The Cartel Lawyer by Dave Daren (ebook reader below 3000 TXT) 📕

to grin as I approached the register where an exhausted young college-aged man leaned over a textbook.

“Hey,” I said to get his attention.

“Huh?” the dark-skinned man muttered as his deep-brown eyes tore themselves away from what looked like a calculus book. “Oh! Hey, man. Sorry about that. Got an exam in the morning. What you drinking?”

“Uuuh,” I blinked a few times. “Let me get a large, hot, caramel latte with two extra shots.”

“That’s going to have four shots altogether,” the young man warned.

“That’s fine,” I said as I pulled out my wallet. “Can I get it with a little extra caramel, though?”

“Sure thing,” the guy said while he rang in my drink. “I’ll hook it up. Go ahead and swipe when you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” I said as I paid and left a large tip for the college student. “Is that calculus?”

“Ugh,” the younger man groaned as he pulled my shots and began to steam my milk. “Yes. I’m in calculus three right now.”

“That’s horrible,” I said as I blinked like I had heard him wrong. “I hated calc one. I can’t imagine going all the way to three. You’re either studying to be an engineer or a mathematician.”

“Engineer,” the barista said with a rueful grin. “I don’t like math enough to be a mathematician.”

“Not many do,” I laughed while I shook my head.

“What do you do?” he asked as he handed me my drink and glanced at my briefcase.

“Lawyer,” I said with a shrug.

“Damn,” the student’s eyes went a little wider. “I’ll take my calculus over your law books any day. My buddy is pre-law, and I tried to read one of the bills he had to review… my eyes crossed halfway through. Well… I hope you have a good night, man. You know where to find me if you need a refill.”

“Will do,” I said before I turned to pick out a table.

I chose the lone booth in the far corner of the room, where the wall met with the glass front, and I slid into the space where I could keep an eye out for any unwanted visitors and no one would be able to read the screen of my laptop.

My goal for the night was to research Judge Travis William’s income, so I took a long swig of my hot drink and then booted up my laptop. It wasn’t hard to find the basics, since he was a public servant. His salary was a matter of public record, so I started there and discovered that he was about mid-wage as far as Miami judges went.

I moved on to any real estate in his name. There was nothing in his name, which wasn’t suspicious, since many public figures routinely avoided using their own names for such sales. It just made it that much harder for the crazies to find you.

I did find an impressive colonial house with five bedrooms and three baths under the name Inora Williams. A woman with that same name was, according to the society pages, the wife of one Judge Travis Williams and a staple in the charity circle for some of the more powerful Miami families.

It was a good start, and a little more digging revealed that the judge and his wife were members of a prestigious country club that he shouldn’t have been able to afford on just his salary. The problem, though, was that I had no way of knowing where the money had come from. He could have invested well, or his wife might have inherited money that wasn’t documented in the society gossip rags.

What I needed was some way to trace the origins of the money that had paid for the house, the seats on the charitable boards, and the country club. I took another long drink from my rapidly cooling coffee as I tried to think of some way for the judge to receive kickbacks that wouldn’t look suspicious. And then I almost shouted with joy as my exhausted brain remembered that the judge would have a campaign fund.

The page was easy enough to find, and in true patriotic fashion, it was covered in images of the American flag. Even the pictures of the judge always managed to feature an American flag somewhere, and I wondered if people were really gullible enough to buy into the act.

But the site appeared to be busy, so someone was obviously impressed with the judge. I clicked through the pages and saw pictures of the fat magistrate in front of community centers I doubted he’d ever stepped foot in, a video of a speech he gave at a conference sponsored by a conservative think tank, and yet more images of the American flag. What I couldn’t find, despite federal and state law, was the campaign funds page.

It took some digging into the darkest corners of the site, but I finally found the donors list. I scoured the donations for the Everson Juvenile Detention Center, but if they had donated it had been under another name. There was, however, a super PAC that had given an almost obscene amount. It wasn’t one of the better known PACs, and as I stared at the name, I realized I hadn’t ever heard of it before.

I opened a new tab to search for the unknown PAC. The first results were for the more well-known PACs, and by page three, I was convinced that the name must have been made up. But I finally found what appeared to be the homepage for the group, so I clicked on the link and waited for the primitive page to finally load.

The home page featured a short description of the PAC’s purpose that was vague and filled with buzzwords. Basically, it said nothing about the PAC’s purpose or beliefs, but that was typical. More interesting to me was the list of the biggest donors at