“Tell me something. What’s mandatory sentence for dental floss?”
1:45 a.m.
Sheraton, Room 702
Kelly was asleep. Jack could tell by her breathing, which had settled into a slow, comfortable rhythm.
Thank Christ.
Nanomachines? The Operator? The Olsen twins? A killer satellite? Proof in San Diego? Luminous toxin? Deflecting a kiss one moment, offering a blow job the next? What kind of con game was this?
But deep down, Jack knew this wasn’t a con. More likely, this woman was simply stone nuts. Some kind of research scientist who had lost her mind, or stayed up one too many nights with a complex equation.
Boiiiiiing! Spring loose! Let’s go out and kidnap a man nursing a boilermaker in an airport bar! A sad substitute for a lost social life.
Jack slowly rolled off the bed and made his way to the other side, where she had stashed her bag. It was one of those vinyl messenger bags you see strapped to twenty-something hipsters. He opened the flap, and yep, she wasn’t kidding. Handcuffs. He gently placed them on the carpet, trying to avoid the sound of metal jangling.
They weren’t authentic police handcuffs. Unless some city departments had started purchasing restraints from a store called the Pleasure Chest. The name was featured on a purple stamp on the base of one of the cuffs. Hot-cha.
Still, they seemed solid enough. Sex games were no fun unless there was that element of realism.
Enough to cuff her to the bed while he called the police.
Let them arrive, and she can tell them all about the Operator and Mary Kate and Bob Saget and whoever else is in the Full Nut-House in her mind. They could force her to surrender the antidote.... In fact, wait a fucking sec. It was probably right here, in her bag.
As quietly as he could, Jack fished around in her bag, but he found only three items of interest, poisonwise. A bottle of CVS-BRAND contact lens rewetting drops. Clear liquid inside. Could she have used this to store the antidote? There was also a plastic tube with a Tylenol Extra Strength label on it. He twisted it open. It was full of round white tablets. He shook one out—they were stamped OP 706. No idea. So maybe they were it. Finally, there was a sheet of foil-wrapped Imodium tablets. Or at least they looked like Imodium. Could be anything.
Was it one of these three? Did she even have it on her? Well, the police would be able to make her talk.
Jack picked up the handcuffs and crept closer to Kelly. She was the kind of woman who slept with her arms over her head, which was perfect. He placed one of the cuffs around her wrist and gently snapped it into place.
Her eyes opened. She breathed sharply. Then she screamed, “No!”
Jack hooked the other cuff around the bedpost. Snap it, snap it, c’mon, snap it.... Kelly yanked her hand away. The cuff clanged against brass, then slid free. Then she smashed her forehead into Jack’s nose. His face went numb. His eyes closed defensively. It was like someone had pushed him under chlorinated water before he had a chance to hold his nose. Burning liquid, up his nose and down his throat.
Then he felt a blow to his chest, and he fell backward to the carpet.
Kelly was astride him in seconds. Her thighs squeezed his rib cage, which was amazingly painful.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. Jack coughed; the burning in his nose intensified. “But you almost killed me. You have to understand that.”
She squeezed his chest again, and Jack felt the cool metal over his wrist. Then a click.
“I thought you believed me.”
1:50 a.m.
Little Pete’s Restaurant, Seventeenth Street
The all-night diner was called Little Pete’s. It lived up to its name. It was a tiny rectangular wedge on the first floor of a seven-story garage complex. Just enough room for a row of six booths, a breakfast counter, a compact cashier’s station, and a stainless-steel kitchen in back. It was a greasy spoon as imagined by Fisher-Price. But it was the only thing open this time of night in this part of town. And that’s where his handler had told him to go.
Good news was, the night was almost over for him. Sure, it’d had its bumps, but four hours of work wasn’t too hideous. He could get some sleep and resume his personal mission the next evening.
