Dig the two heavily muscled men sitting astride one of the marble lions that bookend the library steps, facing one another.

I’ve been watching them from the recessed entryway of the former Nat Sherman tobacco shop (later some useless chain clothing store) for about six minutes. Northwest corner of 42nd and Fifth Avenue.

I’m exhausted and just want to lie down. How much of my life, in hours and days, have I wasted watching other people from a concealed vantage point?

The brawny lads seem to be speaking quietly and sharing a cigarette, up there on the lion. Feels like I’m watching the beginning of a high-concept guy-on-guy porno, that part you’d fast-forward through to get to the action.

Fuck this, I decide to move in on them. No disguising the fact that I’m walking wounded. I have my gun at my side.

Now: if I’d started with a full magazine, I should have fourteen rounds to go. The Down syndrome kid, his guileless smile, pop up at me, I knock them back and bury them.

The boys are watching me, as I do my funky limp their way. Aware that I’m podcasting Halloween-scary, a bloody black apparition in half a suit.

The fellows dismount, not particularly graceful in their movements. My goon radar is spiking. Goon city. And I make them for Baltic/Slavic twenty yards away. Hope that doesn’t sound racist, you can just see it. Tell me I’m wrong.

These people are the new goombahs, nouveau-Guido, used to be the Italians. And they dress accordingly.

The boys fall into bouncer positions, seemingly a natural bearing for this body type. Legs a touch wide, arms folded.

“Good evening!” calls one of them. Yeah, I hear Eastern Europe.

I hobble up and stop, about ten feet shy of the heavies, scope them. One has a shiny black T-shirt with a massive Armani logo, the other is rocking one of those miserable Ed Hardy pieces favored by this class of character, an off-white number with crisscrossing stitching up the sides, and a pair of yakuza-style “sleeves,” renderings of a koi pond, colorful fish, and shit. Both are wearing linen trousers and man-sandals.

I get the douche-chills.

“Gentlemen,” I greet them, hoping they don’t register the quotation marks.

“Beautiful place to come home,” says the talker, the one in the Armani tee. Like overfriendly. He tilts his head in the direction of the library. “To live in such a place is to feel like a king. What do they call this place?”

“It’s a library.”

Armani pouts his lips and nods, admiring the Beaux-Arts façade, which still looks pretty clean. “Very good. If they are making a condo inside, I buy one. I come talk to you, huh?” He grins at me.

“Don’t hold your breath on the condo. And I don’t own the place, I’m just the custodian.”

Armani is nodding. Custodian is a big-boy word so I doubt if he got me, but he’s nodding all the same. “It is Mr. Decimal?”

“Indeed it is.”

“Perhaps you are hurt? Wishing to sit?” He glances at my leg, the bandages, my filthy pissed-in slacks, of which one leg has been cut off at the thigh. I see him note the gun, by which he is unfazed.

“I’m good here,” I say. “Your manners are impeccable, and I appreciate that. Now what can I do for you cowpokes?”

Ed Hardy is looking me up and down, slowly. His eyes have that unoccupied look of heavies the world over. They alight on my gun and stay there. He’s got a jailhouse tattoo on his neck, some gang scrawl, the Jack of Spades.

“Some discussion, some talk. More comfortable inside?” Armani half bows in a lead-the-way gesture.

“It’s a public building. You gents might be more comfortable inside, but I’m fine just where I am. What say we talk here?” In truth I’m aching to sit, but I want these thugs on their way. I cross my arms casually, Beretta in hand.

“Okay. No problems. Guns, no need for guns,” says Armani.

“What can I do for you?” I repeat. I’m too tired, really. I need to wrap this up.

Armani’s ingratiating veneer slides a bit. “Our boss, he likes to speak to you.”

“And who is your boss?”

“Mr. Yakiv Shapsko.”

“Uh-huh. And he wants to discuss …”

Armani lifts his shoulders and drops them. “Business. What else?”

I nod. “Okay, I’m open to that. Tomorrow morning would work best for me.”

The men exchange looks.

“Mr. Shapsko makes suggestion, meeting right away. We take you to him now. Okay?”

I absorb both of them. Honestly, I don’t want to be a snob, I certainly do similar errands on occasion, but there’s this subspecies that’s just so specific. These guys fall into that category.

From past experience I can guesstimate that I don’t exactly have a choice about how this plays out. I’m not up to further static. Say, “Look, boys. At least let me change my pants. As you can see, I’m not presentable and I don’t want to disturb you or your boss’s finely honed aesthetic sensibilities. If I may.”

Again the boys share a glance. It’s a hair tense. Armani is working his jaw. “Stepan, he is going with you.”

“Guys, I’m not a flight risk. Neither you two nor your boss does much in the way of scaring me. I’ll go wherever, I don’t have anything better to do.”

Armani, who I’m sure would love to have at me, is marshalling his cool. “Stepan, he is going with you,” says the big man again.

I shrug, put my gun in my waistband, and start up the stairs. It’s not easy. “Fine, Stepan, please do follow me.”

Armani, in Ukrainian, says to Stepan: “Hurry this up, help the nigger walk.”

“Yeah, Stepan,” I echo in their native tongue, “help this nigger walk.” Throw them off a little.

They don’t seem particularly impressed by my lingual skills.

Stepan offers his forearm, the koi warped by his ridiculous musculature. A lesser man would have gagged on his cologne, but I keep it together and take his arm like Scarlett O’Hara.

“You’re too kind,” I continue in Ukrainian. “Hey, I dig Hardy’s gear. It’s got that edge.” Stepan won’t look at me, so I keep talking. “Cousin, in general I just gotta say, I like what you’re working with. The big guns here. Since David Barton went under, I imagine you have a fantastically well-appointed home gym.”

These guys must be under strict orders and/or truly fear their master. Because their intense desire to beat me into carpaccio is thicker in the air than my man Stepan’s cologne.

Which is saying something.