The Blonde

3:15 a.m.

Little Pete’s

It was too soon for another breakfast. Worse yet, he was alone this time. Ed’s head was tucked away behind the front desk of the Sheraton. Least Ed had company—plenty of cops and rescue workers and hotel staff—buzzing around him. Not Kowalski. He was totally and utterly alone, sitting at a table recently wiped down by a stocky Slavic woman with at least three hairs growing out of a mole on her chin. Good smile, though. So there’s her.

Kowalski spun his cell phone on the tabletop and stopped it with a single index finger. It landed on the number one. He held it there; the phone speed-dialed.

This is Katie. Leave a message and Til get back to you as soon as I can.

No jokes, no cutesy voice. That was Katie. Businesslike in every way except the important ones.

It had been months now, but he hadn’t called to cancel the voice-mail service from her local phone provider. She had no other relatives—her half-brother was out of the picture—so there was nobody else to cancel it for her. Kowalski kept it going just to hear her voice. Seventeen words. That’s all he had left. Every week, he called the access number to erase all of the hang-up calls. He was the only one who called her phone number anymore. Sometimes, he’d hang on the line, and he’d hear his own sigh. He hadn’t known he sighed till then. He’d always thought he had better control than that.

The phone on the tabletop vibrated. It looked like a hovercraft, gliding over a sea of Formica.

Kowalski answered it.

His handler.

“How close are you? I have someone coming in to meet you in a little over an hour.”

“You should run out to the Seven-Eleven, get a Yoo-hoo and a couple doughnuts for your guest. It’s going to be awhile. Our girl’s out of the picture for a bit.”

Kowalski expected a quick rejoinder; that was his handler’s style. Their conversations were like cutthroat racquetball. Bat one right at her head, she’d return the serve and there’d be a hard little explosion in your nuts.

This time, though, nothing.

“You’re there, right?”

“Define ‘out of the picture.’ ”

“Taken to the hospital. Something was wrong with her—she was bleeding from her nose and mouth. But still breathing.”

Kowalski might have been imagining things—it was late—but he thought he heard his handler gasp. He tried to assure her.

“Give me a few hours, I’ll recover her, dead or alive, and bring the matching set down to you. Okay?”

“That’s not what I had in mind. Hold, please.”

Kowalski held. Holding, no big deal. That was his thing. Hang out, endure the boredom, tempered by the thought that soon, oh so soon, the fun would start. The brief hot burst of joy: the weight of his finger on a trigger, the quick flash of a man’s brains exploding out of an artfully executed shot. Nobody had picked up on the pattern yet, which partially delighted him, partially depressed him. If they were to take X rays of all of the skulls of the wise guys he’d killed over the past months, and laid them all on top of one another, they’d see that the entry holes formed a particular letter of the alphabet. Even the occasional Sesame Street viewer would see it. What starts with the letter K?

Katie.

Kowalski.

She used to joke about keeping her maiden name. Katie Kowalski? Sounded like a cheerleader. He’d call her “Special K,” and make faces at her and short bus jokes, and she’d slap him—kind of hard, come to think of it—and …

“Your services are no longer required.”

“Really.”

“Good night.”

“Wait… you’re serious? Come on. I can still deliver what you want.”

“No, you can’t.”

So true on so many levels.

And that was the end of their relationship.