The Identity Man Page 5

  The first night, when the news broke, Karen called him. "Oh my God, Shannon. Are you all right? Call me back." He didn't dare call her back, but at least he could listen to her voice. It made him feel better.

  The second night, though—that was not so good. There had been a message from a cop, some smart-ass detective.

  "Hey, Shannon," the cop said. "This is the police. You're surrounded. Come out with your hands up and no one gets hurt." Then he muttered, "You murdering piece of shit" and hung up. Shannon blanched and turned the phone off quickly.

  Tonight, the third night, Shannon didn't know what to expect. He hoped Karen had called again. He missed her painfully. It had been easy to get tired of her when she was around every day, but now that he might never see her again, he remembered the good times they'd had together. He remembered the pleasure of lying next to her in the dark.

  He turned on the phone. He waited nervously. He imagined the cops pinging him with their devices and zeroing in on his location. He kept an eye on his watch to make sure he didn't keep the phone on longer than a minute. The seconds passed and there didn't seem to be any new messages. Karen hadn't called. He was sorry about that. He figured she realized it was all over for good.

  He was about to turn the phone off, when a light started blinking on the screen. There was no phone message, but there was a text message. Maybe that was from Karen. He pressed the button to bring the message onto the readout.

  The message said: Shannon. You've made a friend. I can help you. The Pacific Mall at midnight. Eyes.

  Shannon went through torments of uncertainty before he decided what to do. He argued it back and forth and back and forth in his mind. He was sure the message was a setup. Probably the cops. Luring him out to the mall where a dozen cruisers waited for him in the shadows. Their lights would suddenly fl ash red on every side of him. Their sirens would howl as they closed in on him like wolves. Or maybe it was something else, some killer cousin of Benny's, waiting to stick a knife in his heart: "This is for what you did to my boy." He would lie on his back in the parking lot and bleed to death, staring into the starless sky.

  What else could it be? What kind of "friend" could he have? What kind of friend could help him? It didn't make sense. It had to be the cops or some killer from Benny. It had to be.

  But with his situation as desperate as it was, he wanted to believe there were other possibilities. It could be real, couldn't it? It could be, say, the girl from Whittaker, the girl he'd helped out when Benny went for her. Maybe she had a brother or sister who wanted to show their gratitude and would bring him down to Mexico and hide him among their happy family. He worked up a daydream about that, about the children playing in the sun and Mamacita bringing him bowls of rice as he waited out the long, hot Mexican days. Then he worked up another fantasy, more elaborate, about this guy Whittaker who ran the foundation. Maybe Whittaker had seen the girl on TV and seen how Shannon had helped her and how he hadn't taken the money from his foundation after all. Someone who had a foundation—he must be at least a billionaire, right? Maybe he was sitting in his red leather wingchair, smoking a pipe in his bathrobe, and he saw the girl on TV and said to his butler, "By gadfrey, Jeeves, I think I'm going to help that young fellow."

  Shannon had to choose. Time was running out. Hector was going to turn him in. He could tell. He either had to leave for Mexico tonight or meet this mysterious friend of his at the mall and hope for the best.

  Eyes—that's what finally tipped the balance. He knew the mall well—he'd cased it for a job once—and he knew Eyes. Eyes was an eyeglasses store. It had a unique location, set on a sort of island in the middle of the mall's enormous parking lot, away from the other stores. If you were a cop—or even a killer—it wasn't the place you would choose for a meeting. It was too easy to scope out. Shannon could approach it from any direction, get a good look at the surrounding area, and make a run for it if there was any trouble. Plus, he could come and go anonymously because, while there were security cameras all over the rest of the mall, the only camera near Eyes was inside the store. It was hard to think of a place in town that would give Shannon more advantages in any kind of ambush. That had to be why this "friend" of his chose it. It had to be some kind of gesture to gain his trust.

  Finally, desperate as he was, he decided to go to the mall.

  The mall at midnight was vast and empty. The quick, steady traffic hissed and flashed past on upper Main and Pacific, the streets that bordered the place on two sides. But in the mall itself, there was nothing moving. The parking lot seemed to go on forever, an immense expanse. On one side, the Pacific side, was the supermarket, the Vons. Way over on the other was the huge white block of a Macy's department store and the long, low white gallery of shops and restaurants that ran from the Macy's to the huge white block of a Sears, for all your home and garden needs. In the middle was the gray pavement of the lot, going on and on. There were no cars there at this hour, which made it seem even larger, oceanic, a shadowy gray sea with the white parking stripes like whitecaps on it. Street lamps made an archipelago of bright pink patches across its brooding, solitary distances.

