Bryant case's quiet end another rich guy dodge.

You didn't hear much about the end of the Kobe Bryant rape case. But then, crying is more interesting than check writing.

Crying brings out the TV cameras and the breathless reporters and the 100-point headlines and the interrupted evening newscasts. Cuing sells, and there was plenty of crying when this saga began, Kobe in tears, next to his wife, lamenting his terrible "mistake," the young woman who accused him, reportedly in tears, not only over having her idol treat her like a hooker, but over the way outsiders ridiculed her, leading her to drop out of college and move from town to town.

Crying gets our interest. Jail time gets our interest. A hero falling from grace, facing prison, all over the jackpot of tongue-wagging news junkies--sex--that gets our interest.

But check writing? Settling out-of-court? Where's the ratings in that? Perhaps this explains why the other week, buffed on the inside pages of newspapers, under no glaring lights, far from a police station or a courtroom or a bed, Kobe Bryant wrote a check to the woman he allegedly raped and she presumably cashed it.

And both swore to never speak of it again.

Now that's a real Hollywood ending.

Problem is, nobody learns anything from it. The only lesson is that if you've got enough money, your problems can be solved.

"In Kobe Bryant terms, the check will be small," a Denver trial lawyer named Larry Pozner said. In the accuser's "terms, the check will be gigantic. Kobe just bought her a home."

Great. So what we learned is that Kobe has more money than she does? We didn't learn if the man who made millions passing himself off as a smiling, all-around good guy forced a woman barely out of high school to submit to him an hour after they'd met.

We didn't learn if this woman was a hussy of the youngest and worst kind, scheming to pin her troubles on Bryant and walk away rich.

By writing a check, Bryant avoids ever having to go on record with what happened that night in Colorado. But accepting the check, the woman surrenders what her lawyers once claimed was her only interest, to see a rapist brought to justice.

The only for-the-record accounting of this was Bryant's statement when the accuser dropped her criminal case last fall. Kobe said, "I now understand how she sincerely feels that she did not consent to this encounter."

As confessions go, this is not much more than, "I admit I was in the room." It proves nothing. It means nothing. The woman, now married and pregnant less than two years after the alleged rape--and you can imagine how public opinion would view that--took the money and zipped her lips.

And Kobe never missed a game.

That's a real Hollywood ending. The lawyers meet. Figures get tossed around. A check is written. On a week when Martha Stewart emerges from jail and walks straight back to two TV shows, a week when Bernie Ebbers, former head of WorldCom, tells jurors he didn't even understand technology, a week when Kobe writes a check and is done with it, we're not doing a bang-up job in the punishment-no-matter-who-you-are category.

Something terrible still may have happened here. But don't expect to hear about it. They say you can't buy or sell morality, but you can buy and sell silence. They just did.

Mitch Albom is the author of the bestsellers "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" and "Tuesdays With Morrie."