"Mob Money" (closed)

[CutiePie1997]

"Mob Money"

Please note:
I am looking for 1 female writer
to play (preferably) at least 2 characters.
I already have 2 or 3 male writers writing
1 or more characters.

This is not a group thread per se. Most of the back and forth
replies between 2 characters will be written in 1x1 threads
that are linked to this thread.

Please do not post here unless invited. I appreciate it.​

Viola Prichard had always understood the relationship between herself and Jimmy "The Blade" Tyler: he was her sugar daddy, and she was his play thing. She'd always been happy or at least content with the arrangement: he provided her with everything she needed, from a cash allowance to a convertible sports car to getaways to Mexico, France, even Australia once; and she provided him with arm candy in public and the most incredible and most adventurous sex in private.

But he was a mobster, a gangster, an organized crime lord … and Viola had never been foolish enough to think that this would last forever. It didn't, of course; three weeks earlier, Jimmy had been gunned down on the street right out in front of an FBI safehouse, where he'd been negotiating terms of his surrender to the Feds and his eventual testimony against the Syndicate.

Viola had already been in hiding before Jimmy went to the Feebs. When she didn't get the appropriate secret code word email from him within 48 hours of being taken into custody, she'd gotten the hell out of Dodge. For three weeks she kept on the move, never staying in the same place more than 12 hours, never using transport that required proof of ID, never even engaging in conversation with someone who might remember her if her picture suddenly appeared on the nightly news or worse, on social media.

Finally, today, she was stepping out of a locally based bus service onto the cracked sidewalk of some bodink backwater town that didn't even show up on her phone's Google Maps unless you zoomed in very close.

She was a stranger in a strange town, far from home and her previous resources -- financially and otherwise -- and human support. But Viola wasn't entirely without what she would need to start a new life. She had always been Jimmy's most trusted confidante rather than just a play thing. And she'd been entrusted with the location of what he'd called his Pirate's Treasure Chest, in case he ever needed to run and couldn't get to it himself. So here she was, in this little town of maybe 500 people, standing all alone next to a wheeled suitcase containing $2.85 million in cash and untraceable, uncut diamonds.

As she looked about herself, she couldn't help but wonder Well, I seemed to have gotten away … but … now what? She looked down at the bag and smiled. She may not know what was coming next, but she had a pretty good idea that if it required money … she had that covered.

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So, this is the gist of the story:

• We are using Brownsville, Oregon, as the location of our story because it is a historic town in Oregon and there are lots of pictures of it. You can even go to Google Maps street view and see the town from one end to the other. Brownsville, by the way, is where they filmed the 1986 movie, Stand By Me.
• However, we will call it Brownsville only, without the Oregon part, because some of the story to be presented here won't be accurate to the town's current situation. Brownsville is actually doing pretty good financially, but for our story, it is going to be on the verge of collapse.
• Viola is going to look for a boarding house, then maybe an inconspicuous apartment, maybe over one of the century or more older downtown buildings.
• She is going to try to remain inconspicuous, but hey, c'mon, would you not notice her walking down the street?
• Eventually, she will make friends … and eventually she will find a lover (or two?)
• But another important part of the story is that she will see this sad little town falling into financial ruin … and hey … she has a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills and uncut diamonds. How fortunate for Brownsville.
• Her benevolence will be subtle at first, but ultimately, people are going start wondering why all of this readily available cash suddenly began showing up just about the same time that babe showed up from … where did she come from...? Hmm, no one seems to know.
• I'm thinking it would be nice to have a multitude of characters:
  • A Deputy Sheriff.
  • A struggling store owner.
  • A single bar owner, whether male or female, who would like to expand but doesn't have the money.
  • A volunteer at the history museum who could think of some really neat ways to preserve history if only a few extra dollars could be found.
  • And such forth.
• I'm looking for 10+ posts a week, but they can be as little as 25 words. I just want to see the story move forward.
• I'm looking for proofreading: proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar. In other words, please don't spit out some words into your phone's voice recognition app and then post without even looking to see what your phone thought you were saying.
• I will write more than one character; I will write women and men both as needed.
• PM me if you are interested. Please don't post without permission.

