The Identity Man

  Everything happened at once then. Shannon understood—and erupted, furious. He grabbed Foster, both hands on the front of his jacket. The weasel jumped up, his chair falling backward, a handful of spades and clubs and hearts and diamonds flying, red and black everywhere, as he drew his gun. Likewise the slickster on the cot: riffling pages of cleavages, bras, and panties went airborne as he leapt up and charged into the melee.

  "You knew they'd come to kill me!" Shannon managed to say before the weasel stuck the gun barrel in his eye and the slickster wrapped an arm around his throat and pulled him off, with Foster shoving him away for good measure. "That's all I was there for—i ust to die! You missed the first murder, so you wanted to make sure you witnessed the second!"

  Foster had fallen backward, angrily smoothing his threadbare jacket, his chintzy tie. The other agents held Shannon fast, one with his chokehold, the other with his gun. Foster gestured them away.

  "All right," he said.

  They let Shannon go, sneering as they backed off. The slickster fetched his magazine. The weasel holstered his gun. He righted his chair and began to gather the playing cards.

  Shannon and Foster stood glaring at one another.

  "We didn't want them to kill you," Foster said.

  "You just didn't give a shit if they did."

  "Why should we? You're a lowlife. You don't mean anything to us. You don't mean anything to anyone, Shannon. If you died, so what? Who cares? But we figured they wouldn't kill you right away. We figured they'd do exactly what they did do: try to find out what you had, where the info was, who else had it, who else knew. Maybe if you hadn't chased me off at the fair that night, I'd've been nearby when they made their move, could've gotten there to help you. As it was, we had to watch from here—and by the time I reached you, it was over."

  Shannon gave a bitter laugh. "Bad break for you, me killing him, huh?"

  "That it was. That it surely was. If he'd killed you, we'd've had him. Busted him, turned him, traded our way up the ladder right to Augie himself. We'd have had them all. As things stand, with Gutterson dead instead, the whole operation's blown, a great big waste of time and taxpayer money. When they murder you now—and they will—it'll just be SOP for a cop-killer—shot trying to escape—we get nothing out of it. So congratulations, Shannon. We fucked you? You fucked us right back."

  For another moment, Shannon glowered at the little man. Then, disgusted with him, disgusted with himself and with all of it, he turned away, shaking his head at the dusty floor. He had one more burst of anger in him: "Didn't occur to you bastards that if you gave me a new life, I might live it, huh? I mean, when you contacted me, I had nothing, I had nothing to lose, but now..."

  Foster shrugged. "Poor baby. Like I said, Shannon, you don't mean a thing to us, not a thing. Just a scumbag thief living off other people's money. Sort of like the government, come to think of it, only they're not looking at three strikes and hard time. But then, what can I tell you? Life's unfair."

  Still studying the dust, Shannon hooked his thumbs in his belt. He nodded. He couldn't argue with the man there. Life was unfair all right, and hard time was what he was looking at for sure.

  The other agents had now settled back into their places. The slickster was on his cot again, paging from one cleavage to another. The weasel had finished gathering his playing cards, had settled back into his chair, had racked up the deck with a few quick bangs of it against the tabletop, and was dealing himself a new hand.

  "What now?" Shannon said. "You gonna turn me in? Send me to prison?"

  Foster waved him off. "Nah. I don't want to have to explain this mess to anyone. Better for all of us you just disappear. Do your thing, man. Into the wind with you, there's a good lad. Unlikely you'll get out of town alive anyway. And if you do, well, after today, Henry Conor's gone. Your license, your papers—they'll all vanish from the computers. They'll all be about as useful to you as a teenager's drinking ID. We'll be setting your fingerprint and DNA records straight, too, so the first time you're busted, you'll go down for good. The arc of the moral universe is long, boy, but it bends toward you getting screwed."

  Something occurred to Shannon now. He turned his face from the floor, raised an eyebrow at Foster. "You keep calling me a thief."

  "You are a thief."

  "But not a killer. You don't pin the Hernandez killings on me?"

