The terminator, too.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: Bankruptcy auctioneer Manny Fisher

Manny Fisher tells the white-haired man turning the key in the front door: "We're not trying to pry, you understand. We're just doing what the court makes us do."

As the door swings open, the textile executive steps aside, and Fisher's assistant and second wife, Donna Sims-Fisher, steps in pen and pad in hand.

The living room could serve as a set for a Doris Day movie -- neat as a pin and frozen in the '50s. It doesn't look like the home of a man who just filed for bankruptcy.

Sims-Fisher goes right to work, itemizing the house's contents chair by chair, end table by end table, curio by curio. Fisher does his best to make small talk, but he doesn't get any help. Long stretches of silence ensue, punctuated by the jingling of the man's huge ball of keys.

For a while, the executive follows Sims-Fisher's every movement as she checks out the trademarks on the china and peers under tables to see whether they're antiques or reproductions. Finally, with a long sigh, he sinks into an easy chair that's already been put on her list. Fisher sets off to explore the rest of the house.

Twenty tense minutes later, the family's heirlooms, keepsakes and other possessions have been reduced to three yellow legal sheets of close writing. Before the night's over, they will be distilled into a single sum -- about $30,000.

After poking around in everything from a cabinet full of Christmas ornaments to a furnace room that once served as a dog-house, Fisher asks if there's an attic. "Just some pull-down stairs out in the carport," the man says. "You'll find nothing but old clothes up there."

"Mind if I have a look?" Fisher asks. Though 70, he scrambles up the stairs for a quick survey. Sure enough, just old clothes.

Then, when their '89 Lincoln Continental (bought out of a bankruptcy) has pulled out of the oak-shadowed neighborhood onto a busy Gastonia boulevard, Sims-Fisher admits, "Manny's done it so long, it doesn't bother him. It still gets to me."

"Everybody looks at me and say, 'Boy, you have to do that? It's terrible,'" Fisher shoots back. "I'm not responsible for this man's actions. He certainly did something wrong somewhere along the line. You never know. I just don't let my emotions enter into it. I'm an agent of the court."

As an appraiser and auctioneer who specializes in the art of the speedy liquidation, Manny Fisher is the last man a business owner wants to see knocking on his door. He's an expert at picking up the pieces of companies and lives shattered by financial ruin and selling them off piece by piece to the highest bidders.

For instance, when Charlotte apartment developer Steve Walsh filed for personal bankruptcy, it was Fisher who auctioned off the rights to buy 10 of his Hornets' tickets--for $97,500. Fisher's cut? Tne percent. But Manuel Fisher is no stonyhearted, grasping Shylock, say his friends and associates.

"You'd think he'd wear a black hat," says the Rev. James Sessoms, director of Operation Reach Out, a Monroe charity. "But instead, he's very caring and has tremendous sympathy and understanding for the individual."

Talk to those who know him best, and they'll tell you: Manny's a mensch.

Fisher was born in Charleston, W. Va. -- his mother, a Russian emigrant, his father, a barber and hairdresser. When Fisher was 9, his father broke his leg and lost the beauty shop. The...