Leon Krakover was deaf, but his disability was not a handicap to his entrepreneurial ambitions.
In the 1940s, the Chicago businessman built a million-dollar enterprise on backs of a small army of street peddlers who like him, were deaf and who exploited public sympathy for their disability to sell their wares and make their boss a fortune. Krakover's luck changed when the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf became outraged at his antics and expelled him from its ranks, leading to an expensive legal battle.
But his ghost has hung around and, like that of Banquo, has returned to spoil the dinner party thrown by Krakover's spiritual descendants, a Mexican immigrant family called the Paolettis.
For a couple of years, New York subway riders have grown used to deaf Mexicans disturbing them in their commuters' reverie by handing them cards explaining that they are handicapped and need to earn money by selling trinkets or key rings for US$1 (HK$7.74) apiece.
Although the practice is eyed suspiciously as little better than begging, the deaf peddlers have usually been given a warmer reception by passengers, if only because they seem far too shy to accost the riders as aggressively as the common-or-garden kind of panhandler. But although they have earned a good income from their subway trade, none of the scores of peddlers were ever given what they needed most of all: somewhere to run and hide.
Police raids last week finally awakened the city to the truth behind the sad lives of the deaf regiment. Over 50 of them were rescued from impossibly cramped conditions in two houses in Queens, where they told tales of mental and physical abuse, sexual harassment, and virtual slavery. Subsequent raids uncovered similar operations in North Carolina and Los Angeles.