  "Ha! Listen, you add together the IQ of everyone who works for the United States government, you'd get enough intelligence to make one retard with his hat on sideways—but we're not that stupid. Benny Torrance looking for payback ain't even my idea of a good lead. We never would've used you if we thought you were a mad dog."

  "But on the TV they keep saying it, telling people I'm a suspect. I've heard them."

  "They'll keep saying it, too. We're not the police. You're a suspect till they bring you in and beat the truth out of you."

  "So meanwhile, that's it. I just walk out of here."

  "Like I said. Unless..."

  "Yeah? What?"

  "Well, this is gonna unravel fast. Our target is smart—a cop—Ramsey, his name is—he's smart and he'll unravel this jig-time once he starts looking for you, digging into your life. He'll go everywhere you've gone, talk to everyone you've met, and sooner or later, he'll figure out there's nothing there and it'll dawn on him he's been played. On the other hand, if we act fast, if we let him find you—let him find you—maybe he'll come after you. He's out of allies, so he might well do it himself. Then we'd have him."

  "You mean come after me like Gutterson did?"

  "Right. Find out what you know, work you over, maybe give himself away."

  "Or he might just pop a cap in me."

  "Or that. Probably that."

  "And if he doesn't—and if you get him—what's in it for me?"

  "Uh ... shit."

  "Nothing?"

  "Not a thing."

  "You still gonna make Conor disappear, put my records back, and all that?"

  "Got to. Like I said, we're flying way off the radar here. After today, you're Shannon again, whatever happens."

  "You won't even offer me—you know..."

  "Immunity? Son, I'm gonna be lucky if I don't end up in jail my own damn self. There's some small chance, if everything goes just right, we might be able to work something out for you higher up the line. But no guarantees, and as things stand, I wouldn't pin your hopes on it. A bullet to the head's a lot more likely."

  "So if I help you, either I get killed or I get busted for life."

  "Pretty much."

  "I guess I'm missing something. I want to do that because ... why?"

  Foster's whole hairless head seemed to quirk upward as he broke into a self-mocking grin. "Civic duty? Stop the bad guys? Save your mother country from political disaster?"

  Thumbs hooked in his belt, head hung, Shannon stood looking at the man a moment.

  "Have a nice day," he said then—and walked out.

  He made his way back to the abandoned house, his hideaway. He tossed his gun in his tool bag and zipped the bag up and grabbed the handles and lifted it, ready to go, ready to leave town, hit the wind. But he didn't go. He set the bag down again and stood there, staring at it.

  He didn't know what it was, what stopped him, but he couldn't move from the spot, even though the tension and urgency of his danger twisted his gut inside him. Then, after a few moments of standing there, staring, he did know. It was Teresa. He couldn't leave because of her.

  Slowly, he sat down on the floor. His gut went on twisting, the tension terrible. He knew he had to go, had to run, had to get out of this city any way he could or the police would kill him. So he loved Teresa—so what? It wasn't as if she was going to run away with him. Hell, if she did, it would only ruin her life. And he didn't have to worry anymore that she would think he was a killer after he was gone either. Now that he knew the truth, he could write her a letter and explain it all. Why should he stay because of her?

  Bu
t the answer was already in his mind, beneath the tension, beneath his conscious thoughts. Foster's words were there:

  Our target is smart—a cop—Ramsey, his name is—he's smart and he'll unravel this jig-time once he starts looking for you, digging into your life. He'll go everywhere you've gone, talk to everyone you've met, and sooner or later, he'll figure out there's nothing there and it'll dawn on him he's been played.

  Ramsey. He was the one who had murdered this Peter Patterson. He was the one who had sent Gutterson to his apartment, the one who was looking for him now and who would go to his worksite and would find out about the Applebees, and who would go to the house on H Street and look for him there.

  Shannon lay down, his bag under his head. He stared up at the ceiling. He didn't think Ramsey would hurt the Applebees—why would he? He didn't think so, and yet his sense of their danger was even more urgent to him than his own.

  He lay there a long time, thinking about it. The sunlight shifted to slanted afternoon beams in which motes of dust were dancing. He stared up through the yellow beams, through the dancing dust, his mind drifting, his stomach in knots.

