Trust. A dead body in bracken. A cop cheats on his unhappy wife who, in secret, sees a psychiatrist whose own marriage is corroded by grief: she thinks her husband is having an affair with a gay patient of hers. The cop's lover, Jane, is recently separated, and her neighbors - a couple with children - include a muscular unemployed man. Late one night, the doctor skids off a back road, finds a call box, and tries in vain to reach her husband. She sees headlights and flags down the driver. Later...

"But if you forget to come back for Madame Zeroni, you and your family will be cursed for always and eternity." Those were the exact words spoken to young Elya Yelnats the day he forgot to repay Madame Zeroni. From then on his family was cursed with bad luck. One hundred years later Stanley Yelnats IV is accused of stealing a pair of cleats from a major league baseball player and sent to Camp Green Lake (a dry lake bed in the middle of the desert). It never rains at Camp Green Lake, it hasn't...

Cooper, the deputy director of the CIA, wants to be the director. So, he tries to smear the director into resigning or being removed. The director, who knows that Cooper has been bugging him, feeds him some false information--that there's a man who might be able to clear of the charges against him will be arriving at the airport, so he sends his man, Brown to meet him. Brown was just suppose to make contact with anyone at the airport thus making Cooper believe that he is the man who can help the...