Free AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy) by Don Donovan

daytime
dalliances could be covered without elaborate explanation. She was just
"working". As long as she got home at a decent hour.
    But even though her story was bullshit, and even
though she was ready with a far more detailed version had Nick pressed her to
go deeper — she always had people ready in those other cities to
corroborate her story — she truly was looking for a legitimate place to
put their money so it might grow and provide a nice annuity for Francesca, and
any other children they might have in the future. She had a battery of accounts
in offshore banks that held a lot of her money, but her economic nerve center
was Computer Superstore of the Americas.
    Located in Hialeah, CSA served as her headquarters
from where she coordinated all her activities. Right now, she was placing her
laundering commissions in Panamanian and Caribbean banks, but she wanted to
start a trust for Francesca. That required a very visible, very legal financial
structure, so that meant some of that clean money would have to be diverted
from shell corporations into legitimate investments and not merely into foreign
bank accounts, where it would gather dust, remaining essentially out of reach.
    This was not an unusual play for someone in
Alicia's position. Aboveboard investments, the formation of trusts, estate
planning — these were sometimes part of the playbook of a major money
launderer. But she was a different kind of animal. Possessed of a quick mind
and keen intuition, she was especially good at economics, so she'd given this a
lot of thought. This would be her legacy.
    Legacy. Legacy.
    She'd seen how legacy mattered very little in the
yang to her yin, the Miami drug trade. Hardly ever considered, truth be told.
She thought about it now, about how it's probably the same no matter where
you're doing that kind of business. Miami, Mexico, Colombia, wherever. There
was a series of priorities you go through on your way to the top of the drug
world. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized these
priorities were chiseled in granite.
    For your average drug dealer, your first years in
the business were all about the drugs themselves, acquiring them at the right
price, knowing how to process them, building a clientele and ultimately, an
organization. This took time, because you often had to develop new customers
and Alicia knew from her clients' tribulations early in their careers how
all-consuming that could be.
    When the drugs were firmly in place and the
organization was humming, it then became all about piling up cash in obscene
amounts. Counting it, banding it, protecting it, stashing it, laundering it,
figuring out what to do with it, distributing an enormous percentage of it to
your team, and another gigantic chunk to build a firewall of protection in the
corrupt, dual worlds of law enforcement and politics.
    Then, once you had the cash, and it was
appropriately handled, it became all about what you could buy with the cash:
the mansion, the big cars, the jewelry, the Gulfstream, all the rest of it.
This stuff was not only nice to have, it sent a message. An unmistakable
message that you were to be taken very seriously. At that point, it seemed you
had everything you could possibly want or need. But once you were properly
tricked out, the cash and the goodies faded into the background, while power
took center stage.
    The more money you made, the harder you found it
to resist the alluring siren song of power. To someone high up in the corporate
flow chart of the cocaine business, power was far more intoxicating than money.
Anybody could make money. Any dickhead could go out and start selling coke,
Alicia knew, and with a little get up and go, he could make a pretty good
living out of it, maybe even a spectacular living. But the power … ah, there's
the big leap.
      Having
money all by itself doesn't give you power, regardless of what Tony Montana
said.
    You have to use the money in the right way, know
how to turn it