The Blonde Read Free Page A

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, thendialed 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. Kowaiski 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.
    Kowaiski 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 Kowaiski to bring back a biological sample.
    “Some skin?”
    “No.”
    “Blood?”
    “No, no. We need the head.”
    “The whole thing?”
    But of course. Pity was, Kowaiski 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 Kowaiski, 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