But it had been a very long day, and she was working
with
CNN, not
for
them, and there were things that needed to be said.

So she said them.

And Kathryn Reynolds listened. A network news veteran in her late fifties, Reynolds was one
put-together
black woman. She’d been at work since eight that morning, and it was now creeping up on eleven p.m., but she somehow looked like she’d just arrived. Her suit was crisp, her makeup perfect, her long nails bright red and unchipped. Last time Julia visited the bathroom, she’d been more than a little startled by the rumpled, exhausted woman staring back from the mirror. The mirror-Julia had a hopelessly wrinkled jacket, flyaway hair, and dark circles starting to show beneath her eyes.

If Reynolds was insulted by Julia’s rant, she didn’t wince. She just moved her Peabody Awards—all three of them—from the edge of her desk to the center. Followed by the Emmy. Then she smiled, as one does at a slow child.

“Newspapers can afford to be selective.” Gold hoops danced below her earlobes as she shook her head. “Scratch that—they can’t, unless they want the blogosphere to go on eating their lunch.” She slid her awards back to the side of the desk. “Here, we’ve accepted
the existence of the Internet, the twenty-four-hour news cycle.” Her red fingernails swept across the glass wall separating her office from the CNN newsroom bullpen…and the anchor desk, green-screens, lights, cameras, boom mics, and monitors everywhere you looked. “Gotta feed the beast. Would that it were different, but...” She shrugged.

“I get that,” said Julia, “but at some point, we end up shifting focus to the freak show on the fringes of the story. And everybody loves a freak show. Then we start reporting the freak shows, even when there’s no
real
story attached.”

“I agree with you, the world would be better served if we ignored the freak shows, but we simply no longer live in that world.” The news producer closed the blinds across the glass wall, shutting out the newsroom, pulled a bottle of Southern Comfort out of the credenza, poured a couple ounces into her coffee. “Days like today, the coffee around here could stand improvement.”

Julia held her mug forward. “Much obliged.” The women smiled at each other, for real this time. They sipped the sweet, boozy coffee.

“Because of women like me,” said Kathryn Reynolds, “women like you are where you are. Not saying you haven’t had to deal with your share of assholes. But you should’ve
seen
the bullshit I had to wade through on my way up. You’d have quit the business. So shut up a minute and hear me.”

It was all said with good humor, and measured respect. A wave of self-awareness washed over Julia, and she saw herself from the other side of the desk and felt embarrassed all over again.

“I read your series on Katrina. You’re a good reporter, and you’ve been blessed with serious writing chops. But you need to think about the road ahead. You could make the jump to television.”
She sipped her coffee. “Some networks, you compromise every principle of your calling...”

Every principle of your calling.
The words gave Julia a start. She’d always felt pretentious when she admitted to herself that her job
did
feel like a calling, and she never gave the feeling voice. It’s the feeling of having been put on this earth for a specific purpose. The genesis of which can be found in the neurochemistry of the human brain, but it’s easy to see how people came to invent a soul, separate from the body. It’s a spiritual feeling, even if there is no spirit.

“…At this network, you only make one compromise: you have to lower the bar of what constitutes newsworthiness. We need the eyeballs; it’s the only way we can make the margins that our Wall Street overseers demand. Understand? See, we’re fighting for the survival of journalism; the ‘Platonic Ideal’ isn’t even on the table. And if you don’t bend, you break. You gotta stay in the game, and we only bend that one thing here. You keep the rest of your ethics intact, and you can still do stories in depth when you can justify them. Some of us have managed it before you. And for that, you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” said Julia. “I appreciate the advice.”

“I knew I was gonna like you, once we got that chip off your shoulder,” said Kathryn Reynolds. “I want you to think about what I said. The future ain’t what it used to be, but it’s coming right at us, regardless.” She nodded, putting the subject to rest. “As for Trinity, I don’t tell you what to put in your pieces for the
Picayune,
so don’t tell me what
isn’t
news for CNN.”

“Deal,” said Julia.

They clinked mugs and drank to it, Julia now glad Herb had made the deal with CNN. She could learn from this woman.

Kathryn Reynolds plucked a remote off her desktop, flicked the television on, muted it. Soledad O’Brien was doing a stand-up in front of Trinity’s Lakeview mansion. Blue tarpaulin covered the roof of the main building, while the garage had a new metal roof. The front yard was mounds of dirt, and a tractor stood in the driveway.

