The Dewey Decimal System

by Nathan Larson

  “Brilliant plan,” he says. “You must be very proud.”

  “Tell them to stand down,” I say.

  Yakiv just smiles.

  “I said, tell them to chill and back up.”

  The man says nothing of the kind. And of course he’s playing his cards right, I expect that if I shoot him I’d find myself in a downpour of bullets. The only power I wield at the moment is conditional on Yakiv being alive.

  I sigh. Okay, we’ll just take it as it comes.

  Set out across Ninth Avenue, backward, angling south. This seems to be working. One step at a time. Yakiv takes this moment to put his elbow in my gut, a good effort but I have the vest on.

  Which is apparently what he was trying to determine. “Listen,” he calls in Russian to his boys, “he’s wearing a Kevlar vest. Go for a headshot. If you feel like you can take it, take it. I trust all of you like brothers.”

  Well played by Yakiv. Shit. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

  The guy on the street who has been waiting for just such an opportunity must be digging himself tonight, because he pops out and squeezes one off.

  I duck behind Yakiv, hell yeah I do, I’m no hero, and feel that hot bullet whizz right past my right ear. An excellent shot at this distance.

  Yakiv decides he doesn’t like this action. That one came as close to him as it did to me. “Okay, hold it! Just hold your fire. Just hold it.”

  The frisky dude has for the moment forgotten that he’s wide open, distracted perhaps by his commitment to take the next opportunity to cap me. It’s unfortunate.

  Yakiv starts to say something but I’m focused on lining up my own shot. I take it and get it in one. The guy turns sideways, I can’t see his expression from here, and collapses. Some would frown on this kind of thing, but I line up another one, and for the second time I shoot a man who is already down.

  Now things are considerably easier. Yakiv knows it.

  “I never took you for suicidal type. This is certainly going to end poorly for you.” Et cetera. Trying to psych me out but I’m past all that. He blathers on.

  As we get across the street, his boys are positively jumping up and down with frustration. Half of them run inside, probably with the intention of coming around the side like their dead or dying buddies.

  That’s okay. I’m in the zone. I can taste it, this will work.

  Dragging the Ukrainian across 16th Street now. Half a block to go, less. Yakiv is feeling my good fortune. He’s trying to keep his voice relaxed and snarky but it’s not coming together for him. His tone is increasingly desperate.

  “Decimal, think about this, how does this end in a good way for you? You kill me, so what? You will never know things that are essential for you to stay alive. Only I can provide you this information. Okay? You only kill yourself.”

  I’m done talking to this man. We’re like three meters from the busted-out glass door we’re headed toward.

  His boys arrive on the other side of the street. They’re out of ideas, impotent, useless, and they’re probably catching on to that themselves. They hang back as I step awkwardly over the door frame and into the dark of the dilapidated restaurant, hauling Yakiv’s unwilling carcass with me.

  Once we’re through the doorway I step back a bit, pointing the pistol at the base of his spine. I poke him.

  “Move, quick, let’s go. Put your hands on top of your head. Lace your fingers.”

  He does as he’s told. I steer him out into the main corridor that runs the length of the old Chelsea Market and terminates at Tenth Avenue. A simple maze thick with glass rooms that were once shops, bakeries, groceries, general fanciness.

  All I have is the small Maglite, it’ll have to do … I train it on the ground a couple feet in front of us as we proceed. I nudge him past the newsstand, deeper into the dark of the place. I note running water up ahead, either a leak or the fountain is somehow still functioning. Lots of broken glass litters the walkway, crunches underfoot. This place saw some pretty heavy looting.

  I stop him at the old Chelsea Wine Vault on the right, the door is already busted out and we’re hit with the stench of spilled, spoiled wine that has been baking in this heat for a good month and a half. It’s pretty overwhelming, but I say: “In here, let’s go.”

  He’s clearly trying to come up with an angle, so indeed would I in his shoes, but the guy cooperates. “Decimal,” he says as I scoot him toward the back of the shop. Broken bottles everywhere, I’m careful where I step. Dude presses on: “It’s no use, this whole thing. My team will find you. Walk away right now, and I give my word as a man that no harm will come to you.”

