The Dewey Decimal System (12 page)

Where are my pistachio shells?

See: whenever word spreads (and it spreads fast) that I’m on a job, all squatters know to avoid this place, as if whatever nefarious shit I’m up to creates a field of bad energy that repels them. It’s weird but it’s true. I don’t mind; I’d much rather be alone at any given time, though I tolerate them when they’re around. It’s a public building. It’s my public building. So whenever I start a job, I know I need to be extra careful.

And in case you haven’t caught on to this yet, I have a System. The System is made up of Maps, Rituals, and Patterns that I like to repeat in certain circumstances. Also Tokens, which I guess you might say in my case is the physical pill bottle, the key of course, and the bottle of Purrel
^TM
. Plus my hat.

Rituals are classified as Safety, Hygienic, and Other (or Miscellaneous, if you prefer, but Other is a less ungainly word, I reckon).

One of the Safety Rituals is the Scattering of the Shells. I collect them in my shell bowl and cast them about as I leave the library without fail, always and only on the third set of steps. And I clean them up nightly with my trusty Dustbuster. Should I notice some crushed shells upon my return home, I might expect to find visitors upstairs, and be prepared accordingly.

In this case I’m not seeing any shells yet, anywhere. Broken or otherwise. I play the flashlight up and down. Correction: since the lights are off in the whole building I’m going more by sound than sight, and I have not heard the familiar homecoming sound of crunching underfoot. Now I’m visually confirming it. No shells at all are present here, halfway up the third set of steps.

I kill the flashlight and darkness, complete and total, hustles in to surround me.

Okay. I kneel, wincing, and feel for the latches on the briefcase. The lock is already spun into its correct open position. Six-six-six. Locating the latches, I ease the case open.

I’m not 100 percent familiar with this particular handgun, but I’ve seen it assembled and so I go through it slow, massaging each component and sliding it into place as quietly as possible.

Sig Sauers are pretty intuitive and user-friendly.

A couple things occur to me now. One: whoever is here is probably already aware that I’m here as well. And two: the suitcase came with some nifty night-vision goggles.

I slide my hand around until I hit them, feel for the front of the gadget, remove my hat, and pull them over my head and into place. That’s better. I replace my hat.

Blood tint my world.

And I almost puke from the force of what is unmistakably a “memory”: moonscape-like vista, made unreal by the red tinge that brought on this vision, I see a tank, a Humvee, two or three civilian vehicles, a cart and some livestock, visible heat waves shifting near the ground, and a couple low houses. In the middle distance, a hitherto unseen man casually stands up, starts making hand signals to unseen persons or person behind him. I squeeze off a shot, his chest explodes, and I understand that a short-term goal has been accomplished.

Wham
. I’m back in the present but Jesus that shakes me up. My perspective had been through some sort of infrared scope.

What did I do that would cause my brain to be so completely fragmented regarding certain things, and so photographically specific in its recall of others?

What did I do?

Can’t go there now. Won’t go there. I hear my mother’s voice:
If not now, when
? To which I say,
If I had my way, never
.

I close the briefcase, remove my shoes and socks, and leave them on the staircase. Proceeding then down the hallway leading to the Reading Room, holding my gun and flashlight crisscrossed in the manner of all law enforcement, at least as depicted by Hollywood. Why? Habit. Plus it looks cool.

I note: the generator has been turned off. Godamnit, how did they find the fucker? Further, there has been extensive tampering, as the battery-powered camping lanterns I had hung down the length of the hallway are not illuminated. Pain in my ass. If this turns out to be some kids fucking around …

Pausing near the entrance to the Reading Room (because it would naturally be here that anyone would come; the Reading Room is the heart of this place and it has a special magnetism), I listen closely to determine if anyone is just inside the doors. Ninety seconds and I’m satisfied that if I have guests they’re further within the huge space.

I crouch and slowly rotate my body into the hall. I’m very pleased to notice that the goggles are heat sensitive, so hot dog! Right away I spy two individuals, one wedged between wall cases on the west side of the room, one on the east—I can see him only partially as the benches block my view.

Note another man stand up and move slowly west across the room to join his companion.

Three men total. I think. Touch my key for luck.

Sizing this up, it appears to me that the fellow on the easternmost side was in the middle of going through my belongings when my presence was detected. I can see that my gear is not properly placed in my preferred nook, which is just to his right.

Based on this, I’m assuming that this man will be the most dangerous, and the most useful of the three in terms of answering questions I might have; and that the other two are most likely along for added weight.

I wish I could see more of the man to the east; I want to disable him, but all I’ve got is a partial view of his head and chest. That won’t do.

Decisions are made for me, which is just as well, as one of the two fellows to the west begins to move quickly in my direction, feeling his way along the wall so as not to trip on the long tables. I doubt if I’ve been spotted, I reckon he’s been told to go cover the door.

The trouble with the night-vision goggles is that anything warm-blooded appears to be nothing but a glowing shape, like that smudgy picture of the hoax Yeti. I don’t get a lot of detail, especially when they’re in motion.

At any rate, I go ahead and draw a careful bead on the moving figure, and shoot him in what I hope to be the head. I seem to have hit him as his lungs evacuate and he disappears behind the tables.

The other two are in motion now, and of course they saw the muzzle flash so I’m moving too, in an easy sideways roll. Foremost I want to disable the man who was digging through my shit, and he’s up and running toward my previous position.

I take a calculated gamble, keeping half an eye on the other guy, and I wait till my first target has emerged from behind the row of tables. As he does so, I fire from about fifteen feet out at what I hope to be his leg, trusting I don’t hit an artery, this in tribute to Iveta Shapsko, as that was such a simple gesture and one almost forgets to opt for nonfatal options in emotionally charged situations like this.

