The Blonde

Let’s go to L.A.,” he told the blonde, whose real name was Vanessa. She’d come a long way in the past few weeks. She was napping less. Recovering most of her memory. Still, her mood remained the same: sad. Verging on black depression. Not surprising, considering that she’d almost died and, before that, spent a few weeks acting like a serial killer. Most people acting like that either ended up dead or in a padded room.

“I thought you said San Diego,” she said. “Where I stashed the key.”

“C’mon, L.A.’s fun. I’ll take you to Musso & Frank for a steak. Then we’ll drive down to San Diego.”

“I don’t eat red meat.”

They decided to go to L.A. anyway. Kowalski was just about finished with his Philadelphia business—there wasn’t much left of the original crime family who’d butchered his fiancee, except for a couple of low-level numbers men who really weren’t worth the trouble. Already the Russians and the Poles were moving in to fill the void. They could have it, Kowalski thought. He could care less if he ever saw Philadelphia again. Maybe if terrorists nuked it he’d stop back, just to piss on the burning ashes.

It was time to stop thinking local, and start thinking global.

As in:

Global Apocalypse.

Vanessa told him as much as she could about Proximity. She relied on memory; the hardcore data was on a USB key in San Diego. But what she knew was frightening enough. Those little Mary Kate fuckers replicated like trailer trash: fast and furious and without much thought. And if The Operator—the dead headless bastard—was to be believed, the Mary Kates were currently busy inhabiting the bloodstreams of much of the population of North America. It had been a few months since their adventures in downtown Philadelphia. A lot of time for the Mary Kates to go forth and prosper.

Meanwhile, Kowalski’s employers, CI-6, were slowly putting the pieces together, like a toddler with a plastic Tupperware shape toy. They weren’t entirely stupid. Just big and awkward, like any government agency.

Kowalski didn’t think he had much free time left with Vanessa. They were going to come looking for them, hard. Maybe within the week. He could tell by the way he was treated when he called in to ask about new assignments. A new chill had set in. Something was going on.

L.A. was the smartest move he could come up with.

She went along with it.

They rented a car and hit a mall in Neshaminy, a suburb just north of Philadelphia. They bought what they needed—small suitcases, clothes, some crime novels for Kowalski, some toiletries for Vanessa.

Kowalski flicked the paper shopping bag with a finger. “What’s that?”

“Me skin wasn’t meant for California sun,” Vanessa said. Her Irish accent was back in full bloom. She’d been faking deadpan Midwestern American during her trips from airport to airport across the country. No reason to now.

“Your skin is just fine,” Kowalski said.

Vanessa flicked the side of his plastic bag. “What’s that?”

“I’m in a Ross Macdonald mood.”

“Can’t get enough of the Oirish, can you.”

It was meant to be funny. Neither of them laughed.

They took the PA turnpike east, crossed over to the NJ turnpike, then flew out of Newark.

Yeah, I know.”

“You know what?” Kowalski asked.

“I was there in Newark. I saw you. I was the guy who alerted the team in LA.”

“Bullshit.” Kowalski shifted in his seat. The metal seat was cold against his balls and ass. He knew why they’d stripped him naked. It makes you feel that much more vulnerable. Not Kowalski—he really didn’t give a shit. It was just uncomfortable, and that pissed him off.

“No, seriously,” the interrogator said. “This probably isn’t professional of me, but I was there, three rows away. You were trying to read a paperback copy of The Way Some People Die, but you kept looking at your blonde friend. She looked distracted. Maybe even a little sad.”

“Did she, now?”

“Don’t take it hard. I’m good at what I do. As you’re about to learn.”

“Well, your L.A. team sucked.”

The interrogator smirked. “Yeah. They did suck, didn’t they?”

Kowalski spotted them just a few yards out of the gate at LAX. He didn’t tell Vanessa, because he didn’t want to worry her. Not until it was necessary. As it turned out, it never was.

Out of the rental place, Kowalski avoided the freeways and found La Cienega and rode it all the way up, right through the hoods. He lost them near Inglewood. Kowalski hoped they weren’t fresh CI-6 recruits. They were fond of plucking them right from colleges, filling their head with junk, patting their fannies, and nudging them out into the field. If they didn’t have a few ounces of street sense, they would be eaten alive. Not that this was Kowal-ski’s problem.

“This is L.A.?” Vanessa asked. “Jaysus, it’s just another slum. With palm trees.”

“They’re dying out, actually,” he said. “Some kind of fungal disease. Pretty soon it’ll be just slum.”

“Maybe the Mary Kates got to them already.”

Kowalski watched her as he drove. She touched the vial on her necklace. It matched his, which he also wore around his neck. Hers with his blood, his with hers. The vials kept them both alive.

Forty minutes later they made it to the safe house.

It was the sweetest safe house imaginable—a one-bedroom apartment up in the Hollywood Hills. The place belonged to a screenwriter friend of Kowalski’s, a guy he used to pal around with at places like Boardner’s during the early 1990s. For a few hardcore weeks there, Kowalski and his buddy had tried to kill as many brain cells and bang as many aspiring actresses as possible. Now Lee Michaels was up in Vancouver shooting his first big-budget movie— a radical update of a hyperviolent 1980s TV show called The Evis-cerator. Kowalski kept in touch with Lee over the years, buying him a rib eye and a couple of lagers whenever he found himself in L.A. In exchange, that bought him access to Lee’s pad on occasion.

Lee’s pad was completely unknown to CI-6.

Lee’s pad was also famous.

Or famous enough, if you liked Robert Altman’s version of The Long Goodbye. Lee’s pad was where Eliot Gould, playing Philip Marlowe, lived. Upstairs, they filmed parts of Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again.

Vanessa had never seen either film, so the fame was lost on her.

So was the apartment.

She didn’t even look out the window.

Even Kowalski had to admit the view was pretty spectacular: rolling hills of green and brown dotted with model-sized multimillion-dollar homes. In the distance, you could watch the glimmering lights of downtown. If you had to be in L.A., this is where you wanted to be.

Didn’t Vanessa even want to look?

“I’m going to have a shower,” she said.

Kowalski decided to have a beer.

The shower was off the bedroom. As usual, Vanessa took a long time. Kowalski idly wondered what she did in there. But he had a pretty good idea. He was halfway through his third Sierra Nevada when she stepped into the kitchen, towel around her torso.

“How about that wine?” she said, smiling as if she meant it.

Kowalski looked at her bare legs, then the towel, then her body beneath the towel, then her face, then her hair.

It was red.