I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he shook my hand off. “Come on, amigo. One more hand.” He twisted the cap off his beer and played another hand. Now he was down $500. It was obvious they could smell blood. Stan, Bruce, Dusty, Mug all pleaded with him to stay in the game.
James looked down at his dwindling stake, shoved the few paltry dollars back in his pocket and sadly shook his head. “Got to take Skip home, guys.”
Stan pointed up the lane. “Girls comin’ in half an hour.”
James and I both perked up a little. “Girls?”
“Thought maybe Bruce told you. Where there’s loose money, they’ll find it.”
I glanced at my partner, his big smile dwindling. “Working girls?”
The guy with the big face and shaved head named Mug, laughed out loud. “They’ll be workin’ their asses off once they get here. We set ’em up in a small tent over by the Intracoastal Waterway.” He pointed off to the right, behind a stand of trees, where the state had built a series of shelters that looked out on the man-made waterway. Working girls. Another fine use of the Florida taxpayer’s dollar. A tented whorehouse.
“Uh, I think we’ll pass.”
“Tomorrow night,” Stan the pizza guy jammed his finger into my chest, “you stay late. There’s a special little treat goin’ on and I think you young guys would enjoy it. Stay late, got it?”
We said our good-byes and Crayer said goodnight as well. The three of us worked our way up the end of the dirt road.
“I’m stayin’ in a little trailer just over there.” Crayer pointed to a spot in the distance where a scattering of dim lights shone from tents and trailers. “Most of the guys you met stay there.”
“What about the other vendors?”
“Most of the others are like you. They’re local and they go home in the evening. Got families and stuff. We’re on the road. If the rev’s got a gig, we do that, but we spread out and do shows all over the country. Fairs, carnivals, sometime even other revival meetings with other guys.”
“Well, we’re driving the truck back to our apartment. We’ll see you tomorrow night. Thanks for showing us the ropes.” I shook his hand.
“Hell, you guys were goin’ like gangbusters tonight. You got the hang of it right away.”
James nodded. “Tell me something, Bruce. When Cashdollar brings all this force to bear on somebody like Barry Romans, you’re telling me he can get him fired? That’s pretty serious power. What’s happened in the past?”
James was obsessed with it. Power, money, making something happen with his young life. He wouldn’t pass up any chance for a learning experiece. My best friend, the entrepreneur.
“I’ve been doin’ this little circus for a lot of years. Three years with the rev, but lots of years on different circuits.” Crayer ran his hand through his thinning hair. “I’ve made enough donuts to circle this world a hundred times, so I’ve got a little background.”
“And?”
“The rev started out like a lot of them, with fire and brimstone. God’s gonna getcha’ if you don’t straighten up.”
I remembered the revival meeting Buzz and I had gone to many years ago. Somewhere, I remembered, not too far from here. I had no recollection of who the preacher was. I just remember he marched around his platform with a Bible clutched in his hand and he was angry. Angry at the Devil and just about everyone else.
“And I believe that he changed people’s lives. I do. But it’s a different world out there.”
“How’s that?” James was leaning in, eagerly hoping for some business advice he could use.
“People want to blame somebody else for all the problems of the world, and the rev honed in on that. First of all, he got into the ‘God’s gonna make you rich’ thing. He got people dreaming. That’s doing really well for him. Collections doubled, tripled. But he really saw his fortunes start to climb about three years ago when he nailed that senator from Nebraska, Long I think his name was.”
I drew a blank.
“Guy was antigay, anticivil rights, and he made a couple of statements that struck the rev the wrong way. Very right wing. May have even used the N word. Rev went after him and Cashdollar was getting national press — cover of Time magazine — and the money was rolling in.”
“And what?” I asked. “They ran this Long out of office?”
“Not exactly. The rev got the national media behind it, got the newspapers and television networks to go after this guy. Rev was on Larry King and a lot of left-wing talk shows. He started a letter-writing campaign, phone banks, blogs on the Internet, and stuff you couldn’t imagine.”
“He’s that powerful?”
“More powerful than even that.”
“How much more powerful can you be?” Now I was intrigued.
Crayer folded his hands over his ample stomach and in the dim light gave us a hard look. “I was there when Fred Long got killed.”
All of a sudden he’d remembered the senator’s name.
“Somebody shot him in cold blood on the streets of Washington D.C. And boys,” he stopped for a moment, looking off into space, “boys, you don’t get any more powerful than that.”
CHAPTER FIVE
J ames drove, and when he’d occasionally hit the brakes we could hear the kitchen equipment rattle in the back.
“What do you think he meant?” James hadn’t said much since we left the fairgrounds.
“Well, I don’t think he meant that Cashdollar actually shot the man.” I was thinking how Crayer had not been sure of the deceased’s last name, then all of a sudden had come up with the full name. No question, he knew the story.
“I don’t know the story, pally, but Jesus! That’s some serious charge.” James took a long drag on his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out the driver’s window. “Think about it, Skip. Enough clout to have somebody whacked? What would that feel like?”
“Feel like? It would scare the hell out of me. I don’t want that kind of power. I mean, I really don’t want someone killing a senator or anybody, because of something I said.”
“And Crayer says when Cashdollar attacked, the money came pouring in.” James was all about finding new ways to make money.
I thought about Crayer’s accusation. It would be easy enough to find out if Fred Long had died. And, it should be easy to find out how he died. Maybe Cashdollar’s constant hounding did bring about his death. Or maybe the shooting was totally unrelated. Or maybe, just maybe somebody in Reverend Cashdollar’s congregation actually killed Long. “And the other thing he said — ”
“What was that?”
“I was there when he was shot.”
“He must have been living in Washington at the time. They eat donuts in D.C. too.”
“And then, what about Barry Romans? I mean, is his life in danger?” James turned to me. “Imagine, Skip. What kind of business is that? One where you actually try to bring somebody down?”
“James, you’re actually showing some compassion?”
My roommate rolled his eyes. “Hell, no. I was thinking about what Bruce said. Something about absolute power. Getting someone killed? I’m with you. I don’t want to kill somebody, but I just wonder what it would be like to have that absolute power.”
“Let’s hope you never find out.” Sometimes, James scared me.
“Absolute power, bro. Like God.”
I thought about the senator. And about the food vendor who may or may not have been killed, right there on the park grounds. And I thought about Cabrina Washington, who’d been strangled at a revival meeting. These events seemed to be somewhat scary. Somewhat suspect. We didn’t talk the rest of the way home.
James and I share a computer. And we pay for high-speed access, which is a considerable cost since neither of us makes much money. When we got to the apartment I ran a Google search and found about 15,000 hits on “death of senator Fred Long.” How we could have missed the story, I don’t know. I guess the news in South Florida isn’t exactly the news of North Dakota or Washington, D.C.