The Circle of Life

I got a call from Julie just as we were leaving. She had found a bartender who had a portable full bar. For the three hours it was going to be an extra $200 over the amount Dad had paid. I told her the extra amount was no problem. I said I can give her a credit card over the phone and she said we can settle it after the celebration. I wondered to myself if I was actually going to need that credit card.

We stopped by the courthouse. The clerk looked at the paperwork and told us that the lawyer had called and everything was ready. Denise signed a shitload of documents, got a copy of the death certificate. I asked and paid for an extra 15 certified copies of the death certificate, so Denise could mail them to the credit card companies, the bank and so on.

The clerk nodded and told us it was a smart move that most people forgot and had to come back. He took my credit card, got us the copies, and said he was sorry for our loss and moved on to the next case.

With all of the arrangements made, I had the rest of the day to kill after Denise dropped me at the hotel. So I walked down and picked up my old friend JD from the liquor store and we had a good time.

It was a good thing Dad's Celebration was at 4pm. I had a massive hangover to cure before Denise picked me up at 3. But I was good, other than bloodshot eyes which I lied and said it was allergies to the dust in the hotel.

Everything was set up when we got there. Julie and her minions had done a great job. The 'green' room looked like a bar. There were small tables and chairs scattered around. Jake the bartender, was set up in one corner of the room. He had a good selection of wines, beers, liquors and mixers. I grabbed 4 fingers of the dog and we were ready.

The main room was bare except for the cutout of Dad, a simple round table with a black velvet runner and a small urn with a brass plaque with Dad's name, date of birth and death engraved on it. He would have loved it.

Julie and her most eloquent minion were stationed by the door. It turned out that they were needed. A lot of the people that stopped by were less than amused by Dad's sense of humor and several would have left in a huff if Julie or Greg had not intercepted and calmed them down.

Most people came in and had a token drink, but there were a few that stayed. These were the best. They were the ones that knew Dad and appreciated his quirkiness.

My favorite of Dad's cohorts was Alayna. She was probably about 80 years young and had a mouth that would make a sailor blush. She loved to tell stories about Dad. Especially of her booty calls on my Dad after her husband passed away. According to her, he didn't need the blue pills to bang her like a drum all night. Gawd, I hope I got those genes.

Most of the rest were poker pals or old work buddies that had the usual kinds of tales. They all said the same thing. Dad was a nice guy but real cut and dried. Everything was one way or the other and they all had stories of what happened if somebody crossed him.

There was one gentleman who sat by himself slowly nursing a scotch and water. The crowd, such as it was had thinned out. We were just about to wrap things up.

I had just walked Alayna to the door, gave her a big kiss and a swat on the butt, which earned me a "the apple don't fall far from the tree" comment and a big laugh. When I got back, he was the last person left.

"Pull up a chair," he said. "I know this is over but I have been waiting until I could get you alone. If we can't stay here for a while, we can find a bar or something. I have some things to tell you about your old man."

Intrigued, I sat down.

"My name is Leonard," he said after a big sip of the scotch. "I was your father's literary agent."

I am pretty sure there was a clunk when my chin hit the table. He politely ignored that and asked if he could get some more scotch. I waved at Jake and asked for the bottle of scotch.

Leonard continued once Jake retreated. Apparently the reason my mother kicked my father out of the house was that she found out that he had been writing porn stories, novels and screenplays for years. He started it as a lark about six months after the accident that put him on permanent disability.

He started off writing short stories and posting them on Usenet. He got contacted by a print house that wanted to publish his stories in a paperback book. They offered him a small sum of money and a small royalty for each book sold.

Dad almost told Mom about it, but then decided he would see what would come of it (no pun intended).

Three months later he had three checks in his hands. All three made out to his pen name and he couldn't cash them. That was where Leonard came in. He just happened to be in the bank behind Dad when Dad was arguing with the teller that he just wanted to deposit the checks and the teller was adamant that he couldn't because his name wasn't on the checks. Dad was screaming that it was his pen name. That he was a writer and this was the pen name he used when he wrote the stories. The teller told him to come back when he got the publisher to re-issue the checks in his own name.

