Runner-up 4

Palmieri shot a look toward Lopez that could stop a clock.

Lopez ignored him with a wide grin.

“Since I can be reasonably certain we are not here to watch baseball, may I suggest we move to a table so we can conduct some business?” Palmieri was anxious to get this clambake over.

All four moved to a table in a corner. Luckily, since the game had already started, the room was sparsely sprinkled with a few lounge lizards -- except the customer in a booth across the room who went unnoticed by Palmieri’s party of four.

“Look,” Bonner growled to Palmieri, “let’s settle our hash and get the hell out of here.”

Lopez subtly squirmed in his seat. He reached under the table and touched Carmen on the knee. She slightly jerked -- it was a signal to bring up the package.

Sliding the “Falcopack” onto the table, Carmen divulged, “Here it is. I’m supposed to deliver it to Steve Lopez if there’s trouble, and I think there is.”

Steve picked up the prize package. “I believe this is for me.”

“Hold on, Studs, we all may have something at stake in that brown wrapper,” Bonner said. “In the interest of protecting everyone’s rear end, let’s open it.”

Palmieri exploded. “Are you nuts, Bonner? I have a pretty good idea of what Falco put in his ‘insurance’ packet. It probably has enough evidence in it to put you and me away forever.”

“You wouldn’t open something not addressed to you . . . would you?” Lopez said, clutching the package. “By the way, thanks for the ‘Studs’ allusion. Great compliment.”

A man started across the room toward their table. It was none other than Judge Laurence M. Greene.

“What are you doing here?” Lopez inquired. “Afraid you were going to miss some action, Larry?”

Bonner and Palmieri also recognized the man, his face frozen with resolve.

“I’ve come here to clear my calendar, as it were, and stop this cat-and-mouse game you two have so cleverly hatched,” Greene said. “Palmieri, you think you can buy me off and throw your case out of my court. I have always followed dictates of the law and I won’t veer from that course now. You are the devil’s bag man and you have to pay for your despicable deeds.”

Bonner broke into Greene’s harangue. “What a minute, judge. I was the patsy in this caper. I never knew about the drugs, only the Vegas high-jinks. I was a slime ball, but not a killer.”

Carmen and Lopez were a bit perplexed at the goings on. What drugs? They both thought that Bonner and Palmieri were involved with transporting models to Vegas for sex and blackmail.

Greene continued: “I now find I have no other way out, Palmieri. You must be stopped, and, since I won’t be able to do that in my court, I have come up with another method.”

At that point, Greene fired his Smith and Wesson through his pocket at Palmieri, who gasped, held his chest and fell over onto the floor.

Shock overcame Bonner, Carmen and Lopez. Fearing for their lives, they ducked at the crack of the pistol. When they came up for air, Greene was gone and Palmieri was dead.

Lopez looked around for a security guard; several were coming into the room. Lopez started to run for the entrance, motioning to the guards, “Come on, come on.”

As they reached the parking lot, a loud report ripped through the air. They all looked in the direction of the gunfire. Judge Greene was slumped over his steering wheel.

Janice Ackles says, “I have noir in my blood. My grandfather, August Vogel, was one of the founders of Grand Central Market on Broadway -- a locale used many times in the noir films of the 1930s and ‘40s.”