The Blonde (18 page)

But nothing
.

Where the fuck were the reporters?

If these men were buried with the Mary Kates inside them, her tour of vengeance was for nothing
.

She became increasingly desperate. Tired. Her body revolting against
irregular feedings and physical abuse. If she hadn ‘t lost it already … well, her mind was overdue for a serious vacation
.

Then a day ago, she’d been on a plane from Houston to Philadelphia and overheard someone say, “Oh, you ‘re a journalist?
”

This was a man she
had
to meet
.

Journalist Jack Eisley
.

Her Jack, her savior, her last hope
.

Third and Spring Garden

J
ack spat blood on the sidewalk and wondered why he wasn’t already dead. Not that he hadn’t tried like hell to avoid it. He’d screamed and begged and held on to the molding in the stairway, for Christ’s sakes, but the Aryan Man was stronger, and the begging had only seemed to piss him off. He’d been unceremoniously tossed out in the street, with the warning that he never even think about this place again, let alone come back or write about it. Or they’d come for his wife and daughter.

Out on the street, which was utterly fucking completely deserted.

Which was why he wondered, Why no throbbing? Did the Mary Kates malfunction?

“Better move it, asshole.”

“Assclown.”

“Ass bag.” Throaty laughter. Something rattling around a pair of lungs.

Jack turned around.

There were at least two of them, lurking in the shadows, about six feet behind him. Crack whores. You know you’ve sunk to a new low when you’re being mocked by crack whores. But as long as they stayed put, he’d be okay. He’d have a chance to breathe and
think and wipe the blood from his mouth and nose…. And look, it was all over his shirt, too. Maybe he was being too fussy. Maybe he should just join the crack whores, which would guarantee him some company for the next few hours, until the poison finished him off. At least his brain wouldn’t explode, and there might even be some interesting conversation in it for him. See, life was full of amusing options.

Maybe if he offered them money, he could sit with them for a while.

But no. He couldn’t even do that. His wallet was upstairs. For good. No way could he go back to retrieve it.

Which meant another plane trip was out.

Which meant he was stuck here, would most likely die here.

Unless he could hang on until—when, eight? Is that when the Philly branch of the FBI would open? Or were they nine-to-five boys?

“Ass pass.”

“Ass
master
.”

Jack didn’t even know where they were located. Near City Hall, maybe? He looked westward on Spring Garden and saw the blue spikes of the Liberty Place towers, and a few other random skyscrapers, but nothing resembling the yellow-eyed clock tower of Philadelphia City Hall. Funny to think that he assumed he’d have all the time in the world to go sight-seeing after his 8:00
A.M.
appointment at the Sofitel. He did want to see the Liberty Bell, no matter what Kelly White had said about it.

“Assaholic.”

“Hey, fuck you guys, okay?”

One of them threw a bottle at him. It popped and shattered on the sidewalk in front of his hands.

“
Ass.
”

“Give me a dollah,
ass man
”

He looked up and down Spring Garden. No yellow cars. No
nothing. But across the street was a Plexiglas bus shelter with the number 43 in small white letters affixed to the top beam. Standing beneath the shelter was a woman in a tuxedo shirt and black pants, brunette hair tucked over her ear.

Holy fuck.

Angela, from the club.

His only hope now.

Much as Jack fancied himself an agnostic—he’d spent too many years forced into the pews of Catholic churches—he could not help but notice the grand design every once in awhile. He believed that there
was
a higher power at work, and if you knew how to look for the signs, there was a way out of every situation. He called it his Batman Theory of Religion. The caped crusader was forever telling Robin, “Every trap offers its own solution.” If life was a trap, then it offered solutions, too. Even when the trap appeared to be closing fast, the light fading, the jaws tightening. Because there she was. Angela. Why else would she be there, standing on the corner, waiting for a bus, if that wasn’t part of the grand design? She could have had a car parked behind the club. She could have had a friend picking her up. She could have called a cab. But no.