As Dad left fuming, Leonard followed him and offered his services as a literary agent. Dad told him in no uncertain terms what he could do.

Leonard just told Dad to come down the street to this other bank and he would help take care of him.

Well Leonard apparently knew somebody in the bank and they created an account for him under his pen name and he deposited the first three checks and wrote a check to Leonard for 10%.

Leonard said that it had been profitable for both of them ever since. My father wrote several novels that sold reasonably well and wrote a number of adult screenplays for porn movies that payed even better.

Then Mom found out somehow.

When he got back from the bank his stuff was on the porch and the locks had been changed. Either it was a coincidence or I have been blaming the wrong parent all these years.

So he packed his stuff up in his car drove across town and got a furnished apartment. He changed his address so his social security checks and pension checks followed him and there he stayed. Writing porn and enjoying life (and Alayna and friends) until he died.

Leonard sucked down the last of the scotch in his glass and asked if he could keep the bottle. I laughed and said it was all his. He tipped two fingers to his forehead in salute and got up unsteadily.

"Before I go," he said reaching into his suit coat. "I took the liberty of changing the name and address on the royalty payments. I didn't know about you so I had them addressed to your sister. If you want, I can get them to split the amounts and send checks to each of you.

"They gave me the first one to pass along, but I don't see your sister, so could you give it to her?"

With that, he slid a check for $2500 across the table to me, along with one of his business cards.

I looked at them and asked, "By the way does he still have the other bank account, the one in his pen name?"

Leonard thought for a moment and said, "He probably does, since the checks were always in his pen name and he never complained about cashing them.

"But I don't know where it is now. The original bank was bought and that bank was bought and I don't have a clue what the name is now. In fact, I don't even remember the original bank's name."

He paused just before exiting the room, turned and said, "If I remember the name of the bank, I will let you know."

"Thanks," I said to myself as I looked down at the check, the card and a growing puddle of water sweating off the now empty glass.

I relieved Jake of a bottle of JD, and went looking for Julie. I found her talking with Denise in the office. They stopped when I walked in, so I filled the void by handing Denise the check and the business card.

She gave me the classic 'WTF' look and I chuckled for a minute before explaining that Dad had a literary agent and this was her royalty check. I told her that Dad's agent had arranged for the checks to be put into her name so she should expect a little something every month courtesy of dear old departed Dad.

I also told her that there was another bank account out there somewhere that he had used to cash the publisher's checks and that was where the random cash deposits came from in the account we knew about. So he wasn't selling drugs on the side.

I said I didn't know how much money was in the bank account and that I didn't know how to find it. Denise just looked at the check and said, "Well, we can both split the checks and if we can find the bank account, split that. Or we can gamble."

"Go on," I said. I had a sneaking suspicion where this was going.

Denise looked up at me with eye that implored, "If you are willing to gamble that there is a big chunk of cash in the mystery account, if it exists, how about you take the account and I take the checks?"

I looked straight back at her and said, "Done. On one condition, half of those checks go into that bank account for my nieces' and nephew's college fund."

She nodded her head and said, "I promise."

With that I picked her up hugged her and said, "I have a flight home tomorrow, so I won't have a chance to see you guys before I leave. But you have my phone number and address, so don't be strangers. I have to settle up with Julie for the bar tab and some other stuff and she will drop me off at the hotel. So you better scoot and rescue Bill. Take a couple bucks a go out for a good dinner."

Denise nodded, gave me one more big hug and said softly, "It is good to have a big brother again."

She said thank you to Julie and turned and walked slowly towards the door.

Just before she went through it she turned and addressed Julie, "I'll be in touch next week once we have a safe spot for Dad's ashes. God knows what the kids would do if we just put him on the mantle."

She left shaking her head.

I looked at Julie and asked if she had the final bill for me to settle. She looked at her minion and asked if he could lock up while she drove me back to my hotel. He nodded and I held out my elbow for her and we headed out to her car.

