Joey's in the office. I shrug my head fatalistically. I'm beginning to take it for granted that the delivery is unpredictable but I catch myself. No, I won't resign myself to not knowing whether today is a day with or without. The most predictable thing becomes fraught with uncertainty and creates some mental suffering for me and I know this is one of the purposes of the action, besides depriving me of legal information, because knowledge is power. It's just like in my family, I think. The slightest opportunity to harass me was always taken advantage of. Anything new and favorable that happened to me turned into a headache just like with the Law Journal now. Mon. 03.28 I picked up the fax that had arrived for me last saturday. It's from my brother Norbert. It says: "Hello Sis, Here are documents which will allow you to have a clearer view of the accounts, and the letter we have written at the end of the meeting. Excuse me for being late in sending it but the week was very busy and there have been transmission problems twice. Je t'embrasse. Norby - See you when?..." 3.20.94 Dear Brigitte: We are writing to you following our meeting at La Grande C“te with Me. Laurent [attorney] and Mr. Sautreuil [accountant], in the absence of AgnŠs who was unavailable. We all lacked information and are now more up to date on our respective situations. The enclosed tables which were the starting point of our discussion show clearly the disparities between us. 1) You can see that as far as rents are concerned, your share has been integrally paid to you (which is not the case for everybody, see the BALANCE). 2) The disparity is also obvious regarding the houses: - AgnŠs keeps paying hers (bought in her name) - Elisabeth, nothing - Sophie will finish paying back her loan in April (house bought in her name). - Brigitte, nothing, - V‚ronique has her house thanks to funds that were available at the time (house bought in her name). - Fran‡ois is a tenant in the "indivision" [jointly owned property], - Norbert is also a tenant in the indivision. The disparities can be resolved only by the liquidation of the indivision which includes [the buildings] of Pantin, Choisy, [two 12 to 16 units apartment buildings] les Hurlevents [family vacation home in Brittany] and Laborel [Provence mountains farm purchased in 1985 for Fran‡ois]. The other funds have been used as follows: - Reimbursement of the loan to pay estate taxes (2.5 million francs), - Repairs ordered by the City in the Pantin building (776,816 francs). After these operations the coffers are almost empty. We have studied at length all the avenues to make funds available to you: - selling apartments at Choisy, - Selling Pantin. These solutions require your signature. Those who like you are still waiting are getting impatient to get their share and are considering another option: It consists of splitting everything into 6 shares, but you would stay undivided by owning one 7th of every one of the six shares, which is not what you want. However we consider this approach to define officially the contents of each share. Because a death would add to the complexity of the distribution -this is a rational constatation and a legal precaution. Also we would like to draw your attention to the following: The payment of an advance or your complete share of the inheritance can be accomplished only by the signing of a legal document. A bank receipt isn't sufficient because it doesn't prove the nature of the payment. That's why it is not possible to transfer to you all the rent revenues from Pantin. But these funds would be available to finance a major purchase with legal papers. Among the solutions considered, only one could satisfy your request. It would also allow us to determine once and for all the distribution of the estate. We have decided to proceed to a six-way split (see above) if you don't unblock the situation. We sincerely regret that you couldn't come to the meeting, during which you could have seen our good will and this synthesis wouldn't seem so abrupt. We look forward to your decision. Hoping to read from you soon, nous t'embrassons." There follow the signatures of my five siblings, Agnes being absent. I didn't expect good news but this takes the cake. They have decided to share the estate in six and the "in case of death" seems clearly intended for me. So they have made six shares because they expect me to die. No Law Journal. Around 11am I went to the Midtown South Precinct with a copy of the police report of my accident. I said I had new information and wanted to file a report. A guy who was there in the typing pool. He said the time limit to make a report was expired and refused to make a new report. He was like an angry dog who can barely contain himself. I went to the desk and said that I wanted to report the accident as an attempted murder. Two or three desk officers listened to my brief account and the words "attempted murder" ricocheted from lips to lips. Finally officer Richter sent me upstairs to the Investigators' room. I repeated that I came to report the accident I had suffered as an attempted murder. I talked with three of them. The first disappeared soon after I had started my story, then I repeated it to a second, a plain clothes tall blond guy with a purple sweater. He asked me to wait a moment and meanwhile I read the posters on the wall. In front of me was a pledge by the police officers to serve the public and crime victims with the utmost dedication and humanity. I was very upset to take this step but my life depended on it and when nobody came after a while I asked why nobody wanted to listen to