The Dewey Decimal System (17 page)

You’re a freaking badass soldier man. You can do this much.

A minivan blasts by me, I jump away from the curb. I see a beard, hat, earlocks. The van goes straight through the lights that blink yellow yellow yellow without a glance or a pause.

Tactics. Get ahead of me. Too easy. The beard, hat, earlock disguise, cheap and easy. No, no, no. I tell myself to move it. Just regular citizens doing regular citizen stuff. Jews and their minivans.

Perspective starts to shift on its axis and I stumble sideways. Straighten myself out. I take my heart rate and count to ten, System style. My pulse is through the roof. This is bad.

The rain has stopped, I barely register this and do not care. I’ve swung north because I want to find the Pulaski Bridge, which divides Brooklyn and Queens. Thinking I’m out of pills I’m out of pills I’m out of pills. Fuck.

I would hijack a vehicle but I’m far too shaky to drive. All I’m seeing are industrial machines anyway, forklifts.

Moving through a two-dimensional warehouse area, nothing to see even without my peripheral vision, which is fading fast, I’m out of pills, adrift in Brooklyn of all things. I’m not lost, though: I tweak left on Ash Street, I think I’m pretty close.

Limbs are stiffening up. My jaw.

I’m out of pills. A killer migraine squats behind my left eye. This is not good. I close my hand over my key, even this is not helpful. I can’t connect to the System; nothing’s working.

Pass a shuttered business called Pom Wonderful. What the hell could that be? Koreans, Chinese? I need to distract myself, I can’t lose it out here. The wildlife will get me for sure. If my heart doesn’t explode first.

Out of pills out of pills out of pills. I see the bridge. I see it. Can I get up on it from street level? I don’t know.

Thank Christ, there’s a metal stairwell. Can I manage it? Don’t see an option. I make the stairs, slip on the wet metal, crack my shin on a stair, pull myself up, fucking drag myself up, one flight, two flights, and a third set deposits me, blinking, blind, up on the ramp to the Pulaski Bridge.

The fucking air, the ambient filth, it’s killing me. I drop my briefcase, go to pick it up, fall. Get my hand on the case and I convulse. It’s really bad now. I think I start calling for help. Anybody. Come on. I can’t go further. If they’re tailing me I’m finished, and I don’t care.

I go flat on my stomach. I think of Iveta. Thinking, I’m sorry, so sorry. I tried. Somebody with a loudspeaker trying to get my attention, but God kills the lights, and my mind just strolls away.

I
thought I might just wander around,” I say to the faceless woman in the main office at Woodlawn Cemetery, “and see if I can find the, uh, site. I won’t be long.”

“Sir,” she replies, “there are over 300,000 interment lots at this facility. It’s all computerized. Might I see your lot card?”

I check my back pockets.

I check my jacket pockets.

I check my front pants pocket, feeling her eyes on me, finding only a key, feeling the panic making its way up my spine.

“Just a moment,” I say to her. “I’m sure I have it here somewhere …”

A
mmonium carbonate.

I sputter and gasp and realize my eyes are open.

I’m looking at a young man in military garb, who withdraws the vial of smelling salts.

“He’s up,” says the soldier. “Sir!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, that’s not …” I manage.

“Sir, are you all right?”

I lift my head. I’m halfway inside an Army Aggressor— another one? Outside is a depressing-looking stretch of elevated road. A bridge, I’m on a bridge. A couple other soldiers stand around, looking tired.

“Sir, do you have a medical condition we might need to be aware of?”

I look at the boy. Earnest and black.

He’s me, before the Devil stole my soul.

“I … take medication.”

“Sir, you lost consciousness. Do you have a specific medical condition that you can relate to me so we can better help you? What is the medication for?”

“It keeps my heart from exploding.”

The kid looks at me quizzically. “Sir, are you saying you have a heart condition?”

“No, I ran out of med—”

“Washington,” says another soldier from the front of the vehicle. “Wanted on the ’com.”

“Sir, just relax and remain where you are. Okay?”

I nod. The soldier ducks his head and climbs into the front of the vehicle, puts on a wireless headset. “Washington.”

I glance at the roof of the truck. Metal crossbars forming … crosses.

“Yes sir, we have him here.”

Pause. I hear a helicopter, it’s far off. Or I imagine I hear a helicopter. Always, always with the helicopters.

“He mentioned medication.”

Pause.

“Administer what now, sir?”

Pause. I check for my key, it’s there. A constant.

“For a heart condition?”

Long pause. I fumble around … There’s the briefcase, thank God.

“Okay … Right … I see … Okay … Yes sir … That’s right … Not a problem, sir … Yes, just a moment.” Washington climbs back to my area, says to me, “Sir, as it happens, we have some of your medication on hand, right here, so you can relax and I’ll prepare that for you.”

He extends the headset. I have to admit the flood of relief I feel in my stomach is enough to perk me up a bit. They’ve got my stuff. Everything’s going to be fine. I put on the headset.

“Hello.”

