Runner-up 1

Palmieri was in a taxi going nowhere slowly, eastward from the airport on Century Boulevard. He needed a place to figure things out. He’d probably better stay away from the chain hotels along Century, too easy to be recognized.

As the taxi rolled beneath the 405 Freeway toward Inglewood, he saw several motels whose standards were not very exacting. The type that advertised color TV and HBO, perfect to hide out for a day or so while he worked on a plan. He had the driver pull into the Hi-Lite Hotel.

The clerk at the Hi-Lite Hotel seemed irritated that someone wanted to register for a room. He had just gotten the latest “Girls Gone Wild” video and was eager to get back to his unit.

So he barely looked at Ralph Winter’s passport -- the poor sap he knocked out at the airport restroom -- when he checked Palmieri into Room 204. It was perfect, with a view of the driveway and parking lot.

The clerk said to Palmieri as he was about to reach for his carry-on luggage, “The ice maker’s on the ground floor along with the vending machine. After 9 p.m., you gotta go to the liquor store for change cause I ain’t around.”

Palmieri decided to go next door to the liquor store for something to calm his nerves. It was a typical neighborhood liquor store, with cheap wine and lots of half pints on the shelves behind the cash register. He seriously doubted that he would find that Islay Single Malt Scotch that he loved, but right now even blended Scotch would be OK. He found one that was a step above rotgut and went back to the hotel.

The key to door to Room 204 took a little jiggling to open. It was your typical flea-bag motel room: a lumpy bed, curtains with holes in them, a color TV made before the advent of the remote and definitely no wet bar. Palmieri pulled the knob on the antiquated TV. As it flickered on, he went to the bathroom to retrieve a plastic cup. “Damn,” he thought. “Forgot some ice. . . . Guess I’ll just have to drink it out of a plastic cup.”

On the TV was Corrine Adams, news reporter for the local affiliate. What Palmieri didn’t know was that this was Corrine’s last telecast as she was a casualty of network downsizing; though he didn’t give a damn. What had caught his attention was what Corrine was saying.

She was reporting from in front of a congressman’s home, where an ex-FBI agent just had a shootout with two unknown men. He had killed one and seriously wounded the other. He had been wounded himself.

Corrine had just arrived on the scene and hadn’t been able to confirm reports that there had been two small arms fired as well as what one neighbor thought was a shotgun.

Palmieri sat straight down on the lumpy bed. How the hell had everything gone wrong? This had been a simple blackmail scheme of politicos, judges and celebrities. People had been doing this for millenniums. What had gone wrong?

It had to be Falco . . . never should have included a politician. They always screwed things up. And then there was that Hollywood guy Bonner. . . . If he was part of this and lived through it, he would probably sell the movie rights and make a mint. And then he had a pole dancer trying to scheme him!

What to do, where to go. . . .

Thomas Hamlett, a state worker, says he reads bad narrative reports.