Hidden Talents
by Edward Branley
CHAPTER ONE
Beer on the Lakefront
Janet frowned as her friend pulled only one of the earbuds from his ears. “You’re listening to that kook on the radio while we were hanging out, instead of me. Is his ass cuter than mine?”
Renard Alciatore smiled, leaned over, and grabbed two fresh beers from the cooler. Tossing one to his friend, he sat back on the sea wall and gazed out over Lake Pontchartrain. At a quarter-to-five, the New Orleans air was crisp and cool this sunny April afternoon. Renard (Ren to his friends) had been listening to Talk Now! With Jay Hadley in the car on the way to his bi-weekly stress break along the lake with his best friend Janet Julianne Garrison, whom he affectionately called “JJ”. She frowned at him again. Having heard all he needed to, he took out the other earbud and turned off his MP3 player.
“I’m sorry JJ, I know I said I wouldn’t listen to Hadley when we’re here, but this is was something I just had to hear live. We knew a regular visitor to my website would get past the call-screener. And boy, did he get through. Made ol’ Hadley hit the panic button big-time!”
Ren knocked back the rest of his beer and his ebony eyes glowed as the sun dipped to the horizon. He stood up and stretched his six-foot frame before reaching for another beer.
Janet frowned a third time. “I still don’t get your obsession with a radio preacher. You’re thirty-four years old. You’re Catholic, you went to a Catholic school. You still go to a Catholic church. So the guy is a good target and he’s probably fun to mess with. But you’re taking this way too seriously these days. It’s gone so far past simply being a guilty pleasure that it’s not funny anymore, Ren.”
JJ was a petroleum engineer and a practical sort of woman. She and Ren first met in graduate school at the University of New Orleans, both working on MBA degrees. Even thought she was married and seven years his senior, the two had bonded quickly and had become fast friends.
“JJ, this guy isn’t really a radio preacher, he’s a crook. He doesn’t have a church, he’s never been ordained by a respectable denomination, and he spends over a third of his two-hour show begging for money. Guess where that money goes? Straight into his own pocket, that’s where! He’s even got his own fan-page on Facebook!”
He paused while his eyes followed a sailing dinghy about a mile offshore on the lake. Then he finished expressing his thought: “Look, it’s not really a religion thing; it’s an honesty thing. This guy is taking money from old folks and lower middle-class families who buy into his line. If he was selling some product or legitimate service, that would be one thing. All he tells people is that they’ll get blessed if they donate to him. That’s as bad as the indulgence-sellers from Martin Luther’s time. I like to think I’m making a small contribution to ridding the world of con men like this guy. That’s all.”
Janet was not all that impressed. “OK, that’s all fine and dandy, Ren. But some of these fundie types aren’t stable. You go messing with the wrong person and you’re asking for trouble! Consider that, before getting too involved with bringing down kings.”
Ren smiled sheepishly. “OK, point taken. I’ll remember that. Wanna get something to eat?”
“Nah, I’d better get home. The boys have soccer tonight so Joe will want me home at a reasonable hour.”
Ren smiled. Janet’s husband Joe was as much his friend as JJ was. “OK, far be it for me to get in the way of marital and maternal bliss. Get on with yourself then.”
“Yeah—seriously, Ren, I really want you to think about what I’m saying about this Hadley thing.”
Ren grabbed her shoulder and pushed himself up. “Fine, I’ll give it some thought. Really, I will.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek and touched his shoulder.
“See ya.”
“Later.”
Ren gathered up the cooler and headed back to his car—a 1970 Mustang Mach One. The car used to be his brother’s, but he sold it to Ren about a year ago when he and his wife had their third child. It had been worth the trip to Seattle and back to get it. Ren’s house on Moss Street, along Bayou St. John, was only five minutes away from his rendezvous at the lakeshore. He parked the car in front of the house and bounded up the walkway.
Ren’s house was his home, office, and photography studio. Most of his work as a photographer had been on location, but he had converted his master bedroom on the first floor into a small professional studio for indoor work. He slid the cooler down the hall towards the kitchen and entered his office. People who did not know Ren would swear they had just walked into a computer company rather than the office of a photographer. Five computer systems were running: Ren’s desktop workstation, a system dedicated to photo-scanning, editing, and composition; and three servers, for Ren’s business and websites. While Ren had met many photographers who tended to shy away from computers, he fully embraced the technology. A substantial portion of his business was now derived from web design and development.
It had been a busy day for Ren before he had met up with Janet. The sigh he let out when he fell into his desk chair reflected his weariness. Skillfully spinning the trackball on his desktop system, he checked his email.
