Runner-up 2

Palmieri had a nervous habit whenever he was upset. He would look at his watch repeatedly, and he was doing it now in the back of the taxicab.

It was a Rolex knockoff he had bought from a street vendor in Cabo, and he dared anyone to be able to tell the difference. Palmieri was no fool. Nobody was going to play him for a fool, either. That idiot on the phone actually thought that he might not recognize his own man’s voice! Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that things had gone drastically wrong.

Palmieri realized that he couldn’t just show up at Falco’s house now. The situation was too unknown, too unstable. He needed somebody to get inside, to report back to him. It didn’t take him long to completely reshuffle the deck in his mind, a change of plans.

“Carmen,” Palmieri whispered into his phone. He knew she had picked up, probably even recognized, his number. But she was hesitating. Probably summoning the courage to talk to him, he surmised correctly.

Finally, she responded: “This is Carmen.”

“This is Palmieri,” he said. “Change of plans. You dance at the Jumbo Clown Room, yes?”

“I do,” she said, “but I was not planning on working tonight.”

“You don’t have to work, just meet me there,” Palmieri said. “Right now; I’m on my way! Oh, and Carmen, one more thing: You have nothing to worry about. We are going to be on your turf, at a public place. I just want to hear you out.”

Carmen agreed that the Jumbo Clown Room would be a suitable meeting place, and that she could be there in 15 minutes. Palmieri would take about the same, if the evening traffic from the airport treated him benevolently. As soon as he hung up, he dialed Hans.

“Where have you been?” Palmieri shouted when Hans answered.

Hans didn’t sound too good, almost like he was talking with a mouth full of marbles. Hans was apologizing for letting Carmen escape, for not knowing where she was. I am surrounded by incompetent fools, Palmieri thought to himself.

“Forget about all that, Hans,” Palmieri said. “Carmen is meeting me at the Jumbo Clown Room. I want you there as well, prepared for anything. Do not, and I must repeat this, do not do anything to her unless I specifically direct you to, is that understood?”

Hans was cursing Carmen and telling Palmieri what she had done to him.

Palmieri interrupted him. “I don’t care if she gave you a frontal lobotomy! It probably would have been an improvement! I am ordering you to keep your hands off her until I know what she has, what she knows, and who she has told what she knows to! Do you understand?”

He hung up the phone. He had to hand it to Carmen; that girl had some moxie. He liked moxie in a woman. Maybe, just maybe, Carmen would be worth more to him alive than dead. He pondered whether Carmen would be a good investment; she certainly hadn’t taken very long to grease the skids with Falco. She had told him that she had a friend who was a judge, someone she confided in as well (which Palmieri thought might be a bluff.)

Nevertheless, maybe he could turn her into a regular Mata Hari. Of course, if she resisted his proposal, Palmieri would feed her to Hans like a juicy steak. Palmieri liked options.

Palmieri looked at his fake Rolex again. He could swear that the time was the same as it was when he had checked it 15 minutes earlier.

Philip Garrett Panitz, a tax attorney, enjoys playing golf, watching the Lakers and working on the next great American novel.