The Immune System, page 25
“Am I under arrest?” His English is solid, colored by that proto-Slavic accent.
“Sir, I’m merely asking you to answer some questions, if you’ll just accompany me …” I like to keep it as professional as possible, but use broad strokes.
“Am I under arrest?” he repeats, as if to a child.
It’s a reasonable question, to which I say: “No, but that can be arranged if you’d prefer to go that route.”
Jingles his keys. “I do. Have no arrest warrant, I won’t go anywhere with you.” Almost apologetic like.
His pal is inching toward me. A couple other guys have come out of the hall and are watching the exchange.
This isn’t working out. What am I doing? I’m pretty shitty at this direct approach.
“Sir, I need you to understand that I’m characterizing your behavior as uncooperative …”
But he’s in the car and keying the ignition, his friend scuttling away. Yakiv looks at me from the driver’s seat and shrugs. The Toyota pulls off and is up the street before I can organize my thoughts.
I clean the hands. Shit. Now he knows I’m coming. Should have played it NYPD/old-school style, run up on him and hit him. Or hid out in his backseat. Well, had it not been a Prius.
I’m telling you, I’m not particularly smooth. Out of habit I touch the key in my front pocket.
Ah well. Let’s do it the easy way.
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Ditch the Nissan right there on Second Avenue.
Then it’s the 6 train uptown to the R at 51st Street, as per the System. Fortunately, the closure of the 23rd, 28th, and 33rd Street stations allow me to do this and remain faithful to System dogma.
Let me explain. Late afternoons, the rules flip: necessary to take number trains and, if need be, transfer then to the lettered ones. It’s always good to take the subway versus drive, if you have a choice. It’s an eco thing, a hangover tenet from the fossil fuel days.
R train service terminates at Forest Hills, so I figure I’ll hoof it to Kew Gardens. Not too familiar with that part of Queens but I will tell you it’s nicer than you might think. Or was.
* * *
High-rise apartment complexes, a single light on the seventh floor of one building, absolute dead silence.
Ghost-town stuff.
I pop a pill; starting to get a headache … realize I’m absolutely starving. Check and make sure my key hasn’t slipped out of my pocket … nope, still there.
Even in the best of times I imagine one would’ve had difficulty finding a shop open, but I luck out and come across a BP station that, despite the NO GAS, ATTENDANT IS ARMED sign, looks friendly enough.
I trade the terrified Pakistani/Indian/subcontinental Asian man an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes for a log of beef-and-cheese jerky, all he has in the way of foodstuffs. He has at least fifteen large boxes of the jerky. That’s good gear to have on hand.
I keep on my way, wondering who buys anything anymore.
I have Shapsko’s address down as 12 Mowbray Drive, a very nice mid–twentieth century house, a proper house technically in New York City, which always blows my mind … It’s modest but charming, the lawn and foliage have grown wild in a not unattractive kind of way. There’s a noisy generator in the yard, as well as a dirt bike and a tricycle.
The house’s position makes surveillance a bit difficult: I’m forced to loiter across the street in front of an apartment complex, feeling conspicuous. No sign of the Prius, but lights are on in the upper floor.
Before I have time to establish an appropriate spot from which to observe quietly, the porch lights come on. I step backward, quick, into the entryway of the apartment house, stumbling on a loose tile. The entryway, Allah be praised, is unlit.
Iveta Shapsko (née Balodis), aged thirty-nine, Latvian national, height five foot six inches, weight 127 pounds, brown hair, green eyes. I make her easily from across the street, hair pulled back with a stray lock falling across her face, taking the mail out of the box next to the entryway. A small dark-haired boy appears in the doorway, probably Dmitry, the five-year-old, Iveta saying something, pushes him back inside with her, turns and slams the door. The brass knocker bangs twice and the 2 in the 12 is swinging free.
And I am hit in the chest by shock waves from across the road—communicated in whole to me is Iveta Shapsko’s long-standing anger and frustration.
