Detective

not even sure what I like, but I must say I was impressed. I think that even without having seen the security system, I would have known that the paintings on the walls were originals, the statues genuine, the antique pottery authentic, the gold pieces solid not plate, and the jewelry real.
    While I looked around, Leroy lowered himself into a wheelchair, and raised his broken right leg up onto the support in front of him. When he was settled, he turned to me, raised his hand in one flowing gesture to the couch, and said, “Please be seated.”
    A character study in three words and a gesture. The gesture was theatrical or regal, take your pick, but it was certainly grand. The voice was resonant, cultured, and refined. It had an almost British hint to it, which could have merely meant he was a foreigner from some British province, but somehow. I didn’t think so. Something about him said New York.
    I murmured, “Thank you, Mr. Williams,” and sat. Usually, I identify my clients by name as I come in the door to make sure I’m talking to the right person, and after that just call them “you,” but I just naturally called him Mr. Williams. In fact, it took an effort not to call him “Sir.”
    And he was not old, that is to say he was younger than me, perhaps somewhere around thirty-five. It’s hard to guess a man’s height and weight when he’s sitting in a wheelchair, but I guessed he was about my build, not too tall, not too short, not too fat, not too thin, just about average. His skin was chocolate brown. Bemused eyes, and a high, sloping forehead gave him an intellectual look which, coupled with his pattern of speech, made him remind me of a young Roscoe Lee Brown.
    I pulled myself together, took out my papers, and got down to the task. Leroy had been hit by a car. It turned out he had all the necessary information and more, including the name and address of the driver, license and license-plate numbers, driver’s insurance carrier, names and precinct number of the officers on the scene, and even the names and addresses of two witnesses. How he managed to get all that while lying in the street with a broken leg is beyond me, but he had it and, as I would have expected, he supplied it all succinctly and precisely.
    Things were going so well I was quite surprised when we bogged down on one of the simpler parts of the form. When I asked Leroy what his occupation was there was a long pause. I would not have been surprised to hear “Classics professor from Columbia University” or “New York Supreme Court judge,” but what Leroy actually said was “electrician.”
    I believe I gave him a look before writing “electrician” in the proper blank. Then I moved on to the question that I always hate to ask people, but which is a necessary part of the form.
    “And how much do you make as an electrician?” I asked him.
    This time Leroy gave me a look. “Why do you have to know that?”
    “For the suit,” I told him. “We want to show an earnings loss. You’re losing a lot of work with that broken leg. We can get the money back for you.”
    “I see,” he said. He didn’t look happy about it.
    There was another long pause, during which Leroy looked as if he were wrestling with something and trying to make up his mind.
    At length he sighed. “All right. Look. You’re a lawyer,” he said, making the usual assumption which, as usual, I did not jump in to correct. “I have to be honest with you, right?”
    “It’s not a bad idea,” I told him.
    “All right, then. I am not really an electrician.”
    “Oh? What are you?”
    “I’m a thief.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I’m a thief.”
    “A thief?”
    “Yes.” Leroy leaned back in his wheelchair and cocked his head in my direction. “And you see I have a terrible earnings loss because, now, if I were to steal something, I would not be able to get away.”
    I looked at him closely. He was smiling, and there was a twinkle in his eye, and for a moment I thought I knew what it meant. He was putting me on. His eyes were twinkling because he was not a thief, because everything he was telling me was a complete fabrication. I immediately realized this assumption was wrong. He was not putting me on. His eyes were twinkling because he was a thief, because everything he was telling me was absolutely true. And suddenly I realized I was talking to a person one usually meets only in works of fiction, a gentleman jewel thief, a modern day Arsène Lupin,