Once out of earshot, Julie leaned in and said, "You are I for a heap o' settling tonight mister."

And she was not kidding. My balls ached the whole time I sat on the plane the next evening.

I was sitting by the pool about a month later reading the news on my tablet when a story popped up about the death of a noted literary agent. I started to swipe past in when I saw the picture. It was Leonard.

Apparently, he was a very well-known literary agent. Well shit. I guess I don't get to ask him for clues about the mystery bank account. My sister's gamble is looking better and better all the time.

Screw that. I put the tablet down and went into my office. I pulled the three items of Dad's I brought home down off the shelf and put them on my desk and glared at them. The book didn't care. The locked wooden box looked like it was laughing and the laptop was asleep.

I picked up the Hemingway book and stared at the picture on the cover. It was a famous picture of Hemingway in his later full beard years. I balanced the book on its spine hoping that a favorite passage would fall open. I riffled slowly across the pages to see if there was anything underlined or marked in any way. Nothing. So I set the book aside.

I picked up the box. It acts like a solid block of wood with decorative inlays on the sides. I can hear things moving slightly inside like they are tied down, but no clunking when I shake it. But it also won't open. The only reason I think it is a jewelry box is that I remember my Dad had one like this when I was a kid. As far as I know this might be the same one. I never knew how that one opened either.

I turn out the lights and shine a UV light at it looking for some fluorescence. Nothing this time either. I set it down on the desk.

I plugged the laptop in and lift the top. A minute later the inscrutable login prompt appears. I researched the software and even contacted the manufacturer. It is good. The hard drive is encrypted so pulling it and putting it into another computer doesn't work. I contacted the manufacturer and they claim that there is no backdoor. No password, no data.

I pushed the laptop back in frustration and knocked the wooden box to the floor. Maybe I should just bust the fucker open like a piggy bank. I was getting mad again.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and picked up the box from the floor. When I put it on the desk, I saw it. One little square in the parquet was lifted just a hair. I got out a magnifying glass and saw the lines were too smooth. It hadn't come unglued. I pressed it back into place and it popped open. It was a spring loaded cover plate. Sonnofabitch!

So what did it cover?

It covered a little round hole. It must be a keyhole. So where was the key? Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. One step closer and I am still no closer to the solution. Dammit. I had his keyring at one point because I had to take the apartment key off. What did I do with it? Ahhhhhhhggggg! I don't remember.

Maybe it isn't a keyhole. What if it just needs something round like a pencil? I grabbed a pencil and jabbed it in to the hole. There was a satisfying click and the top separated right along one of the decorative lines. Aha!

Once released, the top opened easily to show 7 items strapped down inside.

Three watches, three rings and something I hadn't seen in years. It was a cheap plastic toy I think I got out of a gumball machine. When I was growing up there was a Saturday cartoon about these little blue critters that looked like a cross between gnomes and dwarves with stubby little tails.

All of them wore white hats and white pants except for the leader (and the girl). Papa wore red pants and a red hat just like the little toy in my hand. Why would Dad have saved it? He hated that show and those critters.

After starting at the tiny statue for a few minutes I put it aside and looked at the watches. They were beauties. I don't know much about luxury watches, but if these were real, there was probably $60,000 worth of watches in here.

The rings were pretty impressive. One I recognized as a football championship ring. The other was a huge skull with what looked like rubies in the eye sockets. The third one looked a little like a masonic ring, but the tools didn't look right.

I needed to get this stuff looked at. I called a friend that runs a high end jewelry shop and luck was with me. He was in the shop and it was a slow day. I grabbed the box and slid a thin paperback under the lid so it wouldn't lock on me again and headed out to see Jim.

The watches were collectible. Jim valued them at about $135,000 or more.

He wasn't a ring guy but he knew somebody. A couple days later he called. The football ring was a championship ring, but it was from one of the coaches not a player. That diminished the value a little.

