The Dewey Decimal System

by Nathan Larson

  I try to angle myself so a decorative column blocks the guardsmen’s view of me.

  Reginald hands me a leather-bound ledger. “This dates back to the end of May. Let me just, uh, work on the printouts …”

  “Thanks, Reginald. This is a true service to your country, you’ll see.”

  He tries to smile but fails, then leans over a battered PC.

  I flip the book open … As expected, it’s divided into columns: visitor, who they came to see, time, etc. I know I don’t have a lot of time so I just work backward from the most current entries. Flipping pages. This morning’s entries, I flip past them, scanning names, times, nothing. Keep flipping. Yesterday. My eye goes past it but my stomach churns. I zoom in on : B—l—is, yesterday, about 8:15 p.m.

  I can’t read a few of the letters. My gut flips and flutters. The column for whom the guest would be going to see is blank.

  Iveta Shapsko, maiden name Balodis.

  I fumble in my pocket for the digital camera I pulled out of my suitcase. Futz with the lens cap, get it off. Snap a picture.

  “How’s that list progressing, Reginald?”

  The young man looks frazzled. “It’s just … it doesn’t see the printer. Nobody uses this thing. Let me go plug it in directly.” He exits, into what looks like a small office.

  I flip some more pages. Day before yesterday. Looking, looking … yeah, there it is again. B—l—is, in the same hand, could be another l in there, or a d. Again, no other information save the time, 10:30 p.m. I get a picture here too.

  Back to the most recent signature. Wait a second. I hold my finger in place and turn the pages to the earlier one. Yeah … in both instances they’re in the same hand. Again, no other information … except the time, 8:15 p.m. and 10:30.

  The kid reemerges. Goes to the computer. “Okay, this should work now …”

  “Reginald, let me ask you something. The names in this book, this is dedicated to guests, visitors? And they’re visiting residents, for the most part?”

  “Yes sir, our policy is that anyone who is not a permanent resident signs the book. It’s printing, I think, just a moment.” He disappears again.

  “Sir!” The voice of God.

  I nearly drop the ledger. It’s Sergeant Rock. Standing just inside the doorway. I place the register on the desk and close it casually. Reach in my pocket, brush my hand over the key for self-control.

  “Are you not being helped?”

  “Yes, I am, just … waiting.” I give him a you-know-how-it-is hand gesture.

  The sergeant looks around. I’m thinking, turn around fuckface and goose-step right back out that door.

  But no. Of course not. He moves toward me, taking out his PDA. “You’re a guest of Mustafa Demir, correct?”

  “That’s right. He actually told me he wasn’t available for our meeting, but left some documents with the concierge for me to pick up. Regarding our business transactions.”

  The sergeant looks me up and down. “All right. Well.”

  “So the desk person is just—”

  Reginald comes out of the office, saying, “Uh, sir? Here …” Glancing up, he freezes. Looks at me, looks at the sergeant. Looks back at me.

  “Are those the documents Mr. Demir mentioned?” I ask him, my eyebrows raised, fucking roll with me, Reggie.

  The kid looks back at the sergeant. The pause is much longer than I’m comfortable with. “Uh. That’s right. Here we are.” He offers them to me. His hands are visibly shaking.

  I grab the loose pages, fold them, tuck them into my jacket’s inner pocket. “Appreciated,” I say breezily. Or so I hope. “Have a good evening, gentlemen.” Split. Make for the door. Not too fast.

  I’m out. Enjoy a lungful of heated plastic.

  Phew. Fucking guardsmen. Must be really understimulated. Not even really military. I have a beef with those fucks since they smacked around my cousin out in L.A. way back in the ’92 riots. Damn, that dates me, huh? Unless I’m just making all this shit up. Or it was made up for me, custom-tailored to fit.

  I slide into the driver’s seat with key, pulling the pages out of my jacket as I do.

  Something cold and hard is suddenly pushed into my neck. Godamnit. I scope the rearview.

  “Hello again, fuck-o,” says Anne of the FBI.

  Agent Anne,” I say, making eye contact in the mirror. “It’s a distinct pleasure.”

  “Look.” She’s projecting a much deadlier aura than during our previous run-in. “I’d prefer we just make this fast and simple. No static.”

