Amarillo, Texas, is known for its abundance of cattle, a local restaurant’s 72-ounce steak-eating challenge and, along an interstate highway, a vibrant drug trade. It is the narcotics traffickers who fill the town’s federal courthouse. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump, spends most days overseeing trials about fentanyl pills and powdered meth. But his rulings on several spicier cases have made the 47-year-old a conservative darling far beyond the Texas panhandle.

In a house on a cul-de-sac in Arlington Heights, a nondescript suburb of modest 1950s homes north-west of Chicago, Deborah Fossett is counting hundred-dollar bills. Holding each one up to the light, she examines nine in total. Satisfied, she writes out a receipt, and hands it to the customer, who picks up his purchase—an antique set of silver Tiffany cutlery. Similar sets online sell for thousands of dollars, she tells him. But this one is missing several pieces, and in any case, everything in the house must go, and it is past two o’clock, so $900 is enough. He eyes his bargain again and quickly leaves.

Donald Trump’s criminal trial, soon to enter its fifth week, has felt like drawn-out foreplay. There have been moments of frisson. But as with any such encounter that stretches on and on, arousal waxes and wanes, prompting a few fateful questions. Where is this going? Hurry it up already? Ultimately, climax in this trial will depend on the testimony of one man: Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former lawyer. And he is not due on the witness stand for several days yet.