Henry Perkins, a mild-mannered accountant, accidentally trades briefcases with another man, to find out that there's five million dollars inside. Henry tells his unsuspecting wife of their new-found fortune, but she doesn't embrace it as well as he does. Soon they're joined by their best friends, a cop on the take, a cop on the hunt, and the dreaded Mr. Big, who has come to claim his million dollars.

In the mid-1990s, two inmates bury the burned bodies of two lifers at Mississippi's infamous Parchman Farm; a third old-timer relates their story. They'd served 65 years for a murder they didn't commit, framed by a local sheriff while buying moonshine whiskey for a Manhattan club owner to whom they owed money. In flashbacks we see this odd couple thrown together (Ray is a fast-talking con man, and Claude is a serious man about to start work as a bank teller), the loss of Ray's watch (sterling silver, from his daddy), the murder and trial, the hardships of Parchman, and the love-hate relationship of Claude and Ray as they spend 65 years bickering and looking for a way to escape.

After receiving organ transplants from various animal donors, a man finds himself taking on the traits of those animals.

District attorney Ford Cole is running for mayor, promising to capture the city's elusive crime boss, Danny Ludin. On the night of a gas link in the inner city, his interview with a national reporter is interrupted by word that his best prosecutor, Nora Timmer, who's also his lover, has killed a man she claims was assaulting her. A few minutes later, a man shows up at Cole's office claiming it was murder, implicating Nora in complicated schemes and crimes. Cole wants a few hours to get to the bottom of a mess that quickly includes land deals, shell corporations, and political corruption. Who's setting up whom?