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Jerry’s stomach always knew when his wife Keisha was due to pick him up for lunch. It started growling at 12:45, and at 12:55 he got the text: “Here in front.” Finally, he thought.
He saved his work on his computer, locked up the office, and walked carefully down the three flights of stairs to the lobby of his office building. Once about a year ago he lost his balance and almost fell down the stairs, so now he made sure to keep his hand on the stairway railing at all times.
Spotting Keisha’s car in the parking lot, he got in the front passenger seat and kissed her hello. They’d repeated this routine thousands of times in the twenty-one years since Jerry opened his accounting office and Keisha took off from teaching first grade for what was supposed to be a year to help him start the business. One year quickly turned into twenty-one years, during which Keisha continued to handle Jerry’s accounts receivable and payable in the afternoons after lunch.
“Where to?” Jerry asked.
“Wherever you want,” Keisha replied.
“I can eat anything.”
“Me too -- except I need a good meal after my workout class this morning.”
“Mexican?”
“More than chips and salsa.”
“Italian?”
“I’m thinking the bistro.”
“Works for me.”
So Keisha drove to the bistro.
(...)
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it’s in the blood and not the hand: the corrupt blood of great great grandmassa freret through great grandpa cleo and grandpa cleo and paps and then me; the empty hand to which grandmassa bequeathed some of his fortune to be stolen by his other (white) line under the law by which the court declared null and void the will and legacy to cleo because cleo’s mother grandmassa’s daughter was grandmassa’s slave, so the hand is empty -- empty of that fortune but not of that blade with which this disinherited one drew the same blood from three of the heirs of that other (all-white) line in the dark of one sweet morning in the same garden district mansion where grandmassa bed his house slave great great grandma mildred who then in the same mansion birthed the first cleo to whom was bequeathed the blood and the ultimately stolen fortune: hence the hand the blood the corrupt blood in these veins i let onto the floor of the block screaming “it’s in the blood! it’s in the blood!” and so they took away the blade and again the hand is empty and still the blood is corrupt
Friday was motion day in Judge Dupart's division of Civil District Court. On Friday morning from about nine to nine-thirty, the Judge typically reviewed the docket sheet prepared by her docket clerk, Wenona, and the hearing notes prepared by her law clerk, William. Judge Dupart took the bench at nine-thirty.
On this particular Friday morning, Judge Dupart arrived at her chambers at about nine-fifteen. Hurriedly she scanned the docket sheet, particularly the names of the attorneys appearing in support of and in opposition to the various motions. Many of the names were familiar to her, like James Sitwell, a partner in the downtown defense firm, Moore Sitwell, which had maxed its contribution to her second election campaign, although the firm had supported her opponent in the first campaign. Sitwell's opposing counsel, George Saia, had three strikes against him: she didn't know him, he was from St. James Parish, and he was a sole practitioner. Even if he had money, he probably wouldn't contribute to a campaign in an Orleans Parish election, so he hardly counted. Judge Dupart circled Sitwell's name on the docket sheet.
On the third page of the docket sheet, number 33, "Helwig vs. Bergeron," the name Harold Harris got the Judge's attention. Not only was Harris a partner in a big downtown firm which had supported her in both elections, but he also was a former federal prosecutor who made regular appearances on the (...)
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During the long days of summer, Tara seized every available opportunity to leave work early and drive to the Pier 90 Bar & Boat Launch on Bayou Verret to rent a pirogue and fish for bass. Today she had no pressing deadlines, and the weather was perfect for fishing with an overcast sky and light southeast winds. So at 4:30 she left her law office on Canal Street in New Orleans, and by 5:30 she was pulling into the shell parking lot at Pier 90 in Luling. There she took her duffel bag out of the trunk and went into the barroom to pay and change into the fishing clothes she always kept in the car along with her fishing pole, tackle bag, and pistol.
In the barroom, two people sat drinking and smoking in the shadows at one end of the long bar while “Midnight Rider” played on the jukebox. Larry, the owner and bartender, stood behind the bar at the other end watching the news on a nineteen-inch TV with the volume blaring. There were no windows, but two large window air-conditioning units were installed and running in cutouts near the tops of two of the walls.
Tara went over to Larry and set the duffel bag down on a stool, then took a ten-dollar bill out of her wallet and handed it to him. “Pirogue, paddle, and life jacket,” she said over the TV, jukebox, and air conditioners. Larry rang it up and placed a five on the bar. “Keep it,” Tara said. “How they biting?”
“Thanks George,” Larry said as he picked up the five. (...)
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Afterword on the Surviving Works of Jack Strange by Morris E. Jackson, Esq.
A client who prefers to remain anonymous retained me to manage the literary estate of a close relative. The relative, who died in 2017 at the age of 59 in a high-speed car crash, left an olographic will bequeathing the copyrights in a number of original literary and musical works to the client and her siblings, and naming the client as his literary executor. Although the decedent had worked only as a biegnet cutter at Morning Call in New Orleans since he was 15 years old (despite earning a law degree in the interim), he’d managed to create a plausible literary estate under the pseudonym “Jack Strange.”
The will directs the client to the location of an encrypted file on the decedent's computer containing a folder entitled "Complete Works of Jack Strange.” According to the will, the folder contains subfolders entitled “Autobiography,” “Novels,” “Poems,” "Screenplays,” “Songs,” and “Stories,” and these subfolders contain “at least” one autobiography, eleven novels, 926 poems, seven screenplays, 1216 files of recordings, sheet music, and song lyrics, and 167 short stories and children’s stories, respectively. The encrypted file has the extension .afp and is 34.4 gigabytes in size.
The will further directs the client to the secret location of a paper document containing the password necessary to open the encrypted file on the decedent’s computer. However, neither the client, nor I, nor our IT (...)
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