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  I pointed the Glock, “Let him go, Carl. It’s over.”

  “You shoot, Damn Baca. Go ahead, kill de actor, I not care!”

  It was too risky. Carl backed down the Sunset Strip dragging Bob backward as cars slowed and watched. One of them hissed at us, “What’s the name of this movie? Looks good.” He gave us a thumbs up and drove down the street.

  I stalked Carl with the film crew following me. Carl reached the front door of Siberia and opened it. So, that’s where he’d been since the explosion. Somehow, he’d made it all the way here. He closed the door and locked it, then I heard a heavy weight slide against the door.

  I said, “Call Nine One One, tell them what’s happening,” and I put my Glock in the shoulder holster to wait for the negotiating team to arrive. The only problem was, Carl wasn’t going to give us that much time.

  Everyone heard Bob’s scream. It was long and high-pitched, full of pain. People behind me moaned, “Oh God, oh God...”

  I ran past them to Shamu and started her up, then spun tires as I backed into the Sunset Strip amid squealing rubber and honking horns. The set people saw what I was doing and they ran into traffic, stopping cars. I pulled my Glock and put it on the seat by me as I circled the big Ford across the lanes in an arc and came around with the grill and dorsal fin headed straight for Siberia’s front door.

  I held onto the wheel as Shamu burst through the door and careened across the floor. I caught a glimpse of Carl standing in the middle of the dance floor holding Bob. Shamu was still motoring and I rammed the bar, knocking it into splinters, then felt the big iron-pipe bumper smack hard into the rack of aqua-lung thingees below the barrel of secret ingredients and everything exploded into gray snow and hissing smoke.

  I felt beside me, but couldn’t find the Glock. I searched the floorboard and under the seat, groping frantically. I grabbed change, an air freshener, a half-full box of magnums and a fly swatter, but couldn’t find the pistol. I heard Bob grunt in pain, so I hopped out of the door and straight into a nightmare. There was a gray snowstorm inside Siberia.

  It took me a second to realize the aqua-lung thingees had ruptured and exploded, blasting the Tunguska’s secret ingredients into the air like movie snow. The tanks hissed, shooting vapor into the air like a dozen fire extinguishers. The flakes of Tunguska were whirling and swirling like a heavy blizzard. I had an inch of it on my hair and clothes and the flakes were so thick I couldn’t help breathing it in. My entire body inside and out was tingling and hot-cold. My eyes watered and burned. I felt like I’d inhaled half the comet.

  I heard coughing and walked toward the noise, but didn’t make them out until I felt the edge of the dance floor with my toe. Bob was on his knees and Carl towered over him like a colossus. I stepped onto the dance floor, ready to take Rakes on if it would give Bob time to escape.

  Rakes made a funny noise, like a snort and a gurgle at the same time. I stepped closer and saw he was holding his own throat with his good hand and his face changed colors as I watched.

  Bob crawled toward me and I helped him to his feet. We both looked at Carl. The Russian shook his head back and forth and foam leaked out of the corners of his mouth like he’d eaten a handful of alka-seltzers.

  He looked at us. His one good eye was as red as a cut tomato and the lids were swelling. He gasped, “Breathe...Help.”

  I didn’t know about Bob, but I wasn’t going to help him. We watched Carl drop to his knees and roll on his side, his lungs wheezing. His breath whistled in different octaves as he thrashed around trying to take in air, and the notes were as loud as a kid’s plastic flute. In another minute, he rolled on his back, let out one small sigh and was still. The flakes covered him in a gray shroud until he looked like a fresh-made paper mache mummy.

  Bob still had shaving cream on his face, but it was thick with flakes. I pointed at it and he wiped it off with his shirttail, then we walked outside to the cheers of the set people and forty or fifty Japanese tourists, each with three or four cameras around their necks and another one in their hands as they snapped away.

  The police arrived ten minutes later and we again answered questions, but Bob was a professional and he cut the statements short and told them he had an obligation to fulfill and they could take all the statements they wanted after filming had wrapped. They said okay and let us walk away. A-list actors, I tell you.

