The Woman Who Foiled Blago

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of Rod Blagojevich had a rather comic beginning: After Pamela Davis was denied a request to build a new medical office building because she refused to use a specific contractor, Davis called the FBI. "A few days later, three F.B.I. agents met her at her office, bugged her phone, and outfitted her with the wire to put in her bra." Five minutes into a conversation with the contractor and another woman, the FBI agents called her. "'It's extortion! It's extortion!' They yell, 'Get 'em out! Get 'em out!" Over the next seven months, Davis wore the wire in her bra, handing over tapes to the FBI of Chicago businessmen talking openly about how they hoped to profit off the city's hospitals. As Fitzgerald's investigation widened, it eventually snared Blagojevich. Davis, for her part, still hasn't built her office building.