The Identity Man Page 10

  We can't have dreams until we have faith and we can't have faith until we learn to hope again as a nation.

  Wasn't it just so true?

  So here she was, wearing her white sin like a mink, proud of her shame and searching for her virtue, hoping to receive her virtue like the holy host from Augie's victim-colored hands. Ramsey wondered if Augie had fucked her yet. Maybe not. But he would, he assured himself angrily, and in every possible sense of the word.

  "Lieutenant Ramsey?" she said—warm, respectful, solicitous, arrogant, superior, agonizingly self-aware, and wholly self-ignorant at the same time. "I'm Charlotte Mortimer-Rimsky." Of course she was. She extended her slender porcelain hand, a startling flash out of the take-me-seriously black sleeve of her sexless suit.

  Ramsey stood dizzy with humiliation. This—this uncooked slice of poon, this blond creation of her own dreamy delusions— this was what Augie sent to him? To him? It took all his discipline not to leave her hand hanging there, not to cry out "Where's Augie? I had an appointment with Augie!" like a cheated child.

  But he did it. He fought down every coarse insult that leapt into his head and shook her hand politely.

  "Nice to meet you," he said, just as his mother had taught him.

  "Augie sends his apologies. He's been called to a meeting with Senator Lundquist and he just couldn't get out of it. But I'm his new law enforcement liaison, so he thought this might be a good opportunity for us to get to know one another."

  "Law Enforcement Liaison." The words dripped like venom from Ramsey's lips. "Well, Miss..."

  "Mortimer-Rimsky."

  "Miss Mortimer-Rimsky..."

  "Charlotte, please."

  "I'd love to get to know you at some point, but I'm afraid this isn't the time. My business with Augie is urgent and requires his immediate personal attention." It was the best he could do. And what good was it really? Everyone involved in this transaction—he and this woman and Augie as well—they all knew that he was being stripped right here and now of every vestige of prestige and even masculinity. There was no pretending it was otherwise. And yet pretense was the only fig leaf he had to cover the place where his balls used to be.

  The woman, for her part, did her best to look pained and sincere. Ramsey thought she must've taught herself that expression before breaking up with her high school boyfriend. A pretty little kiss-off.

  "I don't know what to tell you. It's just not going to be possible today. I did manage to get you this, though."

  She had a blue file folder in her left hand. She gave it to him and then stepped aside toward the windows. She gazed down discreetly at the park below, giving him a moment to open the blue folder.

  There was a single photograph inside. Printed out from a computer onto ordinary paper. Dark, blurry. An enlargement of a picture taken with somebody's cell phone, Ramsey guessed. He recognized the house in the background. It was the house on the dead-end lane, the green shingled house where he and Gutterson had found the graffito.

  Ramsey murdered Peter Patterson!

  "Where did you get this?" he said.

  "Some of my city contacts. They're telling me this is the man who wrote that graffito. He's been spreading similar rumors on the street."

  He looked at her, at her tailored back, as she faced the window. He let the silence of his doubt play over her, weigh on her. They both knew she didn't have any goddamned city contacts. Only Augie himself could've thrown his net wide enough to haul in something as random as this. She was protecting Augie. She'd been in town for ten minutes and she had the gall to stand between him—between him—and Augie Lancaster.

  She kept her eyes on the window, on the scene outside, but he could see by her uncomfortable posture that she felt his accusation. She felt compelled to explain. "The thing is, Augie is at a transitional moment," she said finally, with a defensive glance back at him. "I don't have to tell you that. It's a key moment, maybe the key moment in his trajectory."

  "His trajectory," Lieutenant Ramsey said with an aspect of stone.

  She faced him. He wanted to rip that porcelain mask of earnestness right off her. "Yes. I mean ... look ... It's a transformational moment in the whole country. We all know that. It's a time of real hope and ... and change."

