Croaktown P.D. — Known Associates File · Exhibit C
Big Mama Mallory
'The Pond Bank'
Loan shark, accepts bug-currency
The only bank in the swamp that never asks where the flies came from. Big Mama Mallory financed the storm-drain casino before the raid and has been collecting, patiently, ever since — on exactly one of the two things PooPee owes her.
How she met PooPee
PooPee needed startup capital for a casino nobody would insure, in a storm drain nobody would license, on a timeline nobody sane would sign. Big Mama Mallory read the whole pitch, named a rate that would make a shark blush, and wrote the loan on a lily-pad in bug-currency.
The raid came before the payback did. Most lenders would have written it off. Mallory does not write things off. She restructured the debt into something more valuable than flies — his dignity, held in escrow, indefinitely, at a rate of one small humiliation per missed payment.
What she bankrolled
Her money is under the whole storm-drain matter. Follow the flies backward from the casino tables under § 04.2 and they all end at the Pond Bank. She keeps the ledger in her head and the interest in her heart, which is a colder place than the pond.
She says she'd let PooPee slide on the twelve flies. She would not let him slide on the dignity. She has been very clear about this, in writing, in front of witnesses who then went fishing.
He owes me twelve flies and a dignity. I'd let him slide on the flies. Not the dignity. Never the dignity.
Where this name turns up in the file
- The rap sheet — the counts her money is underEvery charge financed on a lily-pad in bug-currency.
- The jobs — the casino she bankrolledThe storm-drain casino, before the raid, on her terms.
- The glossary — swamp terms, definedLook up 'bug-currency,' 'the vig,' and 'held in escrow.'
- The whole crew, one line eachEvery toad, cricket, and skeeter on the payroll.