The double-mortgaged estate in Highland Park was liquidated to satisfy creditors.

Depositions were taken, indictments were pursued, and the whole rotten structure was disassembled the way such structures are actually disassembled in the real world — not with a flourish, but with paperwork, thoroughly and without mercy and without possibility of appeal.

I found that I preferred it that way.

A dramatic revenge can be argued with, undone, mythologized.

But a company placed in receivership, its assets liquidated, its principals under federal indictment, its crimes documented in certified filings — that is final in a way no act of passion ever is.

Fitzroy Wexler had taught me that, months before, and the aftermath proved him right.