The Identity Man Read online

  Peter Patterson was lost in such philosophical thoughts he didn't notice the water rising. It was pouring in fast from the east where the river had broken through the levies. It was burbling up out of the sewers with such force that manhole covers were being lifted and rattled aside, one after another, as the deluge crossed town.

  Peter Patterson began to feel the grip of the flood on his tires, the steering wheel tugging at his hands, but he was distracted. He figured he was just going through another puddle.

  Then his headlights picked out the body of a drowned man.

  Oh, it was an eerie sight to see. It was so unreal, he felt a stutter of disbelief between the moment he understood what it was and the moment the terror began to rise in him. Peter Patterson stared through the windshield, open-mouthed. The corpse's ballooning shirt gleamed white in the headlights as he floated face down through the silent intersection up ahead.

  "Holy mother of God," Peter Patterson whispered.

  An instant later, the tide was on him.

  He felt a soft jolt against the side of the old Chrysler. He turned and was startled to find the water outside was suddenly lapping at the bottom of the car's door. The next moment, with one low, electric groan, the New Yorker stalled. It stopped and sat there, dark and dead, a motionless hulk around him.

  Peter Patterson reflexively reached for the keys, but the shutdown had such a finality to it that he didn't even bother to try to restart the engine. He just pulled the keys from the ignition. He knew he had to get out, get free, as fast as he could.

  He tried to shoulder open the door. It gave a little—just a little. Then the pressure of the water held it. Through the windshield, in the wavering glow of a fire nearby, he could still see the white shirt of the drowned man as he floated, slowly revolving, down the street. A little zap of fresh panic went through him.

  You could get caught in here. You could be that guy, he thought.

  He shouldered the door again, harder this time, with a little of that I-don't-wanna-die adrenalin pumping through him. It was no good. The weird, living gelatin of the flood pushed back against him. He hit the door again, even harder, even more afraid. At last, it gave way. The water poured in over his feet and ankles, shockingly cold. The door slid open just enough—just enough for Peter Patterson to force himself desperately through the gap.

  He stood up in the street. The water reached his knees and was still rising. Shockingly, shockingly cold. Insidious in its swiftness. He could feel the force of it, trying to nudge him away from the car, trying to coax him into the arms of the current. The cold seeped into him like a seductive whisper, trying to weaken his resolve. It was the voice of the storm. The storm wanted to kill him. He could feel it. It wanted him floating and turning down the street like the drowned man. He was already shivering, already growing weak with the cold.

  Peter Patterson held on to the car door with one hand, using all the strength that was left in his freezing fingers. He looked around him and behind him, searching for the best way out, praying to God to help him find it. The glow of the fire to the north lit the intersection with an eerie brightness. He could make out the shapes of buildings silhouetted against it. The dark grew thick in the near distance, though, with the electric down. Hard to find my way, Lord.

  He remembered the keychain gripped in his free hand. There was a small flashlight on it. He lifted it. Had to be careful not to drop it—his hand was getting so stiff—his whole body was shuddering with cold. He pressed the button and shot a thin blue beam in different directions, this way and that. It picked out patches of water, black and boiling on every side of him. He had to pray some more to fight his rising panic. He turned the unsteady beam over the buildings around him. There was a promising one, about a block away. He might be able to break into that. It was blackened brick, about six stories tall. There were boards on the ground-floor windows, but he was sure he could tear them off. There'd be stairs inside. He could climb up to higher ground. Thank you, Jesus.

  He took a deep breath for courage and reluctantly let go of the car. He began wading through the water toward the intersection. The drowned corpse turned and floated past the corner to his left, like a taunt, like a threat, like an omen. But Peter Patterson tried not to look in that direction. He told himself he was going to make it, he was going to be all right. He kept praying.

