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.
Jesus fuck, she had dyed it red.
“What?” she asked, defensively. “I was tired of looking like me.”
Katie had been a redhead.
Katie was his dead pregnant fiancée, who was waiting to give birth sometime in the afterlife, whenever Kowalski could arrange to be there.
“Huh,” he said, then took another slug of beer.
And that’s when people started showing up to kill them.
You have to admit, the second team was pretty good,” the interrogator said. “Yeah,” Kowalski said.
“They were pretty good.”
They were:
Ms. Montgomery, a.k.a. “Ana Esthesia.”
Mr. Brown, a.k.a. “The Surgeon.”
Mrs. McCue, a.k.a. “Bonesaw.”
Their skills complemented each other, which was part of the reason for their silly nicknames.
But they were also a surgical strike team, specializing in accidental and bizarre sanctions. If you want someone to die and have nobody think twice about it, you call in these kinds of people.
So, yeah. Surgical strike team, surgical nicknames. CI-6 had a fondness for the literal.
Bonesaw dug her name. Then again, she was a pain freak.
The Surgeon hardly ever spoke, so it was difficult to ascertain what he thought of his nickname, or if it even occurred to him that he should have an opinion. He did Sudoku. He answered most queries with “Yep.”