Follow The Money

Took a ride through black comedy and crime with 'The Comedown' (2018) by Rebekah Frumkin. It's the author's first novel, and she takes readers through a cross section of America via the Kent State shootings in 1970 Ohio and ongoing protest marches in Chicago. (Reviews here, here, and here.)

Florida drug dealer Reggie Marshall has never liked simpering cocaine addict Leland Abdiel Bloom-Mittwoch Sr.; The latter totally looks up to Reggie. They shared a birthday and were to be 54 in May, 1999. When a drug deal became a hit job which of course involved the disappearance of a suitcase with a large sum of money, both their families got entangled. Leland Bloom Mittwoch Sr. threw himself off the roof of a Tampa hotel in May 1999, and was presumed dead, and that began the search for said missing suitcase.

We began the book with the Prologue on May 8, 1999 and got to May 8, 2009, and the Epilogue ended on June 12, 2009. The search for said missing suitcase of money ended decades later in 2009 in a synagogue, with all parties none the wiser. It was brilliant. Laughed when I saw how book detailed out the family tree in a graphic, of the Bloom-Mittwochs and the Marshalls. It could be a Netflix show.

He took the bullet from his pocket and rolled it between his thumb and index finger. The doctor had no idea what he'd done, giving this thing to him. If it weren't for this motherfucking two inches of lead, Reggie would've never been Richard. He would've gone back to Cleveland and despite the danger of Shondor, the fear that had paralyzed him all these years, he would've saved his family. 

His family. The money. 

Everything from his old life was a puzzle. The money hadn't been meant for him—it had be meant for the goons he'd killed, the fake-Irish ones Shondor and Sunny hired to kill him. The car bomb had been meant for Sunny's family, not Sunny. Shondor was always five fucking steps ahead. Shondor probably knew that if the goons didn't kill Sunny when they showed up to collect their payment, then Sunny would kill himself because his family was everything to him. He knew that on the offhand chance Reggie showed up instead of the goons, Sunny would kill him out of loyalty to Shondor. So worst-case scenario, Shondor has to pay some goons to take out Reggie and Sunny. Best-case scenario, everybody dies and Shondor keeps his money. 

It was a good plan but it hadn't worked. Because they'd been thrown in a swamp. Shondor always gave bodies with no outstanding debts a proper burial, whether he hated them or loved them like family. If he'd gotten the money, Reggie and Sunny would've gotten their own plots and pine coffins. Which meant something had happened that not even Shondor could've anticipated. He'd gone over the details in his head before, but now one missing piece finally fell into place. 

The junkie. Leland.