  What could he do anyway? What could he do about Ramsey? How could he protect them—Teresa, Michael, the old man? It wasn't as if he was really Henry Conor, an honest guy free to play the hero without fear. All that—his new life—had just been a lie, not even a lie, an illusion, a federal setup, a lawdog scam, gone not even like mist in the morning, more like a dream of mist in the morning, because it had never been real to begin with. So? What? Was he just trying to keep that fantasy alive? Was he just looking for an excuse to see her again? Wouldn't Ramsey be waiting for that? Wouldn't he be waiting for him to turn up at the house on H Street? Maybe he'd kill Shannon there, and then the Applebees would be witnesses and he'd have to kill them, too. Wouldn't he just be bringing more trouble to Teresa's door if he stayed, if he tried to protect her?

  He lay there with the sun above him slanting and the light of the sunbeams growing mellow. He thought and thought about it. He had to go. If he didn't get out, they'd kill him. There was nothing he could do if he stayed. But to just run like that, to just leave her behind with this Ramsey bastard coming after her...

  His mind drifted. He saw himself in the future. Maybe on the run, maybe in prison. It was bound to be one or the other. He thought he would be able to bear the fact that he would never see Teresa again. Hell, he knew he could bear it. He would be sad, but so what? He would not have the life he wanted, the good life he thought he had been meant to have, but so what? A broken heart wouldn't kill you. The sadness would get better over time. He would forget that other life. He was a hard guy—he had always been a hard guy. He could deal with all that if he had to, all that and a side of fries if he had to.

  What he couldn't bear, what he couldn't bear even to consider—even just now, even just lying there on the floor—was the idea that some harm might come to Teresa because of him, the idea he might be in his cell one day or hiding in some backwoods town one day, and news would reach him. A murder in the city...

  Teresa's face came to him. The boy's face. The angel's face. Their eyes.

  He lay there. He thought about it. He thought about ... well, he thought about a lot of things. He thought about sticking his Beretta in his mouth and blowing his brains out—anything just to end this tension and indecision and helplessness. He thought about walking out in the open and letting some trigger-crazy cop do the job for him. And he daydreamed about going to see Teresa one last time, not to try anything with her, he told himself, not to convince her to come with him or even to touch her, so help him, he wouldn't even touch her—but just to warn her, to explain himself, justify himself to her, face to face, and see the forgiveness in her eyes and warn her to get out, to run, to save herself and her family...

  All through the day, tortured in his heart, he lay there in the dust on the floor of the ruined house, his head on his bag, his hands behind his head, staring up through the motes in the slanting afternoon sunlight, watching scenarios and disasters play out in his mind, trying to figure out what to do, and waiting for nightfall.

  LIEUTENANT BRICK RAMSEY waited, too, suffered tortures that long day, too, tortures of indecision and of what he disdained to name as fear. But he was afraid—there was no other word for it. It had been building in him since that morning.

  It had started when he'd seen Gutterson lying dead on Henry Conor's floor. There had been that wisp of superstitious dread, that suspicion of nemesis working against him. Then there'd been the old man in the white house—Applebee—leaning on the mantelpiece under the wooden carving of the angel, the old man looking at him and the angel looking at him as if they knew what he'd done and who he was inside.

  Finally, there'd been the daughter—Teresa—and his sense that something was going on here that he didn't understand. That sense—and the old man's look—and the wisp of dread he'd felt when he saw Gutterson—they'd all combined until he felt like a kind of darkness was closing in on him, strangling him. That's when he began to suspect what he would have to do. That's when he began to become afraid.

  He went back to the Castle—that was what they called Police Headquarters. He went up to his office on the tenth floor and sat alone. Swiveling back and forth in his high-backed chair. Gazing out the long window without really seeing the expanse of the fire-and flood-blasted city laid out below him.

  He tried to think things through, but there's no point in following his logic. There wasn't much logic, in fact. It was all just that strangling sense of things closing in. The superstitious dread. The look in Applebee's eyes, the angel's eyes. Teresa.