  Shannon entered the lot from Pacific on foot, skirting the Vons to avoid its security cameras. He was dressed in black again and carrying his gym bag, ready to leave town. His eyes were moving as he crossed the lot, but it was plain to see there was no one in the whole great expanse of it. He headed toward the center, toward the isolated island, toward the small glass box of the eyeglass store, Eyes.

  He moved fast, his black sneakers quiet on the asphalt. He avoided the outglow of the street lamps and stuck to the dark. Now that he was here, his first doubts had resurfaced. He was sure he was walking into trouble like an idiot. It had to be a setup. Had to be.

  He neared the store. He still saw no one, but he had an intense sensation of being watched. Maybe it was just the effect of the glasses in the store window, row after row of eyeglasses peering out at him. Or maybe it was the store sign, the two enormous eyes in spectacles that rose above the line of the roof.

  He made his final approach to the place in a large looping circle, getting a look at it from every side. There was no one near. Shannon paused in the shadows a few yards away. He watched the store. The glasses in the window watched him back. The bespectacled eyes above the roof stared down at him.

  Gradually—and then with a sudden, sickening start—he became aware of a figure in the darkness, a figure standing in the empty parking lot a few yards from the store, just standing there and staring at him like the dead people who had stared down at him in his dream. Shannon's breath caught. How had the figure snuck up on him like that? It was almost as if he'd appeared from nowhere.

  Shannon turned sharply to face him. At once, the figure started walking toward him. Shannon waited, poised to run. The figure came close enough for Shannon to see him in the gray light. It was a man, in his sixties or even seventies maybe, small, heavyset, with rough features. No cop, if Shannon was any judge. He was dressed in a shabby tweed jacket and a button-down shirt and jeans that looked too tight on him, as jeans often do on older men. He had a lot of hair, silver and red, slicked back in an old-fashioned way, the kind of style you would've gotten in a candy-pole barber shop for five bucks fifty years ago. He had bushy eyebrows that seemed to sprout sloppily in various directions. Shannon thought there was something low-life and foreign about him.

  The man stopped where he was, and Shannon's heart leapt as he held something up in his hand. But it was only a cell phone.

  "I call for car, yes?" the man said. Shannon was right: he was a foreigner. He had a thick accent of some kind.

  Shannon shook his head. "You call for car, brother, I'm outta here. What the hell is this? Who are you?"

  "You make friend, like message said. Rich friend, powerful friend. He sends me to help you."

  "Who? I don't have any friends like that. Who?"

  The heavyset man shrugged. He shrugged like a foreigner, too. "You are smart ma
n. You can know."

  Whittaker, Shannon thought. It had to be. Who else? It might be a foreign name. Hard to tell.

  "What does this friend want to do?"

  "He send me to help you. To save you." He held up the phone again. "I call for car."

  This was nuts, Shannon thought. Nuts. It had to be a setup. He was a stone idiot for coming. He had to go. Right now. He had to.

  But he didn't go. He just didn't. The next second and the next, he was still there, still standing there with the rows of eyeglasses in the window watching him and the bespectacled eyes above the roof staring down. He was thinking about Mexico or South America or wherever he would have to run to. It felt to him almost as if that alien country, whatever it was, surrounded the mall, as if it lay just beyond the mall's perimeter. It felt to him almost as if he would suddenly be there if he left the mall. He would be there hunted, alone, lost forever to his motherland, a stranger and an outlaw and prey to anyone.

  "How can you help me?" he said, stalling for time so he could make his mind up.

  But the foreigner with the bushy eyebrows only flipped his phone open. "Send car," he said into it.

  Instantly, Shannon saw the headlights turn in off Main. They bounced toward him across the lot, going in and out of the gray dark and the pink light. It was a blue Cadillac, Shannon could see as it drew near. He could see the shape of the driver behind the wheel, but he couldn't make out his face. The Caddy pulled up close beside the foreigner. The foreigner pulled the rear door open.

  "We should not stay," he said. Then he got into the car's back seat, leaving the door open for Shannon.

