It was a muggy summer's day when two men were driving in a blue Dodge coupé across the Triborough Bridge, past the futuristic World's Fair Pavilion, heading to Long Island. Soon they were passing fruit stands, vineyards, and humble farmhouses along the mostly unpaved Route 25. The driver of the car, wispy-voiced and unprepossessing like a small-town pharmacist in a pair of steel-rimmed glasses, listened patiently to "The General", the pudgy but intense curly-haired man in the passenger seat, sweating in his gray wool suit. Deep in heated conversation, the two men became lost. They drove for over an hour around the South Shore, but their destination was on the North Shore, in Peconic. They were still debating what to do next when they made an almost random turn, and thus did not see the truck until it was too late....