  They knew. That, at last, was the only sense he could make of it all. That explained the old man's hostility, and the girl's ignorance, which had to have been feigned. They knew what Conor knew. They knew who Ramsey was and what he'd done. They were part of this—this thing he was feeling, this evil fate that he felt in the air around him, this will opposed to his will. That's what he was battling here. That's what was lurking in the shadows beyond his understanding, that spirit of nemesis like a stern, relentless phantom, her hand upraised as she waved the Book of Judgment at him, hammering it against the darkness as she hunted him down.

  Sitting there, swiveling back and forth, staring blindly out the window, Ramsey realized there was no way out of this for him anymore. He was going to have to see it all the way to the end.

  Across town at that hour, the fifteen-year-old gangster who called himself Super-Pred was committing an act of violence so grotesque that even the thugs who attended him found themselves nauseated and quailing. The gnarly-assed junky called Speedball had been scamming on the Pred, no question, and had shorted a detective on his payoff, pocketing the skimmed cash to feed his own habit. Which was not only dishonest but unforgivably stupid, because the cop was a cop and sure to complain. Everyone knew S-P was going to deal out some shit to the junky, and everyone also knew that when the Pred got going, he sometimes lost himself in the work. There was always, therefore, a 50 percent chance that Speedball might not survive the discipline—which was probably why the poor zombie pissed himself when he saw Super-Pred had come to deal with him personally. Still, no one was prepared for the elaborate bloodfest that followed. It was something you'd expect to get more from some Afghan warlord than a city g. When Super-Pred finally hitched up his pants and strutted out the warehouse door, the boyos he left behind could only whistle and curse and steal frightened glances at each other as they mopped up what was left of Speedball's body and the pools of their own vomit besides.

  As for the fifteen-year-old lad himself, he was still impossibly wired with triumph and self-horror when he returned to the garage he used for an HQ. Much, indeed, like a warlord of old, he summoned women to him, two of the child-whores he ran, and worked off his excess energy in unspeakably cruel sexual acts that left one of the children bleeding and sniveling and the other mocking her and lording it over her because she felt that was her safest bet
.

  So there, finally, Super-Pred sat, enthroned in an old leather chair, bloated with satisfaction, his mind a sort of red silence, with even the voice of his self-horror barely a dim cry, no more than what you might hear from a starving baby in an abandoned building as you were driving away. He was drinking a beer, watching a movie on the laptop set on a mechanic's workbench, laughing while two of his minions slouched on the sofa, drinking beers and laughing with him as the gangster on the monitor buzz-sawed a rival in two.

  The garage's side door opened then and a shaft of afternoon light fell through it. The gangsters were still laughing as they turned to see who dared disturb them.

  Ramsey's silhouette cut its shape out of the light.

  Aware of all the ramifications, Ramsey felt slightly nauseated as he stood over the boy reclining in his chair. Super-Pred—making a show of being unafraid of a fresh beatdown from the lieutenant—gave him a lazy salute with his beer bottle and said, "What's up, daddy."

  Ramsey gestured with his head and the two other thugs were dismissed.

  Then, when he and the Pred were alone, Ramsey said, "There's a white shingled house on H Street..."

  PART VI

  THE RUINED TOWER

  NIGHT FELL. Far away, beneath a chandelier flashing rainbows over a fine ballroom in the nation's capital, Augie Lancaster was bestowing the high, ringing ideals of his oratory on the upturned faces of worshipful celebrities. But here, in the alleys of the city he'd created and left behind, there were a thousand little crucifixions. Girls who still had secret dreams of romantic dances were on their knees in the dust taking a mouthful of dick for a handful of dollars. Boys in the animal rage of manhood-without-nobility were strutting the little distance between their hard-ons and the grave. Gunfire was everywhere. A teenager was gurneyed into an ER with a slug in his chest. He'd leave in a wheelchair: dead-eyed, drooling. Wailing drifted through every half-opened window. A little girl slapped her baby because it wouldn't stop crying long enough for her to hit her methamphetamine pipe in peace. Tsk, tsk, tsk, said the old men shaking their heads. Old, dried-up, moralizing men locked behind the barred doors of their houses to keep them from souring the juicy life of the street; chewed-up old men spat into the gutter of the juicy street life. And the women? So mean. Thirty-year-old grandmothers: nasty, bullying.