He was weeping — not the collapse of a spoiled heir, but the breakdown of a man discovering the ground of his whole life had been sand.

I gave the tape to Bettina and told her it would go to the prosecutors and nowhere else.

It was evidence, and it would do its work in the one place such things should — a sealed file, an official record, a lawful proceeding — and not one second of it would ever be played for an audience or repeated at a dinner table.

That mattered to me more than I expected.