evidence: A satellite of Miami, the island prides itself on its many flamboyant charity balls, but no amount of good-cause fundraising can remove the whiff of corruption that hangs heavy in the subtropical air. If money talks in most places, in Palm Beach it speaks with a confident authority that’s seldom questioned. Never has that understanding been more egregiously demonstrated than in the case of the inscrutable financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. [...] "I let his lawyers know what I was doing. I sent certified letters to everybody. I knocked on Epstein’s door. Nobody responded to me except [Epstein’s lawyer, Alan] Dershowitz. I think it was because they underestimated what I was doing. They just thought I was some little reporter from the Miami Herald who’s writing about the same old thing." [...] But perhaps what concerns Brown as much as anything is the ease with which Epstein was received back into wealthy society after he had been to prison and was registered as a sex offender.