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In the meantime Trober had asked relatives to pay Fabbri the remaining $36,000 he was owed. On November 10, 2004, the attorney got a call from Trober's sister. His payment was ready, Fabbri recalls her saying; could he pick it up in Collinsville?

That evening Fabbri and Angela Turin rendezvoused at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, where Turin drew Fabbri a map to her mother's house three miles down the road. The money awaited him there, she said, in the trunk of a car whose key was sitting atop its back left tire. As Fabbri tells it, Turin then ripped the map to shreds. Fabbri drove to the house, found the key and popped the trunk.

Inside sat two plastic grocery bags from Shop 'n Save. The smaller bag was his, Turin had said. The larger bag the Trober family wanted nothing to do with.

Angela Turin did not return several calls requesting comment for this story.

Defense attorneys are quick to explain that in their profession, getting paid can be a minefield. Firms like Fabbri & Zotos typically take on four cases in order to be sure of compensation for two. But hitting pay dirt with a $60,000 case is no cakewalk, either.

"I'm not legally allowed to collect money I know comes from illegal activity," explains prominent local defense attorney Richard Sindel, who is among the many who wrote to Judge Stiehl on Fabbri's behalf. "So I ain't gonna ask that question. No lawyer is."

Of course, the government has its ways of policing the area. Since 1985, if more than $10,000 in cash trades hands between client and attorney within a single calendar year, the attorney is required to supply the payer's name, address and Social Security number, as well as the amount, date and reason for the transaction, on IRS Form 8300. Sindel himself was accused of violating the regulation back in 1994 and was hauled into federal court for not supplying all the information called for on the form. He eventually prevailed, but the ruling was narrow and the federal government continues to require the IRS form to be filled out in its entirety.

"From one standpoint [the law is] not tricky at all," says local defense attorney Paul D'Agrosa. "If you're paid $10,000 or more in cash, you report it. What becomes tricky is the way clients try to get around that. You have to be ever vigilant."

If Fabbri could rewind the night of November 10, 2004, he never would have pulled into the Trober driveway on Illinois Route 157. In retrospect, he says, "I should've talked to somebody."

But at the time, the end of the year was approaching and Trober's two cases required a substantial amount of work.

And then there was the young woman Fabbri had secretly married in Havana two months earlier.

Cuba had become an obsession in the five years Fabbri had been visiting the island nation. He became an expert in cigars, salsa and las muchachas, as well as in the nation's history. The place fascinated him, and he idealized it.

"There's something to be said for the fact that two kids on opposite sides of the country open the very same math book to the very same page every day," he marvels. "There's something to be said for communism and the equalizing effect it has on life, or the fact, for example, that there is no racial discrimination.

"It's '50s life," he goes on. "You come home at five, the children are there, the wife is there, you eat dinner together, you help the kids with homework, and there're no distractions: no TV, no video games. I saw a guy once walking down the street with his thirteen-year-old son, and he kissed the son on the lips. He did that because he loved his son. I was moved. If he'd done that here, people would say, 'That's sick.' It's hard to explain, but thinking about all of that was very intriguing to me."

Belkis, Fabbri's new Cuban bride, and her extended family were constantly in need of things, from medical care to a new telephone, and Fabbri relished the role of provider. After they married in September 2004, Belkis wanted to move to the U.S. Getting her a green card would be yet another expense.

On that November night, Fabbri took the two bags of money from the car trunk and drove away. Two days later, after waiting out a federal holiday, the attorney brought the bigger bag to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"I honestly thought I was being a good soldier by bringing it in," he says today.

Upon being presented with the cash, a surprised federal prosecutor requested that an IRS agent, who happened to be working on the premises, join him to ask a few questions. Chief among them: How much money was in the sack, and where exactly had it come from?

Fabbri said he was not sure of the amount: $60,000 to $80,000, he estimated.

He then lied about how he'd come to possess the money. He told the federal officials that he'd gone to Trober's mother's house late at night, let himself in, gone to the basement and used a ladder to climb into the rafters, where, Edward Trober had told him, an ammunition box filled with cash was stowed. He said his client had supplied a map of the basement, showing where the money was hidden.

Later that day IRS agents called on Trober's mother, who told them that as far as she knew, no one had entered her house the previous two evenings. Prosecutors requested that Fabbri be removed from the Trober case. A judge granted their motion, and a federal investigation into Fabbri's activities was initiated.

IRS agents persuaded Trober, who was still awaiting sentencing, to wear a wire for a jailhouse conversation with Fabbri in January 2005. "Mr. Trober was in a position to help himself," says Kevin Stallard, who worked the case for the Illinois State Police.

During the conversation Fabbri referred to his $36,000 fee and urged Trober to stick with the ammunition-box story.

Fabbri: "Your family is important to you."

Trober: "Of course, they're important to me.'

"Well, OK."

"Yeah."

"You want 'em? You want to give 'em up? Come on, Ed."

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