  “All right, let’s relax. I’m always happy to be of service to the Bureau,” I say.

  She caught me as I was getting the papers out of my coat, my hand is still half in my jacket. I shift my reach, slow, and get a hold of the Beretta.

  Anne smacks the butt of her Glock against my bad ear. I lurch to the right, hearing pink noise, and a wall of pain rushes up and tackles me.

  Swearing through her teeth, she reaches around and yanks out my Beretta, throws it next to her on the backseat, then retrieves the Sig and does the same. And she hits me sideways again, on the other side of my head. I’m momentarily deaf.

  She’s talking, drilling her pistol into the base of my skull. “… fuckwad, so you need to turn down the smart-ass, turn it way, way down. Don’t even speak.”

  Finding it hard to focus, I try nodding to indicate I understand but my muscles won’t cooperate. I think she did some permanent damage. Try to tell her I missed the first part of her rap but the action is lost somewhere between synapses.

  “I know your type and I have no patience for you, so let’s cut right to it.”

  I bring my hands up to either side of my head.

  “One: you stole an item out of the Do Rite office. I want you to give it to me and I want you to do this now. And two: you know the location of a woman named Iveta Shapsko. I want that information, pronto.”

  My palms come away bloody. Nowhere to wipe them. I manage, “Don’t have any idea what you mean, Anne, on either count.”

  “Okay, lean forward, hands behind your back.”

  I try to cooperate. Really, I do. I sense her seriousness of purpose and I’m not going to play with that. Rest my head on the steering wheel. I hear the rustle of metal on metal, and feel cuffs placed on my wrists, the ratchet of the lock engaging. She’s got them on tight.

  I hear her open the back door, slam it. I glance at the power lock button, make a move for it, but the cuffs prevent me. Anne pulls open the driver’s-side door, grabs me by the arm.

  “Out.”

  Bump my noggin on the roof, get to my feet unsteadily. Anne pulls the chain on the cuffs high. My sphincter spasms for a second and I let out a little hiss. She steers me around the vehicle in this excruciating yoga position, yanks the car key out of my pocket, pulls open the passenger’s door, and shoves my bony self in.

  Damn, this girl is strong. I misread her completely. Probably by design on her part. I blame myself 100 percent for not paying more attention. This scene is completely off the third rail and I can’t find a soft spot to go for.

  “I’m FBI and I’m taking this man into custody, no need, under control …” Calling back to the soldiers in front of the Tower, presumably in response to a question. She’s got her badge out, holding it high as she circles back around the side of the car.

  Anne slides into the driver’s seat. Punches me in the jaw, hard. My temple cracks against the passenger’sside window, and my hat falls off and lands at my feet.

  She keys the ignition, reverses out, tires screech as she guns it up Central Park West.

  My mouth is filling up with warm liquid, and I spit blood on the dash. A tooth. Try to speak. “Anne …”

  Blowing through blinking yellow lights, accelerating … 63rd Street, hello, goodbye.

  I slide against Anne’s shoulder as she cuts a haphazard right onto the 65th Street park throughway. She breaks hard, and I’m flung forward, head-butting the windshield. The drive is c
ut off with police tape, piles of rock, and a fallen telephone pole.

  “Shit,” says Anne, then throws the car into reverse and starts backing up.

  I look at the dashboard, finding blood, mucous, and the word I want to see: Airbag. Swinging my leg over, I bring my foot down on top of hers with all of my remaining strength, and together we press the gas pedal to the floor.

  Anne screams wordlessly in my ear, tries to bite me. I bring my head up hard against her mouth and nose, hearing something crack. We careen backward across Central Park West, she’s trying to pull the wheel left but loses her grip. The Volt jumps the curb and slams into a building at approximately thirty miles per hour.

  There’s a lull, relative quiet, joined by a new sound. Dry rubber on glass.

  Think I’ve been blinded. I work my head to the left, see a mop of thick dark hair resting on a big gray balloon. The wipers are on.

  I struggle to sit up … Air bags, the air bags activated. As advertised. Having borrowed that maneuver from some movie I saw on a plane ages and ages ago. Remember thinking, yeah right, no fucking way that’d work for anybody.

  So I’m pretty pleased it panned out. Jah be praised.

