You can't always tell by the smell.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: Business North Carolina's Mover and Shaker of the Year, Bennett LeBow

Our Mover and Shaker of the Year took a bite, but RJR Nabisco wasn't ripe for the picking.

Br'er Hawk soared over the cornfield, not so much flying as riding the wind. Below him, perched on an old dead pine, sat Br'er Buzzard, head hanging low, nearly starved to death.

The hawk called out: "What you doing? Why ain't you up here like me, looking for your dinner? What you waiting on?"

The buzzard replied he was waiting for the Lord to provide. That caused Br'er Hawk to squawk. "When I get hungry," he said, "I kill me something." The buzzard shrugged, mumbling about all God's creatures not being alike.

But Br'er Hawk wasn't listening. He'd just spotted Br'er Rabbit sprinting along the edge of the field. He dived, and just as sharp talons were about to sink into soft fur, the rabbit leaped through the wire fence.

The hawk, all his senses fixed on his supper, didn't see the fence, didn't even know it was there until he hit it, breaking his neck.

Br'er Buzzard didn't say anything, just stared down at the dead hawk hung up in the wire. Finally, he raised his eyes to the sky. "Thank you, Lord. As soon as Br'er Hawk stinks up a little, I'll go over there and eat my fill."

Bennett LeBow has been called a lot of things - "radioactive," "third-tier wheeler-dealer," "minor-league bottom-fisher" (all those in the first two paragraphs of a Business Week story) - but perhaps the least flattering is "vulture investor."

If that's the case, you can't blame the Miami financier for what he wound up doing: After all, things sure stunk in the tobacco industry in 1996.

Not only did the feds announce they were going to start regulating nicotine as a drug, but Clinton and Co. jumped on the issue, whipped it raw and rode it hard all the way back to the White House. Among the multitude suing cigarette companies was the Marlboro Man's widow, who claimed all that lighting up brought him down with lung cancer. There was even a study indicating that smoking might cause old folks to go blind, the way they used to say masturbation would young boys.

One of the few bright spots for the industry was that, after decades of decline, the percentage of Americans puffing had increased. That probably heartened the trial lawyers as much as anybody: It just deepened the potential plaintiff pool.

Bennett S. LeBow, wheeler-dealer, controls Brooke Group Ltd., which owns Durham-based Liggett Group Inc., maker of such marginal brands as Eve and Chesterfield. He bought a big stake in RJR...