For now, Genie's in the driver's seat

Genie flopped into the passenger seat, breathing hard from her sprint through the alley in a vain search for Carmen. She shot Ernesto a warning, "Keep your mouth shut and drive."

"Where?"

"I don't care. Anywhere. I need to think." She closed her eyes, tried to block out the visual of that blond-haired goon leaking blood onto Carmen's threadbare carpet, a pottery shard rising from his neck like a miniature tombstone.

If she had been smart, she realized, she would've flown to Cabo, ditched Charlie, then found some handsome cabana boy to ply her with margaritas and suntan oil. She rubbed her temples. But if she'd let Charlie handle this thing on his own, he'd have ended up squashed inside an oil drum or buried in a pit, munching gravel alongside Jimmy Hoffa.

She didn't love Charlie, didn't even like him much, but she needed him alive.

Ernesto cleared his throat. "Charlie's gonna get panicky if I don't call soon."

Genie glared at the man's pockmarked face. How much could she trust him? "What are you going to tell him?"

His eyes shifted to her, then back to the road. "What he wants to hear."

"Which is?"

"That I persuaded Carmen life would be nicer in Vegas."

Genie turned away from the smirk that twisted Ernesto's lips, not wanting to think about how often or how intensely he used his powers of persuasion. She glanced at her purse resting on the floor at her feet, wishing she'd kept it in her lap -- not only to protect the flash drive inside, but to have ready access to her Beretta. Forcing a nonchalant shrug, she said, "So call."

She gazed out the window, hoping Charlie was out there somewhere breathing in the relentless smog along with 10 million other Angelenos, far from Cabo's clear blue skies. Ernesto's words replayed in her head, "Mr. Palmieri's gonna be sore . . ." Surely, her husband hadn't boarded that plane, she thought. Panic nipped at her stomach.

Ernesto's cellphone began emitting a tinny version of "La Cucaracha." He winked at Genie, making her feel as if those cockroaches were scuttling up her arms.

" 'lo," he grunted.

Genie heard Charlie's voice, but his words were only vague mutterings punctuated by the beat of "Copacabana" playing in the background.