The Blonde

4:10 a.m.

Security Office, the Sheraton

Kowalski found Just for Men hair dye in Room 508, along with a black leather jacket. Can you say aging, overachieving fuckhead} Probably out for a jog around Rittenhouse Square this early in the morning. Trying to outrun death. Good luck. Part of Kowalski wanted to stick ar.ound, say hi when he returned. Hey, guess what? All that running didn’t mean dick! Snap.

The man’s absence was all the better for Kowalski, of course. But still. The guy should be at home sleeping if he was worried about dying his hair blond. Less stress in your life.

A pair of black jeans from another room, along with a pair of reading glasses from still another—Kowalski nabbed ‘em right from the nightstand in that case, with their sleeping owner two feet away—he was finally ready to say hello to Charles Lee Vincent.

Who didn’t recognize him at all.

“So this is a DHS matter, huh?”

Kowalski smiled nervously, adjusted his glasses with his good hand. Kept his right tucked in the jacket pocket. His wrist was throbbing, and he didn’t want it to give him away.

“If this is the guy we’re looking for, then yes. He assaulted you?”

“He got lucky. If it hadn’t been so late …”

“Of course. But don’t feel bad. This man I’m after is well trained. Got deep with Mossad, did some mercenary work in Afghanistan.”

“Still, I say he got lucky.”

“You feeling okay, Mr. Vincent?”

“I’m fine. But I’m standing here thinking, you look so goddamned familiar. You sure we haven’t met up somewhere else?”

“Pretty sure,” Kowalski said. “Unless you used to be on the force here, because I was out in San Diego. Possible we met at a convention or something.” That sounded vague enough to be true, and wide open enough to send Mr. Vincent here searching his memory bank in the wrong part of the building.

“Yeah, maybe that was it.”

Kowalski asked about Jack Eisley, the guy in the room with the blonde. Vincent didn’t know much: He had his driver’s license and credit-card info on file, so Kowalski was welcome to that. Then Vincent explained how he’d escorted the guy down here, because Eisley claimed to have panic attacks if he was left alone, which seemed like grade-A bullshit to him, but whatever. Not good business to upset a Sheraton customer, so he’d humored him. Brought the guy down to the lobby, had a colleague baby-sit him. Next thing, though, the guy bolted. Probably worried that his wife would find out about the blonde in his room. Like that would do any good. Sooner or later, the cops were going to want him.

“And like I said, we’ve got his stuff on file right here.”

“What do you have in the way of cameras out front? ”

Vincent’s eyes lighted up. “I’m ahead of you.”

After switching over to the backup recorder, Vincent pulled the current digital tape and popped it in the playback machine, then used a large plastic knob to rewind back to 3:00 A.M., right around when the cops arrived, he explained. The more he moved the knob to the right, the faster the tape rewound. A few minutes went by, Vincent eased up on the knob, and then yeah, sure enough, Jack Eisley had left the building.

“Looks like he was headed south on Eighteenth Street,” Vincent said. “Could be anywhere by now.”

Kowalski kept watching the screen. Not much was happening.

“Waiting to see if he’ll double back? Don’t know what good it will do you. I saw that scumbag you’re looking for a lot more than Eisley. We rode up in the elevator together. I’d be able to spot him in a second.”

“You would, huh?” Kowalski said. “Wait—there.”

A yellow blur on the screen. A cab, racing up Eighteenth Street. Kowalski twitched the knob slightly to the left and rewound the tape a few seconds. The cab sailed past again, and Kowalski returned the knob to dead center. The cab was frozen in the middle of the street.

“You can’t see who’s in there,” Vincent said. You can barely see the driver’s hands.”

“But I can see the medallion on the hood. What button can I use to bring up the focus on this?”

“You’re not going to be able to read those numbers.”

Kowalski ignored him, punched more buttons. “You know how the blonde is doing?”

“I heard she was being taken to Pennsylvania Hospital, but it doesn’t look good. Fucker probably pulled the same thing on her. Squeezed the air right out of her lungs, deprived her of oxygen too long. You should have seen it up there on five. Unless you already have.”

“I have,” Kowalski said, still working on the focus.

“Then you saw the blood on the carpet. How hard do you have to choke somebody before they start spurting blood? I mean, fuck. That’s hard. You say this guy was with Mossad?”

“They know no mercy. Hey, you got a pen and paper? I got those numbers.”

“Holy shit. You did? This something they teach you at Homeland Security?”

Not really. Prior to 9/11 and the creation of DHS (and CI-6), prior to active CIA status, prior to the military, prior to University of Houston, Kowalski was an AV geek for a short while. Manned the control booth for a handful of basketball games, screwing around with the studio gear for a couple of weeks, but that was it. Brother Harry begged him to come back, but he needed to move on. With high school activities, Kowalski was like a locust. He wanted to try it all, master none. No baggage, even in high school. If he were to head back to his high school reunion—and oh, how watching that John Cu-sack movie made him long to do just that—he wouldn’t be surprised to find that everybody sorta remembered him but nobody knew him.

“We learn a little of everything, brother,” Kowalski said, locking eyes with Vincent. “Look, I’m going to run this down. If I catch this bird, I’ll bring him back for the Philly boys.”

As he said this, he pressed the button that would erase the five minutes of digital tape on which the cab appeared.