The debt he had hidden was gone.

The money he had taken had been repaid, dollar by dollar, out of the assets the court had ordered sold.

His sentencing had been finalized some weeks earlier, in a federal courthouse across the city, though I had not gone.

People asked me, afterward, whether I regretted not being there to see it.

I did not.

I had already seen the only moment that ever mattered — the moment in the blue light when the mask came off and there was nothing behind it I recognized, or had ever, I think, really known.

The judge, I was told, had been unmoved by the speeches.