  The flood was up to the bottom of his thighs now, but he was still stronger than the current. He could still push through. Only the cold worried him. Wicked cold. It ate into him, ate away his strength. It made his arms quiver, as he pressed them tightly against his sides. The rain lashed his face and his sodden overcoat clung to him. Every stride through the thick flood was an effort. He felt heavy and was getting heavier. He felt like a man made of soft, wet clay trying to reach his goal before the clay dried and hardened so that he became a statue on the city street. His teeth began to chatter. He made shuddering noises, battling to take another slow step and another. Don't let me die.

  He reached the intersection. The light here was bright and startling, drawing his attention to the west. He turned to look and stopped where he was, stood still, letting out a tremulous breath as the water washed around him.

  The flames were bright here, the city on fire. You wouldn't think it could burn like that in all this rain. Only a block away, beyond the revolving corpse in the foreground, jagged lashings of livid orange burst through a broad storefront and scarred the black night. The store's low white roof gleamed red. The taller brownstones on either side of it loomed darkly above the burning. The water flowed and rose on the street out front, reflecting the fire in places or sometimes swallowing its light or sometimes sending up flickering splashes as people kicked through it. The human figures appeared in silhouette, running into the flaming shop and out again, carrying their boxes of plunder. They were busy as insects, but now and then the fire caught the face of a man, his eyes weirdly dead and bright at the same time, dead with the mindless passion of his hunger and bright with the hunger at the same time, dead and bright like the white shirt on the back of the corpse revolving in the current.

  Appalled, Peter Patterson stood there for a moment, watching. But only for a moment. The flames were vivid and hot to the eye, but they gave no heat really. The water still had him in the clutches of its cold, numbing him and urging him into its flow. He had to fight it. He had to move. He had to keep moving. Help me, God.

  He turned to go on—and there was Ramsey towering over him.

  Lieutenant Brick Ramsey killed Peter Patterson quickly and efficiently. He grabbed the bookkeeper by the shoulder and thrust the blade of the combat knife deep between his ribs and into his heart, twisting it to sever the artery. The two men were close together. Ramsey could practically read the sequence of Peter Patterson's thoughts in his eyes. Patterson was startled by Ramsey's sudden appearance but then, for a single instant, he tried to make sense of it, maybe figured he was the fed who'd been sent to meet him in the rain. Then Ramsey jammed the knife in and Peter Patterson's eyes went wide in pain and bewilderment. But before he died, the logic of it must have come to him because Ramsey could see that he understood.

  Peter Patterson tried to struggle free, but it was only a small instinctive motion. He was already too weak and he knew he was finished, his lips moving in prayer. Ramsey held him against the knife handle easily. As Peter Patterson's knees buckled, Ramsey lowered the bookkeeper into the water and pressed down on the knife to force him beneath the surface. Peter Patterson thrashed once before his final breath came bubbling out of him. Then he sank to the bottom of the roiling flow.

  Bent over low, bent close to the water, the cold damp soaking through his sleeves, Lieutenant Ramsey held Peter Patterson down. The firelight penetrated the black depths, and he could make out the bookkeeper's face down there. He was sickened by the sight of the eyes staring up at him, sickened at the gaping mouth, wavery underwater, and the staring eyes full of what looked to him like pity. He had to turn away from them.
He lifted his own eyes to the fl ames: the burning storefront and the dark buildings looming over it on either side. He saw the silhouetted figures of the looters splashing around in the firelight and caught glimpses of their bright, dead faces. He still had one hand on Peter Patterson's shoulder and the other on the knife. With a sickening thrill, he felt—or thought he felt—Peter Patterson's heartbeat pulsing in the knife handle. The pulse weakened and faded away and was gone.