  They cleaned Bob up like new, but I was too tired and told them I’d get through this and clean up at my office. We moved a block down Sunset and set up again. The shoot went perfect and Bob did twenty-two takes, each one a little different and each one I thought was perfect. At the wrap I had the cutie-from-Salinas’ phone number and got a ride home from Bob. I called on Bob’s car phone as he drove and told the body shop repairman where to find my truck. He laughed when he hung up.

  I shook Bob’s hand when he dropped me off and he said he’d stay in touch. The hospital had released Hondo, and he was at the office. He, Arch, and Waylon were waiting inside when I opened the door. They all pointed at the thick crust of gray stuff on my head and clothes.

  Arch said, “Haw! Worst case of dandruff I ever saw.”

  “You need to work on your routine, Arch, it’s not funny.” Well, that brought another round of hoots from both Archie and Waylon.

  Hondo leaned back in his chair and said, “We saw it on the news. They filmed it all and even played the ‘Jaws’ theme when you drove Shamu in a circle and crashed through the door.”

  Waylon said, “Yeah, you guys must be pretty important because they broke into the middle of a Bonanza rerun to tell us about it.”

  Archie slapped his thigh and snickered. “They don’t do that for just anybody.”

  I went to my desk and plopped into the chair, sending a cloud of gray dust and flakes into the air. In a couple of seconds, all three of them were sneezing and rubbing their eyes.

  I put my hands behind my head, “It’s good to be back,” I said.

  ~~***~~

  Thanks for reading Baca, the first story in the Ronny Baca Mystery series. I hope you enjoyed it.

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  You can find my books, plus a few other things at my website: www.billykring.com

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  Below is an excerpt from the second Baca novel, L.A. Woman:

  “It’s not just children who need heroes.”

  -Tamora Pierce-

  CHAPTER 1

  “I can’t believe they gave you the lead in a commercial just because you opened somebody’s car door,” I said.

  Hondo pulled down his Ray-Bans to look at me. “It was a little hard to open.”

  We sat under an awning on the sand at Will Rogers State Beach, the same place they filmed four million episodes of Baywatch. A film crew was finishing preparations and all the other actors milled around rehearsing their parts. Hondo was dressed like an Army Ranger – Hollywood style.

  He wore a torn camouflage tee shirt that only half covered his torso, leaving a good look at his pecs and six-pack. A bandolier filled with cartridges angled across his chest and he wore a pair of cut-off camo pants. His face and arms were touched up with green and black camo paint in a way that emphasized his build and features.

  He saw me studying the paint. “What?”

  “I guess you could hide out at a model’s party at the Viper Room or someplace. Kind of squeeze in there between Heidi Klum and Zoolander.”

  He shook his head in slow motion. “You’re unbelievable.”

  The director came over then, a blond, intense twenty-four year old named Emma Storm. Emma worked as an AD and sometimes-reporter at one of the local network affiliates, but she was also sharp enough and good enough to land the director’s job on this commercial. She motioned to someone behind her. A couple of the hands brought over a flat screen television monitor and placed i
t on a table near Hondo.

  Emma said, “Since we’re going to intersperse your action with actual news footage of your heroics, I wanted you to watch it again, just to keep the symbiotic perspective of our film in focus.”

  I said, “Symbiotic? Hondo’s had his rabies shots, he won’t infect anybody.” Nobody laughed. I said, “It was a little joke, like, ha-ha?”

  Emma ignored me and brushed Hondo’s hair with a delicate touch. “Watch the footage, Darling. We’ll be ready for the first take when you finish.” She snapped her fingers and one of the hands turned on the television and left.

  I said to Hondo, “You need to find some people with a sense of humor to hang out with, make you laugh.”

  “Oh, hanging out with you is enough.”

  The picture came on and I watched what my friend had done four days ago. I’d returned to Los Angeles last night and this was the first time I would see the footage.

