BERNIE IN EFFIGY

You can imagine Bernie Ebbers sauntering out onto the stage of “The Tonight Show,” sheepishly acknowledging the audience and taking his seat as the band stops playing and an uncomfortable silence ensues. A beat goes by, and Jay Leno fires at point-blank range: “What the hell were you thinking?” You can imagine it because you want it so much. You want atonement — complete, abject and final at the highest level. As public as a pillory in the town square. We all do.

More importantly, the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission want it, too. The high-profile gavel swinging heard all the way on Wall Street last week was proof. Throwing erstwhile ImClone CEO Sam Waksal in the slammer for a seven-year stretch is one thing. But slapping the cuffs on America's surrogate mom, Martha Stewart, is nothing if not a grandstand demonstration of the appetite the feds have for white-collar flesh. The bigger the spotlight on the case, the bigger their stomachs become.

Though the hard evidence against Ebbers may still be scant (ironically, the company that once claimed responsibility for the majority of all e-mail traffic was led by a CEO who never touched the stuff), it will sprout like spam if he is truly guilty. The man who spent only 90 minutes of due diligence before spending $6 billion acquiring Intermedia can't have been that careful. And each newly implicated employee (not to mention the current cast of MCI) will be eager to point a finger at the former CEO.

The SEC and DOJ know only too well the lack of closure and justice the public feels with regard to corporate supercrime. Disgraced Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman got off with a slap on the wrist, which doesn't hurt so much when you're wearing a gold watch. And Enron's Ken Lay, for all his wife's televised sobbing, is reclining leisurely in a chaise lounge somewhere, reading the novelization of “Finding Nemo.”

For the feds to close the book on this debacle with the arrest of WorldCom henchmen Scott Sullivan and David Myer would be like nabbing Question and Mark but letting the Riddler get away scot-free. It's inexcusably anticlimactic.

No, the telecom debacle needs a face. And as faces go, you can't ask for a more memorable one than Bernie's, with its oblong, almost equine shape and that inexplicable Mennonite beard in the middle of Baptist Mississippi. The sad eyes and sorry frown alone seem custom-made for anyone looking to put a face on fraud. And make no mistake: The feds are looking to do exactly that. So eventually, the curtains will part, the band will play, and Mr. Ebbers will be welcomed onstage.