In addition to several messages related to soccer refereeing, a passion of Ren’s second only to photography, there were a half-dozen messages from those in the know about Lonny’s on-air antics with Jay Hadley that afternoon, as well as some business-related inquiries and a note from his brother.
He had no sooner settled in and begun to read through the day’s correspondence than his phone flashed, indicating that someone was paging him with a new message on Kik. Since most Kik users are anonymous, his curiosity was piqued:
“Hi, I have information you might find useful. Information about Jay Hadley.”
Interesting! In spite of no simple way to identify the sender, he replied anyway.
“Oh yeah. And what sort of info would that be? :-)”
Ren usually ended messages with a “smiley-face” icon because it tended to put at ease whoever he was to talking with.
“Lonny was right, you know. Hadley paid to fly his copy-editor and her kids to Dallas at the same time as he was doing a public appearance in Fort Worth about two months ago. Had a teenager take the kids to Six Flags all day that Saturday and they spent the day going at it like rabbits.”
The mystery messenger had Ren’s full attention now:
“Ok, I can confirm the travel arrangements for this woman and her kids, but how do I confirm your allegations of sexual impropriety?”
There was a pause. Just enough to make Ren wonder about the truthfulness of the person at the other end.
“Hadley likes to play with SnapChat.”
That statement took Ren aback. SnapChat was a photo-sharing app for mobile devices most popular with teens. The idea is to send photos that only stay on the recipient’s phone for a few seconds.
“Are you saying you have pics of ol’ Jay with this woman?”
“Yes.”
Trying to remain calm, Ren continued:
“Great, when can I get these files from you?”
“Not yet. Remember Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate? It’s the same deal here. You have to build up to it, follow the trail. I can guide you but you have to do the work yourself.”
Trying not to get annoyed, Ren pressed forward:
“Are you saying you’re too close to the situation to become directly involved?”
Another pause.
“In a way, yes.”
Ren could feel the tension of the person at the other end almost oozing through the phone. One of the reasons he enjoyed chatting on these programs so much was that he had a gift for “feeling” emotions online, even if the party was in another country. His next question would confirm his instinct to be right.
“Can we meet?”
“Eventually, not yet though.”
“How do I know you’re not just jerking me around or, worse still, setting me up?”
Ren was satisfied that his instincts were correct, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
“Check your email in a little while. You’ll find some interesting reading that will establish my credentials with you.”
There was no further response from the mystery messenger. Ren leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to use his intuition to sense whether he was on to something here. Or whether he was walking into a trap.
Had Ren been able to see the face of the person on the other side of the connection he would have known immediately that this was legit.
***
Cecilia McIntyre had worked for Jay Hadley Ministries for five years, but she had never seen Hadley as angry or as upset as he had been after this afternoon’s show. She had spent 15 minutes in Hadley’s plush office being screamed at for allowing Lonny to get through to the show and embarrass him. Worse still, he did his screaming in the presence of a representative of the publisher of all his books.
Feeling thoroughly humiliated, Cecilia hurried out of the office and headed for the little pub she and her friends frequented regularly on Thursday nights. Even though this was a Tuesday evening, she was still welcomed as a regular and she proceeded to gulp down several glasses of Chardonnay.
The wine had kicked-in by the time she arrived at her apartment in Old Metairie and her feelings of humiliation had turned to anger. She activated her computer and quickly accessed the personal web page of Renard Alciatore, whom she knew was the webmaster of the most active anti-Hadley site on the Internet.
She made note of Alciatore’s account on “Kik”, the service offering the closest thing to “total anonymity” and messaged Alciatore, dropped some teaser information on him, then emailed him some interesting inter-office memos from the Ministry via an anonymous email server. She was more than a bit good with computers; covering her tracks was no problem at all. Neither Hadley nor Alciatore would know this information would have come from her unless she decided she would want them to know. She wasn’t ready to risk her job by identifying herself to Alciatore.
She chuckled inside then shut her system down before curling up on her couch to watch TV. Alciatore and his buddies had been playing small-time faith-busters up until now. She had just moved them into the big leagues.
Ren was on his second reading of the information emailed from his mysterious chatter. None of the memos’ contents was what anyone could call “earth-shattering”, but it was all juicy enough to be considered annoying by Hadley and his staff. If this were not merely an isolated acquisition by his newfound chat source, this individual could become very useful as a conduit of data about the Ministry.
