Runner-up 3

This was the final inning.

Carmen went to bat. Sometimes she had more guts than brains. “Neither one of you gets the flash drive. It belongs to me, the L.A. Times, the cops, freedom and any other category besides you slimeballs!”

She invaded Bonner’s pocket and scooped up the flash drive, slung its lavaliere around her neck, and bolted over to Steve Lopez and his “friends” for protection. She took a chance in assuming that the guy who’d just butted in wasn’t going to risk using his gun in this crowded room.

Lopez’s “friends” stepped around her like shields as Carmen handed him the flash drive. “You’ll know what to do with this along with the insurance packet. I’m out of here. Don’t call me; I’ll call you.” And she was gone.

Lopez mumbled, “This is like ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ or some kind of spaghetti western.” Somehow he didn’t think he would ever hear from her again.

From his seat in the booth across the room, the fifth man was whispering into his cellphone.

“That’s not the only flash drive,” Palmieri quipped.

“The Birds of Paradise were erased,” Bonner informed them, hoping the feds had recorded enough.

“So how many copies are out there?” the judge snarled.

“Enough to bury you,” Palmieri replied.

“What will it take to shut this extortion down?” the judge challenged.

“How about a quarter-million for both Bonner and me,” Palmieri countered.

“You’ll have it when I have all the copies,” the judge agreed.

“But what about Carmen’s reporter?” Bonner nodded in Lopez’s direction.

“He’s history. We’ll get something on him or just kill him,” Palmieri snarled.

Ernesto gave the order to close in on the trio of conspirators and escort Lopez out of the line of fire. He barked a command to intercept Carmen wherever she had gone. Material witnesses for the government needed protection.

Hauser and jacketed agents rolled in like a tsunami and fanned out to cover all the exits.

The man in the booth didn’t move, trying to remain obscure. Unfortunately for him, Lopez’s “friends” had sent cellphone pictures to DEA headquarters for visual IDs. The guy in the booth had come up as one of their suspected cartel dealers. Within seconds Hermann “Read Him His Rights” Hauser had done his bit and cuffed the guy. Then he took special pleasure in cuffing Palmieri and stripping all of them of their weapons. “So much for security in stadiums,” he mumbled in disgust.

“What a column this’ll be,” Lopez mused. Another accolade for his collection.

His mind snapped shots of everything like a camcorder. This ability made for amazing recall of details. With Carmen’s documents in his pocket he had plenty of front-page headlines. The journalist in him was enjoying the scene but he was relieved there was no gunfire. You never knew in L.A.

Just as things were calming down, there was a sound like an express train hitting the building, which started to shake violently. The lights flickered and went out. Elevators quit. Glasses rattled and fell off tables. The liquor bottles in the bar rolled and spilled. The shaking was still going on. Women screamed. The feds had trouble holding onto their prisoners.

Panic had hit the ballpark. Native Californians knew what was happening and asked themselves that terrible question, “Was this the big earthquake Caltech had been predicting?”

Constance Spencer has been writing full time since retiring last year after 25 years of teaching. She is “hoping to be like Frank McCourt, who made it late in life.”