The Dewey Decimal System (11 page)

He winces. “
Wasting
people? This is very crude. I don’t use this kind of term. People waste themselves when they don’t do like they were born to do. And you talk about teams, as if this were football match? No, no. Life is not like this. Life is gray. Like you.”

“Like me? Don’t follow you.”

“Well, are you 100 percent black man? Or are you 100 percent white?”

Please. “That is a stupid-ass metaphor, my friend. You’re trying too hard. Know the limits of your command of the English language.”

He laughs at that. “Okay, but you see my point.”

“Not really. Yeah, yeah, gray areas, so what?”

Yakiv lifts his shoulders and exhales. “All right, let me simplify things for you then.”

“By all means.”

He holds up his right thumb. “One the one hand: you do this job for me, you get to walk with your life, plus good deal of money. Within reason.” Then the left thumb: “On the other hand: you don’t do this job, and you get nothing. And you are certainly not walking away. Understand?”

He sits there, eyebrows raised, giving me the double thumbs-up sign. Like the Fonz, I think inappropriately, given the gravity of things here.

Me: “No gray areas when you put it like that.”

“Do you understand?” he repeats.

“I understand,” I tell the Ukrainian.

Cause what else do you say?

T
he shaking doesn’t start until I actually hit pavement on West 16th Street. When it does, I nearly fumble my new briefcase. Jesus, how anyone can bear the levitating coffin known as an elevator?

I point my trembling gimp toward Eighth Avenue, hoping I can find a respectable place to collapse, unseen by the car service drivers who line the street, the battered Town Cars, uniformly black—man, I wonder what it must cost to convert a monster like a Town Car to battery cell or solar, must be a serious chunk of change. Like a Navigator. Pretty much the same engine, most people don’t know that.

I wonder if the C train is operational. Thinking maybe I don’t want to run into military personnel with what I’m carrying, and my freaky fritzed-out aura. I zombieswerve eastward. Just want to be home.

In the briefcase:

—a polymer 9mm Sig Sauer SP2022, plus fifty extra rounds and a silencer. Traceable apparently to one Branko Jokanovic, don’t ask me how.

—a thin folder containing information relevant to Iveta Shapsko and her possible location, which I have yet to look at.

—night-vision goggles.

—a Canon digital camera.

—a ziplock of string cheese, and some kind of fucked-up yak jerky the crazy Ukrainian insisted I take, “in case you get hungry.”

Am I really that goddamn emaciated? Why is everyone so concerned with my diet? Next they’ll be sifting through my poop.

I make Eighth Avenue, and the C/E station looks dark. I’m shaking so hard I sit down on the curb. Wait for it to pass. Feel for the key, yes. Feel for cigarettes, nope. Sometimes I forget to keep smoking.

The air is a blanket of toxins.

I pop a pill.

The briefcase, which is equipped with a three-digit combination lock, isn’t the only new accessory bestowed on me this evening.

I inspect my new ankle monitor, affixed neat and snug to my bad leg. I’ve been tethered. Reckon these are tamper-proof so I don’t bother playing around with it.

I seem to remember my dad had one at some point. Probably after the second time he beat down my mother. House arrest. I recall having to run to the corner to buy him beer. Before he legged it back to Trinidad, bracelet and all.

If you could only see me now, Pop. I’m a big shot. Lady-killer. On the curb in a summer suit, shaking, shaking, gripping a tan faux-leather briefcase. The night is young, and I’m king of this city. Yes, if I could just see you now, Pop. I got a Swiss buddy named Sig I’d simply love you to meet.

I’m wallowing in this kind of pointless tough-think, or I’m too spaced out by my painful leg. Either way, I don’t notice the vehicle creeping up Eighth Avenue, an electric Army Aggressor, until I’m hit in the face by 120 watts of spotlight.

“Hey, hey, totally not necessary, people!”

I do my utmost to scramble to my feet, blinded and handicapped as I am. A megaphone crackles and an amplified voice addresses me and anybody else within a ten-block radius.

“
Hold it there. Interlock your fingers behind your head
.”

I do as I’m told, I’m not a complete idiot. “Be cool!” I shout. “I’m one of the good guys, all right? Just be fucking cool.”

I can’t see much as the light is in my face, but I’m starting to adjust. A pair of doors slam almost in unison, I’m approached by two MPs, one hangs back, cradling an HK machine pistol. The other comes toward me, saying, “Keep those hands where they are. Where’s you ID?”

He’s a kid, maybe twenty. Freckles, probably a redhead under that helmet. I tell him: “Front left-hand suit coat pocket. Sorry: your right, my left.”

“Sir, are you carrying needles or any sharp objects I might need to be aware of?”

Jesus, what is this … ? “No, son, it’s just a laminate. Careful with those plastic edges, though, they can be sharp.”

He gives me a here’s-a-smart-guy look, but I’m serious, I’ve cut myself more than once on those laminates. Just trying to be helpful.

“I’m going to put my hand in your pocket and get out your ID at this time, sir. Please do not move.”

“No problem, you’ll see shortly that I do in fact work for the city. Just be cool.”

The kid gingerly withdraws my ID from my suit jacket. Guy with the HK is chewing gum, looks bored.

Freckles holds my ID up to the light, squints at it. Looks at me. Looks back at the ID. “Mr. Dewey Decimal?”

“That’s me.”

He calls back to his buddy: “Can you check the list for a Decimal, Dewey, ID … Ready?”

“Just a sec … Yeah,” calls an unseen man in the vehicle.

“ID number 4-7-9-alpha-golf-november-yankeecharlie.”

