Runner-up 3

As they approached the two characters at the bar, Carmen hesitated and dropped behind her bright-eyed companion a half step. The goateed man reached a hand out to the older of the two as he spoke up.

“Steve Lopez,” he said. He let that sink in for a second or two. No reaction.

“I write for the L.A. Times,” he added. “I want to ask you a few questions.”

“What the hell . . . “ spluttered Palmieri as he began to shift on his chair. His glaring eyes shifted instantly from Lopez to Carmen and then to Bonner. If looks could kill then Bonner was dead.

The smiling reporter’s arm stretched homelessly out into an atmosphere of confusion, fear, and anger. No one intended to shake his hand.

In a nearby anteroom Ernesto and another DEA agent cursed as they watched and listened to the exchange on the mobile equipment. “Leave it to the media to screw things up,” Ernesto muttered. He pictured months of hard work snuffed out in an instant.

The suddenly obsequious bartender had inserted his redheaded countenance into the scene. He was FBI agent Joe Linker and he made damn sure he’d be near enough to tamp down any sparks in what he knew could be an explosive situation. He had watched Bonner’s right hand slip down under his long leather jacket and he had also read murder in Palmieri’s face.

When Carmen began to speak, both Bonner and Palmieri interrupted her with rapid-fire angry outbursts. Carmen didn’t give up, however, and the three of them were rattling out a white noise that seemed to amuse the Times reporter. Agent Linker, on the other hand, was light years away from being amused.

The sound of a calmly authoritarian voice permeated the clatter and worked to quiet the three other voices. It was the practiced questioning of Steve Lopez.

“What do you know about the Marceno cartel, Mr. Palmieri ?” he asked the older man. He begged pardon and ordered beer for himself and Carmen from the redheaded young bartender. He ordered another round for the others.

“I guess you put that on an expense account?” Palmieri, suddenly friendly, asked. He reached out his right hand now. He was suddenly calm, and his tenor voice had re-secured its slithering tone of command. “Vincent Palmieri,” he said. “We should talk expense accounts, Lopez,” Palmieri said. The veteran reporter knew the suggestion of a bribe when he heard one.

None of them had noticed the mustached man across the room raise a large automatic and point it at Charlie Bonner. As the man walked slowly toward the group, Lopez recognized him: Judge Greene.

Ernesto, in the anteroom, recognized him too. He had caught the guy’s movement at the same moment that the jurist’s old 45 service revolver discharged, blowing a massive hole in Charlie Bonner, dead center. Very dead.

Carmen and Lopez hit the floor as a garden of guns sprouted, their gray steel stems suddenly shooting upward into the room. The bar’s occupants, as it turned out, were a group of goons and government men, one murderous judge, one scared newspaperman, and one ticked-off pole dancer.

Lopez held his hands over his ears. The noise was deafening. He had felt Carmen’s foot kicking him in the back awhile ago. His face was in the carpet now and he hoped to flatten out as much a possible. In his panic, he pictured eating pancakes at the Pantry and prayed that he might have the chance to do so again.

Dan Hennessy is a writer and teacher who says he “writes for fun and not for a living.”