The Identity Man

  "Look at me, boy," he said.

  Shannon looked up at him, blinking through the blood.

  "You're making this uglier than it has to be," Ramsey said.

  Shannon blinked up at him, open-mouthed. Even in the haze of pain, he realized what Ramsey was going to do. "Aw, don't," he begged.

  "Are you going to talk to me or not?"

  "Please..."

  "Are you or not?"

  Shannon sobbed in expectation of the agony. "Fuck you," he said. "Fuck you."

  "God damn you!" Ramsey said.

  His finger was tightening on the trigger when Foster charged through the door.

  It was all like a slow-motion dream to Shannon. He was staring up at Ramsey and he saw the gun and he understood what was about to happen and he couldn't do anything but pray and pray for God to let him die and then there was a bang and he thought he'd been shot but he wasn't and he saw movement and there was Foster in some vague, unfocused distance charging across the background of blue sky and tower tops, shouting words Shannon couldn't hear through the wind noise, holding his gun out before him in his two hands.

  Then Ramsey was turning, his gun still pointed down at Shannon, and the blockheaded cop in the white waiter's uniform was whipping around toward Foster and lifting his gun. Shannon heard the first shot, not loud, a distant snap almost drowned by the hoarse roar of the wind and the walls rocking and shuddering. He saw the smoke and fire explode from the barrel of Foster's nine. Then the blockheaded cop was flying backward and crumpling to the floor next to Shannon's feet.

  Then there was another shot, a blast echoing through the wind. Shannon didn't know where it'd come from. But then he saw the blood and flesh explode on Foster's shoulder and the agent's face contorted with pain and his body twisted and his gun flew from his hand as he went falling toward the sky.

  Shannon blinked upward through swollen eyes and saw that it was Ramsey who'd fired, his gun trained on the spot where Foster had been, smoke curling from the barrel of it.

  Foster now lay at the edge of the floor, inches from a break in the charred wall, an open space into emptiness, a forty-story fall. The agent was wounded, writhing like a hurt animal, trying to crawl away from the edge to recover the gun that had fallen out of his reach.

  All in that vague, unfocused slow-motion—all beneath the hoarse, shuddering roar of the hot, gritty wind—Shannon saw Ramsey glance down at him from far above to make sure that he wasn't moving, that he was helpless there. And then Ramsey walked away, walked across the room to finish Foster off.

  And a thought came to Shannon that was almost like a voice in his ear—that clear—the fi rst clear thought he'd had since Ramsey had started working him over: The gun! The blockheaded cop's gun!

  Shannon looked up at Ramsey's back as Ramsey walked into the unfocused distance to kill Foster where he lay, and then he, Shannon, looked over at where the blockheaded cop lay on his back on the floor at his feet. And, sure enough, there was the weapon, the nine the cop had been holding—there it was on the floor not far away, so that Shannon realized that if he could only move, if he only had the strength to move, he might get the gun. He might get the gun.

  Shannon understood that this was what he had to do, an un-looked-for chance he had to take. He did not feel he had the strength to move or that his body could stand the pain of moving, but he knew he had to. He did not think or pray. He was all prayer and all pain—unbelievable sickness and pain—as he began to curl his body toward the gun, moving his flesh as if it were a mountain of stone under which he was buried, moving it around by what seemed like inches at a time, over a time that seemed like hours. He still saw Ramsey in his peripheral vision, the gray back of him moving away toward Foster. And then Ramsey was gone, and Shannon thought there must be no more time left and that it didn't matter anyway because the pain was just too much, he could not move another inch, but he kept moving—another inch and another—because he understood this was what he had to do, an unlooked-for chance.

  It was his left hand that was broken. He reached for the gun with his right, flinching with the agony of the movement but trying not to cry out. Suddenly he felt the wind again and the grit of the wind stinging his wounds. He reached the gun. He closed his fingers around it and began to lift it, his hand trembling weakly and the weight of his flesh and the weight of his pain crushing him down so that every inch of movement required more strength than he believed he had.

  He squinted across the room at Ramsey and his vision cleared so that he saw the lieutenant standing over Foster now, lifting his gun to put a final bullet in him. Shannon could not bring his own weapon to bear fast enough. He could not stop Ramsey in time.

