official, financial term for what she imagined would kick-start this outpouring of generosity — it’s called seed money — but she had never heard of such a thing and neither had anybody else she talked to about it. Some people went so far as to scoff.
“You’re nuts,” JannaRose said.
On top of that, if they could somehow collect enough money to get the pool going again, wouldn’t people naturally start paying attention to them? Enough attention that maybe they could get somebody to talk to the ice cream company? Somebody like the mayor?
“Really fuckin’ nuts.”
If Nina had never heard of seed money, she never thought of the money they’d need to get the project rolling as bank robbery money, either. Anybody could raise money any way that suited them. It just happened that this was the only one that fit her skill set. But it wasn’t until JannaRose started hinting that it would be nice if Nina’s brother’s plan for when he got out of jail included a position that Ed Oataway might fill that the idea of acquiring the necessary money by robbing a bank began jumping up and down in the back of her mind, demanding attention. Filling such a position would get Ed out of hock with the parent company for the Pontiac a whole lot faster than the only other obvious way, which was stealing a bunch of cars from people who didn’t want them stolen. Suspecting where that would lead and not wishing to see her family broken apart caused JannaRose to slam things so hard that Nina could hear it across the street. Nina figured that was probably why JannaRose was doing it, but she also couldn’t help but think that behaving like that would be out of character for JannaRose unless things looked quite a bit worse than usual.
As far as Nina could see, the idea of Frank robbing anything was idiotic. It wasn’t necessarily that he was too dumb — he was smarter than Ed Oataway. Even she had to admit that much. But robbery wasn’t his style. Nina always believed that people gravitated to whatever they were intended to do the way quarters and dimes and so on gravitated through the right holes in those machines that sort coins at the supermarket. It was why Frank leaned toward selling driveway resurfacing to old people and then disappearing with their downpayments. If he’d wanted to squeeze out of them the rest of the money they’d agreed to pay, he’d have had to come back with a barrel of used crankcase oil to brush on the driveway so it looked decent until it dried, by which time he’d have vanished with all their money.
But for this he’d have needed a truck, and if there was one thing that ranked up there with the Law of Gravity in SuEz, it was the situation when it came to trucks. The situation was that anybody in SuEz who had a truck had stolen it in the last hour or so, and the only thing they’d be interested in was selling it — not using it to do something else. A truck was a short-term proposition. Besides that, there would have been the hard work required to brush the fake stuff on some old fart’s driveway, and Frank could live without hard work every bit as well as he could live happily with just their downpayments. Sometimes he’d branch out into landscaping — design and construction. The deal there was the same as driveway resurfacing, especially the part where he told them how it would increase the value of their property. This particularly appealed to people who were going to have to sell soon and move into an old folks’ home. The same business fundamentals were involved: extremely low overhead and a minimum of labour and physical risk.
Frank never cared any more for risk that Ed Oataway did. D.S. used to say that was why Frank never would have made it in legitimate business, where some customer would beat the shit out of you without any warning and you’d be sent home with no compensation, until you were healthy enough to go back to work. According to D.S., if the economy had as many downturns
“You’re nuts,” JannaRose said.
On top of that, if they could somehow collect enough money to get the pool going again, wouldn’t people naturally start paying attention to them? Enough attention that maybe they could get somebody to talk to the ice cream company? Somebody like the mayor?
“Really fuckin’ nuts.”
If Nina had never heard of seed money, she never thought of the money they’d need to get the project rolling as bank robbery money, either. Anybody could raise money any way that suited them. It just happened that this was the only one that fit her skill set. But it wasn’t until JannaRose started hinting that it would be nice if Nina’s brother’s plan for when he got out of jail included a position that Ed Oataway might fill that the idea of acquiring the necessary money by robbing a bank began jumping up and down in the back of her mind, demanding attention. Filling such a position would get Ed out of hock with the parent company for the Pontiac a whole lot faster than the only other obvious way, which was stealing a bunch of cars from people who didn’t want them stolen. Suspecting where that would lead and not wishing to see her family broken apart caused JannaRose to slam things so hard that Nina could hear it across the street. Nina figured that was probably why JannaRose was doing it, but she also couldn’t help but think that behaving like that would be out of character for JannaRose unless things looked quite a bit worse than usual.
As far as Nina could see, the idea of Frank robbing anything was idiotic. It wasn’t necessarily that he was too dumb — he was smarter than Ed Oataway. Even she had to admit that much. But robbery wasn’t his style. Nina always believed that people gravitated to whatever they were intended to do the way quarters and dimes and so on gravitated through the right holes in those machines that sort coins at the supermarket. It was why Frank leaned toward selling driveway resurfacing to old people and then disappearing with their downpayments. If he’d wanted to squeeze out of them the rest of the money they’d agreed to pay, he’d have had to come back with a barrel of used crankcase oil to brush on the driveway so it looked decent until it dried, by which time he’d have vanished with all their money.
But for this he’d have needed a truck, and if there was one thing that ranked up there with the Law of Gravity in SuEz, it was the situation when it came to trucks. The situation was that anybody in SuEz who had a truck had stolen it in the last hour or so, and the only thing they’d be interested in was selling it — not using it to do something else. A truck was a short-term proposition. Besides that, there would have been the hard work required to brush the fake stuff on some old fart’s driveway, and Frank could live without hard work every bit as well as he could live happily with just their downpayments. Sometimes he’d branch out into landscaping — design and construction. The deal there was the same as driveway resurfacing, especially the part where he told them how it would increase the value of their property. This particularly appealed to people who were going to have to sell soon and move into an old folks’ home. The same business fundamentals were involved: extremely low overhead and a minimum of labour and physical risk.
Frank never cared any more for risk that Ed Oataway did. D.S. used to say that was why Frank never would have made it in legitimate business, where some customer would beat the shit out of you without any warning and you’d be sent home with no compensation, until you were healthy enough to go back to work. According to D.S., if the economy had as many downturns
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