  My door has been bent and forced partially open, the entire car jackknifed. I start pushing on it with my upper arm. Apparently Anne is awake, because she grabs a handful of my hair. I shake her off and slide out the door onto the pavement, landing on my shoulder.

  I think about the briefcase in the trunk.

  Struggling up, I turn to see Anne has her gun out and is fighting with her door.

  Fuck me, it’s hard to stand up with a bad knee and no use of your arms. But I make it happen. No choice. I need to beat a retreat. I aim for the park, my hands completely numb, blood cut off by the cuffs.

  Her first shot goes slightly wide, kicking up a chunk of asphalt just to the right in front of me. I don’t turn around. And I doubt she’ll miss twice so I just charge headlong toward the low wall next to the 65th Street transverse.

  I hear the next shot as I’m flipping myself over the wall and onto a steep, muddy embankment. I slide perhaps ten feet, leaves and dirt fill my mouth, and my fall is broken abruptly as I collide with a tree trunk. I’m winded, I wheeze, sucking at the air as if through a dandelion stem.

  Anne comes over the wall, skids, and collapses backward, landing on her tailbone, her skirt riding up over her midsection. She’s lost a heel, kicks off the other shoe, and scoots toward me, rather gracefully, on her butt. Catches an adjacent tree, steadies herself, and trains the gun on me. Her mouth is contorted, a red messy wreck.

  I spit out leaves, blood, pebbles. We’re both panting. Can’t seem to straighten my eyes out, pretty sure I’m concussed.

  “Asshole. You broke my nose,” she says, nasal.

  I try to regain control of my lungs, whisper-croak: “Sorry.”

  “The box,” says Anne, spits. “And the woman. Spill.” She looks demonic; my vision is dimmed but her eyes and bloody teeth remain bright. “Woman’s back at the Trump, right? And the box, it’s in the car? Yeah? Am I right?”

  My head lolls back, but I can speak. “Who you working for, Anne?”

  She laughs. “Fuck you. Who are YOU working for, mister? Cause nobody can tell. Hey, you think anybody can get by on a government salary? I’ve got a six-yearold girl and student loans straight up my ass. Harvard fucking Law. Brian pays me triple. I’m still FBI but I freelance. Like you, Decimal. So fucking what.”

  I had started to slip away, but I drag my head back. All I can think is, I’ll never get the dirt out of my mouth. Insects, hookworms, tapeworms. Potential tenants for my small intestine.

  Try to get back to the thread of the conversation. “Freelance, yeah …”

  “Decimal. Look. Look at me.”

  To the best of my ability I look at her. I think of Kali, goddess of annihilation. Maybe that’s racist, just cause she’s part Indian or Pakistani or whatever.

  “You’re about to die right here, unless you tell me where the box and the girl are.”

  I don’t remember why I shouldn’t tell her. So I do. Well, half of it anyway.

  “The box. The one with the haunted-house hand in it? It’s in the trunk. In, in my briefcase. Just take it. The woman is at my place, the Main Branch Public Library. Don’t want any more trouble out of you all, do what you have to do.”

  She stares at me. Kali the Destroyer. “I believe you.” She aims the .45 at my face and cocks the hammer.

  Nothing I can do about it. I prepare to get shot. Keep my eyes open at least. Fuck her, fuck you, and fuck everything.

  The gunshot comes from above and to the right.

  Anne whips her head to the left, then forward, plop, straight into the dirt.

  It takes me a moment or two, but it becomes clear that Anne has been shot, not me. Blood snakes out the side of her head, darker and brighter than her hair.

  I’m not making connections as quickly as I’d like, having just had my skull pounded on. I’m very tired. Reach in my pocket. Thank God, the key’s still there.

  Someone or something is coming down the embankment, I sense this but the curtain is falling. The last thing I’m aware of is being lifted up, and a familiar voice. I get the notion that I have permission to black out.

  So I black out.

  Looking at a white plastic digital clock/radio. 6:18 a.m. flips over to 6:19. My body hurts, and when I say this I mean it hurts everywhere. Where are my pills?

