Flanagan's Strings by Andrew Frothingham & Warren Adler

Author:Andrew Frothingham & Warren Adler [Frothingham, Andrew & Adler, Warren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adler Entertainment Press
Published: 2024-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Emily and Josh were both out of bed early. They would be spending hours together and neither felt like talking about business of any kind. There were lots of little chores each of them could do, but no pressing emergencies. In truth, each of them might have welcomed the distraction of an emergency.

The level of tension between the Flanagans was at a higher level than normal. Each of them was feeling pressure from basic money worries. Emily had been made mindful of this by the email she had gotten in response to the feelers she had put out to gauge what interest there was in acquiring a rare violin. She had been pretending that she might have millions to invest in a musical instrument—when in reality she’d have to think twice about buying a harmonica—and someone had believed her.

Pausing what he was doing, Josh looked over at Emily, cutting the tension as he said, “What would you do if you won one hundred million dollars?” This was a game they played occasionally to counter the grim realities of their financial situation. It was what Josh called "an exercise in values clarification." Over the years, when they played “What if,” it allowed them to get a sense of how each other’s priorities had shifted.

A small smile touched Emily’s lips and she tilted her head in thought. “Hmmm, let me think.” When their children were young, she would have been likely to suggest, among other things, a big donation to a New-York-based non-profit that dealt with national policy issues relative to children. In recent years, she was more likely to suggest a direct grant to a charity that delivered services to the disadvantaged in the Lakeside Falls area. But now her wish was, “I’d endow a professorship at Laklandia in Isaiah’s honor.”

Josh said, “Great idea. But I’d maybe say a few scholarships.”

Josh was secretly happy that Emily hadn’t repeated her mantra that “lotteries are taxes on the stupid.” Deep down, Josh believed that he could win, and that thinking about lotteries might improve his chances. If anyone would let him, he could talk for hours about how jackpots would be taxed in most jurisdictions, and how the fine print generally said that you could elect to receive your, say, ten million in yearly payments over a set period of twenty or thirty years. He also knew trivia about how there had been a thriving black market in Mexico where shady characters would buy winning lottery tickets, at a discount, from winners before they were cashed. The sellers would get to keep their privacy. They could avoid debts, judgments, immigration agents, ex-spouses, rapacious relatives, con men, and most of all, taxes. The buyers would happily pay taxes on the prize. They loved having a pool of cash that was clean and legal. Lottery ticket transactions were a great way to launder money. For the criminals, there were only two drawbacks—it wasn’t quite legal, and there just weren’t enough situations where they could launder the immense amounts of cash they accumulated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.