  So he had fucked her. Well, good for him. That was fast work. He must've explained all this to her in the afterglow. We can't have hope until we have dreams and we can't have dreams until you suck my black dick...

  "Augie has a real chance to become one of the new transformational figures. Isn't that what we've all been working for? To get beyond race? To bring some of the same progressive policies to the federal level that Augie's implemented here at the municipal level?"

  Even in his rage and shame, Ramsey nearly laughed out loud. Had Miss Dreams ever gone ten steps beyond this pristine government complex? Had she ever set her baby blues on exactly what Augie's progressive policies had accomplished at the municipal level? The city is in fucking ruins, you dumb bitch!

  "Look, we all know," this girl—who was too young to know much of anything—went on desperately. "We all know that in the rough and tumble of city politics ... associations are made ... things get done by the people around you ... Augie would never turn his back on his friends, believe me. It's just that ... with this degree of scrutiny on the national level, he has to take appearances into account in a new way. For a period of time, I mean."

  He stared at her. He couldn't help himself. For a moment, he was simply dazed, astonished at the wonderful perfection and complexity of Augie's treachery, as if it were some kind of magnificent crystal suddenly revealing its infinite network of facets to the light. Then, as his astonishment receded, anger rushed back into its place with a new force. Ramsey had seen this kind of fury in the faces of men twisted up like pretzels on cell floors, the froth of seizure on their lips, words of such filth and savage desire spewing from them it was enough to make you believe in hell and the devil. He had seen it, but he had never felt that sort of titanic rage himself until this minute. He wanted to shove this girl, this created suburban thing, against the wall, wanted to seize a handful of her throat and a fistful of her breast and ram himself up inside her like he was planting a flag on the moon. He wanted to cram his face a whisker's breadth from her terrified eyes and tell her everything, everything that was going to happen to her next. Come a day, he wanted to spit into her porcelain face through his gritted teeth, come a day, you will stand before judgment, so help me, before a judge, in fact, or a Senate committee or God his own fat, happy self, and Augie will do as much to you as he has done to me here now. "I never knew her," he'll say. "I never knew what she was up to. We had a fling. She took it too seriously. She was overzealous on my behalf. That wasn't what I meant at all." Then oh then, so help me, so help me, you will strip off that sexless suit of yours, you will ditch your degree in environmental horseshit and scurry to put on some tears and lace blouses and any other waif-like wile of femininity that might just charm your sweet white ass out of prison or your sorry soul out of the flames of hell. And even if you do escape, that's your life ever after, cooz. That's the definition of your future life: a bewildered slag announcing your redemption-through-rehab to some bored reporter from www.excelebrityfelons.com, a ragged exile from your daydreamed self, a half-damned half-spirit in a perdition of philosophical somersaults and rationalizations and glasses of wine—anything—any trick you know to stave off the hour when you make a priest of your mirror and confess to yourself what you did here today.

  He wanted to tell her that, throttling her, clutching her, pumping into her until he finished to the pounding rhythm of the final syllables and ejaculated acid in her, burning right through her womb to poison her bleeding heart...

  But instead, expressionless, he nodded once, the image of dignity, of authority and calm. He looked away from her studied earnestness, down again at the blue folder open in his hands, at the picture in the folder. His eyes went from the green-shingled house to the line of car
s parked at the curb outside. His eyes went to the figure behind the wheel of one of those cars, a man in shadow with his features obscured by the glare of the streetlight on the windshield, the same streetlight that illuminated the right half of the car's license plate. Just enough of the license plate so that Ramsey would be able to track the man down.

  This was all Augie would give him, the last thing he would give him—and he would never admit that he had given him even this. This picture. This figure. This man who had written the graffito in the green-shingled house—or who had made the remark to the gang-bangers there that caused the graffito to be written—who somehow—somehow—knew:

  Ramsey murdered Peter Patterson!

