The Nervous System by Nathan Larson Read Free Book Online Page A

towel. Press on my hat.
    Yeah, starting to feel better and better. Ready to bounce.
    Praise Jesus. This fucking politician. The way I look at this, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. The senator knows more about me than I care to, quite likely every little distasteful thing the DA put me on to. Dangling this over my head like a guillotine. I can’t have that. Worse still: ten-toone the man knows my name.
    This will not do. Got to get a leg up on the senator. Have to steal some leverage.
    Start with what you know. That’s the way of the System. A dead, dirt-dredging DA. Dig the power vacuum therein.
    A loony-bin legislator, likely the subject of extortion, looking to cover up a cover-up.
    A sad-sack brother like myself wanders in ignorance straight out onto the field.
    Senator, scared I’m gonna be his new tormentor. Scared, but not sure.
    Nightmare team of military contractors, in the service of said senator, sent to settle my hash before I settle his.
    Gotta move. Gotta move now.
    Exit the Reading Room, dropping the towel in the doorway.
    Midmorning sun struggles through the smoke and the atmospheric shit, and weakly illuminates the passageway.
    Wing tips go clippity-clap, lopsided in accordance with my limp.
    Betting these yahoos, however seriously I might take them on the j.o.b., couldn’t get into the basement. Would be a surprise, as I’ve made some structural alterations that won’t show up on an architect’s plan of the joint.
    Shuffle with stealth through the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room, with its collection of dead computers … hustle on down to the second floor and the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. I enter and drag the outsized faux-brass doors behind me.
    Looking for cameras now. It’s a superficial search I make, but it’s not likely they would have rigged this room. There’s nothing in it.
    Except for the wood panel covering a section of the westernmost wall, which sports an outsized eighteenthcentury French map showing the West Indies and the Lesser Antilles.
    Press my palm into the sepia splotch representing Trinidad. Birthplace of my bastard father, and his bastard father before him. Apply pressure, and the panel swivels on a central axis, opening up an eighteen-inch gap into darkness.
    I take a moment and breathe the air of my adopted home, not knowing when and how I’ll return. Alls I know is my little haven is under direct siege, and extreme protective measures are called for.
    Click on the penlight and slide in, drawing the panel shut behind me, proper haunted-house stylie.
    I clomp down metal spiral stairs of pretty recent construction, a fair descent.
    Downstairs, underground. Backtrack toward the dumbwaiter shaft.
    Damp. Endless recess of shelving, worn leather binding. No rats thus far, but man do they grow larger and bolder.
    Old paper, smelling of feces and dirt. Beyond that, trace odors given off by the garbage fire pits that once made up Bryant Park. Maybe I’m imagining things.
    Natch I don rubber gloves, check the fit on my mask. I see this labyrinth as if from above, its curvature well known to me.
    If the Reading Room is the library’s heart, the subterranean cathedral with its miles of shelving is the joint’s brain, containing all things, all knowledge. I alone remain to bear witness.
    When I come upon it, the DA’s box is upturned at the ass-end of the dumbwaiter shaft, contents having partially slid out across the concrete floor. A single floodlight is still operative so I click off the penlight.
    I quickly see what I’m looking for, make sure it’s intact, and flip open the file.
    Given the DA’s sloppy habits, this is a comparatively tight and well-organized set of papers, photographs, and subfiles. Laid out well, which I appreciate, and I start from the top.
    A crappy set of fixed-point shots of a black man and Asian woman in various states of sexual congress. The pictures are infrared and