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sheriff’s deputy assigned to the courtroom, an African-American woman, drew me aside and berated me. “How could you have lost this case! Look at what you did to that poor girl and her family.”
    Disgusted at my helplessness, I drove that evening to my parents’ red colonial-style home in suburban Palatine, where I had been staying until I could get an apartment. I ate without tasting the food and tried to get to sleep, but I kept hearing the sheriff’s deputy saying “How could you have lost this case?” so often that her voice seemed like my own.
    Turning points are strange. You don’t know what is happening to you right away—a notion just grips you and won’t let go. And then, somehow, you’re not the same any more. By the next afternoon, I was fed up with the legal profession and made my complaint to Mike Ficaro in November or December 1979. Now, just a few months later, I could see that Dan Reidy and Chuck Sklarsky had come up with the best chance the state and federal governments ever had for throwing fixers and grasping judges into prison. But without an insider at the criminal courts the plan would die. And so I agreed to join, with all the enthusiasm of someone unaware of what was in store for him.
    I had been told not to confide in anyone outside my immediate family about my new role, but I couldn’t keep my excitement from my girlfriend, Cathy Crowley. A few days after agreeing to work undercover, I felt comfortable enough with Cathy to take her to a wedding reception for a high school friend, even though I had known her for less than two months.
    Cathy was a little taller than some girls I’d dated, slender and pretty with reddish-brown hair. We had met through my friend Mark Ciavelli, who sometimes worked with me in the police stations. Since I still lived in the suburbs, I was not part of the singles scene, so Mark had taken me to a St. Patrick’s Day party on the North Side. There I noticed Cathy in a green plaid dress and asked if she would dance with me.
    You can be with some people for years and never really know them. But with others you quickly find yourself talking to them as if they’d always been a part of your life. That was how I felt with Cathy. She was bright and fun to be with, and I found myself going from subject to subject as we kept up with the music. That was how I learned she was in her first year at Loyola law school, from where I had graduated in 1977.
    Seeing that I was already acting as if I wanted to be with Cathy forever, Mark waited until she was out of earshot and then suggested that I offer her a ride home. Among the things we three laughed over were the latest antics of Judge P.J. McCormick. He had been stopped for driving too slowly on a highway. He alledgedly was so drunk that he tried to escape by taking the state trooper’s car.
    June 1980
    At a red light on the way back from the wedding reception, I turned down the radio in my eight-year-old Plymouth Fury and said, “I’m transferring to Narcotics Court on Monday.”
    â€œBut I thought you liked felony review,” Cathy said.
    What would Dan Reidy and Chuck Sklarsky think if they knew I was about to divulge my decision to the daughter of a judge, who was studying to be a trial lawyer and whose family moved in legal circles? I just couldn’t help myself.
    â€œWell, I’m going to be working undercover for the FBI.” There, it was out and I didn’t care.
    â€œYeah, right,” Cathy said. She turned up the radio and took another look at me. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
    I had thought I would become something of a hero in her eyes, but now I felt a little silly. “It’s the truth,” I assured her. “We had a couple of meetings downtown, and they told me the names of maybe half a dozen lawyers and judges they’re looking at. Can you believe it, taking down judges ?” My