“Stand by.”

We do. It’s awkward. More for them than me. Freckles thumbs the edge of my laminate, whistles tunelessly for a couple seconds, stops. His bare hands … I’m gonna have to disinfect that ID card. Kid sneaks a glance at me a couple times.

His pal with the big gun wears headphones; the engine on the Aggressor is silent and I can make out snippets of Jay-Z, a throwback to the world I once knew well. A beat to which the boy with the machine pistol bobs his head slightly.

To break it up, I ask Freckles: “Do you serve, son?”

Kid shakes his head. Yeah, I guess he’d be a bit young.

Presently, the fellow in the truck comes back with: “ID is good, and, uh, we have a message? Unclassified, quote:
It’s Rosenblatt, WT mother F? Contact me via shortwave a.s.a.p., this unit has frequency, etc
. Unquote.”

I sigh. I recall my pager, crushed to dust in the bushes somewhere on the Upper East Side.

“Gents, can I be so bold as to ask for the use of your radio?” Freckles hands me my ID. I take it with two fingers. “And kindly chill the lights out, I’m as tan as I need to be.”

I
t’s coming up on three in the morning as I gimp-limp up the marble steps past the twin lions, briefcase in tow. Home sweet home. I’m going to eat this yak jerky, maybe the string cheese, and collapse.

Christ, what a long-ass goddamn day.

The DA was pissed. His usual state. Nothing new there. Why wouldn’t I respond to his multiple pages? Dealt with that.

Was I aware that I’d permanently screwed my chances of walking normally ever again? This secondhand from my doc. No I had not been aware of this, but thank you for the heads-up.

The lean, it gives me character.

Was I some kind of smart-ass? Yes, I was.

I enter the library, gladly accepting its cold embrace. Pull the flashlight out of its nook near the door, fire it up.

Agents from the DA’s office had tailed me as far as the Maritime, and Rosenblatt knew I’d been nabbed, and in contact with Shapsko. What the hell was going on?

This was far more complex to dance to, but I made it work. My play, as related to the DA, had been thus: I had described myself as a small-time operator: veteran, thief, mercenary, and jack-of-all-trades. Throwing myself on Shapsko’s mercy, and offering my services in any capacity.

Far from being angered by my aborted break-in at his former home in Queens, and subsequent collision with his wife, Shapsko was impressed I had the wherewithal to track him down and tail him undetected. He was further impressed that I survived the encounter with his wife Iveta, about whom he didn’t seem to be too concerned; and that I obviously had sufficient government contacts to somehow arrange for a medevac.

Yakiv had a job for me, which was “sensitive.” I was to meet him tomorrow, privately, to discuss details at his office on West 26th Street. If I didn’t show, Shapsko had said, he would find me and kill me.

So, in short, Shapsko had bought my flimsy line of bullshit. My relief knew no bounds, I told Rosenblatt, who then asked if I thought he gave a shit about that?

I told the goodly DA that my plan, then, was to use this opportunity to whack Shapsko in an intimate setting, as this evening in the hotel had not been ideal; should I have attempted anything untoward, the Ukrainian’s men would have gotten to me within seconds.

And unbelievably, incredibly, DA Rosenblatt bought my flimsy line of bullshit. Of course, he made me squirm a bit and crowed on and on about my inability to do anything in a straight line, but in the end he bought it.

Because he wanted to buy it.

And he reiterated his warning concerning Iveta: this woman is a no-go zone. I was not to seek her out, I was not to come within one hundred yards of her, ever ever never again, no, no way, no how.

This seemed redundant, as for all the DA knew I had no need to involve Iveta, but I didn’t comment. Don’t think I’m missing the fact that it’s now twice he’s gone out of his way to make protective noises about the woman, despite his total lack of ethics and usual disregard for collateral damage.

Now I rub my forearm and examine the rising red bump. It looks innocuous enough, mosquito-bite minor. But I don’t dig it, not for a nanosecond.

This was the big negative that came of my conversation with the district attorney. I’d lost the pager? No problem. He had insisted, rather, that I be electronically tagged. This way he could provide backup if I was abducted, etc. It was for his peace of mind, and for my own safety. His exact words.

And best of all, my new friends, the strapping young soldiers in my company back on Eighth Avenue, had the necessary equipment to do it, right there on the spot. The machine looked like one of those old label-makers. I used to label everything in my room when I was a kid. Even my little fish tank:
goldfish
. Lest I forget.

Little scraps of a life I assume is mine, patchy as hell.

Anyhow. Freckles had administered it.
Pop
: a little pinch, and I had a state-of-the-art circa 2011 microchip buried in my arm.

Fantastic.

As I move into the belly of the library now, I consider the two GPS units affixed to my person. Who monitors them? How much information do they impart? What kind of equipment does one use to do so? Between Shapsko’s outfit and the DA’s office/military, who has the more impressive gear?

I picture Shapsko’s moodily lit outpost as staffed by sexy Eastern European females of dark hair and complexion, clad in black catsuits, matte black earpieces, with a holographic wall of 3-D renderings of my precise position, posture, heart rate, and ever-shifting moods.

Likewise, I envision the DA/military spread as a shoddy, fluorescent, plasterboard affair, some temporary office setup, hastily assembled, with shitty metal chairs and disgruntled, unattractive demotees peering at a blinking white blip on a black field like the earliest generation of video games, about whose location they can only make vague approximations.

I bet you that over at Shapsko’s joint they have some sort of complex rotating computer model of—

Hold it. I freeze midstep and am brought smack back to my surroundings. I direct the light left to right, and up and down the stairwell.