Kowalski had called his handler once he was safely away from the scene of his most recent crimes. One headless burned guy (not his fault!) in a burned-out shell of a house, one dead woman in a shallow creek, one strangled asshole in his own living room. He’d taken the asshole’s Audi—an awfully nice car for a young college professor. Maybe the guy—Robert Lankford, according to his ID—had had a sideline going. Stay up all night, hoping that armed robbers would wander by his backyard. Take a cut of the loot, buy some flashy wheels to impress the barely dressed undergrad criminal justice majors.
His handler’d had a rare bit of good news for him: “No need to travel. We’re sending someone to recover the bag from you.”
She’d given him the address of a diner two blocks from Rittenhouse Square.
And here he was, Ed’s head stashed between his feet on the floor, plate of bacon, bowl of cottage cheese, bowl of mixed fruit, and a cup of chocolate skim milk on the table before him. Usually, he waited until after an assignment, but the running and killing and planning had left him ravenous. An infusion of protein would help.
He’d wanted to talk to his handler.
Maybe say, We should talk.
Or: I need to explain a few things to you.
Or even the classic: This is not what it looks like.
But how could it not?
Let’s say you’re her.
A handler in an ultrasecretive government agency. Your boyfriend—also your number-one field agent—disappears on a long-term op, only to emerge with a pregnant fiancée. How’s it supposed to look?
Never mind that the fiancée is dead. That doesn’t help things at all. Not in your eyes.
Her eyes.
Kowalski couldn’t even bring himself to think of his handler by name. Her lovely name.
They’d worked together for years, anonymous to each other, the passion growing. By the time they’d broken down together in Warsaw, in that violent thunderstorm, and she revealed her true first name, it was like bearing her naked body to him for the first time. It was the most intimate thing about her.
And now that he thought about it, that was supremely fucked up. He used his butter knife to slice a strip of bacon in half. Surprisingly good bacon—not many globules of fat, not too burned.
Want some, Ed?
He could put the bag on the table, unzip it, unhinge Ed’s jaw and give him a little taste. Least he could do, after all he’d been through. Kowalski decided he’d been a little harsh previously. What was Ed’s crime? Flirting with a pretty blonde on a plane ride to Philadelphia?
Meanwhile, Kowalski had a stack of mafiosi bodies piling up this summer—an Italian holocaust. And he was the guy enjoying the bacon.
The worst thing was, he’d lost count of how many goombahs he’d snipered since ID’ing Katie’s body at the morgue. The local paper had it somewhere around thirteen, according to the last news brief he’d read. Speculation was that it was intermob warfare, a bunch of bargain-basement capos capping one another over worthless bits of turf left behind by the Russian mob. And he’d only read that brief because they had printed the anonymous tip he’d phoned in: “Yeah, somebody’s out there. He’s pissed. And he’s a good shot, too. They call him Mr. K.”
The reporter ran with that, verbatim. They didn’t check a damn thing. It was amazing. The media would print anything.
But Ed, I did it for a reason. I wanted them to know why they were dying. That I was coming after them. All of them.
You understand, right, Ed?
1:55 a.m.
Sheraton, Room 702
She pressed a corner of a blanket to his nose. “Keep your head back and the bleeding will stop.”
“I’m bleeding? Oh, fuck, you made me bleed!”
�
�Shhhh, you big baby. It’ll be fine. I didn’t break anything. If I had, you’d know.”
“Fuck.”
There were three sharp knocks at the door.
“Oh, fuck,” Kelly said.
A muffled voice through the door: “Hey, sorry to bother. I’m one of your neighbors from across the hall, and I thought I heard something. Everything okay in there?”
“We’re great!”
“Somebody help me!”
Kelly squeezed tighter, and the fresh agony in Jack’s ribs took his breath away. She clamped her free hand—the one that wasn’t handcuffed—over his lips and pressed down hard. Her eyes were daggers.
“My husband’s kidding. We’re doing a little rough play. You understand, right?”