Not knowing how I know this or the source of these feelings but realizing I care, all of this playing out like a set piece, a scene I’ve seen before, from which nothing good can come … My presence here is malevolent, my intentions murky, and the fear of that yawning void from which I access this knowledge propels me out of the vestibule, walking fast and then running, a marblesize obstruction in my throat, sprinting down this treelined street in Queens, again into warm rain, but as I bring the back of my hand to my cheek, I think no, not rain, not rain at all.
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Because there’s a dark thing implanted in the frontal lobe of my brain, ever-present, a cruel sequence of images, profoundly monstrous. It’s this: a figure materializes, fades in from black, in a concrete playground attached to a low-income housing project, moving into a metal elevator, moving into a hallway, moving through a door into a silent apartment, into a bedroom, a form beneath a worn sheet. And then the shots, two of them, impossibly loud, and I wake, the reverberation of the shots, and the lunge for the receding shapes. And cut.
Always the same dream.
Iveta triggers something buried in my chest. Do I know her? I can’t be sure. Perhaps she’s standing in for someone, or something iconic.
Now, it’s important to understand that I believe I have had certain aspects of my memory erased while laid up in D.C. What’s more, I believe I had false memories implanted. I have no way to prove this, it just feels true. It’s a gut thing. As a result, I look at my recollections or dreams with suspicion.
Regarding this dream. My therapist at Walter Reed, Dr. Rosita Lopez, framed it in this way: as I am unable to accept the loss of my wife and daughter while I was deployed, and as a manifestation of my then trendy Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I repeatedly visualize an imagined reenactment of the crime committed against my family.
In the view of Dr. Lopez, with her frumpy nylons, her clipboard, and her surreptitious glances at her wristwatch, my acceptance of the realities I face will bring these visions to a close, and banish the imagined assailant from my apprehension, forever.
What I failed to mention to Dr. Lopez is the fact that, should I force my gaze downward in the midst of this recurring brain-film, the imagined assailant is wearing my hands. And shoes.
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Due to the 2/14 Occurrence(s), all available written information on any given subject is frozen in midsentence, a portal into the era known simply as “Before.”
It’s fascinating: all the signs of what was to come are right there in the details, this is a truth, despite the mind’s desire to revise history through the prism of what is currently known.
Take this bit of trivia from 2011’s CIA World Factbook:
Latvia’s economy experienced GDP growth of more than 10 percent per year during 2006–07 but entered a severe recession in 2008 as a result of an unsustainable current account deficit and large debt exposure amid the softening world economy.
Unsustainable. Softening. What mild, bureaucratically vanilla terms. Words a citizen can acknowledge, shake her head at, what a shame, a tragedy; and continue shopping, working, bench-pressing, consuming, wasting, using, poisoning.
I shut the hardbound volume and return it carefully to my “active” stack, being sure to apply PurellTM afterward.
This stack here? This is material that I keep on hand, relevant to my current situation. I find it informative, comforting, an aspect of my larger project: reorganizing the library’s stock in accordance with the antiquated but deeply logical Decimal system.
Somebody’s got to do it, man. The internal computer network here having fritzed out, it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for.
But as I’ve said, dig: I have my own comprehensive System, the Decimal thing being a piece of the larger puzzle; and therefore I have structure. Otherwise: chaos.
Since I’m doing this on my own, it’s slow going. A righteous chore. After four months I’m partway through 000, which is “computer science, information, and general works.”
The founding fathers of the Decimal system couldn’t have know what a gargantuan amount of material would come to fall under this heading. Especially the subheading “computer science.” Jesus. And “general works”? Don’t get me friggin started.
Reams of books, numbering in the thousands, stack Dr. Seuss style along the entire stretch of the left-hand wall of the Reading Room. This is my work to date. I reckon I have a year to go on 000, maybe more like two.
It’s a safe bet: if the architects of this place knew that a colored man would remain its sole keeper, they would’ve had coronaries.
