“My people, please.” Cashdollar held up his Bible, calming the crowd. “We will work through this.”
The noise diminished. Slowly, but surely, they turned their attention back to the man who’d brought them together.
“Let us remember the message we’ve all come to share. You will be made rich in every way. Say it with me.”
And the crowd chanted the message, reading from the banner the scripture that was burned into their minds. The two bodyguards melted into the curtains and the Reverend Cashdollar held the congregation spellbound in the palm of his hand. After all the crap, he had them right where he wanted them.
“Let me bring out two people, just like you, who heard this message three years ago. Brethren, welcome brother Steve Olean and brother William Riley.”
There was light, scattered applause. The names sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them.
“Brother Steve Olean and brother William Riley both believed this message. They prayed on it, they came to our revival meetings, they met with brother Thomas LeRoy our director of finance, and they met with me.”
Two young white guys walked out on stage, dressed in casual slacks and knit polo shirts.
“Ladies. Gentlemen. I give to you the founders of Meet and Greet, one of the Internet’s biggest meeting places.”
James grabbed my shoulder. “Oh, my God. Do you know who these guys are?”
“He just told us, James.”
“Skip, amigo, these guys were just on the cover of Rolling Stone. They’re like rock gods of the tech world.”
I knew who they were. You’d have to be in the Stone Age not to know the business they started. Started, and sold to one of the big networks for something like a billion dollars. Maybe two billion. James even has a personal page on Meet and Greet, just like My Space, complete with his picture and a doctored history. Believe me, I knew who these two guys were.
“My friends, these two gentlemen would like to tell you their story. Do you want to hear it?”
There was a frenzy of screaming and applause. This was the meat and potatoes. This was what the Cashdollar experience was all about. Two very rich white dudes who owed their success to God — and to Preston Cashdollar. The two men spoke for the next fifteen minutes, telling their story very well. They spoke of their belief in a higher power, they referred to the banner in an almost choreographed manner. Olean and Riley owned the big yellow tent.
“Do you have a dream?” Riley, a thirty-year-old, short, Tom Cruise-looking guy took the lead. “Do you?”
There was confusion in the ranks. Shouts of “amen” and “yes, brother” followed.
Olean leaned into the microphone. “If you have a dream, you can make it happen. If we did it, you can do it.”
The crowd screamed. Shouted. They stood up, and as strange as it felt, as cynical as I was, I stood up with them. We had a dream. I wanted it to happen. And when they were done, they asked the congregation to repeat the phrase. It came back louder than ever.
You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion.
During the next passing of the plate, James put in ten bucks. I put in five. I didn’t want him to feel totally alone. Daron Styles smirked and shook his head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I s it me? Is it the people I hang out with? Is it the society we live in? Is it the American way? One minute I’m totally bummed out. The idea that someone, maybe in the Cashdollar camp, tried to commit a murder. The idea that someone has threatened Cashdollar himself. My feeling that Cashdollar is a slimeball. And then, in an instant, I find myself sucked into a scam. I know it’s a scam, but I want to believe it. I want to believe that you will be made rich in every way. What is wrong with me, with the people around me, that our belief system can change in a nanosecond? What we believe one second can totally change due to greed.
I’m not what you’d call a religious person. I believe in a God, but only because there’s got to be something out there. I don’t buy into this primeval slime that we supposedly evolved from.
So all of a sudden, I’m investing $5, betting that God will make me rich. And I already know where that $5 is going.
“You guys know where your money is going, right?” Styles had cocked the hat back on his head and, back at the truck, he was eating a burger that James had cooked for him as he prepared for the evening rush. The bun was loaded with pickles, peppers, relish, onion, mustard, and whatever else he could find.
James sat on his upside-down pickle bucket, his apron on, waiting for the crowd to come piling out of the yellow tent. “Yeah. Some of it goes to the full-timers. But you know, damn it, you see two guys up there who are worth a billion dollars, and you’ve got to wonder.”
Styles sat on the rear of the truck, dangling his legs over the edge. He sipped on one of our expensive green labels and kicked his feet back and forth. “Yeah, you’re right, James. You’ve got to wonder how much Cashdollar paid them for that testimonial.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I was up by the grill, precooking potatoes, onions, and peppers. “What do they need the money for? They’re worth billions?”
“Boys, read the Time magazine article on them. Read the Rolling Stone interview. See if they mention Cashdollar one time.”
James took a long swallow of the good beer. “You mean, they don’t mention him at all? It’s a hoax?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t read that crap. But I’ll bet they don’t mention him. I’ll bet they don’t say a word about how Cashdollar was responsible for their wealth and fame.”
“So, what could he pay them? My God, they’re billionaires.”
“Look,” Styles finished the beer and pointed to the refrigerator. James, the obedient lapdog, brought him another. We were almost out.
“I’m not saying these guys didn’t attend one of the rev’s meetings. And I’m not saying that they didn’t contribute some jack to his fund. And, I’m not saying that they don’t believe that Cashdollar and the scripture had something to do with their wealth.”
I was tired of him already. “Then what are you saying? Man, you talk in circles.”
“Maybe there’s a grain of truth there. Maybe Cashdollar had something to do with their success, but you’ve got to remember, Skip, this is a show. It’s a circus, a carnival. Remember that. It’s set up to get money from the locals any way possible. These people are entertainers. Entertainers pure and simple. They get paid depending on how well they entertain. It’s no different than the hucksters that paraded around at the turn of the century selling swamp water in a bottle to cure all our ills. It’s a business. An entertainment business, and that’s all it is. The minute you forget that, you become a sucker. Listen. James drops ten in the pot, two thousand people put ten in the pot, they’ve got three collections per service, that’s what? One hundred twenty thousand dollars for Thursday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday, we’ve got two services. Count ’em, two. That’s two hundred forty thousand dollars per day. That adds up to,” he paused, working the figures in his head.
As a business major I could have told him, the trick is to do the math as the story unfolds, not wait until the end.
“Three hundred sixty thousand dollars.”
He’d gotten it right.
“And son,” he continued, “there are a lot of people who put in a whole lot more than just ten bucks. I’m talking a hundred bucks a pop and more.”
James and I looked at each other. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This guy could do up to half a million dollars. In four days.
Now I got it. James wanted to stick around and soak up everything he could. The good, the bad, the ugly. He wanted to learn just how everything in this operation ran. At the risk of our own safety, James wanted this education. Hell, I wanted this education. I finally figured it out. Stick with James, because it was an education.