When politicos play musical chairs in Illinois, what happens after the music stops and there's no safe place to sit?

There have been four dead in recent years, unrelated cases of suicide, different except for the acts of the common pageant: The corruption investigators call. The music ends abruptly.

Two were done in by guns, one on a beach, the other under a bridge. A third was by pills in a construction trailer.

The fourth came Friday morning during rush hour, announced by that body under that white sheet on the Metra tracks in McHenry County.

The flesh once belonged to Phil Pagano. For the past 20 years, Pagano was the respected boss of Metra, the commuter rail agency that, unlike the Chicago Transit Authority, actually keeps the trains running on time.

Over the past week or so, Pagano was under siege, facing investigations both federal and local, suspected of finagling a bonus of more than $50,000 by finessing vacation time, among other things.

He'd been placed on administrative leave. Metra was about to drop the bureaucratic hammer on him, publicly, on Friday.

So just before 8 a.m., the 60-year-old drove to the Metra rail line near his Crystal Lake home. He parked his car and walked out into the middle of the tracks in front of an oncoming train.

In his pocket was found a final mocking gesture flipped at the organization that was about to humiliate him:

It was a Metra manual on how to handle service disruptions in the event of a suicide.

I'm not saying Pagano was an innocent victim, but he was person with a title and consequence. He was a headliner.

Each of the four politicos had connections and influence, but they weren't big players. They were prominent suits out front.

But true power is reserved only for a few. Such people never become anxious when the calliope music starts cranking. They've got other people to run around the empty chairs. These folks are called buffers.

Like Orlando Jones.

Jones, 52, was the godson of the late South Side political boss John Stroger, working in Cook County government and later as a lobbyist. Stroger ran the Cook County Board for Mayor Richard Daley until suffering a stroke, when Stroger's son Todd was installed by the Daley machine.

Jones had been questioned by federal investigators in connection with state pension investment deals involving Republican and Democratic insiders, and shady hospital contracts in Las Vegas.

He shot himself on a Michigan beach in 2007. The gun was found next to the body.

Christopher Kelly didn't have a buffer. Christopher Kelly was a buffer.

He belonged to indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and was indebted to those in Daley's administration who understand multimillion-dollar airport construction contracts.

Kelly, 51, part of Blagojevich's inner circle, had been convicted in a kickback scheme involving roofing contracts at O'Hare International Airport. He was under indictment in the Blagojevich corruption case scheduled for trial in June, and was under enormous pressure to testify.

Kelly ended his days in a seedy construction trailer in the south suburbs in September 2009. He used pills. "Tell them they won," Kelly is reported to have said to his girlfriend as he was retching on the way to the hospital.

Blagojevich appeared theatrically at Kelly's funeral, after first having a press agent issue a media advisory announcing that Blago would grieve publicly for the cameras to see.

Even stone cold, Kelly remained useful. Blagojevich tried to transform the Kelly suicide into a cudgel with which to pummel the prosecution's case against him.

But last week, U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel ruled that Kelly's decision to take himself out would not be a story for the jury to hear.

The third suicide belonged to Michael Scott.

He didn't have a buffer, either. Scott, 60, spent his career as a buffer.

The longtime Chicago Board of Education president and Daley team player was under scrutiny by investigators and reporters for real estate deals and running up extravagant charges on his school board credit card.

In November 2009, hours before dawn, Scott crawled under a bridge along the Chicago River. Out of sight of surveillance cameras, Scott shot himself in the head, authorities said.

And on Friday, it was Phil Pagano's turn.

Metra issued a statement of concern and regret. Similar dry statements were issued after the other deaths as well.

"Phil served this agency with distinction for many years," it read. "Today we shall remember the good work he achieved with our board of directors and the men and women of Metra."

The sympathetic statement made no mention of Friday's scheduled Metra board meeting, where Pagano likely would have been humiliated, then fired.

Such statements are sterile things. They are the work of committees, of public relations people, of clerks. There is no blood in them.

There is no shame in such statements. And no rage, the rage of the politico who realizes that everyone gets a seat but him.

There is none of that dull acceptance that must come at the end, that terrible clarity that arrives as the music stops.

jskass@tribune.com