“The model brought out the picnic basket. The lady was maybe even more angry than before, getting tired of being the butt of a boring joke, and started to walk away again. Then Edwards hollered, ‘Hey, don’t go away mad, Martha, there’s something else in here.’ The woman ran back a third time and watched Jeff Edwards pull yet another card from the box. Then Jeff said to the woman, ‘This card says that you can put that picnic basket with the ham sandwich inside it…guess where? Can’t guess. Well, Martha, you can put the ham sandwich and the picnic basket…into the trunk of your very own…brand-new Ford Mustang convertible!!’

“The woman went down face-first like a tree. I mean like a tree. She ended up flat out on the floor, her face mushed into filthy camera cables and sticky candy wrappers. The surprise of the new convertible killed her dead.”

The old cripple had the producer’s undivided attention.

And then the old cripple started coughing again. Goddamn it, he thought, what a time to start this.

Stifling his cough as best he could but barely able to regain his composure, the cripple continued talking because he had to. He knew the producer’s attention was finally focused on him and his idea. Fighting to regain his breath, he went on. “Like I said,” he gasped, “when the lady contestant…was told she had just won…a brand-new Mustang convertible…she went down like a tree.” The cripple paused to try to breathe normally, gave up, and continued. “I was standing…right behind our director…John Dorsey…and heard him…frantically yell to his cameramen…‘Pan up…pan up, guys!’ through the intercom…Get your cameras…the hell outta there! We don’t want to show…a…a…dead woman on our program!’

“‘Keep those cameras…right where they are…John!’…I yelled back on the intercom. ‘Don’t you move a thing…Just keep those cameras…glued to that corpse.’

“Nice, churchgoing John Dorsey…turned in his swivel seat, looked up at me…and said, ‘The poor woman’s a corpse…and she’s lying…on top of trash…and dirty camera cables!’

“And I said, ‘I don’t give a damn…if she’s lying on dog turds…Don’t move those cameras!’”

The old geezer paused to take a breath.

“I was sure the contestant was dead,” he continued, breathing better. “She didn’t move a muscle. A tail of the blouse she was wearing had pulled itself out of her Bermuda shorts and her bra strap had fallen farther down her right shoulder. I stood there in the control room dazed, wondering if it was a good thing or a bad thing to have a dead contestant on my television show. Would we get a lot of press? Would we be on the evening news? Would our show be talked about? Would it help Treasure Hunt’s ratings? All these questions were running through my mind a mile a minute, and all the while the contestant was still lying there on the studio floor, dead.”

The old cripple sat slumped in his straight-backed chair, exhausted. The producer wondered if he would be able to go on.