Bloomington has a N. Lincoln St and a S. Lincoln St, but no W. Lincoln St. Willis is keeping to the “no pointing my readers at real addresses which real people live at” rule.
Ah, a fellow Bloomingtonian! I was going to check and see if there was 1322 Lincoln, but then I remembered this fact myself! (Not getting out much has really put a damper on the geography skillz. :-p) )
Or he’s wondering how much Blaine’s mob bosses will pay to have Blaine have a fatal slip on a piece of soap.
Mra
Yeah, with all the publicity from Becky he will probably become more trouble than he is worth.
Regalli
It’s deeply sad how we’re all hoping for ‘mobsters on the inside of the prison system knock Blaine off,’ and how it is actually disturbingly realistic a possibility for such an ‘accident’ to befall him.
That said, it is Blaine, so my sadness is purely for the fact that it IS disturbingly realistic and not for him.
I wouldn’t want to see him die, but it’s a possibility.
Some1
I will except Blaine dying if before he goes, he somehow gives our protagonists some sort of vague yet incredibly important advice that leads to the downfall of the mob.
clif
If he dies, he can’t be brought back when you least expect it.
Regalli
What clif said. Death’s basically the only guarantee we have that Blaine WON’T eventually show up again and escalate. (Almost certainly also why Ross died. If he stayed in jail, eventually there’d need to be a trial. If he escaped, he was just gonna do Exactly This again. Ross being dead gives more outlets for Becky and Joyce to wrestle with Complicated Grief Feelings AND brings the Carol and the congregation plot to a head.) Especially given his status as a mob stooge. If they DON’T knock him off so he can’t flip, then he’s probably still a useful enough pawn to get out of jail, and then he gets out, licks his wounds, and starts scheming vengeance again.
Jon Rich
I don’t think there’s any way that the mob will want Blaine anymore. This was an utterly harebrained scheme that got revealed through a sitting congresswoman’s twitter feed. It involved a recent campus shooter (even if he never killed anyone) that Blaine got out on bail. The story itself involves a vigilante, too, and kidnapping, and not one, but *two* motorcycle-car chases, if you count Ross’s earlier campus visit. There’s no way in hell that this isn’t making the national news—the media would eat this up, the stories practically write themselves. And I highly doubt that the mob has any use for a stooge who has become nationally recognizable for highly-visible failure.
Kyle Voltti
Given the fact that he didn’t use them a a resource in this He’s probably been on thin ice for a while. I’m also sure that once they find out that he bullied their nephew into helping and possibly exposed him to issues with law enforcement that Blaine will be lucky if it’s just soap in the shower.
Doctor_Who
Yeah, even if this guy’s a dirty cop, I can’t imagine that Blaine’s master plan to get out of some child support payments that wound up with a dead body, him on the news, and a congresswoman’s twitter account spreading the story to all corners of the internet is gonna look good on his next performance review.
SeanR
Well, he’s probably out from under those child support payments now. Not exactly easy to keep those up while in jail.
So, now what? Amber was dependent upon her dad’s court-ordered payments, so there goes her tuition. Becky is presumably freed by her dad’s death, as it makes her an orphan, rather than a prison orphan, now.
I suppose, as Joe’s presumptive step-sister, she might still have the possibility of support, but I suspect she’ll be needing a job, now. Good thing a semesters tuition isn’t paid in installments.
Doctor_Who
Becky will probably be the owner of her dad’s house now. If she sells it (can’t imagine she wants to go back to that community ever again), it could cover her tuition even if she doesn’t stay employed with Robin.
woobie
Rent out. Not sell.
tbf
She’s eighteen years old, home-schooled, and plans to be a full time college student. She doesn’t have the time, knowledge, or emotional bandwidth for renting, and I think she knows that.
Deanatay
There are property management companies that can do all the heavy lifting for a slice of the rental income. Becky just has to answer the occasional phone call asking if she wants to replace the water heater and stuff like that.
Keeping the property is definitely the better option. No better wealth than land.
HeySo
@tbf You’re seriously underestimating the benefits of renting, I think.
