The Dewey Decimal System (5 page)

Damn, I didn’t come here to pistol-whip the woman. Make it right.

“Iveta.” I get into a crouching position near her. “Iveta, do you have some, uh, first aid materials? You’ve got a bit of a cut there.”

No response, she grunts and rolls sideways, supporting her head.

I look around the living room. On the sad couch there’s bedding, a sheet.

I almost gag, a used fucking sheet, search my pockets for some fresh surgical gloves. Make sure I haven’t dropped the key. Pulling the gloves on, I suck it up, grab the material off the couch.

“Iveta. Let me take a look. I have to know you’re not going to jump me again, though. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, muffled by the arm covering her mouth.

I take her hand away, there’s a shitload of blood, thanks be to Christ I put on the gloves; I apply the sheet and press it to her temple. She blinks at the blood in her right eye. I dab at it as best I can.

We sit like this for a while. I actually have no idea as to what comes next.

“Mama?” A boy’s voice, tremulous and scared. Shit. He’s in the doorway to the living room now, his mouth an
O
.

I gotta say something.

“Your mother hit her head but she’s fine. Go back upstairs. Okay?”

The kid is frozen in place. Iveta shouts something in Latvian and he’s gone. I hear a door upstairs slam shut.

“Ma’am,” I say, “I apologize for hurting you but you did assault me.”

Iveta stares blankly. “You broke into my house with this gun.”

“Nope, lady, you very kindly invited me in. Now you’re making up shit.”

“You say you are government worker.”

“I am. Part-time.”

She swallows. “Yakiv is also government worker.”

Well now. “U.S. government?”

She nods.

“Do tell,” I say.

B
leeding under control, we’re sitting in the living room, across from one another. I’m in the chair; she’s on the couch. I get this notion like we’re about to go to the prom.

There’s a nervous energy but I dig on it. I like this woman. So much so that I want her to stay okay. I’m watching her for signs of concussion and thus far she looks like she’s recovering fine. Keeps pressing the sheet to her head, checking it.

“Hey, yo, listen. Stop doing that, it’s clotted, you’ll mess it up.”

She doesn’t respond. I’ve fetched her a glass of water, from which she takes a long drink. Wipes her mouth with her sleeve.

“Yakiv is—”

“A killer and a rapist, I know.”

She shakes her head impatiently. “Mafia, back in Ukraine. Assume he start with running goods, not legal stuff. Guns, drugs. Then it was people. Before this ‘Occurrence’ …”

I nod emphatically. Trying to vibe: skip this part. Everybody has a Valentine’s Occurrence story—where were you when, how you
felt
, how you’re
feeling
now, etc., etc. I’m not the least bit interested in such touchyfeely nostalgia, and I don’t want to hear it.

But Iveta doesn’t go there. She continues, “Transport mostly girls, some boys, but mostly girls. For, you know …”

Yup, I know. That was a worldwide epidemic.

“Tell them they have job at nice restaurant or hospital, whatever. Then takes away the passport. Puts them in apartment …”

“I know what you’re describing. Tragic.” I say it and mean it.

“Me too, I was one of these girls.” Her face flares and she looks at me accusingly. “But I never did anything like that. I was student, trained as nurse, speech therapist you know, I have some skills. He was talking very poorly, like with a stutter. I can fix this. Also, he likes me very much. So I become his girlfriend, and later in Las Vegas we are married. God, he was so drunk. Well, okay, me too.”

A wan smile. She takes a Newport out of an open pack on the coffee table. Offers me one.

This is a loopy deal. We’re, like, hanging out. I shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m allergic. To menthols.”

“Oh. So is it okay if I … ?”

“Yes, it doesn’t bother me secondhand. Plus, your house.”

True this. She fires it up, exhales.

“I should say to you, leave. Why haven’t I said leave?”

I shrug. “I have a gun.”

“Yes. What is your name?”

“Dewey.”

“That’s a strange name.”

“It’s African.”

She shrugs. “Dewey, I don’t know how you’re involved with this, but these people …” She trails off.

“Well, I’m a freelancer. I’m not tied to one thing or the other, per se.”

“Yes, but in the end we all work for somebody. I should really check on Dmitry. May I go do this?”

“Of course.”

Iveta gets up and exits. I scan the room.

Really and truly: the joint is depressing, and is in possession of not one item of interest. Amazing how people choose to live.

I take the opportunity to bust out some Purell
^TM
. The only thing that could make this place more depressing would be the presence of a cat.

I hate cats. I really fucking hate cats.

Subdued voices from upstairs.

I take a pill. Have to chill, gotta destress. I can’t believe I started thinking about cats. Cats are satanic. Choke on a piece of steak in your apartment alone, and your beloved cat will walk all over your corpse and eat the chunk of meat straight out of your dead throat—

“Dewey, don’t move.”

Sweet Christ. I’m an idiot.

Iveta is in the doorway, aiming what looks like a Sig Sauer P220 at my head. Naturally.

“Place the pistol on the floor and kick it away.”

Goddamnit. I could probably take her out first, but I do as I’m told. I don’t want to hurt this woman.