  A news helicopter returning from a traffic story caught the entire thing. The cameraman was filming a blue Firebird weaving through heavy traffic where the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, cut into the side of a hill and left only a guardrail to keep vehicles from dropping straight down a sixty-foot cliff to rocks and ocean below.

  A large, black Dodge Ram pickup suddenly sped up through the cars and turned into the Firebird’s front fender, ramming it off the road.

  The Firebird spun in a tire-smoking skid and banged into the guardrail so hard it flew nose-up into the air, wobbling like a hooked marlin. The car came down on its side, and rolled three times before going airborne again and hitting upright on the guardrail. It slid down the guardrail sideways like a skateboarder on a handrail for another hundred feet, scattering showers of sparks and glistening ropes of liquid from ruptured lines before finally coming to a screeching, metal-grinding stop with the car’s front end hanging over the precipice, rocking up and down like a seesaw.

  Other vehicles slid and banged into each other during the accident as the drivers swerved to miss the Firebird, until the chain reaction created a massive conglomeration of wrecked vehicles jammed together in a metallic jigsaw puzzle that clogged the highway for fifty yards in either direction around the Firebird. Later reports said ninety-four cars and trucks were involved.

  The helicopter dropped lower to film and pan, and that was when they saw Hondo fishing at the edge of the surf below the cliff. He was shirtless and wore cut-off jeans and an old pair of New Balance running shoes. The camera zeroed in on him as he lay down his rod and reel to look up at the teetering car high above.

  Smoke curled from the bottom of the Firebird and a woman’s hand came out of the narrow gap between the crushed top and driver’s door handle.

  She waved for help, but no one else could see her because of the other wrecks. The Firebird’s front half dipped lower and lower over the cliff with each rocking motion.

  Hondo ran to the cliff and free-climbed toward the Firebird. He went up very fast, like someone was pulling him with an invisible wire.

  The camera zoomed on him and the shiny dimpled craters and slender wormlike lines of a half-dozen old scars from knives and bullets showed on his tanned back. One was the size of an oblong dime and as pink as bubble gum. I knew the story behind it. A Russian criminal named Simon Mortay had run Hondo through with a sword cane. That’s when Mortay found out Hondo Wells was hard to kill.

  When Hondo was ten feet from the car, a small plume of yellow flames and black smoke appeared at the back. He reached the Pontiac and got underneath the car where the front leaned over the guardrail. Flames were within a foot of Hondo as he put his back against the frame and braced his feet on a large outcrop of rock. He pushed up and the Firebird slid off the guardrail and back onto the road.

  Hondo rose and hopped over the guardrail. The camera zoomed closer and showed the unconscious woman driver slumped in the narrow gap between the crushed roof and the bottom edge of the driver’s side window.

  Flames flickered reddish-yellow in the back seat behind her and thick black smoke streamed out of the broken windows. The few other people starting forward to help ran back when they saw the fire.

  Hondo tried the door handle once, but it was bent and crumpled, as good as welded shut from the force of the wreck. He ran to a nearby delivery truck that was jackknifed and wedged among a dozen other vehicles and he slid open the side panels, revealing cases of Budweiser.

  He took a case and ran back to the burning car. He shook the case, then dropped it and used his knife to punch holes pop-pop-pop fast into the cans and use the spewing froth to put out the flames nearest the woman.

  When he tossed the last can away, Hondo put his foot against the side of the car and grabbed the door. He pulled, and the muscles in his back and shoulders swelled and quivered with the effort, but he got a corner loose, and pulled and bent it open and down like someone using a can opener, until he had an opening large enough to reach inside to the woman.

  “See,” I said, “Just opening a darn car door.” The corners of Hondo’s mouth went up a quarter inch.

  **

  The woman was wedged inside. Hondo bent the steering wheel toward the passenger’s side until it touched the dash, then he cut through the seat belt with one quick slice of his knife. He picked her up and moved away from the burning car. Hondo made five steps before the gas tank blew and sent orange and yellow flames through the Firebird’s interior.