Nevermind that selling real estate is really not ever ideal unless you need the immediate income, the property value has scaled to a point of notable profit and is likely to decend again soon, or the property value is otherwise likely to meaningfully drop.
Having property is [generally speaking] a security net for housing, a stable income source, and (in most cases) a fairly stable and reliable investment option.
Of course, a lot depends on factors like how the local region is doing, how the region around the house itself is doing, and the state of the house.. but yeah, generally speaking, can’t imagine anyone wanting to give up a house without a clear basis for doing so.
Likewise, as Dean noted, renting out is usually pretty offhand, and pretty easy to delegate. The only real concern as a private leaser is that you want to be careful to vet your tenants on financial reliability and destructive habits [which’d reduce (sometimes significantly) how much profit you’d make off their residency].
Barring any unusual circumstances, I’d definitely take having a house [in good condition within a worthwhile (ie, easy to rent-within and with stable or rising real estate values) neighborhood] over immediate cash, each and every time.
Charles Spencer
Just me, but I’ve seen two houses my parents let a property mgmt firm rent, and two ‘managed’ bay another firm for my in-laws. Renters don’t care and property management firms don’t either, as long as the checks clear. All four properties eventually sold for less than 70% of what they were worth before renting, one less than 50%.
Roborat
I can’t see her keeping the house, too many painful memories for her, I think she will sell it, if she ends up with ownership of it.
Amias
Amber is Joe’s presumptive step-sister, not Becky. Joe’s dad and Amber’s mom are together, whereas Becky’s parents are now both dead.
Amias
Oh, oops, I misunderstood your sentence structure. Yeah, Amber probably needs a job if the child support payments aren’t coming anymore. If Dr. Rosenthal can help with tuition, I’m sure Amber’s mom won’t mind.
Strangeshapes
Maybe she can get a job at a local comic/toy store which will hire her out of hero worship for her AG antics?
Segnosaur
The issue of Amber’s tuition post-prison has been discussed before.
It is possible that Amber may need to find other ways to fund her schooling. But if you want to be optimistic, maybe blaine has assets that could be seized by the courts to cover tuition… (His business, money he may have hidden away, etc.) And with Blaine’s mob ties revealed, I am sure investigators will be able to examine his finances in detail
CJ
I suspect Blaine has lots of money, so maybe a good lawyer could get Amber a lump payment for her schooling plus damages?
Might leave the wife and Faz in the lurch.
Strangeshapes
You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if Faz and his mom found out that Blaine had a bunch of private accounts that he conveniently forgot to mention while telling them that they were poor because of Amber.
DrunkenNordmann
And that isn’t even going into HOW he paid for Ross’ bail.
Personally, I’m suspecting he might have misappropriated mob money for this stunt, so yeah, likely not gonna look good for him.
Swithchris
the church helped him pay it, that was said in a earlier comic.
Diane
The church didn’t have enough money. Blaine gave some money himself to get him out.
Miri
*Or* he’s going to die “unexpectedly from his previously deemed non-life threatening” injuries on the way to the police station, before he can talk to anybody other than Lester, which Lester would definitely think is a shame because this way there’s no way he’ll be able to name names in return for leniency, since some of these credible kidnapping victims and fellow co-conspirators are talking about him having mob connections and dirty cops on side, which means that these allegations can’t be investigated any further. Lester and him seemed to recognise each other?! Oh, uh, Bridge group a few years ago. Casual acquaintances. Hadn’t seen him for years *twitch*
sharktrs
The ol’ Epstein treatment.
Hephaistos Fnord
Between Epstein and BLM, our justice system has basically soiled its pants in front of us this year, hasn’t it?
not someone else
Don’t forget the Panama Papers!
Chris Phoenix
Our justice system has been soiled for over a century (probably two, I don’t know early history that well). This year it finally got bad enough for middle-class white people to notice.
There was that Black guy who was sleeping in his car at a fast food joint, and the cops woke him up and shot him. And then there was that other Black guy who was sleeping in his car at a fast food joint, and the cops woke him up and shot him too. The second one was hours ago; the first was a couple of years ago, but who noticed?