 

[CutiePie1997]

(FYI: You will sometimes see this symbol: *M*. This is a link to Google Maps Street View, showing the item being described in that paragraph. You do not have to open these links; they are just for visualization and should be fully described in the reply's text. Keep in mind that sometimes the reply's text overrides what you see in the link. What I mean by that is this: if the text says the building is run down but the link image shows a beautiful building, then the building is currently run down but perhaps will one day be as beautiful as it is in the link; or if the lawn in the image is beautiful but the text says its choked with weeds and overgrown, the latter is true. By the way, once I create an OOC, all of these OOC notes in the IC will be moved.)

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Viola watched the local bus head off out of sight. She looked about herself and couldn't help but smile *M*. Brownsville didn't look much different from the sleepy little town in which she'd grown up: hardware store, smallish post office; lower and middle class homes. Turning to her right and heading down Main Street with her rolling suitcase bumping over the cracked sidewalks, Viola discovered a café, a saloon, a health clinic, a pharmacy, a bank, City Hall, the fire station, and more.

Crossing to the opposite side of the road and heading back the direction she'd come, *M*, she found yet another cafe, a historic Photo Museum, a NAPA auto parts store, a couple of gift and craft stores, an antique mall, and just before the post office a building called The Calapooia, which she realized upon approach was an apartment building that also let rooms for the day or week.

She pushed the handle of her case down into the case, lifted it, and -- before making her way into the Calapooia -- took one last look up and down the street. Again, Viola smiled; she'd walked two blocks down and two blocks back, and she'd seen more abandoned store fronts than she'd seen people on the street. This little town was on the verge of collapse.

Viola made her way inside the boarding house and up to the front desk. There was no one there; in fact, from the note on the counter, it didn't appear there was going to be anyone here for hours:

We are away for the morning.
Feel free to leave any luggage you have
in the room to your right.
We will check you in when we return.
Thank you,
The Management.​

Viola looked down at her suitcase and mused, Should I leave you unattended in a closet? I think not. She found a check in form and filled it out with the name on one of her fake IDs. She added her burner phone's number and scribbled, Can you please call me when you have returned. She put a $100 bill on the paper, folded it to hide the bill, and put it in the indicated tray. She walked to the windows, caught sight of the café across the street, and made her way to it. She found a table near the sidewalk adjacent windows, ordered an espresso and a scone … and waited. It was like she had anywhere to be.

 

[KingOfNowhere]

We are not writing this anymore.

 

[CutiePie1997]

(FYI: we are taking the conversation between Viola and the Sheriff to a secondary thread, found here. If you are following our story or participating in it, you will want to read this other thread, as lots of good information will be included.)

 

[KingOfNowhere]

We are not writing this anymore.

 

[CutiePie1997]

Viola had gotten her room in the Calapooia, hidden almost $800,000 in the walls of the shared bathrooms, and then come down to the street again to cross to the bank to put what remained in a safe deposit box. She went to the corner to cross to the bank, but before she did, she caught sight of a man sitting on the pavement half a block down. Viola had seen her share of the homeless in New York City and knew that homelessness was an issue in every large city. But it surprised her to see a homeless man here in this little rural town.

What she didn't know -- what she was ignorant about, to put a word to it -- was that half of the people in this state who suffered what was called housing insecurity actually lived outside the big cities, in little towns just like Brownsville.

She crossed to the bank and -- using an ID that had never before been used anywhere -- she bought a safe deposit box under the name Violet Richardson. She hid the rest of the cash, as well as the $1.2 million dollars in uncut diamonds, thanked the bank staff, and was about to head outside when she remembered the man across the road.

