For Ambrose Merrion, life was first and foremost a matter of people taking care of one another, with society picking up the slack when family and friends weren't enough. For Danny Hilliard, politics was a matter of gaining and using the power to make sure that society did just that.

With Merrion installed as clerk of the court in Canterbury, Massachusetts, shrewdly managing his friend's campaigns, and Hilliard rising swiftly to chairman of Ways and Means in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, they made an excellent team.

But then something went wrong. Hilliard, to Merrion's dismay, began to play adulterous games, and newspapers soon began to run revealing photos of him with much younger women. His wife was not amused, nor was an overzealous federal prosecutor, who, mistaking righteous vengeance for doing justice, believed he had found an exquisitely ingenious way to put Hilliard away by forcing Merrion to incriminate him.

Someone had changed the rules while Ambrose and Danny weren't looking. The law of political gravity had changed, and what was good, clean wickedness in 1960 had become a felony in 1996.