“Are you okay, miss? Look, how about you open the door and let me know.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I can assure you, we’re completely fine. Go back to bed.”
“Open up for a second. Let me see you.”
“With all due respect, sir, we paid quite a lot of money for privacy in this hotel. Didn’t we, dear?”
Jack considered this. Yeah, he had paid quite a bit for this room. Donovan Platt had offered. Wanted to pick up the plane fare, too. But Jack had refused. If he was going to be castrated, he was going to pay his own way.
Kelly removed her hand from Jack’s mouth and reached back to cup it around his testicles. Pressure was immediately applied.
“Tell him. ”
Jack nodded.
Then he threw himself to one side. Kelly’s legs slipped off his chest. But not the hand clenching his balls. Despite the handcuffs, this seemed to be Kelly’s true lifeline; weakening her grip would mean a fall into the abyss. She squeezed hard. Jack tried to curl up into a defensive fetal position, but the pain was too intense. He couldn’t move. Or speak. It looked like they were engaged in an S-M version of Twister.
“Come on, miss, just open this door for a minute? I’d feel a lot better, and we can all get back to sleep.”
“Sir, don’t take this the wrong way ...”
Kelly finally let go of Jack’s testicles. He again tried to curl into a ball, but she remounted his chest before he had a chance. She pointed an accusatory finger at him and moved it back and forth.
“... but why don’t you fuck off and leave the consenting adults alone?”
Jack found that he couldn’t breathe, both from the agony in his groin and the pressure on his chest. So in that instant, he decided to suspend one of the rules of chivalry hard-wired into his brain since he was a child.
He punched her in the stomach as hard as he could.
So hard, she was lifted up above his body for a brief moment and was thrown backward, clear away from him. If she hadn’t been handcuffed to him, she might have been thrown halfway across the hotel room. Instead, the links between the cuffs snapped tight, and Kelly dropped to the floor.
Jack flipped himself over and used his free hand to claw at the carpet, dragging himself forward, and his captor along with him, toward the door. He could hear her gasping for air, but that wasn’t his problem. The events of the past few moments had convinced him of one thing: her insanity. Her fucking wild stories, her kidnapping, her threats, her steel grip on his balls ... Who the fuck does stuff like that but a crazy woman?
“Have it your way. I’m going back to my room and calling security. You can explain it to them.”
“Sweet Jesus Hallelujah. At long last.”
The fight wasn’t out of Kelly, though. She recovered from the stomach punch enough to pounce on Jack’s back. He heard her coming, though, and rolled at the same time she made impact. A flip later, Jack was on top.
On top of a pretty blonde, to whom he was handcuffed, in a fancy hotel room in a strange city.
Oh, would this make quite an image for the wife.
And while he was here, why not complete the image?
And prove to this woman that she was, in fact, fucking certifiable.
“Hey.”
She was breathing hard; her bottom lip trembled. Jack cupped his free hand around the back of her neck and drew her close and pressed his lips to hers. He forced his tongue inside her mouth, just like she’d done with that middle-aged guy at the airport.
She probably thought he’d forgotten about that.
Mary Kates, my ass.
If she were that contagious with these things, that kiss would have killed that guy.
She fought, but he gripped her neck tightly and didn’t stop until she clamped her teeth around his tongue.
Jack yelled and broke the embrace, then rolled off her. He chose the wrong side. Her handcuffed arm yanked over him. On the floor, they looked like two mimes who had made violent love and were hugging an invisible pillow.
“Jack. You don’t know what you’ve done. You really don’t.”
She was twenty-one, a blonde, a
Chicago Polack with too good a face
and figure to be in something like this.
—NEWTON THORNBURG
1:56 a.m.
Little Pete’s
Kowalski’s cell rang. Someone dictated a number to him, and he scribbled the number on a Little Pete’s napkin. Added his PN, used his prepaid calling card, hit a pay phone, reached his handler. She spoke fast and furious. Things were moving.