  So he shouted out "Ramsey!" through the wind.

  And he saw Ramsey, startled, spinning around, turning the gun quickly from Foster to point it straight at him.

  When Ramsey heard the shout and turned and saw the blood-soaked figure bringing the gun to bear on him, he knew what was going to happen next, it seemed inevitable. All in a moment, he felt overwhelming desperation, rage, and terrible shame. A wild, silent cry of regret, a silent cry of yearning for his mother's comfort, tore from his guts and filled him. All in a moment, he saw: it was his doing, all his doing, and he was sorry for it.

  Maybe that's why he hesitated just a fraction of a fraction of a second before he began to pull the trigger.

  But it was too late by then. Shannon shot him.

  It was a wild shot. The bullet hit only the fleshy edge of Ramsey's thigh. It didn't even knock the gun out of his hand. But the jolt and the searing pain made him stagger back a step and he tripped over Foster lying there and he staggered back another step and fell off the edge of the floor into nothingness and went down and down and down, screaming in helpless terror and sorrow for what felt like forever.

  Shannon saw Ramsey fall back into the sky and vanish in a finger snap as by some terrible magic, and he understood that it was over. The weight of the gun and the pain overwhelmed him then. He collapsed onto the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood.

  He closed his eyes. He felt himself sinking away into darkness—death or unconsciousness, he didn't know which. Either way, he was glad—glad and grateful for it. It was over. He had done everything he had to do.

  He let himself go and was gone.

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  IT WAS STRANGE to be back in the white room. For the first day or two, he was in a painkiller fog, and it was very strange. He hung suspended in the fog as if in midair, and the fog drifted by him, sometimes black and sometimes gray and sometimes full of present shadows or past faces he remembered. He saw the white room through the breaks in the fog for shapeless moments at a time, and he wasn't sure whether it was really there or he was dreaming. And when he thought it was there, that he was back in the white room again, he wondered if the rest of it had been a dream—the ruined city and the wooden angel and Teresa—everything a dream while he had been here in the white room all along.

  Slowly, day by day, the fog thinned. He wafted down from the air and intermittently felt the bed beneath him. The sound of a door opening or footsteps on the floor would alert him and he would fight against the weighted haze, trying to sit up and see more clearly. He caught glimpses of men with guns. Different men at different times. One would stand over him with his thumbs in his belt and look down at him with a deadpan face. Another would sit in a chair against the wall and page through a magazine. Yet another would just sit in the chair and stare. Lawmen of some sort, standing guard.

  There were other men, too, sometimes—and sometimes women: doctors or nurses in scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks. They fussed at him and shifted him on the bed and stuck needles into him. Sometimes they gave him water through a straw and he drank gratefully. When they spoke to him, they spoke as if he were an infant or a dog—as if he couldn't really understand or answer them. When he did answer, they always seemed surprised and a little resentful. Then he would be gone
again and when he woke up it was all so hard to remember.

  One day, he opened his eyes, and there was Foster. Same old narrow, bald, seedy agent in yet another cheap suit. Shannon squinted through sleep and saw him fidgeting in a chair at his bedside. He was wearing a blue sling on his right arm and Shannon remembered that Ramsey had shot him.

  Foster rubbed his neck with his good hand. He shifted his neck in his collar. He looked up at a woman working a machine by the bed.

  "All right?" he said. "I need him clear."

  If she answered, Shannon didn't hear her. He saw her walk away. With lazy nausea, he moved his head so he could look at Foster.

  "Teresa," Shannon said. He had a feeling it was not the first time he had said it.

  "Yeah, yeah, she's all right," said Foster. "I told you. They're fine, they're in the system. New city, new life. No one even knows they were involved. They'll be okay."

  Shannon closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was a great relief to him. He shifted uncomfortably. He was beginning to become aware of a new, unwelcome clarity. The drugs were wearing off, the tendrils of painless fog losing their grip on him, falling away. He could feel cool reality drifting over his skin like air drifting over a rotting tooth. He understood for the first time—or for the first time he could remember anyway—that his body was broken and wrong and the drugs were keeping him from the full feeling of it. He opened his eyes.

