The Temple

The town of Appleburgh was as clean as a whistle and twice as sharp. Into this valley of milk and apple butter rolled Arnie and Krystal Marcus, dragging salvation behind them in a rented trailer.

They had the grift down cold-the kind of con that wears a cross and quotes scripture while it picks your pocket. Arnie could smell money through church walls like a bloodhound smells fear. His wife Krystal had the kind of smile that made lonely men write checks and lonely women trust too much.

Their play started simple: find the hippie kids the good citizens feared, feed them tuna sandwiches and redemption. Before you could say "Hallelujah," they had themselves a coffee house, a teenage ward named Tony, and a hundred grand from his senile grandmother's sock drawer.

The Temple Coffee House served salvation with a side of Yuban-overpriced joe that Cricket Krauss swore was all-American, even if she couldn't spell Colombia. The Krauss kids bankrolled the operation while Arnie worked their business manager Ben Nales like a violin, knowing exactly which strings to pull when he caught him watching young Tony through his living room curtains.

Saturday nights, Arnie took the stage in black turtleneck and tarnished cross, spinning tales about roadside angels and accidents better left unmentioned. The local clergy started sweating through their collars. In a town where everyone had something to hide, Arnie and Krystal were learning where all the bodies were buried.

It was a beautiful racket in an ugly little town-the kind of score that could set them up for life or get them run out on a rail. In Appleburgh, sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.