Morning all. Today is a busy one. Wednesdays always seem to be I find. It’s sort of the tipping point to the week. Monday starts off slow and seems to drag, Tuesday I’m in a groove and then Wednesday I realize the week is almost half over and I have a lot to do before the work week comes to an end. Even though I know the pattern and always see it coming, Wednesday always feels like the to do list multiplied in the night. Even so, we kick it off the same way, with a morning writing prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and let’;s get this day started.
I like this character. There are a lot of fiddly bits to play with. I also suspect this isn’t the start of the story but rather then end. But there is a lot to work with to make this a really juicy character.
Wednesday, October 7th: He would not take more than his share.
He would not take more than his share. The fact that it was all laid out before him and he could take it all didn’t matter. A part of his brain kept staying that it would serve them right if he did. The rest of him, calmly took out his account ledger and looked at the tally.
He counted out the bills, taking them from the stack in the back. He knew how Billy operated. The bills in the safe might or might not be clean. They might have serial numbers that could be traced. Or they might not. If there was even the suspicion of them being traced Billy would put them in the front. He would let others spend those bills. Or he would spend them himself in ways he knew others would follow when he wanted them to see something.
That Billy occasionally used the Feds was known to only a few. It would never do to look helpful. The bills in the lock box would be clean. Billy was too compulsive to change that habit. He also had no reason to change it.
Dave slipped his pay from the clean stack and put it in his zippered pouch. He then put the pouch in the messenger bag he carried, Putting his account ledger in the bag at the same time. Then he closed the box, put it back and made certain nothing looed out of place. He then closed the safe and spun the lock. He marked where the lock started out when he opened it in case Billy too made a note of it and he turned the dial back into its original position.
Dave then left the office via the same window he entered. He checked his watch. He was on time, barely. The lock took slightly longer than he planned and soon Billy and his boys would have dealt with the distraction he set. He needed to be gone before then.
Dave lowered himself to the lower decorative ledge and closed the window. Billy never locked the window. As it was eight stories up, he didn’t think he needed to.
‘Besides, who would ever steal from Billy,’ Dave thought as he shimmied down the wall. He utilized the cracks and divots in the old stone of the building slowly descending as he had ascended earlier. He reached ground level and slipped through the alleyway and away.
It wasn’t until he was six blocks south and in his car that he started to relax. Even then it was a tempered relaxation. He still needed to get out of the city without anyone seeing him. Technically Billy thought he already left. And he had. Dave also circled back three days after Billy was certain he was gone to collect the pay he was owed.
While Billy might eventually tally the amounts and think of Dave, he would think that Dave sent someone else. After all, Billy didn’t know that once Dave spent a lot of time crawling into and out of buildings and spaces that didn’t belong to him. He only knew Billy as his current incarnation. It never occurred to him that he was once something other than what he was when they met.
Dave headed away from town and kept going, turning onto the highway. It was time for a new location and a new start on life. He laughed darkly to himself as he drove into the night. This was supposed to be his new life. He moved here to go legit. He was going to life a life on the straight and narrow. It took two days for Billy to decide that his straight and narrow persona could be of use.
For the first few months Billy paid for his services the same as any other customer and Dave told himself to treat Billy as any other customer. Then Billy stopped paying and any attempt to recover funds was rebuffed. New jobs kept coming in and he wasn’t offered an opportunity to refuse. Dae acted cowed and did the work, keeping a tally of payments owed.
When his lease was up, he opted not to renew and made certain Billy saw him pack up and leave town. Billy’s use for him was done by then, the job complete. Dave was certain Billy wouldn’t mind keeping him around in case his skills were needed again, but with the job done the need wasn’t immediate.
Clean or not, Dave needed to get rid of the bills he took from Billy as soon as possible.
