“I’ll remember,” I told him, “that you had every opportunity to be a good man.

And I’ll remember that you chose, too many times, not to be one.” It was the last thing I ever said to him as his wife.

Chapter 19 — Doing Right at the Last Minute

The legal machinery ground on for months, and did, in the end, exactly what it is supposed to do.

The co-conspirators turned on one another in court, each producing evidence against the others in the hope of leniency, and in doing so laid the whole operation bare.

The properties they had stolen through extortion were seized, and millions of dollars were poured into a court-ordered restitution fund for the victims.