“Have a good morning, ladies,” Jack said, standing up and dusting his palms off. They were raw from sliding across the cement.

Down Spring Garden, a bus was approaching. He could faintly read the digital board on the top of the bus. Route 43.

Msmiatic.”

Jack bolted across the street, not appreciating how much his right leg hurt until he was halfway across. He didn’t know if he was stiff or if he’d really hurt something when he hit the sidewalk.

When he hit the median, his head started throbbing.

Oh Christ. Not so soon.

He crossed the remainder of the street at a full run but slowed down as he approached the bus shelter. The last thing he wanted to
do was spook Angela, have her bolt. The crack whores were probably having a great laugh over this one. Lookit the white man put on the brakes. He’s going to trip himself.

Jack thought Angela had been focused on the approaching bus. She fished around in her pants pocket for her fare. But without looking at him, she said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Catching the bus,” he said, winded.

“This is so
fucked.’
”

The bus pulled up. The brakes were shot; a high-pitched whine cut through the predawn quiet. The engine was rattling so fiercely, it was a wonder the panels of the bus were still attached to the frame. There was a pneumatic hiss, like a snort, and the two panels of the doors shuddered open.

Angela stepped up into the bus, dropped something into the scratched-up fare box next to the driver, then moved all the way to the back of the bus. Jack stepped up and tried to scan the fare signs quickly. Confusing as hell. Transfers, zones, base fare … two dollars. Two dollars?

“One ride costs two dollars?”

“Two dollars,” the driver said. He had a patches of a beard on his jowls, and his eyes were red-rimmed.

Jack reached to his back pocket, then remembered where his wallet was. No. No no no. Front left pocket, nothing. Front right… oh, thank Christ. A ten and a single. His change from the airport bar last night.

“Can you break a ten?”

The driver sighed. “Exact change only.” He nodded his head in the general direction of the fare sign.

“Come on, buddy. Can’t you sell me a one-day pass or something?”

The driver didn’t answer, as if the question was beneath him. “On or off.”

Jack slid the ten into the fare box, cursing. He now officially had one dollar to his name, no credit cards, and was stuck in a
strange city where a strange woman had both poisoned him and infected him with killer nanomachines…. Oh, and where his only friend in the world was a waitress who worked in an Italian restaurant and frequented kinky clubs where off-duty cops paid to watch her mount a saddle with a dildo attached to it.

“Don’t forget your transfer,” the driver said, handing Jack a flimsy strip of off-white paper.

The bus pulled forward.

The Hot Spot

K
owalski thanked the cabbie, slid him a ten, grabbed his gym bag from the seat—oh, the hilarity that would have ensued if he’d forgotten Ed’s head in the back of the cab. He could imagine the headlines in the local tabloid,
OOPS, FORGET SOMETHING?
Or maybe
HOW TO GET A HEAD IN THE TAXI BUSINESS.
They lived for crap like this. Ed deserved better than a bad pun in a runny egg-and-coffee tabloid.

The brown plastic intercom at the side door asked him for a password. Sylvester, his Goth snitch, had given him one that should work: “eyeball skeleton.” (Hey, he’d used worse.) Kowalski tried it. The door buzzed, then clicked open. Sylvester was a big pain in the ass, but he did come through most times. Kowalski had to kick him a bonus. Let the guy buy himself a pair of vampire-teeth implants.

Now the tricky part: scouring a secret sex club for one white guy who probably didn’t want to be found.

But after ten seconds in the place, Kowalski saw only close-cropped haircut after haircut, and weekend muscles, and that bored Catholic schoolboy look; he knew he was home free.

This was a cop sex club.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, wrapping his arm around the nearest thickneck he could find. He flashed his Homeland Security badge, saw the guy’s eyes light up. Oh yeah. He could see the embossed foil with the holographic eagles.

Hot shit, right?

“I’m looking for a guy who probably stopped in here a short while ago.”

