9:13 p.m.
Liberties Bar, Philadelphia International Airport
“
I
POISONED YOUR DRINK.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Um, 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 Herradura, 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.
“No, I’m not from Philadelphia.”
“Goody. I hate Philadelphia.”
“You’re from here, I take it?”
“I’m not from here, and yes, you can take it.”
“That’s harsh.”
“What’s there to like?”
“The Liberty Bell?”
“Funny you should mention that. I was reading about it in the airline magazine. They have this back page where they tell the story of some famous national monument every month. Or however often the magazine is published. Anyway, the Liberty Bell cracked the very first time it was rung.”
“Back in 1776.”
“Wrong.
You should have read this story, my friend. Philly’s been trading on a lie for, like,
years.
It wasn’t rung in 1776. And worse yet, the bell? It was forged in England. You know, uh, the country we revolted against? Like, hello!”
“You’ve just ruined Philadelphia for me.”
“Sweetheart, I haven’t even started.”
Jack smiled and finished the rest of the beer in his pint glass. There was no rush. He might as well order another—minus the whiskey. He’d already had two boilermakers, and it hadn’t helped any. The drama of the past few months hung heavy in his mind. Might as well take it slow for a while, check out the people in the airport. The ones with a purpose in life. With a clear idea of where they were going, what they were doing.
The only thing waiting for Jack Eisley was a night in a bland hotel room and an appointment at eight o’clock in the morning. He was in no hurry to get to either.
The blonde was looking at his hand. At first, Jack thought she was looking at his wedding ring. Which he was still wearing, for some dumb reason. But then he saw that she was focused on the glass in his hand.
“You finished your drink,” she said.
“You’re very observant. Still working on yours?”
The girl smiled coyly. “Why? You offering to buy me a drink? Even after I poisoned yours?”
“It’s the least I can do. What are you having? A martini?”
“Never you mind that. Though I think I should tell you what to expect. Symptom wise.”
“From the undetectable liquid poison.”
“Right.”
“Go ahead.”
“It works in stages. At first …” She glanced at a silver watch on her wrist. “Well, about an hour from now, you’ll start to feel a knot in your stomach. Not too long after, I hope you’ll be near a bathroom, because that’s when the power vomiting starts.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Think about your worst hangover ever. You know, where you’re sitting on the cold tile of your bathroom floor, begging God to show mercy on your poor alcoholic soul? Telling him how you’ve seen the error of your ways, and you promise never, ever to touch the demon rum again? Well, that’s a tenth of what you’ll feel when
this
poison hits you. And in ten hours, you’ll be dead.”
Jack knew his mind was screwing with him—of course he knew—but damn if his stomach didn’t tie itself into a little knot right at that moment. Ah, the power of suggestion. The power of suggestion of death.
Okay, this girl was fucking
psycho.
Last thing he needed was another one of those.
“Um, can I ask why you did this to me?”
“Sure, you can ask.”
“But you won’t tell.”
“Maybe later.”
“If I’m even alive.”
“Good point.”
If this was a con game, she had strange ideas about running it. The bit about the poison would be enough to scare away most people. Which is not the reaction con artists want from their marks. They kind of have to be around for a scam to work.
So what was her game? Or
was
this a pickup?
“Okay, you’ve poisoned me.”
“You catch on quick.”
“Do you have an antidote?”
“Sweet Jesus on the cross, I thought you’d never ask. Yes, I do have an antidote.”
“Would you give me the antidote, if I asked nice?”
“Sure,” she said. “But I can only give it to you somewhere quiet.”
“Not here?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“Your hotel room.”
Yep, that sealed it. This was a con game—probably a bizarre variation of the old sweetheart scam. Take the woman to a hotel room, expect sex, get knocked on the head, wake up with your wallet gone, your kidney missing, your naked body in a tubful of stinky ice, whatever. Whichever way, you were fucked, all because you thought you were going to get a sloppy blow job in an airport hotel.
“That’s a kind offer,” he said, “but I think I’ll take my chances with death.”
Jack scooped up the loose bills on the bar—a ten, two singles. He reached down and grabbed his overnight bag, which had been resting between his feet.
“Good luck with that poison thing.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
After a second, it hit him.
“Wait. How did you know my name?”
The woman turned her back to him and started looking through her purse. She removed a plastic eyedropper and placed it on top of the bar. She then lifted her head and swiveled around to look at him.
“Weren’t you leaving?”
“I said, how did you know my name?”
Her fingers played with the eyedropper, spinning it on the surface of the bar. He leaned in closer.
“You tell me or I’ll bring airport security back here.”
“I’ll be gone by then. And even if they did catch me, it’s my word against yours about the poison. I won’t know what on earth they’re talking about.” She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. “Poison? An antidote?”
“We’ll see.” He turned to walk away.
“Oh, Jack?”
He stopped, turned around.
“Your name’s on a tag attached to your bag.”
He looked down at the carry-on in his hand.
“Paranoid much?”
He could feel it already—the knot forming in his stomach. It wasn’t sickness. It was anger.
After leaving the airport bar, Jack followed the signs to baggage claim. He didn’t have luggage to pick up—he made it a point to live out of one bag, no matter how many days he traveled. Lost luggage was too much a pain in the ass. But according to the airport’s Web site, the taxi stands were to the left of baggage claim, and sure enough, they were. Cabs to Center City Philadelphia were a flat rate—$26.25, so said the Web site. He climbed into the back of the first available taxi and tried not to think too much about the strange girl in the bar.
Strike that.
The strange,
pretty
girl in the bar.
It was just as well he’d left her behind. Considering his morning appointment with his wife’s divorce lawyer.
Poison me?
Sweetheart, I wish you had.
9:59 p.m.
