ME RABBIT, YOU COUGAR

Please welcome back our dear friend Simon Wood!

This year’s Left Coast Crime convention, held in mile high Denver, allowed me to bring out my inner twelve year old boy.  It was the chance to take part in a surveillance and counter-surveillance exercise.  This was one of the extra-curricular activities held during the convention that I jumped on the second I saw it on offer.  Short story writer and ex-DEA agent, R.T. Lawton, put the exercise together.  A surveillance team would have to track a bad guy on the streets of Denver.  The object was for the bad guy to lose the team and for the team not to be spotted and not to lose their bad guy.  How super cool is that?  This was my chance to join the ranks of James Bond and Harry Palmer as the latest spy about town.

I signed up to be one of the hunted.  I put that down to my narcissistic side where I want to be followed by strangers all the time.  As the hunted, I was a ‘Rabbit’ and I was going to be hunted by a team of cougars.  I got quite excited as I’d heard that cougars were predatory older women.  Nice.  Sadly, cougars was just the term for the surveillance team that would be tailing me.  So I shelved the idea of being chased by women all over town for another day.

I wasn’t alone in my rabbit status.  Fellow bunny girls and guys were Marcus Sakey, Reed Farrell Coleman, Margaret Coel, Jason Starr, Donna Andrews, Michelle Gagnon and Twist Phelan.  The identities of the cougars were kept from us to keep things interesting.  For extra flavor, rabbits and cougars were briefed separately.  Us rabbits were taught some techniques for exposing cougars, such as doubling back, entering buildings and watching for who stops, etc.  And the cougars were taught their little tricks for avoiding detection.  I was given a map of downtown and a list of places and times to meet one or more of my fellow rabbits to make “exchanges.”  I was given my start place with a time to be there and told just to do my thing and avoid my cougars.

The game was set.

Hmm, little problem there.  I know the streets of Denver like the back of someone else’s hand.  Also, I get lost in unfamiliar places.  So to avoid wandering the streets hours after the game was over, stopping strangers and asking, “I’m a rabbit and I’m lost, how do I find my hotel?” I did a little homework.  I walked the route ahead of time.  I timed myself and looked for alleys and neat places to hide.  I should add that I was supposed to change into a disguise part way through the exercise and I needed a phone booth or somewhere to do that.  I also didn’t want to walk around with a map in my hand looking like a tourist dufus.  My dry run was a good move on my part as I noticed there were a lot of police and private security on the streets of Denver.  I drew more than a couple of glances from some rent-a-cops during my test.  The last thing I needed to do was get picked up and packed off to jail.  It gave me time to come up with a little plan.

The game kicked off in the late afternoon.  I walked the first leg of my route slowly, looking over my shoulder.  It was surprising to note how paranoid I became after the first thirty seconds.  I’m going from place to place on my route and all I can think about is that I’m being followed by people I don’t know.  They could be anyone.  I must treat everyone with suspicion because everyone is out to get me.  Will I ever be safe?  So I treated everyone I saw as a potential cougar.  It didn’t take long to spot cougars milling around Denver’s streets.  They were so focused on their rabbit and I was so focused on looking out for people following me, it became easy to spot them.   That was the shortcoming of playing a game with so many players in such a small geographical area, but I rolled with the punches.  I was here to play.

When I reached the stage of the game where I could break out my disguise, I wasn’t sure if I’d lost my cougars.  So many were milling about that I just had to hope my daring costume change would do the trick.  I was quite wily, in a way, with my disguise.  I have a padded denim jacket where the lining unzips and is a different jacket.  I also have a pair of glasses that makes me look like Tim Maleeny and a trusty baseball cap.  Because of the law enforcement presence I didn’t like the idea of ducking into a building to change, but I found a very conveniently located building to use as a shield.  I walked up to it on the wrong side of the street.  I waited for traffic to head towards me and I bolted across the road.  If anyone was following, they’d be taking a chance crossing the road after me.  The second I went behind the building, I peeled off my outer coat, pulled on my hat and glasses and emerged the other side of the building a new person.  I took a couple of odd streets to check for cougars and I seemed cougar free.

I went to my last meeting spot pretty sure I was in good shape.  I did check though.  I stopped in front of a shop window and pretended to looking at their wares while I was looking for cougars.  Sadly, I hadn’t looked at which store I stopped in front of and I was checking out the latest offerings from Bare Essentials.  It took me a moment to realize my error which was backed up by three cosmetologists eyeballing me and thinking, he’s not a winter complexion.  I decided that telling them I was trying to avoid cougars wouldn’t have helped. 
As I walked back to the convention hotel pretty sure I’d evaded my cougars, I thought about the little things that continued to give me away.  I was wearing a wedding ring and earrings.  I should have removed those when I changed.  Although I had changed, I couldn’t change my shoes.  I’d realized this when I was packing, so I packed some very ordinary sneakers.  Anything unusual would have stood out.