  Oily smoke billowed out and enveloped Hondo and the woman, hiding them from view for five or six seconds before the wash from the helicopter’s rotors blew the smoke away in two curling patterns.

  Hondo emerged between them still carrying the woman. Her arms hung loosely around his neck and her head rested on his chest like a sleeping child. A long, Laura Croft-style braided ponytail dangled behind her head. Steven Spielberg couldn’t have set up a more dramatic shot.

  Hondo knelt and lay the woman down, but before he could let go she pulled his head to her and kissed him on the lips. She held the kiss for several seconds, then pulled away and fainted. Hondo stood again, his torso and legs streaked with grease and smoke. The camera held on him as the scene faded to black.

  I said, “Okay, since I’m already well established in the movie industry-”

  Hondo said, “On your last job you worked one day as a PA on a Gillette commercial.”

  “Like I said, since I only work with the best in the business, I was wondering how much we’re getting paid for this little bit of cinematic fluff.”

  “You think a Budweiser commercial is small time?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s so, I don’t know, commercial.”

  Hondo leaned over and whispered an amount in my ear.

  I said, “Great googly-moogly, I feel a Hawaiian vacation coming on.”

  “Not until we find her.”

  I said, “It was that darn old kiss, wasn’t it.”

  He wouldn’t look at me, “She’s running. She probably needs help.”

  I nodded, “I imagine. That truck hitting her car wasn’t an accident. Otherwise, you’d think a person you rescued from a fiery death might at least stay around to thank you.”

  “You’d think,” Hondo said.

  “How did she disappear from the scene? There were cameras and cops and a big crowd of people all crowded around. Only thing I can imagine is Criss Angel was there and Mindfreaked her to Cancun.”

  “My guess is she crawled between some cars and then got up and moved into the crowd. Police said the Firebird had been taken from a car lot so recently that a stolen report hadn’t gone out yet.”

  “Any prints?”

  “No, fire pretty much took care of any forensics.”

  “How about the pickup that hit her?”

  “Drove away and the news crew never got a clean shot at the license plate.”

  “You get an uncut copy of the news film?”

  “Not yet. They’re mailing it to the office. The camera crew said they filmed another few seconds beyond
what we just saw, but that was it.”

  “Might be enough, though.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Emma came over as if on cue and said, “Are you ready, Darling?”

  Hondo handed me his Ray-Bans and raised his eyebrows twice, “Darling,” he said and grinned. Hondo followed Emma to his mark and they did the scenes, then did them again, and again, and again.

  CHAPTER 2

  They wrapped at sundown and Hondo cleaned up. We got into Shamu, my big four-wheel drive Ford pickup with the paint job that makes it resemble a killer whale and I headed toward our office in Venice.

  I said, “You’re buying dinner, I presume.”

  “I bought last time.”

  “Yeah, but you just told me how much you made today.”

  “If I remember right, you asked how much we were going to make.”

  “Well sure, we’re a team,” I held up my hand with the index and middle fingers crossed, “Tight like this, but since you did all the work I thought you’d want the satisfaction of picking where we eat. I don’t want you to feel inferior simply because I usually make all the important decisions. I want to empower you.”

  “You listened in on that managers’ symposium in San Francisco, didn’t you? I thought you were running security for them.”

  “Well, I wanted to pick up some management tips for our business.”

  Hondo said, “There’s only two of us.”

  “True, but I’ve never had a chance to use the word empower in a sentence before.”

  “I’m glad you got it out of your system. Don’t ever use it again.”

  “I’m purged, cleansed, pure as the driven-“

  “How does The Mongolian sound for eats?”

  “That’s the one. I’m so hungry I’m going to order the Genghis Khan Platter. It has half a horse for the appetizer.” The restaurant was just ahead and I eased into the exit lane then turned into the parking lot. As we got out, delicious smells from the kitchen rolled over us. “Your olfactories pick that up?” I said, “Horse feet are a delicacy over there. The secret is they cook the hooves for two years to make them tender. Smells pretty good, doesn’t it?”