The Rainmaker Read Free Page B

to.”
    Well, how about a million for me? Texaco will sue me any day now for four hundred dollars. We’ve broken off negotiations and I’ve heard from their attorney. My landlord is threatening eviction because I haven’t paid rent in two months. And I’m sitting here chatting with the richest person I’ve ever met, a person who probably can’t live much longer and is pondering rather delightfully who should get how much.
    She hands me a piece of paper with four names printed neatly in a narrow column, and says, “These are the grandchildren I want to protect, the ones who still love me.” She cups her hand over her mouth and moves toward my ear. “Give each one a million dollars.”
    My hand shakes as I scrawl on my pad. Wham! Just like that, I’ve created four millionaires. “What about the rest?” I ask in a low whisper.
    She jerks backward, sits erectly and says, “Not a dime. They don’t call me, never send gifts or cards. Cut ’em out.”
    If I had a grandmother worth twenty million dollars I’d send flowers once a week, cards every other day, chocolates whenever it rained and champagne whenever it didn’t. I’d call her once in the morning and twice before bedtime. I’d take her to church every Sunday and sit with her, hand in hand, during the service, then off to brunch we’d go and then to an auction or a play or an art show orwherever in the hell Granny wanted to go. I’d take care of my grandmother.
    And I was thinking of doing the same for Miss Birdie.
    “Okay,” I say solemnly as if I’ve done this many times. “And nothing for your two children?”
    “That’s what I said. Absolutely nothing.”
    “What, may I ask, have they done to you?”
    She exhales heavily as if frustrated by this, and she rolls her eyes around as if she hates to tell me, but then she lurches forward on both elbows to tell me anyway. “Well,” she whispers, “Randolph, the oldest, he’s almost sixty, just married for the third time to a little tramp who’s always asking about the money. Whatever I leave to him she’ll end up with, and I’d rather give it to you, Rudy, than to my own son. Or to Professor Smoot, or to anyone but Randolph. Know what I mean?”
    My heart stops. Inches, just inches, from striking paydirt with my first client. To hell with Brodnax and Speer and all those conferences awaiting me.
    “You can’t leave it to me, Miss Birdie,” I say, and offer her my sweetest smile. My eyes, and probably my lips and mouth and nose as well, beg for her to say Yes! Dammit! It’s my money and I’ll leave it to whomever I want, and if I want you, Rudy, to have it, then dammit! It’s yours!
    Instead, she says, “Everything else goes to the Reverend Kenneth Chandler. Do you know him? He’s on television all the time now, out of Dallas, and he’s doing all sorts of wonderful things around the world with our donations, building homes, feeding babies, teaching from the Bible. I want him to have it.”
    “A television evangelist?”
    “Oh, he’s much more than an evangelist. He’s a teacher and statesman and counselor, eats dinner with heads of state, you know, plus he’s cute as a bug. Got this head fullof curly gray hair, premature, but he wouldn’t dare touch it up, you know.”
    “Of course not. But—”
    “He called me the other night. Can you believe it? That voice on television is as smooth as silk, but over the phone it’s downright seductive. Know what I mean?”
    “Yes, I think I do. Why did he call you?”
    “Well, last month, when I sent my pledge for March, I wrote him a short note, said I was thinking of redoing my will now that my kids have abandoned me and all, and that I was thinking of leaving some money for his ministries. Not three days later he called, just full of himself, so cute and vibrant on the phone, and wanted to know how much I might be thinking of leaving him and his ministries. I shot him a ballpark figure, and he’s been calling ever since. Said he would