The gun skitters away, under the fake rosewood IKEA entertainment center. I hate anything called an “entertainment center,” you just know it can only look shitty. I hate IKEA. It’s an inhuman environment, toxic. I wonder about the IKEA in Red Hook, Brooklyn, tomblike, abandoned.

“Stand up slowly.”

I start to get up, perhaps a bit too quickly. I’m anxious and unhappy with my performance here.

“Slowly! I said stand up, but do it slowly!” She shouts this, her voice cracking on the “up.”

Dmitry peers around her legs. He’s wearing a backpack, and holds a largish Reebok sports bag.

They’re going to run.

I stand, as slow as I conceivably can. Iveta tells Dmitry something, and he scurries out the front door. Yeah, they’re gonna jet.

“I get it,” I say. “I won’t follow you …”

As I’m finishing this sentence, I observe (too late now) that she has shifted her aim to my leg. Without pause, Iveta shoots me in the knee.

Prior to the pain eclipsing everything else, I’m thinking she’s got fantastically steady hands. And although she owes me a pair of slacks, I’m thinking I don’t intend on holding this incident against her.

I
’m looking at that map tattoo on the back of my eyelids. I faintly note external movement, a repetitive sound not unlike the wings of a bird in flight, but this is not important.

The MTA, as it happens, has not one but two stops it calls Gun Hill Road. Both are a snap to get to but I’m talking about the station serviced by probably (some might argue this point) the most reliable train line in the city, the 5 express; because it lets you out right there, the place I go now.

I imagine myself exiting the train, taking the stairs two at a time. I’m out on the street, but pressed somehow, agitated:
Go, go, go
.

If I walked just a bit south, I would in time get to the Botanical Garden. In the past I’ve found solace in the garden. But I can’t go there now. I’ve got somewhere else to be, something specific to verify.

I head west, toward Woodlawn Cemetery.

T
he DA is pissed off. NB, even when he’s not pissed off he talks too loud, no sense of decorum; what’s that condition called? A kind of socially insensitive behavior. What’s it called? Sounds like: ass-burgers.

Regardless, I’m compelled to hold the walkie-talkie thingy away from my head whilst Rosenblatt spouts and spiels.

“… any idea how much a
kneecap
? That kind of technology? Costs the goddamn taxpayer?”

People pay taxes? Quel retro.

I’m laid up in the new VA Medical Center, formerly Mount Sinai, on Madison and 98th Street. Uncomfortable as hell, not because of any pain, I’ve got an oldlooking bag of morphine drip-dropping such bodily concerns away …No, it’s the fact that I’m in a military medical facility and I’ll confess, it’s nerve-wracking. Don’t like the morphine clouding everything up.

Military hospital.

The last time they had me up in one of these houses of horror I underwent a lot of bad shit, said bad shit causing me huge memory gaps, possible false-memory implants, as well as (I suspect) some sort of physical tracking device, installed deep, near a vital organ I would imagine, as to be undetectable.

I’m aware how this sounds, but I feel it. Back to it: “People still pay taxes?” I talk into the bottom of the thing.

“Very fucking funny.
Citizens
still pay taxes, Decimal. Unlike off-the-grid nonpersons, such as yourself.”

That rankles. “I don’t appreciate … I am not a nonperson.”

“Course you are. You don’t exist. Officially. Appear in no public record. I like you that way, Decimal. YOU like you that way. Makes you employable, more interesting. You once told me you like that, make up your goddamn mind.”

“I prefer to think of myself an individual who keeps a low profile.”

“Ah, I see. Well, it’s going to be tough, keeping a low profile. Should you have to go through any metal detectors. With that new knee of yours. Six million–dollar man. Cue you: this is where you say, thank you, sir.”

Six million dollars? What’s that all about? Say, “Thank you, Dan.”

“Thank you, SIR.”

“Thank you, Sir Dan.”

“The fuck? I medevac you? Out of some outhouse in frigging
Queens
? Helicopters and the whole nine? Talk about fucking inconvenience. Lucky I think on my feet. Otherwise: questions. Questions we don’t want asked, see? Decimal, you are the massive fuck-up here. Not me.”

“Sir, if you’ll allow—”

“No, I won’t. We don’t do families. Not classy. Are you classy?”

“I’m nothing if not classy, sir.”

“So I had thought. So I had THOUGHT. You dress well. For a freakin vagrant. Kids? Women? No fly. Nyet, nein, nope, no way, never. We do mano a mano. Or not at all. Do you think I’m talking out of my ass?”

Sure I do, but say: “No sir. Perhaps I misread the finer points of the assignment, as the file contained photos and information that included an address, family—”

“No, no, no. I should take you off this. Right away. But I like you. There’s trust here. It’s a chemistry thing. Maybe I’m losing it. Going soft.”

“Sir, the direct approach, it’s a difficult prospect, as the subject strikes me as an intelligent and well-trained—”

“Your observations. On
character
, are noted. But I do not give a shit. Two things: you stay on this job. Wrap it up. One. Two: you do not approach Miss Balodis under any circumstances.”

I frown at this. Who? Oh right, that’s the maiden name … “Shapsko.”

“Yeah, right, that’s right. Miss Shapsko, the wife, her, any kids. I’m issuing a restraining order. Got it?”