Part I        
 
The Fall of Harry Limburger      

        The biggest lumps fall the fastest, an anonymous gumshoe once said. That's the way it was with the biggest cheese in the Big Apple, the chunky lump they called Harry Limburger.
        One minute he was at the top of the food chain, a weasel in the henhouse of life, an elephant trampling the mice of commerce. The next minute, he stopped talking and fell face first into his soup.
        "Oddball," he said to me just before the fall. "You're a real oddball." The words hung suspended in the empty space between my ears, as bitter as the grounds in a cup of Cuban coffee. They left a sour taste in my mouth and cut me to the bone. Just who was this guy to call me an oddball? So look who was talking!