``I'll ask him what he's going to do today, and he'll say he's going to make some phone calls and write some letters. I'm thinking, `Oh, no, please go mow the lawn!' ''

The letters' folders on his desk are a roll call of his fights. One is from an ongoing lawsuit against an electronics store that got into a dispute with his son. One is from a potential suit against his insurance company from a January car accident. He promises not only to sue it for medical bills [he sustained a hernia and tore a rotator cuff, for which he still wears a sling) but to bring another suit against their advertising jingle (``Like a good neighbor _ right, they don't say they are a good neighbor. They say they're like a good neighbor'').

Another folder is for the NFL, whom Morris is suing over retirement benefits. He already sued the league once. That was over disability benefits for problems stemming from the broken neck he played with during the '73 season.

The NFL offered an $80,000 settlement in that case. He demanded $300,000. The NFL countered with an offer of $295,000.

``This isn't over until I say it is,'' Morris told his lawyer. ``Tell them I want, $295,000.22.''

He wore No. 22. He got the check.

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But it is his fight against his former Dade investigators that litters his desk. There are letters, documents, testimony. Some concern Reno, the former Dade state attorney whose people set up the arrest. Some concern Ray Havens, the chief investigator who Morris claims destroyed the tape recording of a conversation in which Morris made clear he was not involved in cocaine trafficking and didn't want to be.

Some concern prosecutor George Yoss, whom Morris notes looks like Danny DeVito. Some concern John Johnson, a former investigator for the state attorney who Morris claims promised to support this tape claim in 1996 but who was supposedly pressured from above into backing off.

``Let's get something straight,'' Johnson said from Fayetteville, N.C., where he is retired. ``There isn't some magical tape that was made one night. There never was. This thing has been going on forever and forever, and I'm sick of it.''

Yes, Johnson said, he would have handled the investigation differently if he had been in charge. Morris wouldn't have been the focus. ``Getting cocaine off the streets'' would have been.

``But it's a matter of the real world that famous people get more attention,'' he said. ``And Mercury Morris was doing wrong here. Let's be clear on that. The only thing he wasn't a willing participant in was the arrest.''

That all happened nearly 15 years ago. Eleven years have passed since Morris' release, six since he took up the case again, one since he hired lawyer Ellis Rubin to represent him.

Johnson was going to testify for them. Now he isn't. Morris says someone got to Johnson. Johnson says he was hurt that Morris ``twisted my comments.''

``He scares me,'' Johnson says. ``I think he's going to reach the point where he gets desperate enough to come after me, or come after Ms. Reno. I think he might figure he has nothing to lose some day.''

Morris sees another finish.

``Did you ever see the movie 9 to 5? Remember near the end, Dabney Coleman made his escape, came back to the office and is sitting in his chair and says, `I just want to gather you one more time and take a look at you before I send you bitches to jail.' ''

He is told the movie ended with Coleman's character going to jail. He shrugs. His point is taken. He is standing on his driveway, and his 10-year-old son, who passes by at the end of this discussion, rollerblades out to the street now, never seeming to notice, never looking back, as his father keeps fighting:

``Do you remember in the Wizard of Oz. . . .''