  Wait for details to come back to me. None are forthcoming. I am under some sort of plush comforter, on sheets with unquestionably the highest thread count I have ever laid my skinny chassis on. I smell cigarette smoke. Reminds me that I like to smoke as well. Reminds me …

  I lift my head, which is more difficult than it sounds, and peer over the bedding, past my feet.

  “Well, you’re alive,” says Iveta Shapsko. She’s in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, legs tucked under her, sitting on a sofa chair next to a floor-to-ceiling window. Her hair is up in a towel. Knocks the head off her cigarette into a black glass ashtray to her right. “You, you are lucky bastard.”

  I try and fail to speak.

  “Must be a lot of pain.”

  I croak, a single syllable.

  Iveta takes a drag, inhales it sharply. “There was many things to clean up. You were like complete mess.”

  She points her cigarette toward the corner of the room. I follow her gesture to the pile of bloody towels, my discarded clothing, bunches of duct tape, gauze streamers, and a pair of bolt cutters. Broken handcuffs, the leg bracelet in two pieces.

  “Told you I was a nurse. Maybe you have internal bleeding but I don’t think so. I would get MRI. For your head. You seem to know the right people to get this firstclass treatment.”

  I lift up my arm, hurts like hell, bandaged up, thick layers of gauze and duct tape on my forearm.

  “You insist. Remember? Get this thing out of me! Waving your arm in my face. Then you pass out again, I don’t know what I’m looking for. So, I dig around. Should be okay.”

  She crushes the cigarette. Smiles.

  “Don’t worry, I threw this chip out, somewhere on West Side Highway, near these Chelsea Piers I think.”

  I can’t manage to articulate anything.

  “Saw this leg thing, yes, it’s tracking device too. And I think maybe you want it off, right? I will throw it away, later.”

  Iveta yawns. I can’t get my mouth to behave. She cracks her knuckles.

  “Okay, you rest more. Me, I’m tired too. Long night.”

  She gets up, takes the towel off her hair and scratches her damp scalp. Looks at her nails for a second. Standing there in the robe. Then she moves over to the bed, hops in, rolls over with her back facing me. Her hair follows gravity and I’m looking at that mole again.

  “It’s okay,” she says, sounding exhausted. “It’s safe, this place. I must sleep, you should too. Okay, just to rest, for a few minutes …” Iveta trails off.

/>   I have serious questions. Plenty of questions. But I can hardly move my jaw. I don’t think I can sleep, but I close my eyes, listen to the pattern of Iveta’s light breathing.

  It’s music, like rain.

  The elevator. The hallway. The key. The shot.

  I jerk awake. Well, my fragmented consciousness.

  Can’t say it’s not predictable.

  I’ve been dozing for some time, must have, cause it’s midafternoon. I look over at the women in bed with me.

  Iveta fucking Shapsko.

  The job has taken on a life of its own, an intelligence. It’s sprouted legs, up and gone run off.

  Ease myself to a seated position. I’m in a pair of underwear. My legs and stomach are a Jackson Pollock of cuts, bruises, welts, and old scars. My android’s kneecap. My midsection is wrapped tight. Breathing hurts.

  Push off from the bed, move toward the window. I’m looking at a bird’s-eye of the Freedom site. My stomach drops instinctively.

  I must be in the Millennium Hotel. A slick ebony binder on the leather-padded desk confirms this.

  Heading to the bathroom. I pause and look at Iveta as she sleeps, sleeping hard, her mouth open and mashed against the pillow. Communicating something to me, communicating surrender, communicating complete trust. Trust I certainly have not earned, quite the opposite.

  And yet, here she lies.

  She’s so many steps ahead of me in this particular game. I need to know what she knows, that she can release herself so completely.

  How long has it been since I’ve shared a bed with anyone? Couldn’t even say. Have I shared a bed with someone who recently shot me? Not lately.

  I hobble into the bathroom, feeling like somebody’s stabbing me in the liver … There’s a half-full bottle of rubbing alcohol next to the free soaps, as well as some iodine. Fresh rolls of gauze.

  My green box cutter is in a drinking glass with the hotel logo on it, soaking in pinkish liquid. I wince at the sight, but retrieve the box cutter.

  Iveta’s clothes are in a heap on the floor. Jeans, a Tshirt and light black cardigan, sensible bra and white underpants. A pair of New Balance sneakers.