  The image of dignity, of authority and calm, Ramsey lifted his eyes. He looked away from the doomed white girl, done with her. He gazed thoughtfully instead at the televisions on the wall. Augie on all three screens. Standing behind the lectern, before the new post-racial world. Gazing visionary into the TelePrompTer.

  We can't have Me until we have Me and we can't have Me until we learn to have Me-Me-Me as a nation.

  Augie sailing off into the new age—and here was Ramsey left behind in the Media Room with this picture, this picture somehow magically in his hands. That was the way of these things, wasn't it? Someone had to stay behind. Someone had to clean up the mess. Someone had to find the man in the picture, had to find out what he knew and how he knew it.

  And someone, in the end, was going to have to kill him.

  SHANNON OPENED HIS EYES. At first, he was startled to find himself somewhere new, somewhere other than the white room. He lay still on the strange bed, wary. Then he remembered. He sat up, dragging his hand down his cheek, trying to swipe away the tranquilizer haze.

  Stretching, craning his neck, he took in his surroundings. A small studio apartment. Gray walls with a couple of pictures hung on them. Nice wooden floors with a braid rug by the bed. A dresser, a desk, a chair, a mirror on the back of the closet door. He could see himself in the mirror, sitting there with his jockey shorts and his brand-new face on. Look at that: a brand-new face. This time, the sight of it struck him as wonderful. He broke out in a big silly grin. It was just like the foreigner said. He was new mang.

  Excited, he got up to explore. He looked out the windows first. There were only two of them, both on the same wall. Not much of a view. Two brownstones across the street. The entrance to a wide alley next to a small grocery. Just the same, after all that time locked up in the white room, he was eager to get out there. Was he ever! Out in the open air again! He couldn't wait.

  He checked the front door. Yup, it opened. He was free. A new mang and a free mang, too.

  Humming to himself, he wandered around the apartment some more. The fridge in the kitchenette was stocked with food. The dresser was stocked with clothes. The foreigner's folders were on the desk, the ones with all his new identity papers in them—Henry Conor's papers. There was a computer there, too. When he pressed the keyboard, the machine whirred and the monitor lit up, showing classified ads. Carpenters wanted all over the place. Next to the computer: a receipt for the first two months' rent on the apartment. Plus car keys with a Honda logo. Plus a wallet with three hundred-dollar bills in it. Nice.

  Maybe the best thing, though, was what he found in the closet. A big red bag with hammers and wrenches in the outside pouches. He unzipped it. He cursed under his breath with wonder.

  Tools. A beautiful set of brand-spanking-new Milwaukees, bright silver and red. A framing nailer, a roofing nailer, a Skilsaw, a chop saw, cordless hammers, screwdrivers—must've been three thousand bucks' worth of stuff. It made his heart beat harder. He loved good tools.

  Crouched over the bag, he looked around him, nodding to himself. He thought of the foreigner. He felt gratitude to the old dude. Even some affection for him.

  New mang. New life. Like princess in fairy tale.

  He stepped out of the brownstone. He stood at the top of the stoop. It felt like the times he'd gotten out of prison—that same dizzying sense of open space. Your soul shrank when you were inside for too long. It shriveled to the size of the cell you were stuck in. When you finally came out, there was all that wide world whirling around without you in it. It was unnerving. You were afraid that if you let yourself go, if you let your soul expand again, there might not be enough of you to fill all that emptiness. You might drift away like some kind of mist and finally evaporate and be gone forever. Some guys never did dare to do it. They lived the rest of their lives all shrunken up inside as if the cell walls were still around them. Shannon had seen it happen. If they put you in prison long enough, you were in prison forever, even after they let you go.

  But that was the whole point here, wasn't it? He wasn't going back to prison. Not at all, not ever. He had a new face, a new identity. New mang, free mang.