"I'm sorry, but … can you tell me, who's that man?" she said pointing the clerk's attention across the road."

"Oh, that's just Parker. Don't worry about him, he's harmless," the woman said with a bit of a dismissive tone. She explained who he was and how he'd once run the town newspaper. "These days, he sells knickknacks and sometimes does handyman tasks and yard work, I've been told."

"So … he's just unemployed … or he's homeless?"

"Both, I think," the woman said. She leaned in closer and said in almost a whisper, "To be honest, I don't really, you know … talk to him. He kinda … well, I don't want to be unkind … but he kinda smells."

Viola didn't react one way or the other to the woman's obvious disapproval of the man. Another customer entered, and the clerk -- one of only two people working in the branch that at one time had had 5 daily workers -- politely excused herself from the conversation. Viola studied the man through the glass for a moment, then exited and crossed to approach the man.

"Hi," she said simply upon reaching him. He greeted her with a smile. Viola looked over his items, asked him about a couple of them, then asked, "How much for the charm bracelet? It's pretty."

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This conversation between Viola and Parker continues here.

 

[CutiePie1997]

(FYI: This post begins after the conclusion of the side thread between Viola and Parker, as found in the link in the above post.)

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The next day:

Viola awoke and rolled from her left side to her back. She blinked her eyes clear and stared at the cracking paint of the ceiling for a long while. Then, rolling again to the right, she looked to the big bay windows that looked out upon the 2nd floors of the buildings across the street, as well as upon the giant oak trees beyond them and the blue sky above all.

And she smiled.

She couldn't recall the last time she' awoken to a pleasant, peaceful mood. There was simply something about her new living situation that suited her. She felt safe, for the very first time since the FBI had begun investigating Jimmy and -- in response -- the Syndicate began keeping a close eye on him, fearing that he might do exactly what he offered to do, turn State's evidence against their criminal organization.

She slipped out of bed and into a pair of slippers she'd purchased the day before at the drug store. In only a sports bra and boy shorts, Viola padded her way across the hard wood floor to the windows to look down upon the town. It was so peaceful, with just a pair of cars passing below and a handful of people going about their business. Viola took note of a merchant sweeping the walk before his store; of an elderly woman pushing a folding shopping cart, her little dog leashed to the side; of a man staring up at her window--

Viola backed up suddenly, realizing, yes, that the man had in fact been staring up at her. She'd been off in her dreamy world and had failed to immediately realize that his attention was on her. Suddenly, she was panicking; they'd caught up with her. She edged ever so slowly toward the glass again, this time at the edge of the window. Peeking down, she found the man again, just standing there sipping at a disposable coffee cup while he looked right up at her new home. She hadn't expected anyone to be able to see inside during the light of day, due to the reflections that would be on the glass. What she hadn't realized was that the tall tree set in a space in the sidewalk was shading her window, or that her light skinned body in its bright white undergarments had been the equivalent of flashing a spot light at the man who'd been simply standing about on the sidewalk, waiting for something other than Viola to appear.

As she looked down upon him, a second person appeared, took his hand, laughed with him a moment, then made a gesture as if they needed to be some place. The first man, though, hesitated to look again up at Viola' window … and smile before he wandered off out of view.

Upstairs, Viola suddenly laughed. She'd instinctively been in fear for her life, certain that the man below was from New York or, at the least, working for the Syndicate. Now she realized he was just some guy checking out the nearly naked girl in the window. She slipped into a thick robe -- also purchased yesterday at a second hand store around the corner -- and made some breakfast before heading down the hall to take a shower. She checked the medicine cabinet and found it still secured in the wall.

Back in her apartment, she dressed -- tight jeans, button up top, vest, and modest heels -- and headed down to the street to go get some coffee at the café where she'd met her landlord the day before. Today Viola was going to start settling into her new life as by the end of yesterday, she'd decided that Brownsville was going to be her new home!