“Oh, I know the guy,” the cop said, trying to stifle a huge smile. “You want his wallet?”

Pennsylvania Hospital

T
he security guard was giving him shit. Actually giving him
m
shit. “This card says I’m a member of the Department of Defense,” the Operator said. “I know you probably had limited educational opportunities. You were probably dealing in high school, am I right or am I right? But even
you
have to know, somewhere in your feeble-ass mind, that the words
De-part-ment of De-fense
means something important, right? And that with one fucking phone call, I could have you sitting in a welfare office by the end of the day? Now open up these fucking doors and give me access to a hospital computer or I’m going to make sure you receive extended lessons on how the government
really
works.”

Yeah, he was laying it on thick. All the heavy-lidded, jaundiced-looking guy asked was, “What kind of ID is that?” Probably out of curiosity more than anything else.

The guard opened the doors, and the Operator gave him another once-over, thought about taking the poor guy’s ID badge, snapping it right off his leather guard belt and everything, but he had shit to do.

Down the off-white corridor, which needed a paint job, stat.
Around the welcome desk kiosk. Moved the mouse, got the patient-search program up.

Probably looking for Jane Does, right? Unless she was using that stupid Kelly White alias up until the end.

Ah, she was. Nice, Vanessa. Real nice.

Room 803.

Spring Garden Station, Market-Frankford Elevated

B
y the time Jack made his way to the back of the bus, counting seconds all along the way—he’d had enough headaches courtesy of the Mary Kates, thank you—his savior, Angela, was standing up and pulling the dirty white cord that ran along the tops of the windows. A dud bell sound. The blue light at the front of the bus read
STOP REQUESTED
.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“No,” Angela said, and brushed past him.

“Just one minute.”

“Fucking hell,” she said, and not to Jack. She grasped the steel rail near the back exit. The 43 bus pulled off to the side of Spring Garden Street, beneath an overpass. Everywhere Jack looked, there was sidewalk and concrete walls, splattered with years of pigeon shit. What was she doing getting off here?

The bus stopped. Another pneumatic hiss. A pause. Then the double doors wobbled to life, swung open. Angela stepped down fast, exited the bus.

It was Angela or the bus driver. No real choice at all, really. For all Jack knew, this was the end of the line.

He hardly had time to consider the fact that he’d spent ten dollars for a bus ride that lasted all of two blocks. Angela was entering
a station of some kind, built into the support columns of the highway above. Even at this early hour, with the sun barely making itself known on the East Coast, Jack could feel and hear the vibe and hum and speeding cars above. He caught a sign:
MARKET-FRANKFORD EL.
Okay, El like in Chicago. Philly’s own Loop.

The transfer came in handy. It gave him admission to the platform.

A hip slide through the turnstile. Jack saw a rack of brochures along the wall—schedules. Maybe there would be a map inside. Would it be too much to ask, O Higher Power, for there to be map that identified the local FBI headquarters on it? Was it a tourist attraction? Maybe this elevated train would take him close enough. He could tag along behind somebody, a member of the early-morning commuter rush, follow him or her to the building, then scoot off into the front doors, find a receptionist, and tell her, “I need help now.”

But if there was a commuter rush, it was scheduled for a little later in the morning.

There were only two other people on the platform: Angela and an older guy in a striped shirt. One of those striped shirts that had gone out of vogue at least fifteen years ago: different-colored stripes in various quadrants. The guy’s one shoulder was red; his lower left torso was blue. There was some yellow and orange in there, too. A guy Jack knew from college had had one of these shirts. It was stylish for about five or six weeks, as he recalled.

The striped guy stood on the edge of the platform, facing toward Center City. Angela was on the other side, the one for Frankford-bound trains.

Jack hurriedly made his way next to the striped guy. No need to panic Angela until he figured this out. He flipped open the schedule. No map, but it showed that the first elevated train of the morning, the very first, would arrive at about 5:07, a few minutes from now.