My favorite manipulation story involves Frank Bolz. Now you’ve probably never heard of Frank, but within the world of hostage negotiation, the man is a god. He was a pioneer and an inspiration for most of us who followed him. There are a bunch of incredible Frank Bolz stories floating around, and they’re all true.

Frank had his team up in the city one time, trying to get a hostage taker out of an apartment. It had been a ball-busting night, and now dawn was breaking. He sensed that he just about had the guy out . . . but as we know, that last 1 percent of trust he needed can be the most elusive of all. So he decided he needed to do something to get the guy in the right frame of mind.

What to do, what to do . . .

Frank thought about it for quite a while, as he tells it, and then finally sprang into action. He sent a pretty perplexed young cop to the corner grocery store for a pound of bacon. In the meantime, he found and set up a little propane grill in the hallway outside the barricaded apartment. Within a few minutes of the cop’s return, the hallway was filled with the toasty smell of bacon crackling in the pan.

“We’re having breakfast out here,” Frank told the guy inside. “You oughta come out. . . .”

He did.