Sunday, December 26

DJ, Kat trapped on banks of Bayou St. John

Another week of Pay Dirt and over 1,200 followers on Twitter. Thanks again, Everyone.

Here’s a recap of what happened this week…

Another New Orleans sunrise. DJ, wet and cold on the banks of Bayou St. John, woke to the whine of a motorcycle growing louder.

The motor cut-off on the other side of the garbage barrels where DJ hid. He'd seen cops on beaches in Biloxi, but never on the bayou.

Peering between the barrels, he saw shiny, black boots digging into the mud and sand, moving closer. A shadow grew overhead. DJ peeked at the boots again.

trashcans Boots with high heels.

DJ stood slowly.

"I thought we we're going to the swamp?" Kat LeRouge said, hands on hips, a smirk on her face.

"But how did you find me—what about the cops?"

"Here." Kat threw him a black Louie Armstrong hoodie. "Take that red shit off. I was on the dome's second level and watched you all the way here."

DJ looked up at the sky, then Kat. They both heard it, a helicopter coming fast.

Kat jabbed his shoulder with three purple fingernails. "Get on the bike, Dildo."

“I’ve been thinking, Kat. We should give-up, before they kill us. NOPD’s got snipers now.”

"Look, I changed my clothes. They don't know we got the bike. Change your friggin’ hoodie and we're home free."

"I can’t. This ain't no dollar store hoodie. This baby's a G-Unit classic."

Kat pulled a bottle of purple nail polish from her bag and removed the cap. "You gonna do your nails now?" DJ asked.

Kat flicked her wrist and splattered polish across the sleeve of DJ's G-Unit classic. "Now, dump that gangster crap, so we can get the hell outta here."

For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.

Our plot again:  When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.

Next installments on Twitter and Facebook tomorrow.

Sunday, December 19

Pay Dirt heats up in Louisiana Swamp

Today, our story has 1,053 followers on Twitter. Another great week, and I’ve got to thank you for continuing to help write this story through Twitter and Facebook. Now, let’s recap the week…

In the Superdome parking lot, DJ's ripped wires from the dashboard of somebody's Cadillac Escalade.

Kat LeRouge"Boy, can I pick'em." Kat laid back on the hood, biting her nails. "You gotta be the only rapper in New Orleans that can't hot-wire a car." That's when the NOPD rolled up beside them, flashing lights, but no siren. "Officer, thank God you're here." The cop climbed out, no hair and a white mustache, naturally gray or beignet sugar, Kat wasn't sure. "I lost my keys and my ex-boyfriend here said he could start it."

"License and registration."

"Oh, sure. I'll just run around to the glove box. Please help us. If I can’t fix it, my daddy's gonna kill me."

Kat walked around the back on the SUV and sprinted north across the parking lot.

“Hey!” The cop walked to the front on the SUV, and then grabbed for the radio on his belt.

DJ jumped from the SUV and ran east to the Mississippi.

 

Bobby Grim found the duck blind 100 yards up the bayou from Rarick's camp, just where the map said it would be, covered in camo and Irish moss.

He hid the boat beneath the it, then climbed a large cypress and stretched across two pin oaks to scoot into the tree stand.

Inside, he cleaned his gun and waited, living on jerky and water. He watched the horizon another day before Rarick's bateau appeared, with it, the lightning and drenching rain.

Rarick unloaded in the downpour, just gear. The lone hunter would focus on four-legged game this trip, unaware of the surprise awaiting him.

Bobby Grim in the Swamp Grim lubed the pulleys on the bow, waxed the strings, and sharpened the heads. The rain would stop soon, and he’d be ready to get the job done and get the hell out of the swamp.

Hour by hour, the storm's intensity increased, as did the size of Grim's arm. The wound from the gator’s bite felt hot and he was sweating in the freezing rain.

Thick clouds. Pouring rain. Darkness in the tree stand, except for the occasional flash of lightning. He couldn't sleep. He hated waiting. Worse, his arm burned, the roof leaked, and his six-foot frame stretched larger than the available floor space, none of it dry.

When he did find sleep, he awoke to a snake coiled around his legs. He mistook it for a Cottonmouth Water Moccasin, but after he'd taken the thing by the throat and kneed it to a bloody pulp, he found the rattler on the end.

On day three, the rain stopped, but Grim's body still alternated from cold to hot. He needed a doctor, but he'd finish the job first.

Daybreak. Birds cackled and the sun cast cypress shadows along the bayou. Rarick walked to the end of the peer and began loading his boat for the big day.

Grim climbed down from the stand and shoved off, just as three boats rounded the bend hauling TV cameras.