This hobby, if it can be called that, has given me an identity as well.
DA Rosenblatt dubbed yours truly “Dewey Decimal” based on my interests, and due to the fact that I can’t remember my given name.
The DA says he has my birth records, Social Security card, etc. on file, but I don’t want to see these documents, as I don’t think I will recognize that person.
Prior to DD I was simply known as “The Librarian,” and older acquaintances tend to still call me this. I don’t care; I answer to anything. But Dewey Decimal, it’s starting to stick.
Tonight the library is dead, which is how I like it.
I crack open a pistachio, make sure it’s clean, toss it in my mouth. Add to the bowl I have dedicated for pistachio shells. Every couple of days I disinfect them, and transfer the shells to a sealed baggie for future use. The Scattering of the Shells. I have my rituals, I have my habits.
Since upkeep of these landmarked buildings was transferred to the Parks Department, I don’t think I’ve seen a single ranger, or whatever they call their agents. I’m not so sure there still is a Parks Department, come to think of it, not that it matters.
I assume they’ve got headquarters in the park, but nobody goes in there. I wonder about the Central Park Zoo, the clock with the animals. Idly I touch my key.
Apparently it’s up to me to hold these halls down, which is my distinct honor. Sure, there are countless apartments and lofts, sitting empty and unused, up and down the canyons of Fifth Avenue, Madison, Broadway. Down in Tribeca, northwest to the Meatpacking District, uptown to Central Park West, spaces unclaimed and unprotected.
Some of these once housed the very wealthy, and are extremely opulent. I’ve seen them. You wouldn’t have to be that ambitious to set yourself up in such a place, as many have; but I feel an obligation here.
When I returned to New York after my (illegal, mind you) detention at the Walter Reed Medical Center, then the National Institutes of Health outside Washington, D.C., this place is where I came to rebuild my head, like so many others before me, and I was welcomed.
Not by the staff; that’s not what I mean. The very stairwells, the walls, the forests of literature enfolded me, said good to see you back, soldier. Here you’ll find rest, and poetry.
In the bosom of the Reading Room I retrieve my kit, lay out my bedroll. Wonder where the mother and child got to, the ones with the hotplate. Wonder if I imagined them. Projected holograms.
Plug my razor into that outlet I noted earlier, find myself cracking a big grin as the blinking yellow charge light appears. Fantastic.
Before sleep, I take a pill and remove my Beretta M9 from its cloth, clean it, load it, etc. The gun feels like an old pair of jeans, conformed to my hands alone. Hands that I now clean as well.
Starting to feel like I’d better be wearing the weapon. Better to have and not need than to be caught out naked.
End of Excerpt
More about The Dewey Decimal System
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The Dewey Decimal System is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. The digital edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Selected by Ransom Notes: the Barnes & Noble Mystery Blog as one of the Best Series Debuts of 2011
“A nameless investigator dogs New York streets made even meaner by a series of near-future calamities. [Larson’s] dystopia is bound to win fans . . .”—Kirkus Reviews
“The Dewey Decimal System is a winningly tight, concise and high-impact book, a violent, exhilarating odyssey that pitches its protagonist through a gratuitously detailed future New York.”—New York Press
“The Dewey Decimal System is proof positive that the private detective will remain a serious and seriously enjoyable literary archetype.”—PopMatters
“Larson’s voice is note-perfect in this tour-de-force. When called for, his clipped, brisk prose expands to the lyrical, adeptly singing the praises of beautiful women, cockroaches, and rubble. Reading The Dewey Decimal System transports you to another world, and although that world is a grim one, you’ll be sorry to leave it. Let’s hope that this book isn’t a one-off, that poor damaged Dewey will return to lead us through the ruins on another near-future adventure.” —Mystery Scene Magazine
“ The Dewey Decimal System is clever, inventive, lovingly satiric and easily one of the most notable debuts of the year.” —Bookgasm
“Like Motherless Brooklyn dosed with Charlie Huston, Nathan Larson’s delirious and haunting The Dewey Decimal System tips its hat, smartly, to everything from Philip K. Dick’s dystopias to Chester Himes’s grand guignol Harlem novels, while also managing to be utterly fresh, inventive, and affecting all on its own.” — Megan Abbott, Edgar-winning author of The End of Everything
After a flu pandemic, a large-scale terrorist attack, and the total collapse of Wall Street, New York City is reduced to a shadow of its former self. As the city struggles to dig itself out of the wreckage, a nameless, obsessive-compulsive veteran with a spotty memory, a love for literature, and a strong if complex moral code (that doesn’t preclude acts of extreme violence) has taken up residence at the main branch of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.
