NEW YORK - Eliot Spitzer was ready to tell someone his secret.

It was a rainy Sunday morning and the governor had just returned home to his Fifth Avenue apartment after a night out in Washington's political spotlight. He had spent the last five hours driving home through a fierce storm.

In a day of Manhattan public appearances on Friday, and glad-handing with the media at a Washington dinner on Saturday, the law-and-order Democratic governor had let on to no one the bombshell revelation that would shock the nation: The governor of New York, the “Mr. Clean” ex-prosecutor known for fighting corruption and taking the moral high ground, was going to be outed as a client of a $5,500-an-hour prostitution ring.

Shortly after passing through the glass doors of his luxurious high-rise building a little after noon, Spitzer faced his wife of two decades, Silda. He would tell his sweetheart from Harvard Law School first: He would soon be named publicly in an investigation of high-priced call girls.

After a few hours alone, they broke the news to their three teenage daughters.

One day later, he would be a disgraced governor.

Spitzer's secrets began to unravel last year. In an office building at Hauppauge on Long Island, Internal Revenue Service agents received a tip from banks of something strange going on with Spitzer's bank accounts, authorities said. His money transfers seemed suspicious, and they were setting off all sorts of red flags, officials said.

The case was referred last fall to federal prosecutors, who came to believe that Spitzer may have spent tens of thousands of dollars transferring money between accounts to pay for prostitutes, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

The first public hint of Spitzer's downfall was dropped in a federal court in Manhattan on March 6. Four people were charged with running a global prostitution and money-laundering ring called Emperors Club VIP.

This seemed different from the run-of-the-mill prostitution bust. The prosecutors assigned to the case were headed by the U.S. Attorney's Office public corruption unit, which generally looks at cases involving public officials. None of the prostitution ring's clients were named, but the 47-page document detailed the ring's dealings with 10 of them -- identified only as Clients 1 through 10.

On pages 26 through 31, "Client 9" -- who law enforcement officials say is Spitzer -- was caught on a wiretap on Feb. 12 and Feb. 13, ordering a tryst with a prostitute at Washington's Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

"Yup. Same as in the past, no question about it," Client 9 told a booking agent, when asked if he had sent cash to the same place as he did in the past, the court papers say.

When told he would be meeting the prostitute known as "Kristen" Client 9 said, "Great, OK, wonderful."

Later, he couldn't remember what Kristen looked like, and asked the agent to remind him, the papers say. "An American petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches and 105 pounds," the booking agent, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, said on the recorded call.

Court papers said Spitzer paid the call girl $4,300 in cash. He spent the next morning on Capitol Hill, doing an early television interview on CNBC and testifying before Congress about a crisis in the bond insurance market.

Three weeks later, Spitzer got the news that he was in trouble. On Friday, March 7, a federal official told him that a complaint against the call-girl ring had been filed and that he was implicated. Spitzer learned about it sometime between smiling for cameras as he doled out $5 million to downtown small businesses and attending a forum about the future of education in America.

It wasn't clear if he read the complaint, or the five pages that outlined Client 9's trip to Washington. But on Saturday, Spitzer hopped a plane back to Washington for the 123rd annual Gridiron Club dinner, a party for journalists and political personalities.

The governor, in white tie and tails, was at the top of the event's A-list. He spent the night mingling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, filmmaker Ken Burns and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Spitzer appeared to be in a good mood, watching President Bush in a cowboy hat singing a parody about the "brown, brown grass of home" back in Texas. He chatted cheerfully with Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr. and several others, including John Daniszewski, the AP's international editor.

"It seemed like he didn't have a care in the world," Daniszewski said.

During the dinner, a Spitzer aide received repeated cell phone calls from a New York Times reporter wanting to speak with the governor. The reporter, Danny Hakim, wouldn't tell the aide why.

Spitzer's staff assumed the call was about the "Troopergate" scandal that had so damaged the first year of his term, in which two ex-aides were accused of using the state police to compile records to embarrass state's top Republican, Sen. Joseph Bruno.

