Like pulp fiction

Is there a Louisiana-based novelist who is the equivalent of, say, Florida's Carl Hiaasen? Let's hope so, because the undoing of Democratic Representative William Jefferson - nailed by the Feds in a bribery investigation - has the soul of a Hiaasen book: petty greed, graft, official malfeasance, all dusted with unintended humor and a generous sprinkling of incompetence. This is the stuff of paperback fiction.

At one meeting captured on audiotape, Jefferson chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa.

As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might receive, the congressman "began laughing and said, 'All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking, as if the FBI is watching,'" he told the businesswoman, who was wearing an FBI recording device.

Oh, and it gets better:

As for the $100,000...all but $10,000 was recovered on Aug. 3 when the FBI searched Jefferson's home in Washington. The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil.

Louisiana writers, you'd better get busy! Otherwise, Hiaasen may just cross state lines and eat your lunch on this story.

(This entry sent parcel cross-post...)