This is clearly a hint that our compassionate, non-profit prison system will manage to rehabilitate Blaine while he serves the full sentence given to him, thus repaying his debt to society!
Half a dozen college kids got kidnapped and a man’s dead. Even if he knows the cops involved, hopefully this is high-profile enough that they can’t sweep it under the rug. If anything, they’ll cover their own corruption up and throw Blaine under the bus to save their own backsides.
Besides that, once the local news stations see the tweets and hear the address over the police scanners, they’ll put 2 and 2 together and jump all over this like lionesses on a gazelle.
Who’s sweeping things under the rug? Blaine’s got a dozen flunkies who will all agree that those six college kids WEREN’T kidnapped, that THEY killed Ross along with Becky who tried to frame him for her act of revenge, and oh look now they’re lying to the police about it. But their lies broke down under police questioning. Isn’t that right, Lester?
thejeff
That’s going to be real hard to pull off and it requires basically every cop at the scene to be in on it. And sweeping all the evidence of Blaine getting Ross out of prison and everything else he did to set this up under the rug. Why did he have flunkies and the house, anyway?
It also requires none of the flunkies to throw him under the bus in hopes of better treatment.
Plus the political and financial weight is on the other side (Robin, the Walkerton family, the Ruttens)
Honestly? He might not get out. I doubt he’s even a caporegime. He’s just a mob stooge. I doubt he’s so valuable that his bosses would bail him out of something this high profile.
I don’t like how chummy Blaine is with Lester, but having a corpse at the crime scene and multiple witnesses might mean it doesn’t matter how many cops he has on his string.
What if Blaine goes turncoat and sings about the rest of the mob in exchange for immunity tho?
Lumino
Then getting to Amber will be the LEAST of his problems.
Screwball
*bad mobster accent* Then someone may have to help him warm up his vocal cords. With their boot. Maybe make sure he’s thinking straight with the other boot. You know what I’m saying, don’t you? */bad mobster accent*
Commander Clash
*bad mobster accent* “Never goagaknst the fsmily.”
Strangeshapes
Based on your avatar, my new headcanon is that he got in with the Raptor Mafia. You don’t cross Blue.
See: “Slips on the soap in the prison shower,” above.
Reltzik
Then Blaine gets to live out the next several decades under house arrest and witness protection, never having any contact with anyone from his past life that might be used by the mob to track him down.
The fact that a sitting Congresswoman’s campaign manager was involved in it kind of makes it WAY too big of a deal. Public pressure should keep too much shenanigans from happening unless Blaine is the fucking Kingpin.
Taking a payoff to look the other way is one thing, kidnapping is another. Not saying there aren’t cops that corrupt, but even if Blaine happens to know some, they were probably beyond his budget.
I figured the implication was that cop is one of the guys he was planning to sick on Mike, but even with a few on his side, I don’t think this will be without consequence, albeit maybe not legal ones.
268 thoughts on “OH RIGHT ALMOST FORGOT”
Ana Chronistic
/me tries being all clever finding the address
“there’s ALMOST one in Gary, that’s three and a half hours from campus and ALSO an abandoned lot… well played”
Ana Chronistic
Lester bears a striking similarity to Shortpacked!Leo (whose counterpart we have not seen in DoA yet?)
He Who Abides
Looks a little old to be Leo, doesn’t he?
Gigafreak
Lester can shorten to Les, can’t it? I think I remember something about Les Bean being a family name. Maybe he’s related after all.
Rotunda
The house is real and is in Bloomington, IN, but the address given in the strip is not the address of the house.
Psychie
Yeah, I wanna say that that house is on Atwater, but there are a few houses around campus that kinda match.
Reltzik
Bloomington has a N. Lincoln St and a S. Lincoln St, but no W. Lincoln St. Willis is keeping to the “no pointing my readers at real addresses which real people live at” rule.