me. The guy with the purple sweater said that "he didn't understand my dialect" and that was why he hadn't returned. Finally another investigator came to me and I started all over again. He had a very skeptical attitude and I was trying desperately to convince him. "Why did you wait four years to speak about it, there a ninety days time limit for complaints" "But there is no status of limitation for murder!" I answer. If he showed so much doubt and impatience, how could I tell him that the memory of the murder had been forced out of my mind in the two weeks following the accident, and that it had re-surfaced four years later while I was speaking to my mom on the phone. He would laugh me out of the room. How could I explain to him that it was the wrenching pain that was inflicted upon me in the matter of my father's estate, that traced the way to the motive and the perpetrators? I told him that at the messenger agency they had told me about a lethal bike accident happening the day after mine, and that bus drivers were doing this sometimes as a prank and I expressed outraged disbelief that it could be true. I told him how the bus sneaked up behind me so I couldn't see it from the corner of my eye and how I avoided being run over. I said the bus's previous stop had been 50th street. I said that my father died of lung cancer four months after my accident, that he was wealthy and that four years after his death all my siblings had inherited part of their share and that I had nothing and that they were ripping me off. He asked where my father lived. I said in France, in Normandy. Then he asked how could a hit man get into a bus. I said but the driver who hit me is a professional driver. And this interpretation, the only possible one, is heavy with meaning. That means that the driver had been reached maybe through the driver's union grapevine, and a proper spot for the hit was chosen on his route and this two block stretch in front of the Research Library was selected because it was uphill, hence my balance would be weaker than on level ground. Once the spot had been chosen, it was a matter of timing to make me ride downtown on 5th avenue at the same time as the bus, and this timing was accomplished easily by Quick Track staff who gave me a "run" that took me from 57th street to 27th street. But I didn't say all that. The investigator could fill in the blanks himself, and that implicated a lot of people. Instead of taking me to the interview room after I told him the beginning of my story, he walked out of the waiting area towards the stairs. I followed him downstairs, still talking. He asked who had sent me to him. I said officer Richter at the desk. He walked towards the typing pool where complaints were taken and asked twice if they had heard of an attempted murder although I told him a desk officer had sent me to him. He asked again once or twice who had heard about an attempted murder and I cringed every time the words were pronounced. After reading the poster in the waiting room you'd think he would be more discreet about such a matter, with the victim next to him. He had not made any written note of my complaint. We were close to the precinct's door and he stopped there. I asked if I could tell him something more, and I said that my lawyers had told me that if I told the truth the jury would believe that I had tried to commit suicide. "But there is no jury in those cases" he retorted inaccurately and beside the point. "Listen, he said, tell your lawyer to call me." "But I don't have a lawyer" I said. Then I asked his name. Officer Carlstadt. The door was just there. He opened it and I left. Why did he want to talk to my lawyer and not to me directly? To make a deal behind my back? To cover-up more of this stinking business? A lot of people who have a lot to lose are involved, because they thought they would get away with it. They didn't think that the French woman, with nobody in her life to notice her or mourn her absence, would not go gently into the good night. Tues. 03.29 I called L. Jacobson's, Arturo's personal injury attorney. He had called at my place trying to reach Arturo, and having declined contact with Arturo I called the attorney to say I couldn't reach him to transmit information. He had sounded warm on the phone and I would like an attorney who would pursue my case as what it was: an attempted murder and not an accident. So first I have to convince the attorney that my EBT was fraudulently obtained but he cannot believe that I wasn't sworn-in. Right away I sense that he takes the side of my attorneys and from now on I have to fight against him instead of dealing with an impartial listener and making him see things my way. I say they made me cut short the duration of the accident from thirty seconds to two seconds. He says that it was to make the case easier to imagine for the jury. But no, that's not the reason. I say that the only problem with the attorney's version of the accident is that I should have fallen on my right leg and not my left and that there is no way you can change that. He remains silent then says that he wants to see the EBT. I understand why, he wants to read the description of the accident and imagine how I could have fallen on my left leg but all the details of the testimony make the situation impossible. I don't speak about attempted murder, but I say that my EBT is a forgery because it was obtained through trickery without my being fully aware and sworn-in. He says that it can't be and insists that I was sworn-in but if I had committed perjury I would know it. It would have gnawed at me, I know I couldn't live