Paulie was in a bar drinking long-necks when he overheard two old men. The conversation was mostly about money.

What Paulie didn’t realize was that the two old men were doing what lots of guys do — sitting around lying to each other about things that don’t matter.

One old guy gets up to leave and Paulie follows him. As the old man reaches for his car keys, Paulie approaches him, "Okay, old man, give me those big bucks you been talking about."

The old guy is bewildered. "I don’t have much money, but you can have what I’ve got," and he reaches for his wallet. Paulie panics and fires a shot from his 9 mm semi-automatic.

The homicide case is assigned to Detective Derrell. He collects a list of inmates recently released from prison who’d served time for armed robbery. Then he builds a manila file folder with six mug shots of the most likely suspects.

With the mug shot lineup in hand, Derrell goes to the bar where the old man was last seen. After a few word games, the bartender identifies the old man, now dead, and one of the six recently released convicts who was in the bar the same night. Not surprisingly, that ex-convict is Paulie.

Derrell soon locates Paulie in another bar and convinces him to come to headquarters for some meaningful conversation. Paulie, of course, denies any knowledge of the old man’s murder.

"I ain’t signin’ no statement," Paulie says, "cause I didn’t do nothin’ — I never seen that old man before in my life."

"Is that a fact?" says Derrell. "Then how come your picture was the last image on the back of the old man’s eyes?"

Paulie feels a sudden chill. "What eyes?"

Derrell looks Paulie straight in the face. "Any idiot knows that the last person anybody sees at the moment of death is fused on the retina in the back of the eyes. The coroner made me a print from the old man’s eyes at the moment of death — you’re it, Paulie. That’ll be enough to give you a needle — unless you decide to help us out here with a written statement. No guarantee — but maybe we can save your worthless skin."

Paulie actually believes Derrell’s fairy tale and signs a confession. It’s a good thing the courts ruled that cops can "exaggerate" to suspects during interrogation.