  Ramsey wrestled the knife free and straightened, knee-deep in the water. He let the knife slip out of his hand. It plopped into the flood and sank down, gleaming dully and then more dully until it settled, dim silver, on the bottom beside Patterson's body. Strange. For a moment there, Ramsey had felt relief, really wonderful relief. The very moment of the murder had seemed bright and explosive—a bright moment of freedom from the tension leading up to it—a star-toothed, bright, explosive release from the nausea of the self-hatred and shame he had barely been aware of feeling. But as he released his grip on the body, as he dropped the knife and stood, the nova-like blast of freedom shrank back into itself and the blackness at its edges—the blackness of shame, of self-disgust—came sweeping down on him in a torrent ten-fold and it was horrible. Horrible. Before, sitting in the car, it had seemed to him there was no getting out of this. What with Augie and all the people he knew and all the things they expected of him, Ramsey could see no way then to avoid what had to be done. But now, now that it was over, it all looked different. He saw that he could have gotten out—he could've said no at any time—of course, he could have. It was this—this now—that there was no getting out of. This was done and there was no undoing it. It was like a stain, an acid stain; no washing it away. Ramsey had to force his mind into a kind of deadness so he wouldn't feel the full awareness of it all at once. But it was there nonetheless. The stain, the guilt. The shame, the self-disgust. He had made himself a nightmare with no waking ever.

  The clammy water swirled around his legs. The cold of it was beginning to reach into him. The cold made the flames he saw seem strange and unreal, all leaping action and no true heat, like a movie or a memory of fire. Ramsey stood in the flood and shivered and gazed at the burning, drowning city. He felt unbearably alone, unbearably exposed to the eyes of the night, which he knew full well were his mother's eyes and the eyes of his mother's God.

  A THOUSAND MILES away, a week or so later, as evening came, Shannon was working with wood. We'll call him Shannon anyway. He'd had a couple of other names in his life and he'll have one more before this story is finished, but he was Shannon now and it'll do. He was running a draw knife over a block of white ash. White ash was a hard wood to shape and it rotted fast, but he liked the color of it. This block in particular had caught his eye in the art supply store. He could see a woman in it, a woman's face. She was not young but not old either. She was very gentle and sweet, feminine and yearning. It was only the face but he could picture all of her. He could see her standing in the doorway of a house at the edge of a field of grain. She was looking into the distance, watching for her man, hoping he would come back to her.

  When Shannon had finished shaving the block down to the right size, he would go at it with his gouges and draw out the woman's features. He could do that. He could see the shapes in wood and carve them. It was a knack he had. No one had taught it to him. He'd just found out about it in the shop in the Hall, the first time he was sent away, when he was still a juvenile. He'd gotten six months for misdemeanor breaking and entering, pled down from a felony. He'd gone to the Hall shop to kill time, and he'd somehow discovered this talent of his. When his 8320 counselor found out about it, he arranged for Shannon to get training as a carpenter. That was supposed to give him an honest profession and keep him out of trouble. It hadn't kept him out of trouble. He still was what he was. But in his spare time, he carved wood. He liked doing it. It had a good effect on him. It made him calm inside and still. It was the only thing that did. His mind got into the rhythm of his hands and he got wrapped up in what he was doing. He began to think and wonder about things, things that were different and interesting, questions that had no answers. Now, for instance, as his two hands worked the draw knife back over the tough off-white surface of the block, he was wondering: Where had this woman come from, this woman whose face he saw? Was she really in the wood to begin with or had his imagination just put her there? If she wasn't in the wood, how did he see her? How had she gotten into his imagination? She wasn't like anyone he knew or remembered. Maybe he had met her somewhere or passed her on the street and forgotten. Or maybe they had never met but she existed anyway and had somehow come into his imagination by ESP or something so that he saw her face in the wood as you might see someone in a dream who later turned out to be real. That might also explain how he could have real feelings about her. Because he did. When he thought of her standing there, waiting for her man in the doorway of the house, when he pictured her face brightening with a smile as she first spotted him coming up the road through the field, his heart lifted. He felt glad, genuinely glad, as if he were the man coming home to her. He even smiled—smiled back at her—as he worked the draw knife over the wood. It seemed too bizarre to him that he could feel this way about someone who didn't exist at all.

  This was the sort of thing he wondered about when his mind fell into the rhythm of his hands carving wood. It was stupid probably, but it made him calm and still inside and nothing else did.

