Page 57 - Just Deserts

Revelation Research

out in the street waiting for the doors to open. The righteous hour
has never drawn like that before!”
“Why?” DeLeone’s face was a study in innocence. “What’s the big
deal about the show today?”
“You haven’t heard about the mystery woman? Yeah, sounds like
a gimmick, I know, but after all this publicity old Jack will have to
deliver a real bombshell. See there in the script? He’s going to bring
on this woman—not showing her face, of course—and she’s going to
blow the whistle on some scandal or other. He hasn’t said what kind
of scandal, or who’s involved, but that’s just part of the come-on, if
you ask me. Anyway, he’s going to get a huge TV audience for this
one.”
“Oh? It’s going out on satellite?” DeLeone asked Schuster
nonchalantly. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he mused,
“Then any other station in the world can pick up our feed and use it
on its nightly news. But they’ll have to give us credit, and the money
will already be in the bag, right?”
“Right. But that’s all been thought out in advance—not by
McCracken, mind you: he’s got some big Washington organization
behind him on this one. They probably put together this whole thing
with the mystery woman. Exactly what it’s about is not in the
script—they didn’t want any leaks. Just remember: if she doesn’t say
what she is supposed to say, Jack will give us the high sign and you
push the tape button in a hurry. Okay?”
Dan DeLeone gave the thumbs-up sign and put on his headset. It
was show time.
On cue, highly-amplified applause greeted the evangelist as he
descended a glittering blue staircase in a cloud of dry ice. The
substitute director smoothly cut to a close-up of the sexagenarian’s
saintly features and superimposed the toll-free telephone number
across his neck. Snooder looked at Schuster and shrugged; the latter
returned a surprised grimace. Then both men relaxed and returned to
their responsibilities.
The mystery woman was not preceded by a warm-up act. Jack
McCracken forsook his usual fire-and-brimstone diatribe against the
evils of unseen forces and got right to the point; a bank of phone
operators behind him sat idle by silent instruments, so he had no
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