"Unless your shirt doesn't have a yoke. Then you start with the collar." I placed the shirt on the ironing board and explained the strategy: the yoke, followed by the collar, then the cuffs, the two sleeves, and finally the body of the garment.

He watched with care until I'd finished the shirt and buttoned it onto a wire hanger. I handed him a second shirt from the basket and had him try his hand. He was slow and a bit clumsy, but he did a credible job for his first time out. He seemed pleased with himself, and I had a brief vision of him whipping through the entire basket of ironing as the afternoon wore on. He turned off the iron, moved the basket aside, and gestured me into a chair.

As soon as we were seated, he said, "Now. What can I tell you about Frankie, aside from the fact he's the biggest punk who ever lived?"

"How long did he work for you?"

"Six months. Drunk most days; incompetent the rest."

"Did you hire him or did your business partner?"

"I don't have a partner."

"I thought your company was called R&R Painting. I figured it was your brother, your son, or your dad."

"No, no. It's just me. I put that other R in there to reassure the public. One-man painting company, people worry you don't have the man-power to get the job done. This way I give the estimate and get the contract signed and then when it turns out it's just me, well, what's it to them. I'm fast, I'm thorough, and I'm meticulous."

"How'd you end up hiring Frankie?"

"Did someone a favor. Biggest mistake I ever made. This fellow knew Frankie's brother and he asked me if I'd give him a job. He'd just gotten out of jail and no one else would take a chance. I wasn't all that crazy about the idea myself, but I'd just taken on a big project and I was desperate for help."

"What year was this?"

"Between Christmas of'68 and the summer of '69. He claimed he had I experience but that was a lie. Worst excuse for a helper you ever saw, I him and that friend of his. It's people like that give prison a bad name."

"What friend?"

"Clifton. Big guy. Had a funny first name..."

"Pudgie."

Lennie pointed at me. "Him."

"I didn't realize Frankie and Pudgie were such buddies back then."

"Were when they worked for me."

That was an unexpected nugget of information. I couldn't wait to tell Stacey, though for the moment I wasn't sure what it meant anything. "From what you said earlier, I gather Frankie filed some kind of worker's comp claim. Was he injured on the job?"