  Shannon wasn't sure how old he was, but he was about thirty-one or -two. His driver's license said thirty-two and he knew it was around there somewhere. He was just over six feet tall, lean, broad-chested, and muscular. He had a long, rugged face with lines down the sides and around the eyes that made him look thoughtful and sad. He was wearing jeans now and no shirt. Sawdust clung to the sweat on his chest and arms.

  The warmth of day lingered in the Southern California evening. The air smelled of eucalyptus and the sea. Shannon was standing in the little square of yard behind the three-story apartments, where he lived on the top floor. He was using the workbench he'd set out there among the lawn chairs.

  He was about to lay the draw knife aside and open his roll of gouges, but he noticed the long light was finally failing. Another ten minutes and it would be too dark to go on. It wasn't worth beginning the next stage of the sculpture.

  Shannon sighed and straightened, taking one hand off the knife and pressing the heel of his palm into his back as he stretched. As quick as that—as soon as he stopped carving—he remembered what he had to do tonight.

  On the instant, his good feeling and his calm were gone.

  Benny Torrance was coming. They were going to do a job. Shannon knew he shouldn't be doing jobs anymore, but somehow he kept doing them anyway. People called and asked him to come in on something, and he knew he should say no, but he never did. He needed the money, for one thing. The carpentry work had been sporadic lately. But it wasn't just that. Even when he was working full-time, he still did break-ins. He needed the buzz, the thrill of them. It was like he was addicted to it. Day-to-day life got on his nerves after a while. When he was carving wood, he was calm, it was all right, but when he wasn't, he needed something else. Day-to-day life made his skin crawl.

  All the same, he had a bad feeling about this job. He'd had a bad feeling about it for days. He couldn't afford any more mistakes, couldn't afford any more convictions. He had two previous knocks for burglaries in inhabited dwellings. Those were serious felonies. One more and the three-strike law kicked in. That meant he'd die behind bars or get out only as a shuffling old man, doughy from prison starch and barely able to tolerate the free light of day. Sometimes the thought of that made him lie awake at night sweating. It made him sick inside with dread. He had to force himself not to think about it.

  So there was that. And then there was the Benny Torrance of it all. Benny was bad news any way you looked at it. He was crazy. There were all kinds of stories about him. Ham Underwood, a guy Shannon knew, said he'd once shared
a hooker with Benny and Benny went nuts and nearly killed her for no reason. And there were other stories like that, too. But they weren't the worst of it. Just a couple of nights ago, after he'd agreed to do the job, Shannon had been drinking in the Clover and some guys were talking about that home invasion in Carpinteria. The Hernandez killings. Some of the guys said it was a gang thing, but one of them said it was Benny and he sounded like he knew. That's when Shannon started to get his bad feeling, when he heard that. The Hernandez business was some very sick shit. The whole family had been murdered: father, mother, and two kids, a boy and a girl. If Benny was the doer, Shannon didn't want to be anywhere near him. He was a break-in man, not a rapist or a killer. But he had already agreed to go in on the job and now he felt like he couldn't pull out.

  Shannon went inside and showered the wood chips off him. He dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt for the job. He went into the kitchen and cooked himself some eggs and ham. He slid them from the pan to a plate and ate them standing at the sink with a glass of red wine set on the counter. He hoped the wine would take the edge off his bad feeling.

  Karen was in the living room. She was watching some TV show about movie stars, which one was screwing which, and so on. Shannon could hear the lady announcer sounding all excited about it, and there were flashes of music like flashes of bright light. When he was done with his eggs, he put the plate in the sink and carried his wine glass to the living room doorway. He leaned against the door frame and looked down at Karen. She was lying on the sofa, drinking a beer and smoking a joint, relaxing after her work day. She had changed out of the clothes she wore at the hotel and was wearing shorts and a pink T-shirt. She had a good body, big breasts, ripe thighs. She had a pretty face, too, when she was made-up nicely. Her dark hair shone in the light from the lamp next to the sofa.