The Blonde

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 Piatt 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.”