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For the first time in more than twenty years, someone was shooting at me. I was flat on my stomach in the back of a beat-up Peugeot station wagon and it was my fervent hope that I probably wouldn't be hit, because the shooters couldn't see me. My two companions in the front seat and I had raced from the back door of a bistro on Rue de Dante, a few blocks from my hotel - the Negresco - in Nice.
I'd barely crossed the bistro threshold when the shooting started and I still didn't know why. For the better part of an hour, I'd been face down in the back of this beat-up, sour-smelling old bucket. While my adrenaline slowly eased back to normal, I was listening to the guy riding shot-gun discoursing in broken English on how the Uzis that had shot at us, though lethal enough, were not very accurate.
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I called her at her boy-friend's bait shop near Mount Shasta. She answered the phone from behind the cash register, where she was talking to a group of admirers. I could hear a lot of noise and asked if I was calling at a bad time.
"Nope. This bunch of guys who think they can fish are standing here listening to some stories from my days in Las Vegas. Either that or admiring my Daisy Mae outfit. Which do you think it is, boss?"
Lanny shooed the group away and asked a lot of questions about my new venture, shrewd ones about the kind of business I was getting into and what I was getting out of it.
"Lanny, will you just fly down here and save the questions for later?"
"Nah, boss, I want to know it all now. By the way, can I bring along the incredible hunk?"
"Lanny, please stop playing Jimmy Olson, Daily Planet cub reporter. Stop calling me `boss,' and yes, you can bring him. By the way, what do you feed him? Raw meat?"
Nothing stopped her, or even slowed her down,
"Nah, boss, he eats just like a normal human being. Let us work here through the next weekend and then we can leave the shop with the hired help for a few days."
We arranged the details and said goodbye. I was looking forward to Lanny's company and to meeting her boyfriend. Other than knowing he was a former body-building champion, I had no information. He could be 60 years-old, or 20. With Lanny, I was afraid to guess.
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