Adler and Christian Streets, South Philly
O
NE SQUEEZE. ONE HELL OF A MESS TO CLEAN UP.
But that wouldn’t be Mike Kowalski’s problem. These days, it wasn’t even up to the police. No, this pleasure would fall to one of the crime-scene cleanup outfits. For fifteen dollars an hour, they’d hose down the blood, mop up the bits of bone and tissue, return things to normal. Or back to normal as possible. In Philadelphia, crime-scene cleanup services were a booming industry. Thanks, in part, to guys like Kowalski.
And right now, he had his night-vision sights trained on a nice little head shot. Yeah, it’d be messy.
In fact, depending on how the bullet impacted and exploded, it could mean an extra couple of hours’ pay for the crew that worked this part of South Philly.
Which would be the Dydak Brothers. Couple of nice, strapping, blond Polish guys based in Port Richmond. They’d been cleaning up a lot of Kowalski’s scenes recently. Weird that they worked South Philly, traditionally an Italian stronghold, now full of mixed immigrants and twenty-something hipsters priced out of downtown.
But whatever. Kowalski liked seeing some of his own people get theirs.
Sto lat!
He’d make this one a gusher. Just for the Dydaks.
See ya, cheeseball.
The guy whose head was covered by a professional assassin’s sights had absolutely no fucking idea. He was eating a slice of white pizza—uh, yo, dumb-ass, it’s the dough and cheese that make you fat, not the sauce—and sucking Orangina through a clear plastic straw.
Savor that last bite of white, my friend.
Steady now.
Index finger on the trigger.
Set angle to maximize blood splatter.
And …
And Kowalski’s leg started humming.
There was only one person—one
organization
—who had the number to the ultrathin cell phone strapped to Kowalski’s thigh. His handler, at CI-6. When they called, it usually meant that he should abort a particular sanction. He would feel the buzz and immediately stop what he was doing. Even if the blade was halfway through the seven layers of skin of some poor bastard’s neck. Even if his finger had already started to apply pressure to the trigger.
But this sanction was personal. There was nothing to abort. Only
he
could abort it.
This was capital
V
—Vengeance.
Still, the buzz troubled him. Somebody at CI-6 was trying to reach him. Ignored, it could mean more hassle. More explaining to do, which was bad, since he was supposed to be on extended leave of absence. No operations, no sanctions, no nothing. The last thing an operative like Kowalski needed was to explain why he’d been systematically wiping out what remained of the South Philadelphia branch of the Cosa Nostra. That was seriously off-mission.
The Department of Homeland Security kind of frowned on the idea that their operatives—even supersecret ops, like Kowalski—would use their training and firepower to hunt down ordinary citizens on a mission of vegeance.
They might secretly applaud it, get off on the details, but approve? No way.
So okay, okay. Fuck it.
Abort.
Your lucky day, cheeseball. I’ll get back to you later. In the meantime, go for some sauce. Live it up.
Rifle down, glove off, roll over, pluck the cell phone from the thigh.
“Yeah.”
The voice on the phone gave him another cell phone number. Kowalski pressed the button to end the call. Added six to every digit of the new cell phone number. Dialed the result. A male voice said, “You mean to say you’ve got a thirst even at this time in the morning?”
Kowalski said, “It’s so hot and dry.”
Wow. It’d been awhile since a relay used
Rhinoceros.
Kowalski had almost forgotten the reply.
The voice gave him another number, which Kowalski memorized—after adding a seven-digit PN (personal number, natch) to every digit. He packed up, stashed the gear in a nearby warehouse, then made his way down from the rooftop and walked six blocks before catching a cab. A $3.40 fare took him to the nearest convenience store, a 7-Eleven, where he purchased three prepaid calling cards in the amount of twenty dollars each. He wasn’t sure how long the phone call would take.
Kowalski stepped outside the 7-Eleven and found a pay phone. He punched in the toll-free number on the back of the card, then dialed the number he’d memorized. By using a prepaid card and a pay phone, the call was untraceable, buried under a sea of discount calls being placed across the United States. Nobody had the technology to sort through all of that. Not even CI-6—a subdivision of Homeland Security they didn’t discuss much on the evening news.
A female voice on the phone told him to fly to Houston. Kowalski immediately recognized the voice. It was
her.
His former handler. They hadn’t worked together in months; they’d had an awkward falling-out. But it seemed they were to be paired up again. Ah, fate.
Kowalski thought he should say something friendly to break the ice, but she didn’t give him the chance.
A university professor named Manchette had died earlier that morning, and Kowalski’s employers needed to check something. She wanted Kowalski to bring back a biological sample.
“Some skin?”
“No.”
“Blood?”
“No, no. We need the head.”
“The whole thing?”
But of course. Pity was, Kowalski didn’t know any crime-scene cleanup crews in Houston. It would be a new city for him. Shame it couldn’t have been in Philadelphia. The Dydak Brothers would have had a field day with a head removal.
“We need something else.”
“Anything for you,” said Kowalski, but immediately he regretted it.
Keep things professional.
“We’d like you to pin down the location of a woman named Kelly White. Want me to spell it?”
“White as in the color?”
“Yes.”
“What do I need to know about her?”
“She may have come in contact with Professor Manchette within the past forty-eight hours. We’d like to know if this is true.”
Kowalski said fine, and thought about asking his handler to meet for dinner when he got back. Just to catch up. He wanted to say, Hey, it’s not as if I’m tied down to any broad. Not anymore. Nope, not as of a few months ago.
And I’m not going to be a father, either.
But he let it drop.
Kowalski caught another cab and told the driver to take him to Philadelphia International Airport. The interior was blue vinyl. It smelled like someone had sliced a dozen oranges and then baked them to mask the aroma of 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.”