IN THE spring of 1991, Frank N. Zaino, a Cranston engineer, asked his friend David Presbrey, a Providence architect, to lunch.

The two went way back. They'd met in the 1960s, when they were both beating the bushes for business. They prospered in the '80s, reaping the fruits of the Rhode Island public-building boom inaugurated by Gov. Edward D. DiPrete. Between them, they designed courthouses, prisons, schools, airports, and other public buildings.

In 1991 Zaino and Presbrey weren't collaborating on anything, but they began meeting for lunch, at, among other places, The Arch, on Providence's Federal Hill. Zaino needed to talk.

Zaino ranted to Presbrey that the police were squeezing their colleagues and friends. The cops were coming around their offices, snooping into financial records, handing out grand-jury subpoenas, asking questions about political payoffs.

Zaino talked of trying to keep everyone together -- to maintain what he called his family. He hoped that Dennis L. DiPrete, the ex-governor's son, was doing the same with "his people,'' as Presbrey later recalled for the grand jury.

According to grand-jury testimony, Zaino told Presbrey that he'd even gone to Edward DiPrete and "told the governor that he [Zaino] would not go to jail for him.''

If Zaino went down, he vowed to the governor, "the whole thing [would] come down -- everything [would] fall apart.''

INVESTIGATORS in early 1991 were hearing that during the DiPrete administration, architects and engineers had paid to obtain contracts from the state.

The investigators started hearing this while they were looking into how Joseph Mollicone Jr., the fugitive banker, and Rodney M. Brusini, a DiPrete confidant, had rented office space to the state.

In March, former DiPrete aide Mathies J. Santos was being questioned about leases when he delivered a surprise: he casually mentioned that Governor DiPrete's son Dennis had told him which architects and engineers to hire for state construction projects.

Santos's comment to the investigators would eventually lead them to conclude that the DiPrete administration's selection committee for architects and engineers, on which Santos had served, had been a sham.

In his first year in office, DiPrete signed an executive order creating the committee -- for the purpose, he said at the time, of removing politics from the selection process and giving more contractors a chance at state work.

A prosecutor would later testify that the investigators came to view Santos as someone who had "pushed through whatever the administration wanted,'' under "the guise'' of DiPrete's executive order.

Both Santos and other former DiPrete officials told the investigators and the grand jury that it was Edward DiPrete who had made the selections.

"It was perfectly clear that it came from him and that he had picked the person,'' testified Frederick Lippitt, DiPrete's former director of administration.

"I mean,'' said Lippitt, "obviously the . . . system was designed for political patronage, which isn't necessarily . . . immoral. . . . You give contracts to those who supported you.''

Lippitt, who had been Santos's boss, was supposed to have made the final decisions on architects and engineers. But when DiPrete had hired him, Lippitt testified, the governor told him that he wanted "the final say.''

Lippitt, an East Side millionaire whose forebears included two Rhode Island governors, seemed glad to remain above the fray.

At one DiPrete fundraiser, he later recalled, "I got besieged by these terrible people who wanted contracts and I had to go home, and I was just delighted when I never had anything more to do with it.''

WITH MATHIES SANTOS'S revelations about the hiring of architects and engineers, the DiPrete investigation in 1991 took a dramatic turn.

One investigator, hearing rumors of payoffs made for state contracts, began searching for clues in the government files of public construction projects.

One day the investigator unearthed a letter that architect Walter Powers had written to Dennis DiPrete in 1988. Powers, interested in doing restoration work on the Rhode Island State House, wrote that he hoped Dennis DiPrete could "possibly motivate some positive activity by the state.''

The architect asked the younger DiPrete to pass along his interest to state officials, and thanked him "for all your efforts in my behalf.''

Questioned about his letter by the authorities, Powers said he had contacted Dennis DiPrete because he was the governor's son and presumably had some influence with the governor. Furthermore, according to court records, Powers said that Dennis DiPrete had once before notified him that Powers would be getting a state job -- before the job had been officially awarded.

Walter Powers was Edward DiPrete's neighbor in Cranston; Powers's children had grown up with Dennis DiPrete. One morning shortly after DiPrete was elected governor, Powers would later testify, he dropped by DiPrete's house to complain to him about not getting a state job he'd been counting on; the job went to Frank Zaino, an engineer and a DiPrete political supporter.

"His [Edward DiPrete's] response to me,'' Powers would later tell the grand jury, "was that he has nothing to do with that; he has people that take care of it.''

It was later, Powers said, that he began talking to Dennis DiPrete about getting state work.

Powers also testified that he had contributed to the DiPrete campaign because he felt he had to in order to be considered for state work. But he said he gave only checks, never cash.

