The Blonde

sweat. A square red CHECK ENGINE was lit up on the dashboard.

“There is no flat fee,” the driver said.

“What do you mean?”

“Only apply Center City. We are twelve block south. You must pay what’s on meter.”

“But South Philly is closer to the airport than Center City. Hence, it should be cheaper.”

“No flat fee.”

Kowalski considered asking the driver to take him to Dydak Brothers turf and then shoving him up against a wall and blasting his head off—that’d be a nice little cleanup job for the Polish boys. Bet you didn’t know you were messing with the South Philly Slayer, did ya pal? Too much to risk, though. Kowalski had to return to this city soon enough, and he didn’t need additional complications. The press was already writing stories about a psycho with a rifle hunting down gangsters. He had to finish this before he was caught and had to cash in too many favors.

“You know what? I’m not worried about the flat fee. Let’s go.”

10:35  p.m.

Sheraton Hotel,

Rittenhouse Square East, Room 702

After he finished power vomiting in the bathroom, Jack was finally willing to admit that okay, yeah, maybe it was poison.

At first, he didn’t want to believe it; had to be nerves. His mind playing tricks. Obsessing over his trip to Philadelphia.

And his morning appointment with Donovan Piatt.

Jack had done some checking up on Piatt. A local mag had voted him the city’s “most feared divorce attorney” and noted that he’d “hacked off more testicles than the Holy Roman Empire.” Nice. There was a little black-and-white photo on-line: The fifty-ish bastard had black beady eyes and a beard of burnished steel. Jack was going to have to face the real thing at 8:00 A.M.

That was enough to make someone vomit, wasn’t it?

But his second attack was even more brutal than the first, and Jack started to realize that this wasn’t simple nerves. This was a full-on assault.

The third trip to the bowl was the worst yet.

Could he have any food left in his stomach? That greasy spinach and cheese airline stromboli had been the first thing to go. He wasn’t sure what was worse—the agony of vomiting or the fact that he recognized his in-flight meal in the toilet. The second time was mostly liquid. And now, the third … yes, now there were globs of tiny blood floating in the water. His stomach was tearing itself apart.

This was fucked.

Jack slapped cold water all over his face, then looked at his watch: 10:36 P.M. He’d left the airport bar around 9:30. He’d vomited for the first time about forty minutes ago. If that girl was to be believed, the poison was working according to schedule.

And in ten hours, you’ll be dead.

The smart thing would be to call the police. But even if he did, what would he say? A strange girl in an airport bar had given him poison, and then he’d said, “Hey, okay, thanks, catch you later”? Why hadn’t he called the police right then? Because she was too pretty to be taken seriously?

Come on now. Think.

Maybe tip off the police with a vague description—he was bad at height and weight, and come to think of it, he couldn’t even remember the girl’s eye color. Most he could say was that her chest was huge. Yeah, that would narrow it down.

Clearly, he needed to go back to the airport, find her himself. Make her tell him what she’d dropped in his boilermaker. Get help. Swear never to drink in an airport bar again.

Or maybe he needed to go to a hospital. Have his stomach— ugh—pumped. Let the professionals figure out what was wrong. Move on.

Unless the poison was already coursing through his veins. How long would it take for the doctors to pin it down? He could die in a plastic waiting room chair long before a nurse so much as stuck a thermometer in his mouth. Besides, he needed more than a cure. He needed to find this girl, figure out why she’d done this to him. Maybe she was doing this to other people, too.

Which is why you should call the police, Jack.

Enough of this. Get in a cab, get back down to the airport, and find the girl. Now. Leave your bag here. Take your wallet and cell phone. Go.

Wait.

It was 10:38 P.M. He was due for another vomiting session in five minutes.

How was he going to survive a cab ride? The trip from the airport to the Rittenhouse Square Sheraton took at least twenty minutes. What, was he going to have the driver pull over halfway to the airport?

Figure it out, then. Leave now. Before you lose your chance to find her.

And you never see your daughter again.

He was suddenly struck with the desire to stay in his room and call home. Hear her voice. But even though it was only a little after 9:30 back home, Callie would have already been in bed for an hour and a half.

No. He had to find the blonde.

Jack took the elevator down to the lobby and found a cab waiting outside the front doors. Philadelphia was dead this time of night. He’d heard the old joke about the city rolling up the sidewalks at night, and sadly, it was true. Granted, it was a Thursday, but this was the heart of the fifth-largest city in the United States. Shouldn’t there be more people out pissing their lives away in restaurants or bars?

“The airport, as fast as you can.”

“Time’s your flight?”

“I don’t have one. It’s just important that I get there….”

“Well, you are going to arrivals or departures?”

Which one?

Jack thought about it, then said, “Arrivals.” Because he had arrived, and could retrace his steps back to the airport bar that way.

“Terminal?

“Huh?”

“Which terminal? They’re serious about security. I can’t go wandering around the—”

“Which one is Continental?” That was the airline Jack had flown in on.

“That’d be C. Anybody tell you about the flat rate?”

Next the guy was going to tell Jack to buckle his seat belt, maybe even hop out of the car to make sure it clicked into the buckle correctly.

“I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Wordlessly, the driver took off up Eighteenth Street, passing Rittenhouse Square and Market Street, then JFK Boulevard, then a construction site. He had never visited Philadelphia before, but he’d studied a map of Center City. His hotel was three blocks from the Sofitel, where he was supposed to be meeting Donovan Piatt. He wondered if he was going to make it. Maybe he’d, ha ha ha, be dead.

If he had been poisoned.

Within a few minutes they were back on 1-95, headed south. Past the same row houses, shrouded in darkness, then two newish-looking sports arenas, then an industrial wasteland of refineries and—

Oh no. Not again.

“Excuse me. I need you to pull over.”

“I thought you were in a hurry.”

“Please.”

The desperation in his voice must have done it. Without another word, the driver pulled across two lanes and