CHARLIE'S LAST VOYAGE

I should tell you about my friend Charlie. His doctors gave him the verdict – he had six months to live. He sat down with his favorite brew one night and thought about what he’d do with the rest of his life.

Charlie had a good job and money in the bank that he was saving for his retirement. He quit his job, sold his Manhattan apartment, made accommodation for an ex-wife and adult daughter, and bought a 42-foot sailboat in Maine. It took him a month to get it fitted out for voyaging, and then he took off alone and headed south along the coast. I asked him to keep me informed of his progress.

He hit a vicious nor’easter about half way to Boston and spent 36 hours in heavy seas and very cold weather, but he survived. His sloop was damaged enough that he put into a yard in Marblehead, MA to make repairs. He called me from there.

“The waves were incredibly high and steep, and they were traveling at me like a big freight train. I couldn’t heave–to in those conditions, and stayed up all night at the wheel. When I couldn’t do it any longer, I battened down and tied myself into my bunk. At some point I fell asleep and when I woke up the sea was still rough, but the sun was shining.”

“Scary.”

“You know what . . . it was liberating,” he said. “Hell, I’m dying anyway so what difference did it make. It was amazing to be lying there in my bunk in those conditions and not be afraid. Hell, I used to be afraid I wouldn’t hit my golf ball.”

“If you weren’t paralyzed with fear what were you thinking about?”

“I listened and watched clinically as the boat and all its parts struggled to survive. You couldn’t see the waves in the dark, but you could hear them coming. I can’t explain why we didn’t roll over and go down.”

“Were you ever sorry you left port?”

“I don’t think so. The irony is that that storm made a new man out of me. Maybe God made it a test to get me on the right track. I can’t tell you how great it felt not to be afraid.”

“So where do you go from here?” I asked him.

“I’m going to hit all the places I love or have always wanted to see.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Yes. Don’t tell anyone that I’ve been given what’s left of my six months. That would spoil everything.”

“Okay,” I said.

Charlie outlived the six months. When he finally lost the strength to sail the boat that was part of him, he moored it in the Bay outside his hospice window and sailed it in his mind, reliving his voyage half way around the world, before setting sail alone on his last voyage.

I didn’t tell anyone he’d been given a time line for death. Of course we’re all dying. Maybe we should take a page from Charlie’s book and stop worrying . . . at least about things we can’t control.

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INTERESTING WOMEN

There are four key women in my new novel, JUSTICE . . . five if you include the President, but her role is off camera. The most interesting may be the character of Mari. She comes to New Orleans from the Island of Martinique in 1959 to work in the home of one of the most powerful families there. She is remarkably beautiful, and has a presence that for several years enables her to rise above the issues facing a black woman in the South in the 1950’s. Her daughter, Joan, has some of those same qualities, and goes on to become a successful trial lawyer in Washington, while Mari insists on lying-low in Chicago’s Southside. Mari lives for, and vicariously through, her daughter. When Joan is named as the President’s choice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Mari’s past comes back to haunt them both.

I freed myself of any restraints and let it all hang out when Joan goes back to New Orleans to confront her mother’s employer.

Julia Gold is an interesting, very modern, woman, and the person in the Homicide Division of the Chicago Police Department with responsibility to solve the murder of a young journalist. She’s up against the usual factual issues present in solving any murder, but she also has to battle City Hall to solve the crime. She’s living evidence of a saying I first heard in Law School . . . sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart. Julia has both going for her.

The fourth would be Kate who travels with me from Havana Passage, along with her fiancée, Gordon Cox. Her character is the bridge between the three critical points of the plot . . . Julia in Chicago, Gordon’s doings with the White House, and the Supreme Court where Kate is a law clerk to the Justice who’s retiring. She also knew the murdered journalist, and is driven to find the real reason he was silenced.

I kept the same White House we saw in Havana Passage. I want to avoid appearing to have a political agenda. Havana Passage came out during the Bush years and this is now. We have fun taking Joan through the Senate confirmation process.

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JUSTICE

“When did you first see the light in JUSTICE?” we asked author Jay Lillie, standing in front of the Supreme Court Building on Capitol Hill.

“About page 326,” he said.

He knew that’s not what we meant. We laughed. “That’s pretty near the end of the story?”

He nodded and smiled. “The light was always there. The fuss about President Obama’s birth certificate came along much later.”

“So what’s the core message of JUSTICE?”

“It’s fiction, a novel, a darn good murder mystery, and it takes place in and around the White House. There’s no core message, unless it’s to point out that Americans know less than they think about their own nation’s Constitution.”

“You have fun with the Senators on the Judiciary Committee.”

“Thank you. They made it easy.”

“From where did “JJ” come? I thought Detective Julia Gold’s giving the young boy Barry Bond’s broken bat was a master stroke. I didn’t see how you were going to get out of the corner you'd written yourself into. Then “JJ” comes along. How do you come up with these ideas?”

“I like smart young kids. They always keep things interesting.”

“Who’s your favorite character?”

“Oh, no you don't,” he said. “I like and hate them all equally.”

“Okay . . . but how did you conjure up that dynamite finish?”

“If you referring to the last couple of pages, I think the French actually did that.”

“It has that kind of ring to it, but it sure was a surprise.”