Saturday, December 11

Pay Dirt in Louisiana swamp, New Orleans streets

Another fun week. Pay Dirt, the novelette you’re helping me write, has close to 1,000 Twitter followers. Thanks again for your help! Now, let’s replay what happened this week…

grimatcamp2 Moving the lighter closer to the chains, Grim found a seam in the floor, then hinges to a door opening to the swamp below. Forcing the crowbar into the seam, he broke the latch. Brown water below the camp. Darker in the center and growing darker. Big yellow eyes in the center.

Massive green jaws lurched from the water. Yellow teeth sliced Grim’s arm. He winced and dropped the lighter. Blind, he swung the crowbar in the darkness. The door slammed shut. Grim waited for the splash below, then collapsed on the closed door, bleeding in the darkness.

"Friggin' gators, I hate 'em."

The next day, Kat and DJ hung out on a bus bench across from Rube Rarick's New Orleans office, Kat on a cell phone, DJ's thumbing through the Times-Picayune.

"How many cabs you gotta rob to get your picture in the paper around here?"

fatallyyours "Weasel-dick Bastard!" Kat slammed the phone onto the sidewalk, before it skipped into the traffic of Carrollton Avenue. Someone in a Prius popped the horn. Kat flipped them off. "Google says he's in New Orleans, we've seen him, but his bitch of a secretary says he's on vacation."

A Tabasco truck hits the cell phone, crushing it like a cracker.

"Hey," DJ looked up from the paper, "that’s my phone."

"Forget it, the police could've tracked us with it anyway." Kat took DJ's round brush from the congressman's bag and twisted it into one of her curls." After we're rich, I'll get you another."

"Well, I found your congressman." DJ held up the B section, a photo of Rarick in camouflage. "It says he's hunting for gator the next two weeks."

"That explains it." Kat grabbed the bag and stood up. "C'mon."

"Where are we going?"

"Do I have to tell you everything? We’re getting a truck or something that'll get us to the swamp."

For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.

Sunday, December 5

Bobby Grim takes on Bayou Manchac

Today, our story has 877 followers on Twitter. Another great week, and I’ve got to thank you for continuing to help write this story through Twitter and Facebook.

Now, let’s recap the week.

swampstore Climbing down from the Abita Beer truck, Bobby Grim heard the driver saying that Savoy Landing was Bayou Manchac's last boat launch, the end of the farthest road into the swamp. “Sure you wanna be dropped here? I ain’t back for another two weeks.”

“I told you, I’m a hunter,” Grim said, “I’ll survive.”

The shack next to the launch had rusted tin nailed on the sides covered with faded yellow paint and a picture—maybe a coffee cup—with some words: Morning Treat.

By a single gas pump and a dead Jax beer light, a hand-stenciled sign swung from a post and read: No Deliveries Today.

The front wall, eight-feet wide, covered with various sized wooden planks, held more stenciled signs: Pig Feet, Gator Balls, and Coon Meat. The shack looked dark, the front door open or missing. All quiet, till the voice of Rush Limbaugh shouted something about Femi-Nazis.

Grim followed the sound through the entrance.

A chest-type home freezer sat just inside the door. In the shop’s center, a table with two chairs. A plastic-lettered cafe menu hung behind a rusted deli counter, white with a Barq's logo. Post office mailboxes with peeling brass-colored paint covered the left wall. On the right, shelves filled with food, for people, fish, and deer.

Behind the counter, a fat lady in a Harley shirt broke a crawfish in half and sucked both ends before speaking. "Who the hell are you?" Something red and yellow oozed down her chin.

"How much to rent one of your air-boats?" Grim pinched a hundred dollar bill from his roll.

Fat Lady wiped her chin with a Post-it note. "Thirty an hour, you got I.D."

"How much if I don't?" He peeled off six hundred, lining the bills across the counter.

"Maybe I'll tell the owner somebody stole the thing. Like maybe it just floated off or something."

"When will you see him?"

"Her."

"When will you see her?"

"Another week, next Friday."

Grim counted another four bills. "The boat floats off next Thursday, right?"

 

Bouncing through Bayou Manchac, the air-boat disturbed a gator large enough to splash some green gunk on Grim’s map. He slowed to clean it and to make sure the gator wasn't in the boat.

He pushed the throttle forward and rounded another bend, then slowed in front of the target’s camp. The recruiter described the target as the only hunter in the swamp with his picture on the wall of his camp. This camp's walls were insulated in old campaign billboards, half painted over, each sporting a photo of the same man and the some words, red and blue, and reading: Rube Rarick for Congress.

Wearing white rubber boots he'd found in the boat, Grim tromped through the mud to the back of the camp and opened the door with a crowbar.