The cripple wore a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles stationed far down his nose. He still hadn’t shaved. He was dressed in a baggy wool sweater. The cripple’s neck seemed pencil thin surrounded by the sweater’s stretched and ragged collar. Dirty, droopy jeans hung precariously low on his hips. Sweat socks and brown leather Birken-stocks rounded out his ensemble. The producer was sure the cripple’s dirty sweat socks could walk away by themselves if they wanted to. And even though the cripple was inside his apartment, he had a woolen scarf wrapped around his neck.

“I get cold,” said the cripple, noticing the producer’s eyes. “I never used to get cold, but I do now. I never used to get a lot of things, but I do now. I never had gout. The big toe of my right foot. My back’s a disaster area. My arthritic thumbs hurt all the time. I have a bad hip. I have other pains. I have no idea where they come from. I’m afraid to ask my doctors. I learned that at eighty-one, going on eighty-two, you don’t ask doctors a thing. Besides, I don’t want to know. When you get to be my age you don’t want to know. You’ll see. Have a seat.” He waved his left arm, the one draped over the crutch, to one of the two chairs.

“I don’t have much time,” said the producer gruffly.

“What’s a crime?” said the cripple.

“What?”

“You said something was a crime?” said the cripple.

“I didn’t say…can we get on with—”

“Hey, I’ll bet you don’t remember who I was, do you,” announced the cripple, ignoring his guest’s apparent impatience. “You don’t. I can tell. You’re too young, I guess. What were you in the seventies and eighties? Five years old? Ten years old? You don’t remember a thing about—”

“Your name sounded familiar.”

“It sounded familiar, did it? Did you know I created and produced a bunch of hit TV game shows back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties? Or did I just say that? I just want you to understand I’m not some fly-by-night loon who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Also, before you leave this room, I promise you’ll be absolutely blown away by what you hear and see. That said, let’s get on with it.”

The cripple limped to the other empty chair, sat down next to the producer, and began his story.

The Empire Clothing Company was located on the third and fourth floors of the City Bank Building, a skyscraper that stood at the corner of Twentieth Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The cloth for the Empire Clothing Company’s suits was made in woolen mills in Philadelphia and Newark. The bolts of material were shipped to the factory’s third floor. The cutting of the patterns, stitching of the suits, and boxing and shipping of the finished product were done on that floor. That was where Billy and Luther something-or-other boxed the suits, on a long table by the shipping elevators.