The governor said nothing.

Sunday morning's rain, high winds and snow canceled his flight home. Spitzer took a long drive back to his Manhattan apartment with his state police security detail.

After breaking the news to his family, Spitzer told his closest advisers, Lloyd Constantine and Richard Baum, to get to his apartment as soon as possible. He called them around 7 p.m. The small group huddled at his home until midnight.

Spitzer thought his career was over, said aides, all speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. Constantine and Spitzer's wife urged him not to resign right away.

"He thought he should resign from the very beginning," one aide said. "It was really family and others' suggestion that he should hang on."

Monday morning, the pain was sinking in. Spitzer's sister Emily, an accomplished attorney, visited. A half-dozen personal and political advisers were told. So was Michele Hirshman, a criminal defense attorney and his former deputy attorney general.

His public schedule was canceled, until early afternoon, when Spitzer -- aware the Times was close to posting a story about the probe -- scheduled a 2:15 p.m. announcement at his midtown Manhattan office.

At about 2 p.m., the headline that flashed across the top of the Times' Web site said it all: "Spitzer linked to prostitution ring."

More than an hour later, a pale, watery-eyed Spitzer took his wife before national television cameras, bit his lip and apologized.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my -- or any -- sense of right and wrong," he said. Statehouse staffers crowded television screens and hung on to his every word.

"I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better."

He didn't say what he was apologizing for, or what he would do next. He left the microphone after a minute. He was back in his apartment a half-hour later and didn't leave for two more days.

It took less than an hour for the first Republican to call for his resignation; others soon talked of impeachment. No Democrat came forward to defend him.

On Wall Street, where Spitzer built his reputation as a crusader against shady practices and overly generous pay, cheers erupted on the trading floor Monday. Many financial industry types thought the "Sheriff of Wall Street" was a holier-than-thou bully who overzealously ruined too many careers.

By Tuesday, more details had seeped out. A law enforcement official said Spitzer was a repeat customer of the Emperors Club, paying up to $80,000 over an extended period.

Serious criminal charges were possible: soliciting sex; violating the Mann Act, the 1910 federal law that makes it a crime to induce someone to cross state lines for immoral purposes; and illegally arranging cash transactions to conceal their purpose.

The public humiliation grew worse by the minute. Newspapers plastered photos of Spitzer next to his sad-eyed wife across front pages under headlines like "Pay for Luv Gov," and "Eliot and the Call Girl." Late-night comedians devoted entire monologues to the scandal.

Spitzer remained secluded in his apartment, talking occasionally to a defense team that included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's attorney, Ted Wells. Hirshman spent hours with federal prosecutors learning more about the case.

Spitzer and family, holed up on Fifth Avenue, hardly ate or slept.

Silda Wall Spitzer stopped telling him not to resign, aides said. A small number of Democrats urged him to fight on.

"If the public is fine, he'll stay," one Democrat said on Tuesday.

It wasn't. One poll said 70 percent of the state wanted him to resign. Several staffers, particularly women, were outraged. Some, true believers who had endured 14 tumultuous months of his first term, said the news was as traumatic as if their own spouse had been snared in the ring.

By Wednesday morning, it was almost over. A macabre motorcade, this time broadcast live on national television, carried the Spitzers back to midtown Manhattan, to the same conference room as two days ago, this time packed with more reporters.

Spitzer was ready. Calmly reading from prepared remarks, without his trademark rapid-fire bravado, Spitzer ended his career. By noon Monday, Lt. Gov. David Paterson would assume power, becoming the first black governor of New York.

"Over the course of my public life I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself," Spitzer said.

"For this reason I am resigning from the office of governor."

Silda Wall Spitzer, dark circles under her eyes, stood a few inches farther from him than on Monday. The closest person to Spitzer and the first to learn of his secret stared blankly into space.

"It wasn't real to me," one close aide said, "until I saw her face."

AP-ES-03-15-08 1207EDT