The S in Ju$tice

The characters in this story all have their counterparts in real life. This is near-fiction, or almost-fiction. Legal necessities force us to conceal some actual identities, but facts contained in public documents and information gained in personal interviews are fair game. It took only a minimum of imagination to glue all these facts together, to fabricate a few lines of dialog, and to elaborate on the characters and philosophies of real people who lived out these real...
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The characters in this story all have their counterparts in real life. This is near-fiction, or almost-fiction. Legal necessities force us to conceal some actual identities, but facts contained in public documents and information gained in personal interviews are fair game. It took only a minimum of imagination to glue all these facts together, to fabricate a few lines of dialog, and to elaborate on the characters and philosophies of real people who lived out these real events.

MARC WHEATON – Marc was only nineteen years old when his parents were killed in a Delta Airlines plane crash in Dallas. He was their only child. He inherited Wheaton Industries, an industrial and investment company worth over eight hundred million dollars. He inherited all of it, save for the token amount of stock and cash his father left to Marc’s uncle, Franklin Wilkinson.

UNCLE FRANKLIN - Marc owned the company, but it was in trust for him until his thirtieth birthday. Uncle Franklin was his trustee and guardian. Marcus Greasadeich Wheaton was a wise old man. He knew his son well. He knew too much money too soon could destroy the boy before he gained the good judgment some age would bring. Marc resented Uncle Franklin’s power hold. He resented it with a dangerous fury. Especially he resented Franklin’s disapproval of his mistress, Carmella.

CARMELLA CATALDO – Carmella was the most gorgeous, the most talented, the most exciting girl Marc had ever taken to bed. She gave him more thrills than any of the high society types from the Polo Club crowd in Boca Raton that he often made it with, and the way she intensified her sexual performances under the influence of cocaine motivated Marc to insure that she always had as much as she needed. He bought the drug from Carmella’s brother, Rene, a waiter who worked at the Polo Club.

RENE CATALDO – Rene loved two things, money and his family. The family consisted of his mother, his half-sister, Carmella, and his younger brother, Felipe. The money he made distributing drugs to the spoiled rich kids at the Polo Club and to a territory in south Broward County assigned to him by his supplier. He used an inordinate amount of this money to furnish an inordinate amount of cocaine to the one member of his family that he loved much more than he should have.

THE THREE MOSQUITOS – Craig Stewart, Corrado Giacona and Bobby Delgado were the closest things to friends that Marc had. They had been classmates of his all the way through high school at Cardinal Gibbons High in Fort Lauderdale. They were all high achievers, and they were an inseparable trio. None of them was as rich as Marc, but he envied them. They all had firm grips on the steering wheels of their lives. They were in control of themselves. He would have given anything to feel that he could control his life and enjoy his life like they did theirs.

AGENT INFANTE – When Franklin Wilkinson was found murdered at one of the company’s project sites in Central Florida, Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Infante was assigned to the case. He ran into one blank wall after another. Then, when Rene Cataldo was killed, apparently in a drug-related incident, new walls he ran into looked not quite so blank. Next, Carmella was arrested in a raid in the Everglades where she was performing in a porn film being made at a lodge owned by Marc Wheaton, and within days, Carmella went missing.

JARED JOHNS – Jared was the alcoholic and slightly retarded cook at the little country restaurant where Franklin Wilkinson had last been seen alive. The description he gave of the young man who was with him on that rainy day sounded very much like Marc Wheaton.

THE TRIAL JUDGE – The judge was obviously in some stage of dementia. His mishandling of the trial of Marc Wheaton for the murder of Franklin Wilkinson was so gross that prosecutors and defense attorneys alike wer