  He went down the stairs like a top-hatted dancer. Down the street like the mayor. Taking in the sights. Excited. Growing bigger inside with every breath. He passed a woman pushing a baby in a stroller. He passed two men and a woman flirting on a brownstone stoop. He passed two older women in skirt suits. They smiled at him as they went by. They had Bibles in their hands. They were coming home from church. He could hear the bells ringing. It was Sunday morning. Nice day, blue sky, temperature spring-cool with an undercurrent of the coming summer heat.

  He went on down the block of brownstones. Past cars parked under green sycamores. That reminded him ... He reached into his pocket. He pressed the button on the key to his Honda. A horn honked nearby. Sure enough, there it was: a blue Civic, his own car. About a year old, clean. In pretty good shape, it looked like. He'd have to give it a spin later. But not now. Now he was walking, like a top-hatted dancer, right out in the open, like anyone, like the mayor.

  Then he reached the corner and turned and stopped short.

  Suddenly, he was staring at a scene of devastation. It stretched into the distance, as far as he could see. In the foreground: brownstones gutted by fire, their windows broken, their brick charred. Beyond those, there were stucco apartment buildings, stricken and slumped like stroke victims. Beyond those, there were piles of churned mud and litter where lawns had been in front of piles of debris that had been houses. In the distance, he could see emergency trailers standing by empty lots, the garbage in the lots making a weird, rocky landscape of appliances and rubble, metal and stone. And all this led at last to the skyline, broken and jagged against the horizon. Light shining through the scorched framework of ruined towers. The city's signature spire snapped off as by a giant's hand. Shannon was never one to watch the news or read the papers much or to fiddle around much online. He'd heard about the floods here and the riots and the fire—you couldn't help but hear. He just hadn't thought about it much. He hadn't thought it could be this bad.

  Standing there, staring, stunned, at the extent of the destruction, he tried to maintain his exuberant mood. He tried to tell himself it wasn't so bad. Hell, he could always leave if he wanted to. He was a free man, that was the whole point, that was the really important thing.

  But it was no good. He'd had such high hopes there for a minute, but now his heart was sinking. He felt sick with disappointment, with bitterness even, even with anger.

  All the places the identity man could've left him, and he left him here, in the ruin of the world.

  He spent the next few days exploring the city, sometimes on foot, sometimes in his car. He drove slowly past toppled trees that blocked the sidewalks, past mountains of stinking garbage, past houses washed right off their foundations and abandoned in house-shaped jumbles by the curb. The sights depressed him. He cursed the identity man. He wished he had enough money to start over somewhere else.

  He walked through neighborhoods overrun with gangsters, prowling young thugs with their eyes all over everything, their hands itching to strike out and make some kind of grab, probably any kind. Watching them, he could feel their antsy energy inside himself, that old agitation. He caught himself
following their glances, casing their lawless neighborhoods for jobs. If only he had enough money...

  Identity like stain, he thought. He shook off the antsy feeling. No, no, no, no. Not here, not this time. New life. New mang.

  The gangsters stared at him balefully and he stared back. They knew a hard guy when they saw one—new face or no new face—and they left him alone.

  He walked on, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, depressed.

  ***

  One day, he parked across the street from a hobbled brownstone. He watched from his car as three ambulance guys rolled a body out of the ground floor on a stretcher. The corpse was enormous, impossibly bloated. It must've been lost in the flooded basement all this time.

  A clutch of onlookers shook their heads and covered their noses. A bunch of homeless guys laughed about it, drunk on their bagged bottles. Even where he was sitting, Shannon caught the stench of the waterlogged dead.

  Man, what a town. What a town this was.

  Patrolmen were standing guard over the scene, their eyes shifting and their hands on their holstered guns. They were the first cops Shannon had seen since he'd gotten here. Their nearness startled him.

  One cop's roving gaze came toward him. Shannon seized up inside, afraid of being spotted and caught. He almost hit the gas and sped away. Then he realized: he didn't have to. He didn't have to worry anymore. He had his brand-new face on. He sat there boldly. The cop's gaze never hesitated. It just passed over him and moved on.