It is as iconic an image from the criminal underworld as the Tommy gun or the getaway car, a grim last act for the unfortunate soul whose life is about to end in a new pair of footwear.

Cement shoes.

One would be hard-pressed to think of a worse way to die than being fitted, as the saying goes, for cement shoes — fate hardening with every passing minute until the time comes to be dumped, feet first, into a watery grave, never to be seen again.

Never again — that is the whole point, and it is exactly why cement shoes are the unicorn of true crime. Everyone can describe them, but who has seen them?

Before Monday, precious few. Which makes the discovery that morning in Brooklyn of a cement-shoed corpse all the more remarkable.