The Blonde (22 page)

“You said this started nine hours ago? Try there.”

“I was at a bar in the Philadelphia International Airport. That’s where I met the blonde. The first thing she said to me was …”

He told his story. Some really weird fucking shit. MacAdams didn’t follow all of it. Barely followed half of it, tell the truth. Apparently, the guy was afraid that if he was left alone, some killer satellite would send a death beam to particles in his blood—yeah, weird fucking shit, right?—which would make him die in ten seconds.

The detectives were split. Some of them wanted to let him
sweat it out for twenty seconds, prove that he was batshit. Others thought that was asking for trouble. What if he got so afraid, he seized, died right there in the interrogation room? Then it’d be a world full of shit for everybody.

But Sarkissian was good at this stuff. He chipped away at him from the side.

“Mr. Eisley, you’ve got a wife and daughter. Were you thinking of them when you attacked that woman on the Frankford El?”

“I didn’t attack her,” Howling Man replied. “I was trying to talk to her.”

“Your wife and daughter know you’re talking to another woman?”

“They wouldn’t mind. Not if they knew what had happened to me.”

“And what’s that again?”

“I’ve told you. I’m infected with a tracking device that will kill me if I’m alone.”

“Why don’t you go home to your wife and daughter?”

“I can’t do that. I wish I could.”

Some key facts gathered with a few phone calls:

Eisley flies here last night, even though he seems to have no business in Philadelphia. He’s a reporter at a weekly newspaper in Chicago.

At about 1:57
A.M.,
a hotel resident hears fighting in his room. A male and a female. Hotel security officer Charles Lee Vincent investigates.

As he approaches the room, he’s knocked out by an unknown assailant. He remembers there being a woman in the room, but that’s about it. Vincent later escorts Eisley down to the lobby.

A little after 3:00
A.M.,
Eisley disappears.

At the same time, outside the hotel, according to two tourists, Christin Dubay and Sarah French, some “flaming asshole” stole their cab.

At approximately 5:16
A.M.,
Eisley attacks Angela Marchione, a waitress at Dominick’s Little Italy. She sprays him with Mace. He goes on a tear through the elevated car, passes through to an adjoining car, then exits at Margaret-Orthodox, where he is apprehended by SEPTA police.

Eisley has no ID, no wallet. Claims he lost it at a nightclub on Spring Garden.

Still, they have a photocopy of his forged driver’s license from the check-in desk at the Sheraton. They find his address and phone number on-line. Call his house. No answer.

However this story was going to shake out, MacAdams thought, it was sure as shit going to be interesting.

MacAdams watched them go back in the room and work with Eisley a little more, try to get him talking about his wife, his kid— what he’s doing in Philadelphia. But the guy was stubborn and more than a little crazy Kept clamoring for the FBI or someone from Homeland Security, yet begged not to be left alone.

Finally, Sarkissian made the call:

Let’s give him a little privacy
.

O
nce you come to terms with the idea that you’re a monster, it’s easier to function. Your physical self is more forgiving of abuse, willing to strain against its own humanity. Because there is no humanity under all of that flesh, after all. Which was how Kowalski was able to drag himself up from the floor and try to piece himself back into some semblance of a man. It’s what monsters did.

He’d looked around at the debris of forgotten childhood.

The best operations, Kowalski’d reminded himself, supplied their own tools.

First, he’d found a needle and thread from a Kenner mini sewing machine kit. The gashes on his body could be covered with bandages and clothes. But his face? His face needed work. Sanitary? Hardly. But what was that to a monster?

The metal supports from the shelves? Leg brace,
Road War-
nor-style. Sort the broken bones out later. Long as they would support his weight.

A little water from the employee sink, he was even able to smooth down his clothes, get some of the shattered glass and dust and splinters and wrinkles out of them. Wash away the crusted blood from around the purple-and-pink-threaded sutures.

By the time he left the abandoned toy warehouse forty-five minutes later, the monster was reasonably human. He checked his image in a plate-glass window of another store. Pale, but no visible blood. People saw blood, they got upset. Otherwise, they could deal with anything. Even his stitched-up face and rusty leg brace.

