The shaking doesn’t start until I actually hit pavement on West 16th Street. When it does, I nearly fumble my new briefcase. Jesus, how anyone can bear the levitating coffin known as an elevator?
I point my trembling gimp toward Eighth Avenue, hoping I can find a respectable place to collapse, unseen by the car service drivers who line the street, the battered Town Cars, uniformly black—man, I wonder what it must cost to convert a monster like a Town Car to battery cell or solar, must be a serious chunk of change. Like a Navigator. Pretty much the same engine, most people don’t know that.
I wonder if the C train is operational. Thinking maybe I don’t want to run into military personnel with what I’m carrying, and my freaky fritzed-out aura. I zombieswerve eastward. Just want to be home.
In the briefcase:
—a polymer 9mm Sig Sauer SP2022, plus fifty extra rounds and a silencer. Traceable apparently to one Branko Jokanovic, don’t ask me how.
—a thin folder containing information relevant to Iveta Shapsko and her possible location, which I have yet to look at.
—night-vision goggles.
—a Canon digital camera.
—a ziplock of string cheese, and some kind of fucked-up yak jerky the crazy Ukrainian insisted I take, “in case you get hungry.”
Am I really that goddamn emaciated? Why is everyone so concerned with my diet? Next they’ll be sifting through my poop.
I make Eighth Avenue, and the C/E station looks dark. I’m shaking so hard I sit down on the curb. Wait for it to pass. Feel for the key, yes. Feel for cigarettes, nope. Sometimes I forget to keep smoking.
The air is a blanket of toxins.
I pop a pill.
The briefcase, which is equipped with a three-digit combination lock, isn’t the only new accessory bestowed on me this evening.
I inspect my new ankle monitor, affixed neat and snug to my bad leg. I’ve been tethered. Reckon these are tamper-proof so I don’t bother playing around with it.
I seem to remember my dad had one at some point. Probably after the second time he beat down my mother. House arrest. I recall having to run to the corner to buy him beer. Before he legged it back to Trinidad, bracelet and all.
If you could only see me now, Pop. I’m a big shot. Lady-killer. On the curb in a summer suit, shaking, shaking, gripping a tan faux-leather briefcase. The night is young, and I’m king of this city. Yes, if I could just see you now, Pop. I got a Swiss buddy named Sig I’d simply love you to meet.
I’m wallowing in this kind of pointless tough-think, or I’m too spaced out by my painful leg. Either way, I don’t notice the vehicle creeping up Eighth Avenue, an electric Army Aggressor, until I’m hit in the face by 120 watts of spotlight.
“Hey, hey, totally not necessary, people!”
I do my utmost to scramble to my feet, blinded and handicapped as I am. A megaphone crackles and an amplified voice addresses me and anybody else within a ten-block radius.
“Hold it there. Interlock your fingers behind your head.”
I do as I’m told, I’m not a complete idiot. “Be cool!” I shout. “I’m one of the good guys, all right? Just be fucking cool.”
I can’t see much as the light is in my face, but I’m starting to adjust. A pair of doors slam almost in unison, I’m approached by two MPs, one hangs back, cradling an HK machine pistol. The other comes toward me, saying, “Keep those hands where they are. Where’s you ID?”
He’s a kid, maybe twenty. Freckles, probably a redhead under that helmet. I tell him: “Front left-hand suit coat pocket. Sorry: your right, my left.”
“Sir, are you carrying needles or any sharp objects I might need to be aware of?”
Jesus, what is this … ? “No, son, it’s just a laminate. Careful with those plastic edges, though, they can be sharp.”
He gives me a here’s-a-smart-guy look, but I’m serious, I’ve cut myself more than once on those laminates. Just trying to be helpful.
“I’m going to put my hand in your pocket and get out your ID at this time, sir. Please do not move.”
“No problem, you’ll see shortly that I do in fact work for the city. Just be cool.”
The kid gingerly withdraws my ID from my suit jacket. Guy with the HK is chewing gum, looks bored.
Freckles holds my ID up to the light, squints at it. Looks at me. Looks back at the ID. “Mr. Dewey Decimal?”
“That’s me.”
He calls back to his buddy: “Can you check the list for a Decimal, Dewey, ID … Ready?”
“Just a sec … Yeah,” calls an unseen man in the vehicle.
“ID number 4-7-9-alpha-golf-november-yankeecharlie.”
“Stand by.”
We do. It’s awkward. More for them than me. Freckles thumbs the edge of my laminate, whistles tunelessly for a couple seconds, stops. His bare hands … I’m gonna have to disinfect that ID card. Kid sneaks a glance at me a couple times.
His pal with the big gun wears headphones; the engine on the Aggressor is silent and I can make out snippets of Jay-Z, a throwback to the world I once knew well. A beat to which the boy with the machine pistol bobs his head slightly.
To break it up, I ask Freckles: “Do you serve, son?”
Kid shakes his head. Yeah, I guess he’d be a bit young.
Presently, the fellow in the truck comes back with: “ID is good, and, uh, we have a message? Unclassified, quote: It’s Rosenblatt, WT mother F? Contact me via shortwave a.s.a.p., this unit has frequency, etc. Unquote.”
I sigh. I recall my pager, crushed to dust in the bushes somewhere on the Upper East Side.
“Gents, can I be so bold as to ask for the use of your radio?” Freckles hands me my ID. I take it with two fingers. “And kindly chill the lights out, I’m as tan as I need to be.”