The legend of Rahm Emanuel, who has just accepted an offer to become Barack Obama's chief of staff, begins with a missing finger and a dead fish.
Washington buzz has long had it that Emanuel, 48, lost half a finger on his right hand to a bomb while serving in the Israeli army. Emanuel is also said to have mailed a smelly dead fish to a campaign pollster unlucky enough to upset him.
The bomb-blast anecdote is entirely untrue - Emanuel, who has been the No 3 Democrat in the US House of Representatives since last year, severed his finger in a childhood meat-slicing accident. The widely reported rotting fish tale has never been confirmed.
But those colourful stories are a vital part of the take-no-prisoners image Emanuel has crafted for himself during more than two decades in politics. And his volunteer service in Israel during the 1990s Gulf War is no fiction, with the Jewish press hailing Emanuel's ascension as a sign that Israel will have its own man in the Obama White House.
Though his combative reputation has won him acolytes and detractors in almost equal numbers, even Emanuel's critics admit that his political savvy and policy expertise make him a natural partner for Obama.
Like the president-elect, Emanuel is a Chicago native with a strong connection to the city's political elite. He and Obama also have both inspired characters on TV's The West Wing, with Emanuel providing the model for wunderkind aide Josh Lyman.
Emanuel was among the earliest converts to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992, serving as a senior fundraiser and strategist. His trademark, even then, was a brash style that often involved raised voices and profanity but also got difficult jobs done. When Tony Blair appeared with Clinton at the height of the Lewinsky sex scandal in 1998, Emanuel is reported to have offered a typically terse warning: "Don't fuck it up."