  “Gosh, Shapsko, sounds like an irresistibly great deal, to which I say no.” I’m playing the flashlight around on the floor near the register … there. A trapdoor.

  See, I think I went out with this girl once who worked here. White girl. Name? That’s a blank. But I am aware, somehow, that these people had a basement. Or so I seem to recall. Relieved this is not a false memory, would’ve made things more difficult.

  “Yakiv, open that thing and climb on down.”

  He doesn’t move. Keeping the gun on him, I lean over and pull the metal ring. The door swings free.

  “Yakiv, let’s go, my man.”

  Again he doesn’t move. I flip the pistol around and come at him. He thinks I’m moving in to strike him in the head, he covers up, and I club him in the groin with the butt of my gun.

  Yakiv doubles up and falls to a kneeling position. I step around him and, using my good leg, roll him into the hole. He goes bouncing down the stairs and not a second too soon, as I hear the group of thugs come stumbling into the hallway, apparently blind. I duck down into the basement staircase; when I’m partway down I turn and close the hatch gently behind me.

  I shift the flashlight toward the Ukrainian. There’s about two inches of black water on the basement floor. The man is struggling with a large shard of green glass that has all but pierced his hand. Rats mill about nearby. Tough break for a proud man. He does this silently, working at the fragment, his face sweaty but concentrated. What stoicism. The problem my man contends with is that the chunk is slippery with blood and he can’t pull the thing out, it’s too slick. He tries it with the tail of his shirt, this fails as well.

  Damn, I’m gonna need a twelve-pack of PurellTM after this foul scene.

  I fetch the silencer from my jacket pocket. Roll up my pant cuffs and descend the last few steps. I go down on my haunches near him, my good knee popping. Say, “It’s probably a bad idea to pull that thing out. You should know this.”

  Screwing on the silencer.

  “Basic tenet of dealing with shrapnel. You pull the thing out, think phew, then uh-oh, you’re bleeding to death. On an empty street, in some shitty building in some shitty town thousands of miles from home. Or in a fancy-pants wine cellar, wherever.”

  Yakiv is not meeting my eye. He’s holding the glass shard, but he stops pulling at it. Not the most glamorous exit scenario for Mr. Shapsko … but then what would be?

  “Roll over on your stomach. Let’s end this thing, Yakiv.”

  He looks at me. Almost tenderly. “She’s not who she says she is, my friend.”

  I start pushing him sideways with my foot.

  “And neither am I,” he adds.

  “Oh, I’m well aware of what you are.”

  I kick him over. He goes facedown, lifts his head out of the filthy water, spits.

  “You know me by the wrong name.”

  I place my foot in the small of his back. “Cryptic. I’m intrigued. Take a couple deep breaths, Yakiv, and dig on life, you’re about to shuck thy mortal coil, as they say.”

  “Fucking joke is on you. The name you use, coming in tonight … shows you know nothing. And the woman you call Iveta. This woman, she cuts your throat. You are not even on her level.” He sounds like he’s smiling, but I’m looking at the back of his head so I’ll never be sure. “You tell her I win. She never got close to me,
not once. I win.”

  I blink. Something in what the man says … No.

  Feel like I should lay out something clever, something about none of us being who we say we are, something big and cosmic, but I can’t formulate it in a satisfying way.

  So I just shoot him. Put a bullet in his neck. He starts trying to get up. Points for stick-with-it-ness. I step on him harder and plant another one behind his ear.

  This time he goes limp.

  I step off the man. Never what you think it’s going to be. Always an anticlimax. That’s the nature of murder, righteous or not.

  And plus, I did kind of like the guy. Shame.

  It’s cold down here. As I pull away the light to guide myself up and out, I hear the raindrop pitter-patter of rats moving in.

  Haste. I have another quick errand to run before I head south again.

  So far as I know, there’s only one proper mummy publicly displayed in New York City.

  I am not surprised to find the front doors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art locked up tight. Got here quicker than anticipated; Yakiv’s thugs were hopelessly on the wrong track, I could hear the boys somewhere down that dark corridor, guttural echoes, bumping into shit, -ski’ing and –vich’ing each other, digging their profound failure.