Sadly, I didn’t get to use my big weapon.  With all the security hanging around, I decided to use that disadvantage as an advantage.  If I hadn’t been able to give my cougars the slip I was going to go up to a rent-a-cop and use my accent.  I was going to say, “Hello, I’m a tourist in this fair nation and I hear stories about violence and muggers.  I’ve seen Law & Order, don’t you know, and some people are following me.  Those people over there to be exact.  Now it could be nothing or it could be something, but do you minding talking to them while I find my hotel.”  With this accent and innocent face, it would have worked like a dream.

Anyhoo, the teams returned to the hotel and we all swapped stories.  Everyone enjoyed playing spy for an hour.  The kid in all of us is hard to shift and when you’re as short as I am, it’s nearly impossible.  Personally, I had a hoot taking part.  I may have taken it a little too seriously, but it will work its way into my books and stories.  Check the bookshelves if you don’t believe me.

Yours in disguise,

Simon Wood

Simon Wood’s Web Hideout

13 thoughts on “ME RABBIT, YOU COUGAR

  1. D.A. Davenport

    My rabbit was Margaret Coel and the woman nearly killed me. She’s 5’11” and has these LONG, lean legs and I’m sure she was just sauntering…for her! I’m 5’3″ and a tad chubby, and I had to jog just to keep up with her. I had thrown 3 disguises in a bag that could be used as a purse or knapsack and I spotted her right off, dodged into a Souvenir shop and spied around displays and shelving units until she began moving off. (The clerk had believed my explaination of being in a surveillance exercise and got a grin out of my shenanigans, thank heavens!) Only problem…I could not spy my team! So I was on my own.I dodged into so many alley-ways and alcoves to do my clothing changes that people began staring at me and I was terrified that someone would call Homeland Security on me at any second!Finally, my quarry met with Marcus Sakey and just as I moved to photograph the hand-off, a bus pulled between us and I could only get a pic of him walking away with some papers in his hand. I tried to duck out of view, doubled back and ran right into the delectable Mr. Sakey. We grinned at each other and I waved my camera at him. He said, “You just THINK you got something on that thing!’ and I ran off to tag along behind Margaret again, despite a raging case of shin-splints.Unknown to me, Margaret had lived in Denver for years and had worked in the Brown Palace Hotel. She ducked in there and disappeared! Clever woman knew a secret side entrance and just vanished.I wandered away and 2 minutes later ran head-long into my team. They had spotted me spot Margaret and had followed a block behind me, so I had back-up after all! Would have been easier if I had known they were there.When MC and I had a chance to talk, she told me she had never spotted me the entire time! And I was not arrested and spirited off to a GitMo interrogation center, so I consider my first foray into Rabbit chasing a success! It was the best, and most exhausting game I’ve ever played.

    Reply
  2. Alexandra Sokoloff

    “Hello, I’m a tourist in this fair nation and I hear stories about violence and muggers. I’ve seen Law & Order, don’t you know, and some people are following me. Those people over there to be exact. Now it could be nothing or it could be something, but do you minding talking to them while I find my hotel.”

    This is why I plan never to get into any game or competition of any kind with Mr. Wood. That’s just exactly how his devious little mind works.

    Thanks for the story, DA. I know everyone had a great time..

    Reply
  3. Naomi

    I would have loved to be a rabbit! This is when being vertically challenged has its advantages–right, Simon? Heck, my husband can’t find me in stores, and I’m not even hiding from him.

    Hope to see you soon–maybe in L.A.?

    Reply
  4. Wilfred Bereswill

    Very cool Simon.

    While I was writing my first novel, I had written a scene that had a terrorist going across town from southern Manhattan to a cell meeting up north. About a month later, I actually had a Saturday morning to kill in New York City and decided to plot it out.

    I combined subway, walking and cab rides to get to my destination, trying to be paranoid. I waited until the doors were about to close on the train before jumping in, etc.

    I then went back and rewrote the scene. The finished product was way better. At least I think so.

    Reply
  5. Louise Ure

    Simon, you must have been a truly admirable rabbit! I saw some of the other players after the game and the disguises were great. I didn’t recognize Michelle Gagnon in her wig for almost an hour.

    Reply
  6. simon

    Hi all,

    Going Rabbitting was fun. I loved Michelle’s disguise because she used her change of clothes to make her fake baby (or Faby as we call ’em in the trade). That was my problem–what to do with my other clothes. If my escape were real they would have gone in a trashcan, but I would have liked a more elegant way of hiding my clothes.

    Naomi: Short did help, but I would have loved to have gotten some lifts for my shoes to give me that extra inch or two. I’m going to be LA in July when the next book comes out. Hope to see you then.

    Reply
  7. toni mcgee causey

    You know, I am thinking that criminals everywhere could stash stuff in stores and say, “Hey, there’s a conference in town and I’m going to have to elude some fellow writers in a few hours… mind if I use your back door / office exit / pair up with you to walk out?”

    I wish I’d signed up in time — as always, Simon, I thoroughly enjoyed your telling of the event. Glad to see you here again.

    Reply
  8. Zhadi

    OUr rabbit was Michelle Gagnon, who was more like the Road Runner than a rabbit. And we were more like three Wily Coyotes than three lean, mean cougars!

    I kept running into Simon while tailing Michelle too… He looked deceptively harmless.

    Reply

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