But me, I’m at a remove from the emotional world. I feel disembodied, analytical, and it’s a very pleasant sensation. Feels like a safe place.

Man number one, as I think of him, goes crashing face forward, bouncing off the edge of a table, and begins shrieking like a banshee. Which jars me out of the zone, it seems so totally inappropriate, this being a library and all. I wanna shush him just on principle, start thinking sloppy. Therefore, I momentarily lose connection with man number three, who I can no longer see.

There’s a break in the action, an intermission.

Number one is now on the ground, he ceases screaming, jagged breathing for a moment … Suddenly he’s speaking, it’s Slavic … it’s Serbian, and my Serbian is a little rusty … He’s calling to God or his buddy, calling out my position perhaps.

So I roll gently out into the middle of the aisle that separates the two table banks and bisects the room, reckoning, correctly, that man number three is moving cautiously down said aisle, approximately twenty feet away.

I take about three seconds to make sure I get in a chest shot, which I follow up as fast as I can with a bullet to the skull. The guy drops to his knees, remains there for a moment, and falls sideways, most likely dead before he connects with the floor.

Man number one has been speaking all the while; as I listen I can feel my brain adjust and the language becomes more and more comprehensible. He’s saying, “Shoot two meters to the left of my voice, shoot low.” As I’m processing this he gets off a bullet that grazes my ear, incredible if indeed the guy isn’t able to see in this darkness. All sound on that side is converted to a highpitched tone, and I feel warmth …

I’m concerned about my suit so I fall sideways, quick, catching myself and sliding to the left, ensuring (hopefully) that I can keep blood off my collar and shoulder. I’ve got a great view of man number one now, who is frantically trying to determine if he hit me or not, waving his pistol this way and that.

I can take my time to steady myself and have a long look at my target. Once I’m satisfied with this, I shoot him in the hand, which causes him to lose hold of his gun, which lands between us.

From there it’s a simple matter of sliding over to him, laying down my pistol for a moment, and grabbing his weapon. I jam it down the back of my pants and pick up my gun again.

He switches to English. “Hey,” he says. “Hey. Okay. Enough. Hey—”

I direct the flashlight at his face and turn it on, still lying sideways. This is a white man, mid to late thirties, slightly overweight, a large scar creating a second mouth below the one he was born with, crew cut, polo shirt, and jeans. His eyes are rolling backward as if trying to get a look at the top of his head. I slide still further in his direction.

The man seems to be going into shock, so I backhand him with the flashlight. He sputters and his eyes double back toward me, though he doesn’t look particularly frightened, just confused … He’s got a hole in his thigh, thankfully the blood that continues to collect is just shy of my elbow.

Anyway, I think I have his attention. “Give me your shirt,” I say in Serbian.

“Hey,” he says in English to the ceiling. Then, in Serbian: “What?”

“I said give me your goddamn shirt, and don’t bleed on it.”

It appears painful, I get a look at his hand, destroyed as it is by my last shot, his pinky gone, ring finger missing above the second joint. Damn, I didn’t intend to do that much damage. He manages, heroically, to work his shirt off with getting too much blood on it.

I snatch it, ball it up in my left hand, and press hard on my ear. Then I stand up. Stomp on his kidney once, twice for good measure. Bare feet, but still. If this suit is ruined, so help me …

Pull the jacket off, awkwardly trying to hold his shirt to my ear as I do, and throw it over a bench. It looks okay but it’s impossible to tell through the goggles. Did I mention this was my last good suit?

This guy isn’t doing much more than groaning, and won’t be going anywhere soon. It’d be best if he didn’t bleed to death, as he and I need to have a talk, so I hobble over to his buddy, another husky fellow plus a beard.

It was a clean head shot with a perfectly round, smallish entry wound, messy in the back where the bullet left his skull. Plus that chest shot … I got to say it: I’m pretty tight when it comes to the gunplay. Just saying. I don’t examine him, rather I tear off his T-shirt, rip it into two pieces.

I go check on the other guy across the room real quick. Yup, I hit him dead on, through the right eye socket. He’s still moving around, so I kneel and place my gun under his jaw, his left eye radiating panic, and fire, the bullet passing though the top of his head.

This done, I return to man number one. Say, “Your people are dead. But for you, sir, I’m going to wrap up these wounds, show you I’m a …” I search for the correct Serbian idiom. “A reasonable kind of guy.”

I pull on a pair of surgical gloves that I’d kept in my back pocket. Switch back to English.

“So, my man. Kindly don’t do anything stupid …” Which is overkill because this fellow isn’t capable of much at this point.

I create a tight tourniquet above his leg wound, tie it off. Wrap up his wrecked hand, loosely. I feel a tad bit bad about the hand, that’s not going to ever be remotely the same should he live through this. Which, alas, I couldn’t allow anyway. Ah well.

Word to the motherfucking wise: don’t be a punkass creep who prowls around other people’s homes, goes through their stuff, then waits for them in the dark. People might rightly assume you mean them harm and react as they see fit.

Squatting next to the guy, I put the flashlight in his face. His eyes dilate, which I take as a positive.

“Hey. Sunshine. I don’t dig getting shot at. Especially by a bunch of unattractive dudes.” The man’s breathing is labored, noisy. He may be going into shock, so I speed it up. “And I don’t dig it when people go through my stuff. What do I call you?”

F
or the time being, I lay the three bodies out on the roof, feet-toward-park so they don’t roll down the slight incline. Morning showed up an hour ago, shaping up to be one of those opaque cloud-covered migraine-type days that slow cook you like a boiled egg.

I’m just too freaking tired to do anything else with these folks, and I have yet to deal with my ear, beyond duct-taping a ball of polo shirt to my head. I am stripped to the waist, and I chew off a chunk of yak jerky, which is the consistency of tar but does the job of keeping me standing.