  I simply sailed out the Tenth Avenue exit, problem free. Into the black air.

  Took the long gimp around the back of Met, somewhat uneasy as one has to walk into the park a bit to approach the museum from the rear, with its massive sloping glass wall. Glass being the key element here.

  Of course, many have beaten me to it. Post–2/14 looting started almost as soon as the Occurrence(s) themselves. Sure: this was most definitely a hot spot, folks crawling on top of each other to snag priceless bits of swag.

  Obviously Yakiv and his boys had paid a visit, came out with a few truckloads of booty. Judging by his collection at the Maritime. The problem is not getting a hold of such treasure. Snatch and grab, here’s a Byzantine triptych. Here’s a sixteenth-century Persian death mask. Rather, the problem is unloading them. Cause who among your neighbors is in the market for a Rembrandt, or a Bronze Age chalice?

  What we all realized pretty quickly: the only material of value is that which keeps us alive. Food. Water. Shelter. Weapons. Les basics.

  Regardless, the joint is wide open, my predecessors having already created multiple points of entry in the breakable façade. It is a simple thing to just step inside, into that expansive hall that houses the Temple of Dendur and its reflecting pool. Rusty nickels and dimes carpeting the underwater tiles, the water green with algae.

  I find the mummy by memory, trusting my memory here, crossing my fingers that nobody has fucked with it already. The mummy, I mean, not my memory. Why would they have? But still. People fuck with everything.

  Looks pretty much undisturbed. The pile that had once been Chief Treasurer Ukhhotep dates from as far back as 1991 B.C., which of course is over two thousand years older than Johnny the B.

  But I figure it like this: a mummy is a mummy is a mummy. It’s old, dead, it’s dried out. Right? How different can they be?

  I produce my box cutter, rubber gloves, a large ziplock freezer bag.

  And I go to work.

  Sweaty but satisfied, my next stop is a quick one: Grand Central.

  The main hall is a surrealist campground. Boschian. I note some expensive-looking tents, semipermanent structures, bikes, hibachis, dogs, children. There’s scarcely a square meter of empty floor space.

  But I bypass all this, got things to get done, head downstairs. To the self-operated storage units.

  I exit via Vanderbilt Avenue. Popping a pill. Slip a keycard to a locker in my back pocket. And do up the PurellTM, God knows who uses those nasty lockers.

  Hang a left onto 42nd, so close to home, thinking about my books, and immediately pull myself into an atrium.

  A pair of soldiers. Man, what the fuck am I thinking strutting around? No question, Rosenblatt will have put out an all-points. No question about that. I don’t want to get braced by anybody in a uniform, it’d spell calamity. Game over.

  And lo, here are these boy scouts, effectively blocking access to a subway. To Iveta. To some resolution.

  Think fast. The grunts bullshitting, bored. Neither clocks me. One Latino kid, one black kid. Two HK MP5 machine pistols. Mad heavy firepower. Way the fuck beyond what I pack.

  Come on, Decimal, work it out. Something proactive. Sick of turning tail like the weaker dog.

  On the brown kid’s utility belt, a portable shortwave phone.

  Proactive. Think System. Simplicity.

  I have it. All or nothing.

  First: check for further law. East and west. Nobody, save one or two citizens.

  Proactivate, Decimal.

  Coming out of the recess, I drunk-stumble toward the pair. Grip my breast right-handed, like I’ve been cut. Hand halfway into my jacket, two inches from the butt of the Sig.

  “Help,” I’m slurring, the boys already facing me, at ease, sure, but both double-grip their HKs. “Fuckin … Gotta help, goddamn. Been robbed, man. Bitch stabbed me …”

  The black kid holds up a hand. Other kid just hangs tight. “Let’s just freeze it right there, sir …” Not buying this.

  Stumble another foot forward, pointing now with my free arm, pointing past them, saying, “Serious, right fuckin there, the bitch has a knife …”

  I can tell the black kid is sharp, wise to me, but: dude knee-jerk reflex follows my hand, swiveling his head, can see him gathering he blew it already, I want to console him, it’s barely a moment that his attention is divided—but that’s all I need.