So much for chitchat.
Anyway: Based on preliminary evidence from Professor Manchette’s head—CI-6 thought it was best to have someone closer expedite the removal, the handler explained; like Kowalski fucking minded?—it was top priority to locate Kelly White and take her into custody.
“I’m on it.”
He’d planned ahead for this. He had the license plate sequence of the cab she’d taken from Philly International; he knew the cab company. A quick call, a bit of “Homeland Security” strong-arm stuff, and he’d have their drop-off location. That wasn’t a worry. What worried Kowalski was the bag between his feet.
“Hey—what about the, um, other head?”
“Store it somewhere safe for now.”
He wanted to ask his handler, Like where? Ask Little Pete if I can stick it in his deep freezer for a while? Right next to the hamburger patties and pork chops? Kowalski knew he was better off taking it with him. His experience with the tree house in Somerton had spooked him. The bag seemed to be in too much demand. The only risk was a cop stopping him, asking to see what was in the bag. But if it came to that, and Kowalski was unable to incapacitate the cop, he knew he had a safety net out there. It might mean some jail time, but not forever. Homeland Security had an infinite number of Get Out of Jail Free cards.
“Where’s your guy? The one who’s supposed to pick it up?”
“He’s unavailable.”
“Mad scientists usually busy at two in the morning?”
A pause.
“Discretion would serve you well.”
“Oh, I’m discreet. How could I not be? I don’t know a thing. Except that I’m the guy who’s stuck holding the bag. And I meant that literally as well as metaphorically.”
Another pause.
“Is that all?”
“I guess so. Unless you’re want to wish me luck.”
“Good-bye.”
“Bye ...” he said, then silently mouthed her name. He felt dirty saying it.
1:57 a.m.
Security Office, Sheraton Hotel
When the phone rang, Charlie Vincent jolted. He had nodded off with a book in his lap. It was a small paperback sampler of Japanese manga his kid had given him, published by some company called Tokyopop. Charlie had been giving him money for these things for a few weeks now, and during weekend visits he’d steal glances at some of the art. Looked like Asian porn stuff he’d seen on the Skinternet, but his kid reassured him they were just stories—mystery, sci-fi, romance, comedy, fantasy, action. He gave Charlie the sampler to check out, and Charlie was confused as shit until his kid told him they were meant to be read back to front. Like that made any f
ucking sense. Charlie wondered if his kid was going to tell his mother about it, give her a good laugh.
Charlie put the book on his desk, picked up the phone. It was the front desk.
“We got a call about a domestic dispute in seven oh two. From the neighbor across the hall. Can you check it out?”
“Christ. What’s the name?”
“Jack Eisley. Like the Eisley brothers, I guess.”
Charlie paused, then decided he had to ask. “Is the guy black?”
“Does that matter?” asked the desk clerk, who was also black.
“C’mon. You know what I mean.”
“I’m looking.... Here’s his license. Nah, he’s a white dude from Illinois.”
“Okay. I’ll be right up.”
“One thing you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“I think we got a case of woman-on-man violence. Guy upstairs said it sounded like it was the dude who was getting beaten.”
Now that’s something different, he thought. “Okay, I’ll be gentle.”
Charlie hung up the phone and wondered if he was suddenly living in a backward world. Comic books you read in the opposite direction, women smacking around guys. What was next? His ex-wife being nice to him?
1:58 a.m.
Jack and Kelly lay on their backs on the carpet, joined at their wrists by Pleasure Chest handcuffs. Jack’s tongue was throbbing ; Kelly was crying softly. Once again, Jack found himself in the strange position of feeling guilty about how he was treating his captor. Never mind that she’d head butted him in the face, cracked a rib, squeezed his chest, and bit his tongue nearly in half. He felt awful about kissing her. As if he’d tried to date-rape her.
“I don’t know why you’re crying.”
The Blonde Page 7