The authorities uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing by Walter Powers. They considered his letter a significant discovery because, like Mathies Santos's testimony, it placed Dennis DiPrete in the mix.

Meanwhile, State Police Lt. Robert P. Mattos met one night with an engineer who alleged that other engineers and architects had given Dennis DiPrete cash for state contracts. The tipster identified Frank Zaino as a key player.

Mattos went to Atty. Gen. James E. O'Neil. This was early in 1991, with the banking crisis raging and law enforcement stretched thin. Still, the allegations were too serious for O'Neil to ignore.

Take a few weeks in the grand jury and see what you can get, O'Neil said to the state-police detective. Everything has to be hush-hush; this is an ex-governor and his son, said the attorney general.

There are to be no written police reports, O'Neil instructed -- nothing that could put the probe on the front page of The Providence Journal.

BACK IN THE 1980s, the sun had shone on Frank Zaino's engineering practice.

Amid the drudgery of drafting tables and the dust of construction sites, the Cranston engineer drew attention. He enjoyed sports cars, jewelry, and parties. And he boasted of his clout with Ed DiPrete.

Now, in 1991, investigators believed that Frank Zaino could lead them into Edward DiPrete's inner circle. And so they zeroed in on the architects with whom Zaino had worked.

One was David Presbrey.

ONE MORNING, that summer of 1991, David Presbrey was meeting a fellow architect for breakfast, his friend Norton Salk. Boats bobbed in Pawtuxet Cove as the two men walked down a village sidewalk.

Across the street Donald R. Conlon, another architect, stood at an outdoor pay phone, looking agitated. Presbrey and Salk asked him to join them for breakfast, but Conlon waved off the invitation. He just stood on the sidewalk and poured out his anxiety.

"My house is bugged,'' he said. "My office is bugged.''

He then rushed off, and Presbrey and Salk looked at each other.

All three architects could feel a noose tightening. Salk and Conlon had appeared before a grand jury. Both had denied any wrongdoing.

But their pursuer, Lieutenant Mattos, wasn't finished. Poring over the records of Norton Salk's architectural firm, the state-police detective found two checks made out to Frank Zaino, the engineer.

That fall, Salk was summoned back to the grand jury. At the courthouse, before he went into the grand-jury room, Lieutenant Mattos confronted him with the checks.

Another concern for Salk was a "straw'' campaign contribution he had made to DiPrete; Salk had donated the money through his assistant, since Salk was over the legal giving limit. The assistant would later tell the authorities that Salk had urged him to lie about the contribution -- to say that the money Salk had given him was a pay bonus.

Prosecutor J. Richard Ratcliffe now walked into the courthouse room where Mattos and Salk were talking. Ratcliffe told Salk that if Salk testified truthfully, he would not be prosecuted for any crimes he might have committed.

The architect grabbed the prosecutor's offer. When Salk went upstairs to the grand-jury room, he was ready to talk about things he had not revealed in his earlier grand-jury testimony.

NORTON SALK was a nervous-looking man, pushing 60. Before DiPrete became governor he had never sought state work, but he knew the new governor from DiPrete's days on the Cranston School Committee, when Salk had done architectural work on the Cranston schools.

During DiPrete's years as governor, Salk got mostly smaller state jobs: a group home, a substance-abuse clinic, a vocational-school training room. Meanwhile, according to court records, Salk would read in the newspaper that big job after big job was going to his friend Dave Presbrey, or to Don Conlon, and he'd say to his assistant: "These guys know how to do it. They pay more.''

Salk was known as a penny-pincher, and the constant solicitations of the DiPrete campaign annoyed him. At one fundraising event, he said to his assistant: "Go straight for the shrimp and eat as many as you can -- eat and drink your money's worth.''

Salk now told the grand jury that in 1990 he had asked Frank Zaino -- whom he'd known for 30 years -- to help him get bigger state jobs. Zaino told Salk to come up with $25,000. So, over a six-week period, Salk wrote three checks totaling the requested amount (Zaino later returned one of the checks, telling Salk he had paid too much).

Salk didn't get the jobs he wanted. He told the grand jury that Zaino had never explicitly promised him the jobs; he had only said come up with $25,000.

"I gave it to him on faith,'' Salk testified. "I did a stupid thing. I was caught up in the system, is what happened.''

THE SAME DAY that Norton Salk gave his story to the grand jury, Oct. 9, 1991, his fellow architect Donald Conlon was indicted for perjury.

Back when Conlon first appeared before the grand jury, in May 1991, he said that he had contributed to DiPrete "so I wouldn't be absent at the party.''

Through the years, Conlon had always been the life of the party.

