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three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar condo—but she didn’t say that in the email. Marjorie said that if Morris was interested, she’d be happy to meet him for a drink and fill him in on the details.
    When Marjorie met with Morris she went straight at him. The fact that he’d shown up for the meeting was enough for her to know that she didn’t have to pussyfoot around with the guy. She told him that she was hoping for a favorable outcome on the pipeline sales tax case as the man she represented—who she never named—thought that being required to pay back taxes because of a confusing law was not only unfair, but in order to scrape up the money to pay the state, her employer might have to let a few people go.
    â€œAre you trying to bribe me?” the judge said, trying to act all stern and righteous and shocked—but he couldn’t have been that shocked. He had to know before he met with Marjorie that she was going to want something in return for the great price on the condo.
    â€œOf course not, Your Honor,” Marjorie had said. “No one is offering you any money. I’m just telling you that you can get a good deal on a Palm Springs condo, a deal you could probably get for yourself if you negotiated hard enough.”
    â€œAnd if I don’t rule the way you want?” the judge said.
    â€œThe real estate market in California is pretty volatile, Your Honor. You can never tell what will happen. Why don’t we wait until after you rule on the case and if you’re still interested, give me a call. I can promise you that the buyer won’t sell until after your ruling.”
    The judge didn’t say yes or no. He just sat there scowling as if he smelled something foul in the room, then said he was late for a meeting and left the bar—a bar he’d picked that was about as far from his normal watering hole as it could get. But Marjorie knew what was going to happen next. She had no doubt. Morris would find a way to convince himself that the right thing to do was rule against the tax-grabbing state of South Dakota.
    Ninety percent of the time, Bill and Marjorie behaved the same as most people representing a special interest group or a particular business: They paid attention to legislation that could cost Curtis money or make him money; they supported, through legitimate campaign contributions, politicians likely to favor Curtis; they pooled their resources with like-minded folks to pay for television ads to pass or defeat various bills and get the right people elected; they hired lawyers to throw monkey wrenches into the machinery when a monkey wrench was needed. In other words, just politics as usual. But every once in a while a little extra effort was needed to solve a problem, as was the case with Judge Morris—and this was why Curtis paid them so well.
    You can’t teach people to do what Marjorie and Bill did. They had a God-given instinct, guided by experience, to know who was corruptible and who wasn’t—and then the ability to persuade those people to take a bribe in such a manner that the person wouldn’t feel that he or she had really been bribed at all. Like with Morris.
    Morris could, legitimately, rule either way with regard to the sales tax issue. He just needed to come up with a basis for his ruling that would morally satisfy himself that his decision had nothing to do with the condo but was instead in accordance with the constitution of the great state of South Dakota. In his own mind, Morris wouldn’t even connect his good fortune to the ruling he made. He was a righteous and honorable man—and just lucky when it came to real estate.
    â€œNow what about the goddamn kid?” Curtis said. “I’ve had enough of that little bitch.”

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    Two hours after leaving Doug Thorpe’s cabin, driving eastward on I-94, DeMarco crossed the Montana-North Dakota border and stopped at a scenic vista near Medora,