“Decimal, you goddamn freak,” says the DA. “I hope you have. Some kinda fuckin overarching plan. That is obvious only to you. Cause you’re so fuckin brilliant.”

“If you’ll let me explain—”

“And Decimal. What. The fuck. Are you doing. In the fuck-ass borough of Brooklyn?”

I close my eyes. “I’ve been asking myself that very question, sir.”

T
here was no shucking and jiving to be done with the DA, not this time. He was buying none of it. So I came clean.

Sort of.

Now I slouch low in a car parked a few doors down from Odessa Expedited. I’m very aware of my ankle bracelet, the chip in my arm. I consider my options. All of which are pretty grim.

I was abducted, I told Rosenblatt. Shapsko’s men, most likely, though I never did find out. Taken to Brooklyn. I escaped, but just barely.

Rosenblatt was not impressed.

The upshot: as far as the DA is concerned, I’m on very strict probation. Either I go to work and take care of this job, or I will be kicked to the curb. No more firstclass status and, most significantly, no more medication. I will be put out in the cold. Twisting in the wind. Persona non grata. And further, I will be considered hostile to city affairs, which will be taken into consideration if I encounter any authorities.

I honestly don’t know how long I could make it under such circumstances. No matter which way I approach this thing, by far the simplest solution would be to do Yakiv.

So be it.

Rosenblatt has been monitoring radio communications within Yakiv’s organization, and has reason to believe Yakiv is at his office, here on West 26th Street.

This was my last chance. I would, according to the DA, find a red Volt, key, and a bottle of my medication under the driver’s seat, near Odessa Expedited’s address.

He stressed yet again: last chance for a slow dance. The train is leaving the station. He then gave me his private line, an honor I have not previously been granted.

Once the job is done I am to contact him, pronto, via his mobile phone. Any military personnel will be available to facilitate this with their equipment.

Committed the number to memory. Easy: 999-999-9999.

Fucking hell, man. Getting boxed in.

I pop a blue beauty and scan the buildings across from Odessa, and think I see what I want to see. The stairwell at number 247, windows facing out, across the street.

Exiting the Volt, I walk quickly to the building, try the door, which swings right open, mount the stairs, and take them up to the second landing. Simple as that.

Hungry-looking rats scatter. I crouch, which is uncomfortable but manageable. Solid view of the entrance to Odessa. With half an eye out the window, I check both weapons. This should be pretty straightforward.

I tap several times on one of the many panes in the checkerboard window, and presently it cracks. I’m able to poke my pistol through the discreet opening.

Screwing the silencer on the Sig. Might as well do the guy with the weapon he gave me. If indeed it is traceable back to Branko (Brian?), maybe we get the double bonus of painting it like some sort of funky turf thing. Who cares, really; most of all I like the idea of dropping him with the bullet intended for his wife.

I touch my ankle bracelet. Yakiv has to know I’m in the neighborhood. Like right on top of him. If I get the chance I will have to pull this off fast.

I touch my key. Nothing to do now but wait.

Don’t have to wait long. Approximately twenty minutes have passed, and without preamble, a couple big guys, interchangeable with the types I’ve encountered in the last couple days, come out the door, followed by Yakiv himself, who is laughing with the cut-and-paste pair of thugos that take up the rear.

When he’s all the way out, he pauses. I lift the gun. He’s sweeping the block with his eyes, his mouth a wide grin. I have a clean shot. I start to apply pressure to the trigger finger.

Yakiv makes a rolling movement with his arms, a disco move that says,
Get on with it. Wrap it up
. I’m positive it’s directed at me.

His boys hang back, exchange looks.

He’s wide open, I’ve got him pinned, there’s no way I’ll miss him when I pull the trigger.

Except that I don’t.

Yakiv walks into the middle of the street, looking this way and that. I withdraw the weapon. He’s raking the buildings with his eyes. For a second I’m sure he’s spotted me and I scoot back like a crab.

He holds his arms up, Christlike. At this point I know I’m not going to shoot the man.

Yakiv lifts his palms, shrugs, turns on his heel, and rejoins his buddies. Within ten seconds they’re piling into a black Chevy van, and within another eight seconds they’re gone.

I couldn’t do it.

Putting aside any of the issues the DA might have with the man, his motivation to send me after him, whatever that might be, because after all I’m not particularly concerned about the finer points of city politics, putting all this aside: I don’t doubt for a second that Yakiv would enjoy laying me out. Arrogant prick.

So what keeps me from carrying through? Do the job, chill out the DA. Put things right with Brian/Branko, return the hand, choke down some pills, and get back to my literary womb.

I can’t do it. For fuck’s sake, why?

Because this gig, it stinks. Something’s not right, something’s off. At the center of this tangle is an unknown quantity. The linchpin.

Iveta, around whom all this chaos orbits.

It strikes me now, this is what I’ve been doing all along. Chasing my own ass, trying to determine how Iveta fits in. Has she been off my mind? Not for a half minute.

I pull myself up off the floor, bounce down the stairs, and leg it toward the car, holstering my gun. Pulling out the Purell
^TM
.