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CASTRO'S HEIR? Reprinted by popular demand.
originally posted: September 24, 2007

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail on the condition I not tell anyone. No one has heard from him now in almost two months, and I’m constrained to break my pledge of silence in the hope that someone may have seen him alive. A recent picture is attached. Here's what my friend wrote:

“The corked bottle of Cuban rum that floated onto the Gulf Stream shore was empty. I had to break the bottle to retrieve the short letter from Fidel Castro that was inside. Roughly translated it reads as follows:

To the person who finds the bottle in which I place this letter I bequeath all my worldly goods and the power to succeed me as President of the Cuban State. To redeem this grant all you need to do is spend 30 days in Miami before coming to Havana to be given my blank check and sworn into office by my brother, Raul. Good luck, my prayers are with you.
Fidel.

"According to the pundits, Fidel Castro is immensely rich, so I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. The part that bothers me is the 30 days in Miami. Why did he insist on that? Is it a test of some kind? Frankly, I don’t think I’d last a day there as Castro’s heir apparent, let alone a month. If I were to get all his worldly goods in cash I might be able to buy my way out of problems in Coral Gables, but if he’s not dead yet I guess there’s not much chance of that.

“I’m not sure I want the job anyway. I’d have to spend a lot of time keeping that clown Chavez happy, while balancing my affections for the Cubans in Havana with the ones who now live in the States. As great people as they are I’d rather meet regularly with the Mountain natives of Borneo. I mean that’s a job for insomniacs and masochists.

“The rum’s not bad, but I prefer the Jamaican variety. Having an unlimited supply of Cuban cigars was worth momentary consideration, until I remembered it hurt when the smoke got in my eyes.

“I’d get to give speeches to the United Nations and in Revolutionary Square about how awful Americans from the U.S. are. But that’s old hat at this point, and others do it better. My Spanish would need some major overhaul.

“The best part would be the beaches. I know they’re better than this beach where I found the bottle. Imagine what I could do with thousands of miles of unspoiled shorelines and estuaries. It brings tears to my eyes.

“If power corrupts, then the temptation to become powerful is overwhelming. So I guess I’ll take it to the next level and book a flight to Miami. It’s an exciting town now and full of beautiful people that will no doubt surround me with excesses. I’ll try it for a few days, and if it gets too much I can always return home no worse for the experience.

“Do you think I need to tell Fidel or Raul that I’m coming?”

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CONFESSIONS OF A CUBAN COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY
originally posted: June 17, 2007

Sometimes the truth is hard to come by. In Cuba a couple of years ago in the company of a group of North American lawyers, I came across a 19 year old MAN who was complaining about the U.S. embargo against Americans doing business with Cubans in Cuba. I sympathized, but pointed to Fidel Castro’s repressive regime for the embargo’s rationale.

“You’re a lawyer,” he said, “and you tell me that?”

As I nodded a “yes,” I could see him getting up the nerve to make his point.

“Would you like to know why we Cubans haven’t overthrown Fidel Castro? Certainly you lawyers have heard of the Helms-Burton Act? This law, passed by your Congress in 1996, says your President and State Department cannot help Cuba form a new government until the claims against my country by those Cubans who fled to Miami are satisfied. Why should I risk my life to line the pockets of those people, who would then return and take Fidel’s place in Havana?”

Back in Washington I made good on a promise to check out Helms-Burton, and in the process turned up this bit of legislative history. Senator Chris Dodd, speaking on the Senate floor in 1995 during the debate on passage of the Helms-Burton Act, argued,

“…the language, Mr. President, is pretty emphatic – No assistance may be provided . . . to a transition government in Cuba. We now have 38 countries in the world, including Cuba, where United States citizens’ property has been expropriated, and we are in the process of trying to get those individuals compensated for that property. Some of these countries are very strong allies of ours. We never said before we cannot provide any assistance to those countries until those claims and matters are settled, and yet that is what we do with this legislation. . . I just think it’s bad policy, Mr. President [to] absolutely hamstring not just this administration, but future administrations, from being able to move intelligently and rapidly to try to shore up a government that will follow Fidel Castro.”

The Honorable Messrs. Helms and Burton are long gone from office, but the Castro’s are as painfully present as ever. Meanwhile this law, and the Trade Embargo on Americans doing business in Cuba which it was designed to tighten and expand, have not only failed in their purpose to depose Castro, they have helped keep him in power.

Does anyone doubt that having American engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, builders, technicians, and farmers on the ground in Cuba would help provide the templates and incentives for a free society to evolve in Cuba as American businessmen have provided elsewhere around the globe? Of course Castro can try to prevent this from evolving, but those behind the Iron Curtain failed in their attempts to do the same. Anyway, why should we do Castro’s work for him?
Let’s give all of us Americans the freedom to make happen in Havana what those Cubans who came to Florida have had the freedom to accomplish in Miami.

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There are few countries in which Jay Lillie hasn’t done business as a New York lawyer on behalf of his clients, often dealing with top leaders in these nations.
In the back of his mind, and sometimes on paper or the hard drive of his laptop, there’s always been a story.
Jay’s still engaged in this pastime, and from his imagination we see fiction based upon real world experience in international and corporate politics where diverse cultures meet, clash and find resolution. This is the stuff that made Hemingway’s stories so compelling; seeing macro events through the eyes of real people, with their own related problems, operating at ground level.