I bought a prison in the United States.

"I think I just heard you say... justice?"

Eleanor exhaled a puff of smoke, a slight smirk playing on her lips, a hint of undisguised mockery.

"Justice is what prosecutors say in front of a jury; it's meant to please taxpayers."

"In my job, justice means 'Whoever pays me, I'll fight for the outcome they want.'"

"As for whether that result is fair to others, that's not within my scope of work."

Looking at her, Lin Ge had a general idea of ​​what was going on.

This woman is not the kind of civil rights lawyer who would deliver a passionate speech in court, at least not now.

She is a pragmatist, a survival expert who navigates the gray areas of the law.

This is exactly what he needs.

"I need a lawyer."

"Ling Ge said."

"Everyone who walks through this door needs a lawyer."

Eleanor flicked her cigarette ash, which fell into the makeshift ashtray.

"What do you need a lawyer to do for you? Do you need help playing within the rules, or helping you play outside the rules without getting caught?"

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is huge."

She put the cigarette in her mouth, freed her hands, picked up a piece of white paper from the table, and drew a line with a pen.

"Playing within the rules means I'll help you draft a legal contract, follow legal procedures, and use legal arguments to negotiate with the other party."

"The advantage of this method is that it is safe, but the disadvantages are that it is slow, expensive, and you are not guaranteed to win because the rules themselves are not designed for people like you."

She drew another circle on the other side of the line.

"Playing outside the rules means I help you find loopholes in the rules."

"Using poorly written legal provisions to let you do what you want, while ensuring that even if someone wants to cause you trouble, they can't find a legal basis."

"The advantages of this method are that it's fast, cheap, and effective."

"The downside is that if the rules change one day, or you encounter someone who understands the rules better than you, you'll have to be able to clean up the mess."

She put down her pen and looked at Lin Ge with a smile:

"So, how do you want to play?"

Lin Ge did not answer immediately.

He took the handwritten reform proposal out of his jacket pocket, placed it on the table, and pushed it in front of Eleanor.

Eleanor glanced down, but instead of picking it up immediately, she took two puffs of her cigarette, creating a semi-transparent barrier of smoke between herself and Ringo.

Then she stubbed out her cigarette, picked up the few pages, and began to read them.

She reads very quickly.

Lin Ge noticed that she lingered significantly longer on certain lines of text, particularly the page about the points system and the section on labor cost calculations.

Her expression remained almost unchanged throughout the reading, but Ringo noticed that her right eye narrowed slightly, an instinctive reaction when she saw something that interested her.

About five minutes later, she put down the file, looked up, and asked incredulously:

"Did you write this?"

"Yes."

"You used to work in the prison system?"

"No, I used to own a factory."

Eleanor looked at Ringo's calm face with a smug look, then leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

Her fingers were long and slender, with short, unpainted nails—the hands of someone who frequently flipped through documents and made marks on various paper materials.

"This thing is interesting."

Her tone was more serious than before.

"To be honest, anyone who has managed hundreds of people can come up with a points system; it's not particularly ingenious."

"What's interesting about it is that you manage prisons like factories."

"Prisoners are like workers, points are like wages, and sentence reductions are like year-end bonuses."

"This logic works fine from a management perspective, but from a legal perspective... you'll have to let me help you make it work."

"Because your prisoners don't have social security, personal freedom, or union protection, which is a legal loophole."

"That's why I'm here. I hope you can help me exploit this loophole and enable the prison to quickly escape poverty."

Lin Ge made no attempt to hide his thoughts.

In America, many jobs operate in these dark, unseen corners, and he believed Eleanor must have encountered quite a few of them.

Eleanor lit another cigarette and looked at him meaningfully.

The sound of an announcement from the pawnshop downstairs drifted in through the window; someone was selling a used television.

"29 inches, almost brand new, only $199!"

In Tulsa in 1984, a brand new 29-inch color TV would cost more than $500.

However, the phrase "almost brand new" has a tacitly understood meaning in the pawnshop industry:

"This thing might not have a very clean origin, but we won't ask, and you shouldn't ask either."

"What exactly do you need me to do?"

Once the cigarette had burned out, Eleanor entered a serious working state, and her tone became more rigorous.

Three things.

Lingo raised his finger:

"First, help me turn this plan into legally binding prison regulations."

"I need it to pass the state corrections department's scrutiny on paper."

"Note that this is on paper. In actual operation, I will adjust according to the situation, but there should be no obvious flaws on paper."

Eleanor nodded.

She fully understands the difference between "on paper" and "in practice".

This is basic common sense that everyone who makes a living in the gray area understands.

"Second, help me negotiate with the county government."

"Former McLean County Warden Crawford manipulated the procurement process, charging for substandard fabric as genuine and pocketing the difference."

"I've now taken over a prison that he's hollowed out."

"That money is gone; he ran off to Texas a long time ago."

"But I need to use this as leverage to get the county government to make concessions in certain areas."

"For example, don't raise my property taxes for the next two years, or give me a more lenient prisoner admission standard and sign a bed guarantee agreement!"

Eleanor's eyes lit up, and she asked:

Do you have any evidence?

"There are copies of the invoices and a former secretary who is willing to testify."

"Her name is Dorothy Hayes, and she now lives in the suburbs of Tulsa and lives on unemployment benefits."

"But she's demanding $5,000 to formally testify, and I don't have that money right now."

"We can hold off on paying the five thousand dollars for now."

After listening, Eleanor waved her hand dismissively, as if shooing away a trivial matter, her attitude exactly the same as Ray's.

"Have her write a statement first. It doesn't need to be notarized; she just needs to sign it."

"This kind of thing doesn't have formal legal proof, but it's enough at the negotiating table."

"The people in the county government are not judges. They will feel guilty when they see a signed accusation, and guilty people are more likely to give in."