A large, slightly disheveled-looking man in his early 60s, Conlon had a nervous laugh and was a practical joker and a clown. An early employer recalled Conlon coming to work hunched over his miniature World War II motorcycle, goggles and German helmet in place. His friends called him the Mad Russian.

Now, the Mad Russian was meeting the Cobra, as the relentless State Police Lt. Robert Mattos was known.

Lieutenant Mattos had noticed, in examining Donald Conlon's finances, that the married architect had put his girlfriend on his firm's payroll; she was a part-time office employee. Conlon had also given her money to buy a fur coat and a car, to pay her telephone bill, and to travel. Just recently, the two had taken a trip to Mexico.

Mattos also noticed money going from Conlon's firm to his friend Frank Zaino's engineering firm.

Investigators discovered, too, that, according to court records, Conlon had funneled contributions to the DiPrete campaign through friends -- concealing his identity to circumvent the legal donation limit of $2,000.

Lieutenant Mattos took to stopping by Conlon's office, and his house. He'd also drop in on Conlon's girlfriend, Claire Corbett, and tell her that Don should cooperate. Mattos was such a frequent caller that Corbett began calling him Uncle Bobby.

One day, Mattos told Conlon that he had grand-jury subpoenas for both Conlon's wife and his girlfriend -- summoning the two women to the Kent County Court House at the same time.

But then Claire Corbett dropped out of sight -- ducking a subpoena long enough to avoid having to appear the same day as Shirley Conlon. Corbett hid on Donald Conlon's boat, in Greenwich Bay, keeping tabs on developments with a cell phone, borrowed from Frank Zaino.

Lieutenant Mattos had also subpoenaed Donald Conlon's telephone-message pads, hoping to document Conlon's contacts with Zaino. But Conlon threw the messages away, at the urging of Claire Corbett, and then lied about having done so to the grand jury.

Upon his indictment for perjury, in October of 1991, the party for Conlon was over.

DONALD CONLON was a fervent Democrat; he'd named his boat Democrat Two. But he was also a pragmatist. He joked that he got more state work out of the Republican DiPrete than he had ever gotten out of the Democrats.

Now, testifying to the grand jury, Conlon said that he owed it all to Frank Zaino, the engineer who Conlon believed had had a line to the DiPrete administration.

Before DiPrete became governor, Conlon said, contractors had been more or less on an equal footing -- they all contributed to politicians so that they would be considered for government work. It was, he said, a "parade'' mentality: "If you see a parade go by, and you can't quite see the parade, and one guy starts standing up on his tiptoes, everybody stands up on their tiptoes.''

When DiPrete became governor, Conlon started out like many other Rhode Island contractors, writing checks to the DiPrete campaign -- "the legitimate bribery,'' Conlon called it.

But later, Conlon testified, when he had reached the legal giving limit, he followed Zaino's instructions and gave money to friends to contribute to the campaign in their names.

He also started giving cash to Zaino -- generally $4,000 to $5,000 a year. As the demands for money grew, Conlon told the grand jury, he opened a line of credit on his house.

In 1988, after winning a $430,000 contract to work on the state Training School, Conlon tried to cash a check for $10,000. The teller told him that federal law required her to report any transactions of $10,000 or more; he settled for $9,950, which he said he gave to Zaino.

Zaino told Conlon that he would deliver the cash to Dennis DiPrete, the governor's son. Zaino spoke often of the younger DiPrete as his contact for state jobs, Conlon testified.

After Conlon got the Training School contract, Zaino passed along a request from Dennis DiPrete: Conlon should hire Dennis's college roommate as an engineering subcontractor on the job. Conlon did.

"I owed a certain loyalty to Frank Zaino,'' Conlon told the grand jury. "And also, he and I were as close as you can get.''

That's why, Conlon said, he had even lied to the grand jury to protect Zaino.

Now, he said plaintively, "I hope we're friends again someday.''

IN THE FALL of 1991, alerted by his lawyer that he was about to be called before the grand jury, the architect David Presbrey contacted the attorney general's office. Just before Thanksgiving, Presbrey and his lawyer walked into a conference room full of prosecutors and investigators.

It was not a scene Presbrey had envisioned years before, as an aspiring architect. A tall, dignified-looking man, balding and bespectacled, Presbrey had the bearing of his four-generation Providence heritage.

A great-grandfather had been a city alderman; a grandfather, a police commissioner. From an early age, David Presbrey viewed himself, too, as a kind of public servant: a designer of great buildings.

He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Montana State University, then apprenticed at several architectural firms. His first state job was modest, installing showers at the Rhode Island prison. But Presbrey soon came to believe that government offered the best opportunity for creating buildings on the grand scale.

To him, getting those projects required the artist to strike a bargain with the world of politics.

Beginning with Governor Chafee's administration, in the 1960s, Presbrey made a point of being seen at gubernatorial fundraisers and shaking the governor's hand.