Dubbed “Dewey Decimal” for his desire to reorganize the library’s stock, our protagonist (who will reappear in the next novel in this series) gets by as bagman and muscle for New York City’s unscrupulous district attorney. Decimal takes no pleasure in this kind of civic dirty work. He’d be perfectly content alone amongst his books. But this is not in the cards, as the DA calls on Dewey for a seemingly straightforward union-busting job.
What unfolds throws Dewey into a bloody tangle of violence, shifting allegiances, and old vendettas, forcing him to face the darkness of his own past, and the question of his buried identity.
With its high body count and snarky dialogue, The Dewey Decimal System pays respects to Chandler, Hammett, and Jim Thompson. Healthy amounts of black humor and speculative tendencies will appeal to fans of Charlie Huston, Nick Tosches, Duane Swierczynski, and Jonathan Lethem.
Also Available:
The Nervous System
Book Two in the Dewey Decimal series
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The Nervous System is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. The digital edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Larson’s antihero Dewey Decimal is back in this bombastic and soulful sequel to The Dewey Decimal System.
“Whiplash prose, teeth-gnashing dialogue and post-civilization concepts that make a crazy (amateur) librarian in a pitch-black world a hell of a lot of fun . . . A good time for fans of the likes of Charlie Huston and Charles Stross.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Larson’s vividly imagined world and his quirky narrator are likely to win him a cadre of loyal fans.” —Publishers Weekly>
“This is a taut, action movie-violent mystery that will appeal to fans of Larson’s earlier novel as well as those who like dystopian literature generally.” —Library Journal
“Nathan Larson’s The Nervous System mashes up genres: postapocalypse sci-fi and crime noir.” —Wall Street Journal
“The most incredible thing about Nathan Larson’s The Nervous System is just how credible it is—a ravaged New York City, a postmodern warrior with a code, villains at once smaller and larger than life, the futile human obsession to create order out of chaos. And the prose is perfect, as tweaked and jumpy and memorable as the man known as Dewey Decimal. I’m a Library of Congress girl myself, but Larson’s uncannily original fiction deserves its own number within any system of library classification.” —Laura Lippman, author of What the Dead Know
“Sheer magic and delirious joy, this intellectual giddy riot is the book of the year. The Nervous System is a rock ‘n’ roll paranoid masterclass in invention, with writing so crafted, gifted, I long to quote every line. The mystery is taken to a whole new level of technospeak artistry, and wonderfully witty, like John Kennedy Toole if he’d written a mystery novel and did meth—a lot of it. The warmth of the character seeps through in Dewey Decimal’s love for a devastated New York and still the city sings. The New York Public Library should put up a plaque to the most original PI since Marlowe. OCD never seemed so compelling. Loved it—and then some. What a writer.” —Ken Bruen, author of The Guards
After a series of large-scale terrorist attacks, New York City is reduced to a shadow of its former self. As the city struggles to dig itself out of the wreckage, a nameless, obsessive-compulsive veteran with a spotty memory, a love for literature, and a strong if unique moral code, has taken up residence at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library. Dubbed “Dewey Decimal” for his desire to reorganize the library’s stock, he gets by as bagman and muscle for unscrupulous politicians and underworld figures—as detailed in the first book in this series, The Dewey Decimal System.