Julius Cooper
Ah, a fellow Bloomingtonian! I was going to check and see if there was 1322 Lincoln, but then I remembered this fact myself! (Not getting out much has really put a damper on the geography skillz. :-p) )
Ana Chronistic
Yeah I was all, in that X-Files about the 1200 block of Chain Bridge, that street only goes to the 1100s
Ana Chronistic
(though I REALLY wonder where that Old Bridge is they claim is in Germantown)
Yumi
THERE WE GO
Reed
ah yes, he’ll never be let out of prison now!!! we have a justice system that works!!!
danielle
bwomp ba bwomp ba bwomp bwoooomp
Phil
And Lester knows him! That obviously means he knows how much trouble he is and will take very good care of him.
tim gueguen
Or he’s wondering how much Blaine’s mob bosses will pay to have Blaine have a fatal slip on a piece of soap.
Mra
Yeah, with all the publicity from Becky he will probably become more trouble than he is worth.
Regalli
It’s deeply sad how we’re all hoping for ‘mobsters on the inside of the prison system knock Blaine off,’ and how it is actually disturbingly realistic a possibility for such an ‘accident’ to befall him.
That said, it is Blaine, so my sadness is purely for the fact that it IS disturbingly realistic and not for him.
tim gueguen
I wouldn’t want to see him die, but it’s a possibility.
Some1
I will except Blaine dying if before he goes, he somehow gives our protagonists some sort of vague yet incredibly important advice that leads to the downfall of the mob.
clif
If he dies, he can’t be brought back when you least expect it.
Regalli
What clif said. Death’s basically the only guarantee we have that Blaine WON’T eventually show up again and escalate. (Almost certainly also why Ross died. If he stayed in jail, eventually there’d need to be a trial. If he escaped, he was just gonna do Exactly This again. Ross being dead gives more outlets for Becky and Joyce to wrestle with Complicated Grief Feelings AND brings the Carol and the congregation plot to a head.) Especially given his status as a mob stooge. If they DON’T knock him off so he can’t flip, then he’s probably still a useful enough pawn to get out of jail, and then he gets out, licks his wounds, and starts scheming vengeance again.
Jon Rich
I don’t think there’s any way that the mob will want Blaine anymore. This was an utterly harebrained scheme that got revealed through a sitting congresswoman’s twitter feed. It involved a recent campus shooter (even if he never killed anyone) that Blaine got out on bail. The story itself involves a vigilante, too, and kidnapping, and not one, but *two* motorcycle-car chases, if you count Ross’s earlier campus visit. There’s no way in hell that this isn’t making the national news—the media would eat this up, the stories practically write themselves. And I highly doubt that the mob has any use for a stooge who has become nationally recognizable for highly-visible failure.
Kyle Voltti
Given the fact that he didn’t use them a a resource in this He’s probably been on thin ice for a while. I’m also sure that once they find out that he bullied their nephew into helping and possibly exposed him to issues with law enforcement that Blaine will be lucky if it’s just soap in the shower.
Doctor_Who
Yeah, even if this guy’s a dirty cop, I can’t imagine that Blaine’s master plan to get out of some child support payments that wound up with a dead body, him on the news, and a congresswoman’s twitter account spreading the story to all corners of the internet is gonna look good on his next performance review.
SeanR
Well, he’s probably out from under those child support payments now. Not exactly easy to keep those up while in jail.
So, now what? Amber was dependent upon her dad’s court-ordered payments, so there goes her tuition. Becky is presumably freed by her dad’s death, as it makes her an orphan, rather than a prison orphan, now.
I suppose, as Joe’s presumptive step-sister, she might still have the possibility of support, but I suspect she’ll be needing a job, now. Good thing a semesters tuition isn’t paid in installments.
Doctor_Who
Becky will probably be the owner of her dad’s house now. If she sells it (can’t imagine she wants to go back to that community ever again), it could cover her tuition even if she doesn’t stay employed with Robin.
woobie
Rent out. Not sell.
tbf
She’s eighteen years old, home-schooled, and plans to be a full time college student. She doesn’t have the time, knowledge, or emotional bandwidth for renting, and I think she knows that.
Deanatay
There are property management companies that can do all the heavy lifting for a slice of the rental income. Becky just has to answer the occasional phone call asking if she wants to replace the water heater and stuff like that.
Keeping the property is definitely the better option. No better wealth than land.
HeySo
@tbf You’re seriously underestimating the benefits of renting, I think.
