King is fixated on dying. Everyone is, to some degree, but not like him. Shawn King, his seventh wife, told me that Larry talks so much about his demise that he started to upset their teenage sons, and she had to tell him to knock it off. ‘‘He kept saying, ‘Listen, I’m not going to be around much longer, boys,’ ’’ Shawn said. ‘‘ ‘Whatever you do, don’t let your mother put me in a home.’ ’’ Recently, Larry and Shawn met with some insurance and lawyer types to go over their family trust. They were talking about his will and who got what and the tax ramifications. ‘‘After about 20 minutes, I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ ’’ Larry told me. ‘‘I won’t be here when this happens. I won’t exist. Everything in that conversation had nothing to do with me.’’

‘‘Let me tell you the story about the first night I spent with Angie,’’ King told me, referring to the actress Angie Dickinson, the star of ‘‘Police Woman.’’ King loves telling people, including me (three times), that he used to go out with her. Dickinson would seem the pinnacle of the former Larry Zeiger’s ‘‘look how far I’ve come’’ routine.

The morning after his ‘‘night with Angie,’’ King called his best friend from growing up, Herb Cohen. ‘‘Guess where the hell I am, Herbie?’’ King said. ‘‘I’m at Angie Dickinson’s house!’’ That’s the whole story.

‘‘This wouldn’t be for print,’’ King told me. ‘‘Or, I don’t know, maybe it would be for print. You tell me?’’