with the guilt feeling and I never felt guilty. This I know. What I felt was that I didn't understand a lot of stuff and I explained it by thinking that I had misunderstood, or that my memory failed me because the alternative, that my lawyers were against me, was unfathomable. But still a lot of stuff didn't seem kosher. Why should there be so much shifty grounds in a case of simple accident? Why was there so much hard feelings for the victim? Why did they look at me with those eyes? Now I understood fully why they had wanted me to say I had fallen right away. Because the actual circumstances of the accident were absolutely incrimitating for the bus driver. On the length of one block, it was unbelievable that he didn't look in his rear-view mirror while moving from the second to the first lane. And he didn't stop before his scheduled stop at 40th street because he hadn't seen me. So they made me participate in the cover-up by testifying falsely. That was the only way for them to get away with murder. If the truth was on the records, it would be obvious to Justice that the driver had acted deliberately. So I'm adamant about telling the truth and I won't consider any other alternative. I think I'll have to act pro-se with the help of some paralegal. No personal injury lawyer is willing to make a motion to suppress my EBT and request a real one, and admit that one of his colleagues did such a heinous thing as what my attorneys did. This defies the common decency so much that it is unthinkable. Yet there is no other explanation for what has happened. I made an appointment with L. Jacobson for the next day at 5PM to show him my EBT's but in the evening I knew that it was not the right way to go. He would try to make me say something that would be consistent with the EBT and I would have to mentally contort my body to fit the papers, which was a psychological torture that I didn't want to endure any more. I realized that I was unwilling to tell him more about the accident given his tendency to take the lawyer's side. If it was going to be all uphill for me again, I wasn't up to it. If I told him specifics he might contact the Slavits and enter into a collusion to do me in instead of helping me. And there was the fact that I had submitted bills to the MTA for reimbursement of household help expenses, which concerned Arturo. Since I had obtained from Arturo that he sign these receipts only by promising him a kick-back when the MTA check came, I met him at a coffee shop with several ball points and made him sign all the receipts I had prepared. When I had talked about submitting receipts for reimbursement, Slavit had told me that if I used commercially available forms, it would look suspicious so he said I should make handwritten receipts. But I made them all the same day and wanted Arturo to sign them all the same day. Altogether, with all the money Arturo was costing me, I had to cheat to obtain the refund of my expenses. I had obtained from Arturo that he sign backdated receipts for cash, when in fact I counted in the cash outlay half of my weekly rent, which was not a fraud since Arturo lived with me only because of my accident. In case Arturo became a witness and a defendant in my case, Jacobson would have a conflict of interests. So I was concerned that this fact might handicap my case somewhere down the line if I had Jacobson for attorney, and I decided at least that it would be my excuse to back out of my appointment. I became paranoid about the possibility of linking Arturo to my case as an agent with the mission of making an alcoholic out of me, and a cigaret smoker again, and a humiliated woman, but I knew that at the paroxysm of paranoia I would find my family. Arturo had been purposefully placed at the street corner when I had got off the cab from the hospital. He hadn't been there by chance. He was the first person I saw when I got off the cab. And the no-show of the woman's daughter was to force me to take Arturo as the only help available around. He had been my helper and alcool pusher in order to weaken my perception of reality and make me more susceptible to accepting the lawyer's conditions. And they had obtained my false testimony through deception, by making me feel I was crazy or suicidal, and reinforcing this by multiple harassments and crimes in all other aspects of my life with the contribution of my landlors who is in close contact with my mother. The cost of all the hired trouble-makers who have contributed to my failure in my attempts to make money, be it with my berets or with music, or with anything else for that matter, this cost must be staggering. But the liquid funds are stacked in suitcases in my parent's home, hidden in Germany and Switzerland and who knows, in the United States without my knowledge and untraceable by the tax authorities. All this cash accumulated over the years from rent and who knows what else, maybe illegal traffic, how much is there? I suspect several millions francs. And part of this plentiful unlawful cash is used to unlawful ends, paying small parts and big parts actors and psychopaths to interfere with my life in a negative way like the 666 Broadway and the accident of May 23rd, linking those two accidents indicates a chiseled malevolence carried out with the skill of a master stage director. I can recognize here my sister Agnes sense of organization. With this systematic interference of my family in every aspect of my life I cannot have a normal life. All the hostility of every member of my family can express itself in a covert way through the systematic sabotage of my entreprises, and as long as