  Pray God forgives jackals such as me.

  Bring my hand down now on the brown boy’s Koch, other hand has the Sig out, and boom, I shoot my young intelligent black brother point-blank in the eye.

  Pushing the Latino’s HK into his groin, I take him down. He’s averting his gaze, almost in embarrassment, and it’s an easy thing to hit the pavement, me sitting on his gun, straddling him, the boy on his back, my Sig now shoved up under his jaw.

  “Chill,” I say, though he’s not struggling. “Chill. Let’s take a breath.”

  Clock his name patch. Him blinking at me.

  “Diaz,” I say. “Brother, I’m not gonna kill you. Your radio, that’s …”

  A tear slides out his left eye, then his right.

  “Diaz, focus, man. Like I said, you’re gonna walk away from this. Entiendes lo que quiero decir?”

  The kid is crying. Softly. Somehow it would be preferable if he fought back.

  “Okay, man,” I say, trying to be mellow. “It’s all gonna work out. Just want to use your radio. Let’s make that happen.”

  “Hakim. Hakim Stanley,” he says.

  “Hakim … ?”

  Diaz flips his eyes to the right. “We’re from Houston, man.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Fuck you. Man, we was in the sandbox together. Two tours, not a fucking scratch, yo. And you creep up out of fucking nowhere, man.” Spits in my face. “Fuck you. Fuck you if you clip me, fuck you if you don’t.”

  I want to respond at the correct emotional pitch, really I do, but I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I have a stranger’s saliva in my mouth. I’m loath to admit that this detail trumps everything at the moment. I have a real handicap …

  Might vomit. I avert my face so as not to hurl on Diaz. Who takes the opportunity, wisely, to pull his HK up, cracking me in the mouth with its butt.

  If I managed to stay my gut beforehand, the gun-to-face impact does cause me to throw up, falling sideways as I do. I’m expelling nothing but bile from my empty stomach, and I bite pavement. If I black out, it’s just for a few moments. I think.

  Two yards away, Diaz is methodically performing CPR on his buddy. His back to me. I’m neutralized, no longer worthy of attention.

  “Diaz …” I say, which comes sounding like “Theath.” I put my hand to my mo
uth, comes away crimson.

  Diaz doesn’t respond. He’s crouched over, listening to his buddy’s decimated face. Calm like. Blow twice. Listen again.

  Attempt to call to him again, can’t, abort. My lips are split. I put my suit jacket sleeve to my mouth. Yet another suit; farewell, my sweet, farewell.

  Listen to me. Bitching about fucking clothes.

  Diaz has begun chest compressions. Pumping away. His technique is perfect, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Hakim was dead before he touched ground.

  Diaz switches back to the two-breaths, listen sequence.

  I try again. “Diaz, man.”

  He’s back at the chest compressions, vigorous. Doing everything right.

  For all my self-education, for all my posturing and talk of my System, I can’t escape the paradigm of my childhood, the brutal Southern Baptist duality of hard-panned extremes. The two-sided coin of pure good and of pure evil. I might be foggy on the details, but this is a stain on my spirit, and it vibes real.

  Heads or tails. And I’m positive as to where I fall.

  There’s a special corner in Hell for the killer of children. It’s extra hot. I know this like I know the contours of my Beretta.

  But I never underestimate my ability to compartmentalize. I’m a genius in that department.

  Bang, and Diaz is standing over me, the HK primed and shoved in my chest. Nothing to be done. It is what it is.

  We lock eyes, soldier on soldier, yin and yang. The tears are history. I read resignation. To what, I don’t know. I can only nod. All is as it should be.

  “Do what you got to do, Diaz,” I say through my teeth. Or at least think it. Sleep would be a blessing. I feel a sweet flush of … what? Relief.

  Diaz drops his weapon. Undoes his belt. Tosses it on my chest. Removes his helmet. Steps away. I look sideways as he places the headgear over Hakim’s face. He stays there for a moment, hunched over the dead kid. Lovingly, he undoes the chain around his friend’s neck and palms the dog tags.

  Then he’s up, walking, without a backward glance.