  "How bad?" he mumbled. "How bad am I?"

  Foster gave a jerky shrug. "You got a beating, dog. Ribs broken. Nose, fingers. Lost your spleen. Muscles torn up all over. You'll live, though."

  Shannon nodded.

  "But we better talk fast," the agent went on. "I need you clear. I need you to understand what I tell you. But once the drugs wear off, you'll be a traveler in the unhappy lands, my friend. So let's get it over with, so we can put you back under."

  Shannon managed another nod. "What...?"

  "Focus, boy. You understanding me?"

  "Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

  "All right. Here it is. The situation out there in the world is currently pretty bleak, not to say dire, for both you and me. We're getting hit good and hard. The media have put their heart and soul into the Augie Lancaster dream of life, and the idea that he's the most corrupt, power-hungry organism in the galaxy isn't sitting well."

  Shannon had to fight hard to understand this. His head was clearing, but as it cleared, he felt the pain closing on him like a fresh skin of knitted nerve endings, closing on him until it passed through, and he couldn't tell whether it was outside him or rising from within ... It was distracting. "Yeah? Okay?"

  "Well, you know how the media thing goes," said Foster. "The way they tell it, it's all our fault. It was an illegal operation, blah, blah, blah. We're just trying to bring down a great reformer and defend the status quo, doncha know. We're racists taking vengeance on Augie for exposing the white man's incompetence during the flood. Whatever. People will do and say just about anything to keep from admitting they're wrong. They're wrong about Augie, but they don't care. They'll die to keep from admitting it."

  "Right, right, right," said Shannon. He was starting to breathe harder, to flinch with the spark and play of his pain. "So what's the point?"

  "The point is: I'll probably be fired. Possibly I'll do some prison time. Which means you've got no friends anywhere."

  "Well ... I never knew you were my friend anyway, so no loss."

  "It's a sad fact, dog, but I'm all you've got. Without me, they'll be in here trying to charge you with shit you never even heard of. You don't get yourself a good lawyer, you'll die in prison, maybe get the lethal I."

  "Well..." Shannon took a sharp breath as the pain shot through him. It was a tough situation, but he couldn't think about it now. "It is what it is," he said.

  "Yeah," said Foster. "It surely is." He stood up out of his chair and moved the chair in front of him and moved to stand behind it. He looked here and there around the room. "The way it's going to go is this. A lot of serious-looking men and women wearing expensive suits the taxpayers were forced to pay for at gunpoint are going to come through here in the next few days and weeks and ask you questions in stern, serious tones of voices the taxpayers were also forced to pay for. They will be full of shit, every single one of them, and they will be attempting to convict you of anything they can in the hopes they can support Augie Lancaster so that the media will make them look virtuous and they can continue to live off the ever-dwindling fat of the land. That is called your government, son, and when it is finished with you, it will put you in one of its prisons or kill you dead. Now you've been warned."

  Shannon gave a small groan. Man, he hurt. He hurt all over. He forced himself to focus through it. "Okay. Okay. What do you figure I should do?"

  Foster frowned. "Tell the truth. They're not used to it. It fucks with their heads. That's what I'd do. But it's your call. I just thought you ought to know what's coming."

  "Okay. Okay, thanks. Don't worry about—" The pain cut a jagged path through him like lightning. He tensed and fought down a cry.

  "Hey, Doc," Foster called.

  The woman came back into the room. Foster nodded at the machine beside Shannon's bed. The doctor went to it and pushed the buttons.

  Foster continued to stand there behind the chair, looking down at him. Holding the chair back with his two hands, drumming his fingers on it. "They gave Ramsey a hero's funeral yesterday," he said. "Bagpipes and everything."

  Shannon felt the tendrils of the drug growing back over him like vines. The pain began to ease, his body relaxing. "Did they? What a comedy."

  "That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm trying to say. They'll tag you for that, if they can. Killing him. Killing a hero cop. I can only do what I can do."

  Shannon gave a small laugh. "I don't expect any breaks. I know how it is." The tendrils spread into fog. His breathing grew deeper.

