Kennedy struggled for six years to find an adequate narrative framework for his story of Diamond. In the character of Marcus Gorman he manages a point of view equal to the complexity of his hero Diamond. Gorman is a respected lawyer, incipient politician, public speaker, "one of Albany's communion breakfast intellectuals ..." But like the establishment hypocrites he criticizes, Gorman also has allegiances on both sides of the legal and criminal communities. He belongs to the Knights of Columbus, delivers a Sunday communion breakfast speech on gangsterism to the Police Department, is a prominent trial attorney familiar with local politicians, district attorneys, and judges. At the same time, he arranges for fifteen witnesses to perjure themselves providing Diamond with an alibi in the Streeter case, fabricates a nun's impassioned exoneration of Jack's behavior in closing arguments before a jury, transports a hundred and eighty thousand dollars of gang money...