A few questions of a passerby got him what he wanted: Yeah, strange guy, howling, taken away in cuffs.

His boy Jack.

Alive, at least up until the point he was arrested.

Nearest police district was the Fifteenth; he caught a cab up there, flashed the Homeland Security badge, just about damn near dazzled Detective Hugh Sarkissian with his embossed foil with the holographic flying eagles, which distracted him from the purple stitches and rusty leg brace. Kowalski told him that Jack Eisley was part of an investigation he was running. No, he wasn’t a terrorist, just a freaked-out informant.

“Who’s still alive, right?” Kowalski asked.

“Yeah,” Sarkissian told him. “But we’re ready to let him sweat it out a little.”

Kowalski took a chance. “He begged you not to leave him alone, didn’t he?”

Sarkissian’s face went wide. “
Yeah
. What the fuck is that about, anyway?”

Kowalski rolled his eyes in a “You don’t even want to know, buddy” kind of way, then gestured to the room. “You mind?”

Which got him in the door of the interrogation room at precisely 6:48
A.M
.

Not a second too soon, from the look on Jack’s face.

He was hurting.

I
thought I was going to die just then.”

“You’re fine. Name’s Mike Kowalski, Department of Homeland Security, making America safer for domestic fucks to rape the citizenry instead of the foreign fucks, blah blah blah,” he said. “But does it really matter? After the night you had, Jack?”

“Who are you?”

Jack studied the guy, who looked strangely familiar, despite the purple-and-pink sutures in his face—what, had they run out of adult stitches at the hospital?

Wait.

The guy.

The hotel room.

The guy who strangled the security guard.

“Oh no.”

Kowalski limped over to the table and slid into a chair. He reached out and took Jack’s hand in his. Kowalski was wearing white gloves, stretched to the point of bursting. And Jack looked at them fast, granted, but he would swear one of them
had the McDonald’s logo—the Golden Arches—right on the wrist.

Jack felt Kowalski grasp his middle finger. “This will hurt.”

And then Kowalski twisted his finger in a way he didn’t think was physically possible. Jack screamed, writhed in his seat. The pain seemed to rocket up his very bones.

Outside the two-way glass, Sarkissian was saying to MacAdams, “
Don’tyou wish?
”

“Oh, fucking tell me about it.”

“Bet he doesn’t even leave a mark.”

“I was trailing your girlfriend, Kelly White,” Kowalski said. “She infected you with something. I want you to describe it to me.”

“Fuck! Ow, Christ, leggo of my—
Ah!
”

“No detail is too small. Tell me how it works. Why can’t you be alone?”

Kowalski pulled Jack closer to him, causing his metal chair to scrape against linoleum, and at the same time, he eased up on the finger. “Whisper it in my ear,” he said.

Now that Jack was up close and personal, he saw that one of Kowalski’s stitches didn’t quite do the trick. Dark blood pooled around a pink strand, started to bead up.

On the side of Kowalski’s nose, there was a thin sliver of glass, wedged beneath a few layers of skin.

Maybe the guy
is
with Homeland Security, Jack thought.

And if not, they should hire him. Because he didn’t seem to give one fuck about personal discomfort.

What was Jack going to do? Talk back to him?

So Jack talked.

Started telling him all about how he’d met Kelly, but Kowalski didn’t want to hear any of that. Sped him along to later in the night, in the hotel room. Jack tried to remember as much as he could about the Mary Kates, what their creator called “Proximity.” Tracking devices in your blood, linked up to a satellite. Only
Kelly’s had a fatal error. Kowalski nodded. Probed for more detail. Asked about nanoassemblies. Is that what she’d said?
Nano
assemblies? My God, it was like he believed him. Maybe he already knew about these things.

“Something else, too,” Jack said. “She gave me a toxin. No … a luminous toxin.”

“Luminous toxin, huh.”

“Yes! That’s it! She told me I’d be dead in …” He looked at his watch. “Oh fuck. About ninety minutes from now.”

“Sounds serious. But I’m sure we’ll be able to get that taken care of.”