Using a little cut-and-paste wizardry, Ren integrated components of the email memos he had received into the “What’s new” section of his blog. This was a big step for Ren: prior to this point the entire contents of the site had been compiled from things Hadley had said on the air. Various rumors and innuendo regarding Hadley’s personal life were always reported as third-party hearsay, repeating what managed to get out on the show before Hadley cut them off. Now, by publishing the contents of these memos, even in the paraphrased format Ren was using, he was entering directly into an effort to bring down Jay Hadley Ministries.
Ren took a deep breath, got up from his desk, and walked quietly through the house to the front door. The hot humid night air seemed to hit him in the face as he descended the front steps and headed towards the bank of the bayou across the street. The waxing moon was a fingernail crescent, only barely illuminating the surface of the water. Ren sat down at the water’s edge and sighed, deeply. He had always thought that the content of his website was aggressive and productive. But now all he could hear was JJ’s voice in the back of his mind, warning him that going after Hadley might be more than he could handle.
Still, if he did not publish this information, he was all but assured that his source would not provide him with any further goodies. It was clear now that there was someone inside the Ministry who shared his sentiments. How could he not press forward with this data?
He tossed a twig into the water and listened for the splash before turning back to the house. Back inside, he leaned over his desk chair, Ren moved the trackball and clicked the keyboard to send the new Hadley information into publication via the server. He had not even sat down. He closed his work computer and headed for the shower. And it was time for a beer or two.
The next morning Ren awoke with a start. Even though he had no early appointments that day, his alarm was still set for its usual wake-up time and he could hear his alarm clock chiming. As he rolled over to switch the alarm off, he realized that the chimes were not from his clock but from his web server system. He climbed out of bed and stumbled sleepily into his study. The chiming became louder as he approached the server and a quick glance of the system’s activity report from the time since he had published the new Hadley information showed that not only had the number of visitors to the website increased, but now someone was trying to make a crude attempt to shut down the server by repeatedly issuing the same request immediately one after another from multiple locations on the Internet. Ren made a few quick modifications to the server’s configuration to deal with the problem and the chiming ceased. Ren could now turn his attention to his workstation computer to check his emails and, hopefully, find out what had been going on while he had been resting.
His server’s email filters had been doing their job by removing the usual annoyance emails sent to him by Hadley’s supporters. His inbox was thus left with merely a few notes from friends. Among them, one from his niece in Seattle and another from one of his fellow Hadley-bashers from Abita Springs, on Lake Pontchartrain’s north shore.
This last email congratulated Ren on publishing confirmation that Jay Hadley Ministries had withdrawn its application for full membership of the Association for Broadcast Ministries (ABM), a watchdog organization formed after the Rev. Jim Bakker had been imprisoned for his Praise the Lord (PTL) network dealings. When he had published this the evening before, Ren had regarded this fact as only a small item of news. But his north-shore acquaintance, who went by the moniker “Professor Apocalypse”, went into some detail to explain that ABM certification was becoming increasingly important to a TV- or radio-based ministry and that Hadley’s reticence to become a full member could only indicate that his financial dealings and records might not stand up to independent scrutiny.
While this revelation might not be considered enough to deal a major blow to Hadley’s fund-raising efforts, he considered it to be a setback that would keep him from joining the ranks of the well-respected media ministries, such as Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family program. As “Professor Apocalypse” pointed out, anything that held back JHM from moving into that top echelon of ministries would serve only to incense the Rev. Hadley.
Ren didn’t know whether to laugh or cry while reading his colleague’s explanation of why his web server had been “under attack” for the previous couple of hours. Professor Apocalypse’s knowledge of what this ABM situation was about made him feel better in that Hadley would probably figure he had been Ren’s source of information. Today’s Talk Now! show might just be the most entertaining one of the month.
***
The staff of Jay Hadley Ministries was having a most uncomfortable morning, especially Cecilia McIntyre, who sat in her boss’s office while listening to him carry on about the impact of Ren Alciatore’s newly published information on the Ministry’s financial position.
“OK. I need a major diversion today, Cee.” Hadley was pacing behind his desk, stopping occasionally to look out over the lake as he spoke. The view was spectacular, with cars darting in both directions along Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. Cecilia could almost see a shiver go up Hadley’s spine as he contemplated the possibility that the day might come when he would not be able to meet the expenses on this plush office suite and they would be forced to find a less opulent home for the Ministry.
“We haven’t had a full-blown exorcism in, what, six or seven weeks, right? See what you can line up for me.”
