Sandy Lewis, the former Wall Street arbitrageur and son of Cy Lewis, the onetime senior partner at Bear Stearns, first met Leslie Wexner in the early 1980s when he was dispatched by Milton Petrie, another retailing mogul, to Columbus, Ohio. Petrie wanted to buy the Limited from Wexner, its founder and now the subject of much speculation because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, convicted of sex with minors in 2008 and newly accused of sex trafficking, a charge to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Lewis and Wexner met alone in Wexner’s office. “We talked and it got very personal,” Lewis remembered. Finally, Wexner asked Lewis if he thought Wexner should sell the Limited to Petrie. Lewis told him no, which surprised Wexner since Lewis was working for Petrie to buy the company, now known as L Brands, from Wexner. Lewis said he didn’t think Wexner would enjoy working for Petrie. “I don’t think this guy is very good to people,” Lewis told Wexner.

The conversation had been very frank, and at the end, Wexner asked if there was anything else Lewis wanted to say. In fact, there was, Lewis recalled. “Get your mother out of her office across the hall,” Lewis told him. “Why is she there? Does she help you run this business or is she just a pain in the ass? I’m pretty direct. And I said, Les, I don’t have a good feeling about this, and your sister too…. I was being direct. And he knew what I was saying…. You’re a good guy, I like you. I don’t sense you as a troubled individual but if you keep your mother around here, God knows what that’s doing to you. Get her out of here. Just forget it.”

It was an odd first conversation, to be sure, but the two men hit it off. They were the same age, and Jewish men of the same class. They had a dinner a few times together in New York City. Wexner visited Lewis’s home, then in New Jersey, and met his wife and children. (Wexner did not respond to a request for comment.)

At one point, in April 1982, Lane Bryant Inc., the largest retailer for plus-size women’s apparel, announced that the Malsin family, which controlled the company, was taking it private in an $88 million leveraged buyout. As an arbitrageur operating his own eponymous firm, Lewis accumulated some of the stock of Lane Bryant, as would have been standard practice in those days in a takeover situation.

And then Lewis had the idea that maybe Wexner would want to buy Lane Bryant, upending the family’s plan to take it private. He called Wexner, who was immediately interested in the idea. “Les,” Lewis told him, “this takes real dedication. If you’re going to bust up a transaction like this, you’ve got to step to the plate and do whatever you have to do.” Wexner was on board. But the next day, Lewis was fired; he thinks another Limited C-suite executive blackballed him. The day after that, however, Wexner reinstated him on the deal.

They went full steam ahead to buy Lane Bryant, using a tender offer to buy stock in the marketplace. Time was of the essence and Lewis worked all weekend with the lawyers to prepare the tender offer, to put an advertisement in the newspaper about the offer and to launch the bid on Monday morning. Everything was set. All Lewis needed was Wexner’s final approval. But Wexner was nowhere to be found. “It’s Sunday and I cannot find Wexner no matter where I call,” Lewis said. Lewis was panicking. Through his friend James Robinson III, he arranged for American Express to provide a $100 million line of credit to support the tender offer. Finally, late Sunday night Wexner called him back. How are things, he wanted to know. “What you’ve done is piss me off,” Lewis told him.