passport. Interpol had issued a “red notice” for McConnell’s ar- rest, and without a valid passport, he was no longer legally al- lowed to remain in the country. The Philippine police arrested him on immigration charges at his office in Makati, near where he and I had met. A few months later he arrived in Minnesota.

Thunderclouds were gathering over the Minneapolis skyline on the afternoon I walked into Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge, a tiki bar hugging a bank of the Mississippi just across from downtown. Kent Bailey was already seated at a table out back, overlooking the river. I’d come to town after months of trying to pin him down for an interview, and spent a day waiting for him to break free from a case. “I’m out on the street with my group,” he texted me. “We have a search and arrest warrant we need to serve. Of course, we are on doper time.” Now he said he had a few hours before an agent’s going-away party. One minute after I sat down, the skies opened up, and we hustled inside.

I asked him why he was finally willing to talk now. He was plan- ning to retire in a year, he said. Kimberly Brill was the real brains behind the operation anyway, and he wanted to give her the credit she was too modest to take. “The other thing is, you know what? I ain’t hiding anything,” he said. “You know what I mean? It is what it is. I think that the story deserves to be put out there.” Bai- ley walked me through the case, from Kimberly Brill and Steven Holdren’s first bust of AltGeld, the Chicago pharmacy, to his trav- els around the world seeking foreign cooperation, to watching the JeReVe sail off across the Pacific. “Over the years I’ve prided my- self on working the biggest and best cases,” he said. “Le Roux is the guy. He’s the smartest drug dealer I’ve ever faced.”

Now, though, Bailey seemed concerned that the case against RX Limited’s employees was dragging on, with no trial dates in sight. Of the eleven original defendants, three had taken deals and pleaded guilty, including Jon Wall, the Israeli American who’d