I live and nothing major happens, they're going to make it their life work of ruining my own. I don't know how they rationalize their attitude towards me regarding our relationship and regarding legal matters of the estate. They have to contort their brains to make what they say consistent with what they have said previously and it turns into a horror episode, a brain and heart torture. I talked to a well spoken young man and told him that I cancelled my appointment because of the possibility of conflict of interest. He took the message and asked for a phone number where I could be reached. I said there was none. He suggested I call later. I said that I would call later in the evening. Which I did out of politeness because I had rather stayed home and not spoken another word about the matter. I told Jacobson about the possibility of conflict of interest because both Arturo and I are suing the MTA and the MTA reimbursed the receipts Arturo had signed. He agreed there was indeed a possibility. I added that there was more to this case than met the eye, that it was a complicated case, and that I was looking for an attorney who would really take my side. He agreed about the difficulty of finding an honest attorney and declined to recommend anybody. He asked me Arturo's last name and I gave it to him. I said it was too bad because he sounded like a good attorney. So first thing is to file pro se a motion to suppress my EBT and request a bona-fides EBT. And this I have to do alone, pro-se. That's what I wanted to do right after I fired the Slavits but a clerk discouraged me from doing so. But I wasn't admitting having committed perjury, I said my testimony had been obtained without being sworn in and by deceit. This is a tough one because it implies that the court reporter and the TA lawyer were in on the trick. Wed. 03.30 Call Internal Affairs to complain that investigator at Midtown South didn't make a report on my claim of attempted murder. I say my family did it for my inheritance, and since they didn't succeed, they're trying to do it again. I said that I was treated like a piece of shit and I'm scared to death. The officer suggests that I come to the office or write. He said there several ways to deal with the problem. While I was talking to him, asking what the police was waiting for to help me, did I have to die for them to take me seriously? But I don't want to die. I know the motive and I know who did it, what more do they need? (In fact they need a lot more but I have that too) I turned around and there was a black woman less than four feet behind me. I asked the officer to hold on a moment then I asked the woman to please step back. She didn't react right away. She didn't expect that I would confront her. She was speechless and motionless for a while and I kept looking intensely at her. Then she stepped back and muttered that if I didn't feel good I should stay in my bed. Then I returned to the phone. "Hello? Are you there?" "Yes" the officer said. "There was this woman standing right behind me and I don't need anybody to listen to what I'm saying". This was particularly true since I was speaking of being the target of a murder and had just said I didn't want to die. Finally I said I would write and asked his name. Vincentori. And the address was on Hudson street. He didn't know the zip code and had to look for it. It was 10013, as I expected. But then why does the phone number have a 718 area code? I talk with Linda at the NY Law Journal and request that she send me the four missing issues. She says she's going to mail them today in an envelope, with a form to trace the paper's route for the Post Office. Bonarti calls me as I pass his office and suggests that I call the headquarters of the Law Journal to try to clear up the situation "because it makes us look bad". I say it sure does. He adds that people are subject to error "they are only human beings after all". He apologizes twice. He almost convinces me, but once home I catch myself. There was no way that human error alone could explain a 25% loss of a month's subscription. It's a federal offense to steal someone's mail and postal employees have a special duty to respect mail so the argument of human error is a bit too much. Bonarti is a master persuader. Several times in the past he always pointed the responsibility away from himself and forced me to give him the benefit of the doubt. He made you feel guilty for not wanting to give it to him. That's how he gets away with his mischief. He had just said that he never opened the newspaper, which meant that indeed he had. I had already observed that the information he volunteered was to be taken as disinformation. He said the opposite of the truth, I had to remind myself of that. Thur. 03.31 To close the month on a nice touch, I was in the kitchen with the window open when I heard a loud voice from the street speak about "my wife" and "my wife" and "my wife". The voice reminded me of Bonarti's but it was somewhat different, on a higher pitch and unnaturally loud. I leaned to see who was in the street speaking of his wife. It was Bonarti. His car was parked almost in front of my window and from the sidewalk next to his car, he was talking to Richie facing my window. After I leaned close to the window to see who was talking, Bonarti stopped. So he wanted me to believe that he had a wife, that he was married, that a woman luckier than I had caught the big fish. But knowing him like I do now, I am rather sorry for the woman.

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[April 1994]

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