Nevermind that selling real estate is really not ever ideal unless you need the immediate income, the property value has scaled to a point of notable profit and is likely to decend again soon, or the property value is otherwise likely to meaningfully drop.
Having property is [generally speaking] a security net for housing, a stable income source, and (in most cases) a fairly stable and reliable investment option.
Of course, a lot depends on factors like how the local region is doing, how the region around the house itself is doing, and the state of the house.. but yeah, generally speaking, can’t imagine anyone wanting to give up a house without a clear basis for doing so.
Likewise, as Dean noted, renting out is usually pretty offhand, and pretty easy to delegate. The only real concern as a private leaser is that you want to be careful to vet your tenants on financial reliability and destructive habits [which’d reduce (sometimes significantly) how much profit you’d make off their residency].
Barring any unusual circumstances, I’d definitely take having a house [in good condition within a worthwhile (ie, easy to rent-within and with stable or rising real estate values) neighborhood] over immediate cash, each and every time.
Charles Spencer
Just me, but I’ve seen two houses my parents let a property mgmt firm rent, and two ‘managed’ bay another firm for my in-laws. Renters don’t care and property management firms don’t either, as long as the checks clear. All four properties eventually sold for less than 70% of what they were worth before renting, one less than 50%.
Roborat
I can’t see her keeping the house, too many painful memories for her, I think she will sell it, if she ends up with ownership of it.
Amias
Amber is Joe’s presumptive step-sister, not Becky. Joe’s dad and Amber’s mom are together, whereas Becky’s parents are now both dead.
Amias
Oh, oops, I misunderstood your sentence structure. Yeah, Amber probably needs a job if the child support payments aren’t coming anymore. If Dr. Rosenthal can help with tuition, I’m sure Amber’s mom won’t mind.
Strangeshapes
Maybe she can get a job at a local comic/toy store which will hire her out of hero worship for her AG antics?
Segnosaur
The issue of Amber’s tuition post-prison has been discussed before.
It is possible that Amber may need to find other ways to fund her schooling. But if you want to be optimistic, maybe blaine has assets that could be seized by the courts to cover tuition… (His business, money he may have hidden away, etc.) And with Blaine’s mob ties revealed, I am sure investigators will be able to examine his finances in detail
CJ
I suspect Blaine has lots of money, so maybe a good lawyer could get Amber a lump payment for her schooling plus damages?
Might leave the wife and Faz in the lurch.
Strangeshapes
You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if Faz and his mom found out that Blaine had a bunch of private accounts that he conveniently forgot to mention while telling them that they were poor because of Amber.
DrunkenNordmann
And that isn’t even going into HOW he paid for Ross’ bail.
Personally, I’m suspecting he might have misappropriated mob money for this stunt, so yeah, likely not gonna look good for him.
Swithchris
the church helped him pay it, that was said in a earlier comic.
Diane
The church didn’t have enough money. Blaine gave some money himself to get him out.
Miri
*Or* he’s going to die “unexpectedly from his previously deemed non-life threatening” injuries on the way to the police station, before he can talk to anybody other than Lester, which Lester would definitely think is a shame because this way there’s no way he’ll be able to name names in return for leniency, since some of these credible kidnapping victims and fellow co-conspirators are talking about him having mob connections and dirty cops on side, which means that these allegations can’t be investigated any further. Lester and him seemed to recognise each other?! Oh, uh, Bridge group a few years ago. Casual acquaintances. Hadn’t seen him for years *twitch*
sharktrs
The ol’ Epstein treatment.
Hephaistos Fnord
Between Epstein and BLM, our justice system has basically soiled its pants in front of us this year, hasn’t it?
not someone else
Don’t forget the Panama Papers!
Chris Phoenix
Our justice system has been soiled for over a century (probably two, I don’t know early history that well). This year it finally got bad enough for middle-class white people to notice.
There was that Black guy who was sleeping in his car at a fast food joint, and the cops woke him up and shot him. And then there was that other Black guy who was sleeping in his car at a fast food joint, and the cops woke him up and shot him too. The second one was hours ago; the first was a couple of years ago, but who noticed?