Julia had done the research on this segment, prepared a crib sheet for O’Brien’s field producer. In the weeks after Katrina, Trinity had taken the first lowball buyout offer from his insurance company, and simply walked away from the place. A record producer who’d worked with the Stones and U2 now owned it.

“Go get some sleep,” said Kathryn Reynolds. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow. ‘Trinity’s Grand Sermon,’ complete with all the freak-show angles.”

Julia drank the last of her coffee, put the mug on the edge of the desk. But she didn’t stand. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did. Ask me something else.”

“What do you think is going on with Trinity? I mean, best guess, given what we know.”

Kathryn Reynolds chuckled. “Honey, I haven’t the foggiest notion. Maybe he has a brain tumor, and it activated a portion of his brain that the rest of us can’t access…and maybe that portion of his brain enables him to perceive one of the six or seven collapsed quantum dimensions. Information traveling backward through time. Or something like that. I’m not totally up on my quantum mechanics, but if I were you, I’d be interviewing a physicist. And an oncologist.”

“I’m talking to a physicist Monday,” said Julia, “but the brain tumor angle hadn’t occurred to me. Thanks.”

“Not that it’ll come to anything. It’s pretty wild.”

“Honestly, to me, it’s a lot less wild than the existence of a God.”

“Well now, I’m a believer,” said Kathryn Reynolds. She looked toward the television. “But that don’t mean I believe Yahweh is sending us messages through this douchebag.”

Julia stood, shouldered her bag. She stopped at the door.

“Thanks, Kathryn.”

“Call me Kathy.”

T
he city was desperate to keep people from flooding the neighborhood to the point of inevitable tragedy, and the television networks were only too happy to help. They set up huge screens and PA systems in Centennial Park, Piedmont Park, Five Points, and in the parking lot of Trinity’s warehouse-studio-church, with the city picking up the tab. They also sent cameras and reporters to cover the reaction of Trinity’s Pilgrims to the sermon.

Trinity had remained silent during the limo ride from the hotel. It was an impressive operation, with a police cruiser in front, another behind, and six motorcycle cops zooming ahead in pairs to close intersections, then dropping back into formation as another pair zoomed ahead to close the next, in perfect choreography. The sort of display that normally would’ve thrilled Trinity. But he didn’t seem to notice. He seemed to be slipping into a state of deep relaxation, and Daniel decided to honor the silence.

He couldn’t think of anything useful to say anyway. Twice he started to tell his uncle about the stolen camera and the photos it contained, but he held his tongue. This wasn’t the time; Trinity needed a clear head. Daniel would come clean after the sermon.

The motorcade made good time to Trinity’s television studio, sped down a ramp and swept into a basement garage that had been cleared for maximum security. The only other car down there was
Trinity’s red SUV, which had sat unused for days and was starting to look a little dusty.

They were now alone in Trinity’s dressing room, Samson and Chris just outside the door and a half dozen cops along the hallway. Trinity sat at the makeup table, deepening his tan, powdering the shine from his forehead.

The room had an abandoned look, Daniel thought. No, not abandoned…more like a snapshot, a still life—one moment, captured in time, made permanent, no matter what else followed. There was the bottle of Blanton’s, three-quarters empty, sitting as Trinity had left it days earlier. The mountain of prayer requests and letters, dirty canvas mailbags that started at the east wall and took up a third of the room. The powders and crémes and brushes and makeup pencils on the dressing table, and the little round lightbulbs surrounding the mirror.

Trinity put down the sponge he was using, removed the sheet of tissue paper from his shirt collar, straightened his white tie, and slipped into his shiny silk jacket.

“Ready?” said Daniel.

Trinity nodded, headed for the door. Then stopped and said, “I want you to know something. I got a feeling something bad might happen out there…”

Daniel started to speak, but Trinity silenced him with a gesture. “No, I’m still going out. But just in case…I need to tell you. And I’m not looking for anything back. Just want you to know. I love you, Danny. Whatever I am, whatever I was. I always did, never stopped.”

“I—uh…I…” Daniel stared at his uncle, settled for, “Well, thank you.”

Trinity grinned, opened the hallway door.

“
Rock ’n’ roll
,” he said. And strode, shoulders back, chest out, into the unknown.