CAN THE TRUTH STILL WORK in Papp's favor? Can his story motivate cycling's other dopers to step forward, knowing that they're doing the right thing for the sport and for themselves? Based on my last morning with Papp, and events that occurred in the wake of my visit, the answer is an obvious no.

Before I left Pennsylvania, Papp and I sat down at a desk in his mother's house. Papp turned on his laptop and played two short homemade videos.

"Look closely," he said. In one video there were men in a small room, speaking Italian and holding boxes of syringes, along with the glass ampoules that are used to store performance-enhancing drugs. In the second, a cyclist relaxed on his bed—you could see his muscular, shaved legs. He was using a syringe to inject something into his arm.

"You can say something isn't happening," Papp said, "but when it's in front of you in video and audio, how can you deny it?" Papp explained that he had secretly filmed his doping teammates back in May 2006 and, in the event he got fired, hoped to sell the incriminating footage to a media outlet. So far, no one had offered a deal. "I want to use the videos to help fund the escapes of Yuliet and my son from Cuba," he said. "There's no betrayal of trust in an inherently corrupt system. No honor among thieves." As it turns out, Papp wasn't the only party with unfinished business. Less than two weeks after our interview, the U.S. Attorney's office in Pittsburgh confirmed that Marie Papp had been served with a sealed search warrant at her home. Two days after that action, Papp sent me the e-mail with its haunting picture of guns. The image was accompanied by a strange caption. "My life would be more easily understood if I trended towards one side or the other," it said. "As it is I am in a mash of worlds."

After the search, Papp wouldn't discuss the events much. I did get an e-mail from him at one point, saying, "I'm still alive."

But people who have gotten close to government snitches and doping cyclists say the storyline is obvious. Federal agents, having heard Papp's earlier confessions, are likely to continue pressuring him for more information. If, as Landis's attorney suggested, Papp had a more complicated level of involvement in his sport's dark side, that's up to law enforcement officials to sort out.

So far, however, Papp hasn't been charged with anything. He takes occasional spins on an old racing bike, searches for another mundane nine-to-five, and, thanks to his decision to come clean about doping, looks over his shoulder. Because who knows when Joe Papp's cheating days will rise up to haunt him again?