Mollennial$
Thirty-two-year-old Delton Ross is at the end of a rapidly fraying rope. His Creative Writing/Western Literature degree (that took him six years to complete) isn’t worth the paper it’s embossed upon. Three separate student loan companies are draining’ his pockets for a grand a month, but his $100K+ total doesn’t seem to be movin’ in the right direction. His junker car is holdin’ up better than his decades old dream of becoming a famous (hell, PAID) novelist/screenwriter-16 screenplays/8 novels over twelve years have garnered nothing more than dead trees and piles of rejection letters. Crumbling under year nine (of a two-year plan) in both the convenience stores he loses 50+ hours of his life weekly, the darkness just outside of his vision has become a dank, suffocating entity that grows stronger with every red inked “Payment Delinquent” notice in his mailbox. A rare weekend off-mixed with a binge of vodka/Red Bulls and a wild hair up his ass-point him toward a storyline best reserved for one of his novels but maybe-just maybe-this idea might be worth losin’ a bit of sleep over…
Nine times out of ten the smartest person in any room he enters, two-time felon Alexander ‘Motorman’ Castillo has had a bitch of a broke ass time staying on the straight and narrow. A month off of three-year parole the sum of his twenty-nine years on Earth fits sloppily in two large garbage bags thrown in the corner of the second story rented room (bathroom down the hall) in the dicey part of East Van Buren Street near downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Barely surviving as janitor/handyman at a rundown community center gym, this YouTube/public library educated computer programming savant is beyond tired of snack ramen sustenance and thrift store DVD’s viewed on his ancient MacBook Pro. If not for the friendly ear (and free coffee with day old donuts on the sly) of Delton Ross (his only regular visitor when he was in the clink), Alex would long ago have succumbed to his anger or the siren of the streets and be fast-tracked back to the hoosegow. So-when Delton showed up at the gym-Alex wasn’t about to turn down a free beer and burger just to listen to a couple of ideas.
Lane Jenkin’s a small-time mobster with delusions of grandeur and little guy syndrome (he’s 5’ 1” in lifts), what he lacks in height he makes up for in depravity. Responsible for sending more criminals to jail than Phoenix PD (his dumb as rocks minions usually get caught red-handed), he and his group of idiots lend muscle to whoever’s got the bucks to pay. The last big score was years back and sent Alex ‘Motorman’ Castillo up the river for a nickel and there went his golden goose (along with $100k in fees that Alex generated monthly hacking warehouse security systems throughout CA, NV, and AZ). On the skids (but still spending money like a drunken sailor), Lane’s in dire need of a financial windfall to refill damn-near empty coffers. Word on the streets is someone’s makin’ a killin’ on a new lottery scam. Lane wants in-and doesn’t care who he has to kill to get there…