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“So, Gregory Aston didn’t have Dave Reynolds killed after all?” Raven asked. “I really wanted to hate Aston.”
“We can’t know for sure, Raven,” Cassidy said. “But it is a possibility that he’s really and truly innocent in all of this and just a real prick in a thousand-dollar suit but there’s still a lot to hate him for…working for a cartel comes to mind. As for the rest, we’ll just have to wait and see how deep all this shit goes.”
“So, there’re most likely leaks in the LAPD and the FBI, but why do you guys think Aston, Leopard, and Trevor are down in the Cayman Islands?” I asked.
Judy cleared her throat. We all turned to look at the laptop. “Noah and I have been exploring everything we can with those guys. It seems that Trevor—his full name is Trevor Sunset Willis, by the way—has ties to the cartel through an ex-lover.”
“Sunset?” Raven snorted. “Did I hear you right? His middle name is Sunset?”
I shook my head in total agreement.
Judy grinned. “Anyway…Trevor Sunset Willis was born thirty-four years ago to hippies. He probably earned the moniker because his parents were living on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood at the time.”
“Oh, my God.” I reached up and touched my forehead because all this shit was giving me a headache. Maybe I was going to need those painkillers after all.
“Are you okay?” Judy frowned.
“Just a little bit of a headache,” I said. “Go on, Judy. What about Trevor’s ties to the cartel?”
She nodded. “He was arrested at Heathrow airport two years ago.”
“What does that have to do with the cartel?” Raven asked. “Was he smuggling drugs for them or something?”
“He was accompanying a Sanchez Cartel mule who was caught with a large amount of cocaine which was eventually tied back to the cartel. The Brits didn’t know that at the time, though. All they wanted was Trevor and the mule in jail in London. The cartel mule pled guilty to drug trafficking and is currently a guest at HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in West London. His sentence was knocked down to five years because of the guilty plea. Trevor was let off with a lighter sentence because he was only a traveling companion. He served six months, was taken into immigration custody, sent back to the U.S., and is barred from visiting England for ten years.”
“I can’t believe it!” Raven said. “First of all, Trevor looks like he’s barely legal. I mean, when he sat there beside Brian Leopard in our office, you would have thought he was jailbait. Thirty-four is older than me. Secondly, you should have seen him. He was on his phone the entire time Leopard was talking about the recovery he wanted to hire us for, scrolling like a teenager. The only time he looked up was to call Brian ‘Daddy.’ I’m pretty sure I threw up in my mouth at least three times.”
“Well, sorry to hear about all that, but the truth is, Willis is thirty-four with a long rap sheet here in California, mostly drug and solicitation arrests,” Noah said. “When he was a kid he got into a bunch of scrapes with other Mexican kids, reportedly because someone outed him in middle school. He got kicked out by his parents, got put in the foster system, ran away multiple times, turning tricks on the streets, and eventually ended up in an overcrowded group home.”
I shook my head. “A gay, Mexican kid who had no place to go.” I looked at Cassidy and Mike. They were watching me. If it hadn’t been for the two detectives I now called friends, I could have ended up exactly like Trevor.
Judy was reading from notes or a device in her hands. “Once in the group home, Willis started getting into fights. He was seen by doctors multiple times at Good Samaritan Hospital for unexplained injuries, even a couple of broken bones, suspected rapes. You know the drill. By the time he was eighteen, he’d been arrested for prostitution and drugs, sent to juvenile hall several times.
“He was finally able to get put on probation through California’s Prop 36 which allowed low-level drug offenders to be granted probation provided they sought drug treatment and regularly checked in with their probation officer. Willis was clean for several years and then suddenly he was arrested during a DEA drug sweep outside a popular gay club. He was jailed with a lot of guys who no doubt included some connected to the cartel which dealt drugs there. Legal representation came from none other than Gregory Aston.”
“The DEA?” I asked.
“No shit,” Raven echoed my surprise. “The guy must be slipperier than a fish. He should be serving federal time.”
“He probably didn’t have any drugs on him at the time, so Aston got him off…no pun intended,” Judy said, cringing so hard I had to smile.
“True,” Lincoln said. “But it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that Aston hooked him up with the cartel to mule or at the very least travel with a mule for the cartel after that happened.”
“Wow, that’s crazy,” I said.
“To answer your earlier question, Raven, at the very least, Gregory Aston is still connected to the cartel because he’s their lawyer.”
“Right.” Raven nodded. “So, how does Brian Leopard figure into all of this and why would you think he’s in this house owned by Castillo in the Cayman Islands? I want to believe he’s an innocent in all this mess, because I didn’t get the bad guy vibe from him at all.”
“We don’t think he’s a bad guy either, Raven,” Mac replied.
I turned to look at the big man.
“We think he was lured there, perhaps by Tawny Flores.”
“She’s involved in all this after all?” Raven asked.
Noah held up both hands. “No. We don’t believe Tawny Flores or Brian Leopard have anything to do with the cartel. We think Gregory Aston went down to the Caymans to speak to the banker who’s the gatekeeper for the account with the fifty million Castillo wants back.”