BarerMender
Lester is thinking: “I don’t know you, buddy. You’re not taking me down with you.”
Needfuldoer
Yeah, I hope the wobbly-ness of that speech bubble’s tail is important.
Pylgrim
This is clearly a hint that our compassionate, non-profit prison system will manage to rehabilitate Blaine while he serves the full sentence given to him, thus repaying his debt to society!
Needfuldoer
Half a dozen college kids got kidnapped and a man’s dead. Even if he knows the cops involved, hopefully this is high-profile enough that they can’t sweep it under the rug. If anything, they’ll cover their own corruption up and throw Blaine under the bus to save their own backsides.
Besides that, once the local news stations see the tweets and hear the address over the police scanners, they’ll put 2 and 2 together and jump all over this like lionesses on a gazelle.
Reltzik
Who’s sweeping things under the rug? Blaine’s got a dozen flunkies who will all agree that those six college kids WEREN’T kidnapped, that THEY killed Ross along with Becky who tried to frame him for her act of revenge, and oh look now they’re lying to the police about it. But their lies broke down under police questioning. Isn’t that right, Lester?
thejeff
That’s going to be real hard to pull off and it requires basically every cop at the scene to be in on it. And sweeping all the evidence of Blaine getting Ross out of prison and everything else he did to set this up under the rug. Why did he have flunkies and the house, anyway?
It also requires none of the flunkies to throw him under the bus in hopes of better treatment.
Plus the political and financial weight is on the other side (Robin, the Walkerton family, the Ruttens)
JetstreamGW
Honestly? He might not get out. I doubt he’s even a caporegime. He’s just a mob stooge. I doubt he’s so valuable that his bosses would bail him out of something this high profile.
Bunny
I don’t like how chummy Blaine is with Lester, but having a corpse at the crime scene and multiple witnesses might mean it doesn’t matter how many cops he has on his string.
General Tekno
Well, one thing worth considering too is “Blaine might not be that high level a guy.”
He might be more powerless than we think because I imagine that his associates don’t want heat on them.
Olivia Cheatham
What if Blaine goes turncoat and sings about the rest of the mob in exchange for immunity tho?
Lumino
Then getting to Amber will be the LEAST of his problems.
Screwball
*bad mobster accent* Then someone may have to help him warm up his vocal cords. With their boot. Maybe make sure he’s thinking straight with the other boot. You know what I’m saying, don’t you? */bad mobster accent*
Commander Clash
*bad mobster accent* “Never goagaknst the fsmily.”
Strangeshapes
Based on your avatar, my new headcanon is that he got in with the Raptor Mafia. You don’t cross Blue.
DSL
See: “Slips on the soap in the prison shower,” above.
Reltzik
Then Blaine gets to live out the next several decades under house arrest and witness protection, never having any contact with anyone from his past life that might be used by the mob to track him down.
Lumino
The fact that a sitting Congresswoman’s campaign manager was involved in it kind of makes it WAY too big of a deal. Public pressure should keep too much shenanigans from happening unless Blaine is the fucking Kingpin.
Chris Phoenix
Yeah, because that worked really well for Epstein. No, having publicity just makes it more urgent for him to be silenced.
Chris
Public pressure should at least keep shenanigans from working in Blaine’s favor.
BigDogLittleCat
If he had cops on a string would he have used a bunch of dumb college kids?
Wizard
Taking a payoff to look the other way is one thing, kidnapping is another. Not saying there aren’t cops that corrupt, but even if Blaine happens to know some, they were probably beyond his budget.
General Tekno
Oh no, he’s on a first name basis with the cop.
He’s getting out, isn’t he.
Mra
I figured the implication was that cop is one of the guys he was planning to sick on Mike, but even with a few on his side, I don’t think this will be without consequence, albeit maybe not legal ones.
tim gueguen
Probably not. He’d need some pull with a judge or DA not to end up with a big bail.
Chris
We’re looking at a murder charge here, which means that even in Indiana, they can hold him without bail.
Ray Radlein
He’s in waaaay too deep for one crooked cop to let him go. Way above that cop’s pay grade
Screwball