Cecilia cringed inwardly. Of all the things she did “for the good of the Ministry”, this was one of those things that really turned her stomach. What Hadley wanted to “line up” was someone who was “possessed” with demons that Hadley could cast out. Cecilia would arrange for aspiring actors to play the role of the “possessed” and Hadley would play the person along before eventually bringing them to the Lord, live, for all the True Believers to hear and, hopefully, for them to pay for.
She nodded to him. “Yeah, I was planning to do one next week, so I’ve got a few people already briefed. Let me track one of them down and see what we can do. Would you prefer a male or a female?”
Hadley grinned. “Oh, female. Definitely. I want a real gut-twister of an exorcism, with a total focus on the positive. An exorcism gives us a great excuse not to take negative calls without appearing to be hiding from the issues.”
He stood, reached for the phone, and gave her a stern look. “Let’s have no nightmares this afternoon, OK, Cee?”
Cecilia nodded again, stood up, and returned to her office down the hall from Hadley’s. She was still reeling from the dressing-down she had received from Hadley the day before. She flopped down in her chair, reached for the phone, and punched in the number of a dinner-theater actress who was about to endure a sudden case of demonic possession.
Forty-five minutes later, the feature event for that afternoon’s show was all planned. The best exorcisms they had staged on the radio had been those in which the “victim” had a concise script and a background story worked out beforehand with Cecilia. She kept Hadley in the dark about the specifics. That way, he was forced to pull the facts out, little by little. Any prior knowledge of the facts would risk blowing the apparent spontaneity of the call. Hadley was good at this, and if the “victim” could keep up with him the whole experience could be a significant revenue-generator for the Ministry.
Of course, there were occasional real exorcisms on the show, too: people who just called in genuinely looking for help. But those made Cecilia very nervous as there was no way to control the flow of the call, making it difficult to get scheduled breaks in. Sometimes the real calls worked out well. But more often they fizzled out as the caller grew silent or simply hung up.
Annie knocked on Cecilia’s open door, smiling at her.
“You OK?” She asked.
“Yeah. For the moment.” Cecilia sighed. “We’re ‘exorcising’ today.”
“Well, at least the ‘simulations’ show the public what’s at stake in fighting the forces of evil in this world,” Annie said with a wry smirk.
“Yeah, but all you handle is the tech,” responded Cecilia, mockingly tossing a pencil at Annie.
“You’re good at this Cecilia. You’ll do just fine!” Annie waved, turned and continued down the hall.
Even though Hadley was just a few feet down the hall, Cecilia sent an email to him to let him know that everything was set up for the show. She was not interested in being reminded again about yesterday, so she shut her door and used email to control her communication with the outside world. A quick check of Twitter and Facebook showed that Ren Alciatore had been a busy bee the previous night, which more than explained Hadley’s desire for a big-time diversion this afternoon. Using her word-processor program, Cecilia began to compile “talking points” for Hadley’s unscripted pledge-breaks that focused on defending the ministry from outside attack. These were always presented in general terms, avoiding the recognition of specific attacks but acknowledging that there were people who were trying to bring down the Ministry.
After an hour of typing and revising, Cecilia sat back, rubbed her eyes, and smiled a satisfied smile as she reviewed her handiwork.
She was just about to email Jay the file she had completed, but decided to print it out and deliver it by hand. As much as she didn’t want to face further criticism today, she also did not want Hadley or anyone in the office to perceive her as a wimp. The document she was pulling from the printer was good stuff. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Things had gone awry yesterday and she was now taking steps to put everything back on track.
Cecilia stood up from her desk and walked the short distance down the hall to Hadley’s office. Seeing his door open she went in unannounced to find Hadley on the phone. The twang of the voice emanating from the speaker-phone made the caller immediately recognizable to her. It was Anita Delatorre of Marcus-Kayson, one of the world’s largest publishers of Christian books. Cecilia slid her document onto Hadley’s desk as she listened-on on the caller.
“…Okay then, Jay, I’m on my way to Love Field in a few minutes. I’ll make sure to stop by your office as soon as my other business is finished. Y’all have a good afternoon and hope the show goes well today!”
Hadley was smiling his “charm-the-ladies” smile, even though the conversation was on the phone. “Great, Anita. Call me on my cell when you get done. Maybe we can grab a bite to eat tonight.”
“Wonderful Jay. Ciao!” Cecilia smiled inwardly as she visualized the big-haired blonde Dallas débutante on the other end of the connection as she turned and walked out the door. Hadley called after her.
“Hey, Cee. Make reservations for me at August tonight, willya? Thanks babe.” She decided not to turn around but instead gave him a thumbs-up and headed back to her office to grab her purse before going out to get some lunch.