Kowalski released his hold on Jack’s finger, then used this same hand to scratch his chin. Somehow, the tip of his finger avoided the two long gashes there. “Hmm … let me try a little something.” Kowalski stood up and picked up the gym bag he’d brought into the room. He placed the bag on Jack’s lap. “Hold this for a minute.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kowalski stood up and limped over to the door. The metal brace on his leg squeaked as he moved. He knocked twice.

“Wait—where are you going? Didn’t you hear me? If I’m left alone, I could—”

“Yeah, yeah. Humor me. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t let go of that bag.”

“This doesn’t smell right.”

The door slammed shut behind Kowalski.

One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, shut the door.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

Seven, eight, lay them straight.

Nine, ten …

A big fat hen
.

Kowalski gave it another few seconds, just to be sure.

He opened the door and found Jack white and sweating and writhing in his seat, but alive. The gym bag still lay in his lap. “What did you do?” he gasped. “How am I still alive?”

The tracking devices in Jack’s body seemed to have sensed the ones in Ed’s dead fat head inside the gym bag. The host didn’t have to be alive. The devices merely had to be present, within ten feet. Just like Jack had said.

Useful bit of info, that.

And that was pretty much all he needed. Now all he had to do was take back the gym bag, leave his guy in here, tell his pal Sarkissian to let him sit for a minute, let him process a few things … Ah, no. Not smart. What if Kelly White was indeed dead? He could use a living witness. For the short term, anyway. Until he got CI-6’s game plan figured out.

He admitted it. He’d never been pulled off an op before.

And it stung.

So okay, new plan: He’d take this guy, find Kelly White—if she was still among the living. Stick this guy in a closet, wish him well in the afterlife. Tell him to say hi to Mayor McCheese.

If Kelly White was already gone … then yeah, get to a safe house, lawyer up, and prepare for a shitstorm, because CI-6 might be deciding to part ways with one Michael Kowalski.

And he couldn’t let that happen. Not until he’d avenged his sweet Katie at least.

“You ready Jack?”

“For what? Didn’t you hear me? I asked you a question.”

“Yeah, I heard you. I wouldn’t waste time if I were you, though. That luminous toxin’s a nasty bastard. And according to your count, you’ve got less than two hours to live. We need to get you to a hospital.”

It took only a few minutes, and another look at that embossed foil with the holographic eagles, to have Eisley remanded to his custody.

While faking his way through the bullshit paperwork, Kowalski noticed a pair of wanted posters on the wall. One showed a crooked ex-cop believed to be on the run with his almost brother-in-law. Small world. Kowalski wished he could tell the FBI the truth, save them a little worry. Say that the crooked ex-cop was buried under thousands of pounds of concrete in Camden, New Jersey. Kowalski should know. He was the one who’d dumped him down that drainage pipe.

His almost brother-in-law, however, was another matter altogether. Kowalski had wanted to leave him for dead, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had been a part of Katie. A half brother. But still a part of her. Most likely the only part left.

So maybe Kowalski wasn’t a monster after all. A monster would have let the guy die.

Pennsylvania Hospital, Room 803

A
flash of the badge got Kowalski the room number of the Jane Doe who had rolled in during the middle of the night; the spiky-haired blonde at the front desk seemed impressed. Homeland Security.
Oooh, ahhhh, keeping America safe
. People really dug the holographic eagles. He led Jack up to the eighth floor. Jack, who kept checking his watch nervously. Guy thought he was headed up to a poison-control center to get treated for luminous toxin poisoning. Hilarious. Hadn’t this guy ever watched
D.O.A.?
He liked Kelly White even more.

Kelly was in bed, hooked up to machines. Her back was arched. Her eyes were fluttering beneath her lids. But she wasn’t alone.

A tall man with thinning hair was leaning over her, syringe in his hand. “Oh,” he said. “You’re here to save Vanessa, aren’t you?”

“Actually,” Kowalski said, “I’m here for the breakfast. The sausage patties are out of this world.”

Vanessa, huh.

The man straightened up and smiled. “You caught me putting her down for the night. We’re getting ready for a long weekend getaway. Just the two of us.”