There was little doubt Krane Chemical had done bad things, but the issue was whether their waste actually caused the cancers. The jury certainly thought so.

It would soon be the job of Justice McCarthy and her eight colleagues to settle the matter.

They tracked her movements to the Coast, to her home three blocks off the Bay of Biloxi. She was there for sixty-five minutes, then drove a mile to her daughter's home on Howard Street. After a long dinner with her daughter, son-in-law, and two small grandchildren, she returned to her home and spent the night, apparently alone.

At ten on Sunday morning, she had brunch at the Grand Casino with a female acquaintance.

A quick check of license plates revealed this person to be a well-known local divorce lawyer, probably an old friend. After brunch, McCarthy returned to her home, changed into blue jeans, and left with her overnight bag. She drove nonstop to her condo in north Jackson, arriving at 4:10. Three hours later, a man by the name of Keith Christian (white male, age forty-four, divorced, history professor) showed up with what appeared to be a generous supply of take-out Chinese food. He did not leave the McCarthy condo until seven the following morning.

Tony Zachary summarized these reports himself, pecking away at a laptop he still despised. He'd been a terrible typist long before the Internet, and his skills had improved only marginally. But the details could be trusted to no one-no assistant, no secretary. The matter demanded the utmost secrecy. Nor could his summaries be e-mailed or faxed. Mr. Rine-hart insisted that they be sent by overnight letter via Federal Express.

In the old town of Natchez there is a slice of land below a bluff, near the river, known as Under-the-Hill. It has a long and colorful history that begins with the earliest days of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi. It attracted all the characters-the merchants, traders, boat captains, speculators, and gamblers-headed to New Orleans.

Because money was changing hands, it also attracted ruffians, vagabonds, swindlers, bootleggers, gunrunners, whores, and every imaginable misfit from the underworld.

Natchez was rich with cotton, most of which was shipped and traded through its port, Under-the-Hill. Easy money created the need for bars, gambling dens, brothels, and flophouses. A young Mark Twain was a regular during his days as a steamboat pilot.

Then the Civil War killed river traffic. It also wiped out the fortunes in Natchez, and most of its nightlife. Under-the-Hill suffered a long period of decline.

In 1990, the Mississippi legislature approved a bill that allowed riverboat gambling, the idea being that a handful of fake paddle wheelers would churn up and down the river while their cargo of retirees played bingo and blackjack. Along the Mississippi River, businessmen rushed to establish these floating casinos. Remarkably, once the legislation was actually read and analyzed, it was discovered that the boats would not be required to physically leave the shore. Nor were they required to be equipped with any type of engine to propel them.

As long as they touched the river, or any of its chutes, sloughs, oxbow lakes, man-made canals, or backwaters, the structures qualified as riverboats under the legislation. Under-the-Hill made a brief comeback.

Unfortunately, upon further analysis, the legislation accidentally approved full-fledged Vegas-style casino gambling, and within a few years this roaring new industry had settled itself along the Gulf Coast and in Tunica County, near Memphis. Natchez and the other river towns missed the boom, but did manage to hang on to a few of their engineless, stationary casinos.

One such establishment was the Lucky Jack. There, at his favorite blackjack table with his favorite dealer, Clete Coley sat hunched over a stack of $25 chips and sipped a rum and soda. He was up $1,800 and it was time to quit. He watched the door, waiting on his appointment.

Coley was a member of the bar. He had a degree, a license, a name in the yellow pages, an office with the word "Attorney" on the door, a secretary who answered the occasional phone call with an unenthusiastic "Law Office," and business cards with all the necessary data. But Clete Coley wasn't a real lawyer. He had few clients to speak of. He wouldn't draft a will, or a deed, or a contract, at gunpoint. He didn't hang around the courthouse, and he disliked most of the other lawyers in Natchez. Clete was simply a rogue, a big, loud, hard-drinking rogue of a lawyer who made more money at the casinos than he did at the office. He'd once dabbled in politics, and barely missed an indictment.

He'd dabbled in government contracts, and dodged another one. In his early years, after college, he'd done some pot smuggling, but abruptly abandoned that career when a partner was found dead. In fact, his conversion was so complete that he became an undercover narcotics officer. He went to law school at night and finally passed the bar exam on his fourth attempt.

He doubled-down on an eight and a three, drew a jack, and collected another $100.

His favorite cocktail waitress brought him another drink. No one spent as much time in the Lucky Jack as Mr. Coley. Anything for Mr. Coley. He watched the door, checked his watch, and kept gambling.

"You expecting someone?" asked Ivan, the dealer.

"Would I tell you?"

"Reckon not."

The man he was expecting had also escaped a few indictments. They went back almost twenty years, though they were anything but friends. This would be their second meeting.

The first had gone well enough to lead to this one.

Ivan was showing fourteen when he drew a queen and went bust. Another $100 for Clete.

He had his rules. When he won $2,000 he quit, and when he lost $500 he quit. Anything between those limits and he would play and drink all night. The IRS would never know it, but he was up eighty grand for the year. Plus, all the rum was free.

He flipped two chips to Ivan and began the elaborate task of freeing his massive body from the elevated chair.

"Thanks, Mr. Coley," Ivan said.

"Always a pleasure." Clete stuffed the rest of the chips into the pockets of hislight brown suit. Always brown, always a suit, always with shiny Lucchese cowboy boots. At six feet four, he weighed at least 280, though no one knew for sure, but he was more thick than fat.

He lumbered away toward the bar, where his appointment had arrived. Marlin was taking a seat at a corner table, one with a view of the floor.

No greetings of any sort, no eye contact. Clete dropped into a chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. A waitress brought them drinks.

"I have the money," Marlin said, finally.

"How much?"

"Same deal, Clete. Nothing's changed. We're just waiting on you to say yes or no."

"And I'll ask you again. Who is 'we'?"

"It's not me. I'm an independent contractor, paid a fee for a job well done. I'm on no one's payroll. I've been hired to recruit you for the race, and if you say no, then I might be hired to recruit someone else."

"Who's paying you?"

"That's confidential, Clete. I explained this a dozen times last week."

"You did. Maybe I'm a little dense. Or maybe I'm just a little nervous. Perhaps Iwant answers. Otherwise, I'm not in."

Based on their first meeting, Mariin was doubtful that Clete Coley would eventually say no to $100,000 in cash in unmarked bills. Mariin had virtually put it on the table. A hundred grand to get in the race and stir things up. Coley would make a beautiful candidate-loud, outrageous, colorful, able to say anything with no concern about the fallout. An anti-politician the press would follow like ants.