The Blonde

—Kevin Burton Smith,

January magazine’s Best Crime Fiction of 2006 list

Also by Duane Swierczynski

The Wheelman

Secret Dead Men

Damn Near Dead (editor)

THE

BLONDE

Duane

Swierczynski

To Sunshine, the other redhead in my life

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

        — RAYMOND CHANDLER

9:13  p.m.

Liberties Bar,

Philadelphia International Airport

I poisoned your drink.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Urn, I don’t think I did.”

The blonde lifted her cosmopolitan. “Cheers.”

But Jack didn’t return the gesture. He kept a hand on his pint glass, which held the last two inches of the boilermaker he’d been nursing for the past fifteen minutes.

“Did you say you poisoned me?”

“Are you from Philadelphia?”

“What did you poison me with?”

“Can’t you be gracious and answer a girl’s question?”

Jack looked around the airport bar, which was done up like a Colonial-era public house, only with neon Coors Light signs. Instead of two more airline gates in the terminal, they’d put in a square bar, surrounded by small tables jammed up against one another. Sit at the bar and you were treated to the view of the backs of the neon signs—all black metal and tubing and dust—a dented metal ice bin, red plastic speed pourers stuck in the tops of Her-radura, Absolut Citron, Dewar’s, and a plastic cocktail napkin dispenser with the logo JACK & COKE: AMERICA’S COCKTAIL.

For commuters with a long layover, this was the only place to be. What, were you going to shop for plastic Liberty Bells and Rocky T-shirts all evening? The bar was packed.

But amazingly, no one else seemed to have heard her. Not the guy in the shark-colored suit standing next to the girl. Not the bartender, with a black vest and white sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

“You’re kidding.”

“About you being from Philadelphia?”

“About you poisoning me.”

“That again? For the record, yes, I poisoned you. I squeezed a tasteless, odorless liquid into your beer while you were busy staring at a brunette with a shapely ass and low-hanging breasts. The one on her cell, running her fingers through her hair.”

Jack considered this. “Okay. So where’s the dropper?”

“Dropper?”

“The one you used to squeeze poison into my drink. You had to use something.”

“Oh, I’ll show you the dropper. But first you have to answer my question. Are you from Philadelphia?”

“What does it matter? You’ve just poisoned me, and I’m about to die in Philadelphia, so I guess, from this point on, I’ll always be in Philadelphia.”

“Not unless they ship your body home.”

“I meant my ghost. My ghost will always be in Philadelphia.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

Jack smiled despite himself. This was delightfully weird. He’d been delaying the inevitable—a cab ride through a strange city to a bland corporate hotel room to catch what little sleep he could before his dreaded morning appointment.

“Let’s see the dropper.”

The pretty blonde smiled in return. “Not until you answer my question.”

What was the harm? Granted, this was perhaps the strangest pickup line he’d ever heard—if that’s what this was. For all he knew, it was the opening bit of an elaborate con game that targeted weary business travelers in airport bars. But that was fine. Jack knew if this conversation led to him taking out his wallet or revealing his Social Security number, he’d stop it right there. No harm, no foul.