Once during the administration of Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy, Presbrey testified, he and Frank Zaino had been discussing campaign contributions. Presbrey told the grand jury that Zaino said the contribution expected from an architect or engineer who wanted a state contract was 5 percent of the job's fee. For example, if an architect wanted a $200,000 project, a $10,000 contribution would be expected.

Former Governor Garrahy recently denied knowledge of any payments' being required from state contractors when he was governor.

SITTING IN the attorney general's conference room that November 1991, David Presbrey went on to walk the prosecutors and investigators through his escalating campaign contributions to Edward DiPrete.

He testified that he believed the contributions had been necessary to get state work. And as he gave more money, the jobs rolled in: the new Washington County Court House, the new Block Island airport terminal, the expansion of the Davies Vocational- Technical School . . .

The contributions began with checks for tickets to DiPrete fundraising events, which Presbrey would deliver to Rodney Brusini at the F. A. DiPrete insurance agency, in Cranston. Brusini was the governor's chief fundraiser; although Brusini held no government post, Presbrey testified, Presbrey made sure to tell him which state projects he was interested in.

Eventually, Presbrey started dealing instead with Frank Zaino. From their conversations, Presbrey gathered that Zaino was reporting to Dennis DiPrete, the governor's son. But Presbrey, like Salk and Conlon, testified that he never dealt directly with Dennis DiPrete concerning contributions for state contracts.

"My sense,'' Presbrey told a grand jury, "was that Dennis DiPrete was making the decisions, or Dennis and the governor were making the decisions, on who was going to be doing the A. and E. work'' -- the architecture and engineering.

All Presbrey knew, he told the grand jury, was that as he increased his giving, his business thrived. At last, he was designing the buildings he had dreamed of, and winning recognition.

The American Institute of Architects honored Presbrey's Washington County Court House, and he won historical-preservation awards for his restoration work in downtown Providence.

For his own Providence office, Presbrey refurbished a Civil WarŠera mill. For his home, he and his wife renovated the old white-spired Lutheran Swedish Evangelical Covenant Church, in East Greenwich.

By the late 1980s, a campaign-contribution limit of $2,000 had been enacted by the legislature; to circumvent it, Presbrey testified, he started giving cash to the DiPrete campaign. Between checks and cash, his annual contributions went from $2,000 to $4,500 to $6,150 to more than $27,500, in DiPrete's last two years.

At first Linda Presbrey, Presbrey's wife, would go to the bank and get the cash, he testified. But she grew uncomfortable and told her husband she wouldn't do it anymore.

Presbrey recalled once fidgeting as he waited in a bank line, anxious to be on his way. He never actually touched the 100-

dollar bills that the teller counted out; he asked her to seal them in an envelope. He took the envelope to Frank Zaino's engineering firm, in an industrial part of Cranston.

As was their routine, Presbrey testified, Zaino received him in his wood-paneled office and closed the door. The two sat around a small coffee table. Presbrey laid the envelope on the table. Then they chatted, neither man touching the money.

"You've got to remember,'' Presbrey testified, "a lot of the wording is couched, you might say -- or, uh, you know, people aren't blunt . . . they never said to me, "Give me ten thousand dollars and I'll give you this contract.' Nobody ever said that to me.'' But, he told the grand jury, the arrangement was clear. As clear as the envelope on the table.

IT WAS DARK that afternoon in November 1991 when David Presbrey finished telling his story in the attorney general's conference room. The prosecutors and investigators put down their pens.

Attorney General O'Neil told Presbrey that the state would grant him immunity for his testimony. O'Neil called Presbrey a stand-up guy: Presbrey admitted having paid for state contracts while other contractors were denying it. Before they parted, the attorney general said Presbrey was the most honest architect in Rhode Island.

ON MARCH 6, 1992 -- nearly a year after the DiPrete investigation had expanded to scrutinize architects and engineers -- David Presbrey took his turn before the grand jury.

Under the fluorescent lights of the grand-jury room in the Kent County Court House, he testified for hours. As he sat alone in the middle of the room in a chair facing the grand jurors, choking up at times, Presbrey seemed like a penitent hunched in a confessional.

"You might ask how I got involved in something like this,'' he said to the grand jury.

"Well, I, uh -- as an architect, the thing that I, I always wanted to do, was I always wanted to design buildings that were really good buildings that were useful to people. . . . And I've -- I've worked very hard for this. . . .

"It's not easy for me to be here,'' Presbrey continued. "I don't enjoy it one bit, and, uh -- but it's also important for you, I think, and perhaps the people of the state, to know that, uh -- that they weren't cheated in any way in what I did, because I did the best I could.''

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