The skull ring was solid gold. It was a reproduction of a Buccaneer's ring that was made from gold salvaged from a shipwreck. The maker had been a partner in a salvage operation had been paid off in gold bullion from a late 1600's Spanish shipwreck. He doubled his value by making reproduction pirate jewelry from it.

The last ring was from a small fraternal order sort of like the masons, but less well known. It dated from the early 1700's and it was probably the most valuable ring because the order was extinct and few of master's rings were ever found from this order.

When I got home from work that night, Heather wasn't home, but Sissy stopped by a little after I walked in the door. I am afraid I was just busting to tell somebody so I told her about cracking into the jewelry box and then taking the stuff to Jim and what he said about the watches.

I put the box on my desk and then almost ran Sissy down. I thought she had stayed in the kitchen, but she was right behind me. We ended up grabbing each other to try to avoid falling down. I ended up grabbing her torso and she ended up grabbing my leg as she was falling down. One of her hands landed directly on pants right over my very erect penis.

"Oh my," she said, "somebody is all excited. I think I better check this out."

With that, she brought her other hand around and undid my belt and unzipped my pants. As usual, I was sans underwear so my cock sprang forth and slapped her in the face.

She giggled and said, "Oh yeah, you are happy to see me."

Or at least that's what I think she said. Her voice was kind of muffled at the end by having already swallowed half of my cock.

Sissy's blowjobs are legendary and I fell heavily into my desk chair. What she was doing to my cock made my legs weak.

After a few minutes she came up for air and announced that sucking my cock was fun, but she wanted it somewhere else. As my poor blood starved brain tried to make sense of those words, she spun my chair around to face the desk. She then straddled my lap and sat down reverse cowgirl on my cock.

Either she wasn't wearing panties under that micro-mini skirt or she ditched them somehow. At that point I didn't care. She put her hands on the desk for leverage and began to bludgeon my poor defenseless dick with her warm, wet, soft, slick, silky tunnel of love.

To help her catch up to me, I leaned forward and slid one hand up under her knit top to play with her beautiful perky breasts and sent the other one to abuse her little man in the boat with a severe finger lashing.

It was none too soon. My cock started to throb and I could feel the electric fire of my impending release just as she mashed her cunt down on my cock and started to grind it into her. I felt her love muscles start to squeeze my manhood just as my orgasm took the top of my head off.

I abandoned ship and reached up to her unattended breast with my other hand, grabbing it and pulling her back to me as I lifted my hips trying for that fraction of an inch more penetration.

The first jet of hot sperm landed deep within her love canal. It was just enough to push her completely over the edge into a stronger orgasm.

She twisted in my arms and our mouths and tongues found each other just as she screamed into my mouth.

We both lost control and flopped at each other as I continued to shoot jet after jet of my hot sticky cum into her and she continued to milk my cock with her cunt muscles until we both slumped spent into the chair.

Sissy recovered first and she leaned forward to grab a couple tissues from the box on my desk. While wiping up the jiz that was leaking from her nether regions, my cock softened up and slipped out. She got up holding the tissues and turned back to clean me up with her mouth and tongue.

She threw the first tissues into the waste basket and leaned over the desk to get some more. A she did, she saw the little blue and red statue in the box.

"I know him," she squealed. "I had a big soft stuffed pillow of this guy that I used to stick between my thighs and rub his beard on my pussy when I would masturbate. He was so cute.

"I always thought he looked like Hemingway when we had to read that story about the old man fishing."

And just like that, the fucking lightbulb went off. I leaned around Sissy and flipped up laptop open. There was the damn login prompt laughing at me, but this time I was sure. My fingers typed the first letters and then the rest and I was in. I had access to whatever secrets my father protected so valiantly.

My world focused to the confines of that lighted monitor's window into my father's world. Quite rudely I completely forgot about Sissy.

I found out a lot about my father that day. One of the most interesting things I learned about my father is that he has been doing this for a long time. I clicked on a spreadsheet icon on the desktop marked bibliography.