Frank Minyard is the only official among the nine in Nine Lives. As Orleans Parish Coroner, he was written about a lot in the aftermath of the disaster and he was hard for me, as a reporter, to get ahold of. I didnt’ meet him until late February, 2006 -- six months after the disaster. He had me pick him up at his house on Barracks Street in the French Quarter and we drove out to what had been his office, in the Orleans County Courthouse. Frank was 76 then, but he was as fit and energetic and hearty as a man in his fifties; it was hard for me to believe he was as old as he was.

His office, which had seventeen-foot-high walls covered with framed photos of his life, was deserted and without power. He pulled a cellphone from his pocket and said, “This is now the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office.”

He opened a copy of that day’s Times-Picayune and turned to the death notices. “Look at this,” he said. “As many people are dying in New Orleans every day as died every day before the storm, and only a quarter of the people are back. That means the death rate is four times higher than before. And look at their ages: 52, 46, 37, 55. . . . When it’s an unexplained death we get them on my table, and here’s the creepy thing: We open them up, and there’s no cause of death. People are simply giving up. Stress. Despair. I maintain that these are all storm-related deaths, and I write them down that way.”

That was a brave political decision. The survivors of someone who dies from a hurricane get extra federal benefits and, sometimes, higher life-insurance payouts. Frank was setting himself up for a lifetime of defending his decision to angry federal officials and insurance companies. He didn’t care.

Frank’s an odd duck, in a lot of very good ways. Having been born poor and then having grown fabulously wealthy, he renounced the rich life in the sixties to serve New Orleans’s dead. He’s something of a wild man, as he’d be the first to admit -- a jazz trumpeter and a flamboyant man-about-town. He’s made his share of mistakes. But he’s also the longest-serving elected official in the long history of New Orleans -- perhaps in all of Louisiana, and even his detractors admit that his commitment to New Orleans -- particularly the poor -- is unimpeachable.

I knew I wanted him to be one of the nine because he has such a long and colorful history in New Orleans, and because he would be a window on the one genuine scandal revealed in Nine Lives -- which happens at the emergency mortuary set up by FEMA. I didn’t know if he’d agree, though; he’d been uncharacteristically reticent with reporters since the crisis.

One day in January 2007 I rode my bike over to the disused funeral home on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue that he was using as a temporary coroner’s office and dropped off a paper letter asking him to participate. Before I got four blocks away my cellphone rang. It was Frank, of course, thrilled to be asked and requesting I come straight back and get started. We spent a lot of time together over the next five months and I came to like him a lot. He is one of the most unabashedly emotional and sentimental men I’ve ever met. Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- loves New Orleans, and especially those in New Orleans who are difficult to love, more than Frank Minyard.

The perfect person to play the older Frank Minyard would be Anthony Hopkins. He’s a dead ringer, in looks, voice, and elegant manner.