  "Did you hear him at the end?" he heard Foster ask from a dreamy distance. "Ramsey. Did you hear him scream as he went down?"

  Shannon shook his head slowly, his eyes fluttering shut. He had not heard. He only had seen Ramsey disappear into the sky like magic. He saw it now again.

  "I heard him," said Foster. "Man, I'm still hearing him. At night? It's like he's still around somewhere, still screaming."

  Shannon smiled dreamily, letting himself sink away. "I wouldn't worry about it, Foster."

  "Yeah, I guess," he heard Foster say. "But when you work for the federal government, it's not such a big leap to believe in hell."

  The men and women came in their expensive suits as Foster had said they would. By then, the pain had become bearable. The fog of drugs had thinned to a mere mist. Shannon lay on his bed and gazed quietly at the men and women as they asked him questions and pointed their fingers at him and sometimes leaned over to shout in his face. He told them everything that had happened. He did not hide anything. This only seemed to make them angrier. They accused him of lying. They accused him of murdering Ramsey. At one point, one man, an old guy with big eyebrows bouncing up and down, told him that he was going to go to death row and be executed if he didn't change his story right this minute. Shannon gazed at him from the bed. It was odd, but he was not afraid. He was not afraid of any of these people or of anything they might do to him. At first, he thought maybe it was the drugs dulling his feelings. But it was not the drugs. The drugs were very mild now. He just wasn't afraid, that's all. He just told the truth and lay on the bed and gazed at the government people as they came and went.

  One day, Sharpstein came. Sharpstein was a large, flabby man with a large, flabby face. He wore glasses with black frames. He said he was Shannon's lawyer. Shannon never knew who sent him.

  Shannon was out of bed by now. He was dressed in jeans and a black sweater when Sharpstein walked in with his brown briefcase. He was sitting on the couch in the main room, the room where he had watched all the old movies on the DVD player the last time he was here. But the DV
D player was gone, so he was just sitting there.

  Sharpstein set his briefcase on the table. "Don't they give you a TV in here?"

  "No. I could use a TV. One of the doctors brought me some comic books, but I read them all."

  "No computer? No Internet?"

  "No."

  Sharpstein's big, flabby face seemed to expand. "Jesus. That's gotta be a violation of something or other. What do you do all day?"

  Shannon shrugged. "Work out. Try to get my body back. I still sleep a lot." He also spent hours daydreaming about Teresa, making up scenarios in his mind about the life they would never spend together, what it would have been like. But he didn't tell Sharpstein that. Who the hell was Sharpstein anyway?

  "Man!" said Sharpstein. "Stuck in here all day with nothing to do? It'd make my skin crawl. Doesn't it make your skin crawl?"

  Shannon's lips parted in surprise. He stared at Sharpstein for a long time. "No," he said, wondering. "It doesn't make my skin crawl. You're right, it should, shouldn't it? It always used to. But no—no, it doesn't." It was like not being afraid of prison or death row. It was another odd thing he noticed.

  "So no one's telling you anything either? You have no idea what's going on out there?"

  "No," said Shannon. "What's going on?"

  Sharpstein laughed. He had a high-pitched laugh that made his jowls quiver. He seemed full of glee at the absurdity of people. He told Shannon that a big struggle was taking place. It was all political and hard to understand. As far as Shannon could make out, the people who talked on the radio were battling the people who appeared on TV. It had started with Foster. He had been suspended from his job and had gone on the radio to talk about it. The people on television had not let him come on, but the people on radio let him and he told his story. Then, a detective told his story on the radio. It was the detective Foster had shot on the rooftop, the one who dropped the gun that Shannon used. Somehow, he had changed sides and decided to talk on the radio, too. The people on television didn't like this. They brought people on to attack the detective and to prove he was a bad man and a liar. And he was a bad man and a liar, and they did prove it. But the thing was, when they proved it, they accidentally also proved that Ramsey was a bad man and that he was corrupt, and then the people on the radio began talking about that as well. After that, the public started to get interested, so the politicians also started fighting. The way Sharpstein told it, the politicians who wanted to look virtuous on television were squaring off against the politicians who wanted to sound virtuous on radio and they were arguing back and forth.