  Well, he was right about that anyway. They shouldn't stay, not with the light of the car drawing attention, and all those eyeglasses staring.

  Shannon took a deep breath. Almost before he decided to do it, he was walking to the car. He tossed his gym bag to the floor and lowered himself onto the back seat. As he was pulling the door shut, the car started moving.

  He sat back, dazed. What the hell had he just done? He stared blankly at the pane of dark Plexiglas that shielded the front seat. He couldn't see the driver on the other side. He only saw his own reflection.

  After a moment, he collected himself enough to turn to the foreigner. There were lights burning low on the doors and he could see him clearly. "Where are we going?"

  The foreigner didn't answer. He seemed to be studying Shannon, peering at his face as if it were a statue in a museum. He was twisted around toward him on the seat with his arm up resting on the seatback. He was tilting his head this way and that as if considering his options.

  "What're you looking at?" Shannon asked him.

  The man reached out with his thick, liver-spotted hand. He tried to take hold of Shannon's chin. Shannon slapped the hand away.

  "Get off me. What're you doing?" The foreigner just went on studying him. It gave him the creeps. "Who are you anyway?"

  "I am identity man," the foreigner murmured as he studied him. Only he said mang instead of man. "I am identity mang." Now, finally, he turned away. He reached for something on the other side of him. Shannon craned his neck and peered hard to make out what it was in the dark. It was a medical bag. The foreigner opened it, rooted through it with his thick fingers, glancing at Shannon over his shoulder. "Yes? You know this? Identity?"

  Shannon shook his head. "What—you mean, like, you get people fake ID?"

  "Oh! Please! Not fake ID." The foreigner went on looking at Shannon but went on rooting in his medical bag at the same time. " Real ID. New. I give you new everything. I give you new face. I give you new name, new papers, new work, new place to live. Yes? Is good, huh? I save you. I give you new life entirely."

  Then, with unbelievable swiftness, animal swiftness that outraced the mind, he whipped his hand around and plunged a syringe into Shannon's neck.

  Shannon began to lift his hand in self-defense, but his hand fell back as he sank into unconsciousness.

  PART II

  THE WHITE ROOM

  THE GANGSTER WAS fifteen years old. He called himself Super-Pred—he actually called himself that. He had his own following among the scattered crews warring over the city's Northern District, or what was left of the Northern District after the looting and the fire and the flood. He had a rep for the unimaginably sudden and grotesque: frothing fits of rage that left his enemies de-boweled or otherwise damaged irrevocably. There was, for instance, one thirteen-year-old in his posse nicknamed Eyeball because Super-Pred had torn one of his eyeballs out in a property dispute over some twelve-year-old cooch—who, by the way, had been missing ever since.

  Thus Lieutenant Brick Ramsey watched dispassionately as Detective Gutterson beat the little cancer down.

  They were in a steel shed, what had been a storage shed out back of an auto parts shop years back. The shop itself was long gone but the shed stood even after the flooding. Corrugated steel walls and a dirt floor. That's where the boy was—on the floor, hands over his head to protect it. The blood from his nose had made a round stain about the size of a silver dollar in the packed earth.

  Well, these things had to be. The Northern District was lawless now. Murders every hellish day. Gunfire all the time—so much gunfire that citizens had stopped calling it in—it was just rattling background noise to them like cicadas in the trees. Super-Pred's squad—and other squads like them—prowled the ruined streets in dark and daylight. Slink-backed coyotes, drooling for Vics. With rap-star T-shirts and golden dollar signs on golden chains and baggy pants like their convict heroes wore. One night, a pack of them broke into a woman's emergency trailer—one of those trailers the feds gave to people who'd lost their homes in the storm. They broke in and raped her to death right there in her own bed, her four-year-old daughter crouching in the corner.

  That was bad enough. But last night, someone really crossed the line. Someone popped a cruiser. A cop car establishing a presence on Northern Boulevard. A couple of patrolmen doing a slow pass, giving the evil eye to the whores and dealers there. Some joker hunkered like Baghdad behind a Dumpster in an alley opened up with a Kalishnikov and peppered the car's passenger door, could've hurt the rookie riding shotgun. Shooter was gone before they could chase him down. That crossed the line. That couldn't be allowed to stand. When the police passed by, you faded, motherfucker, you vanished like the Cheshire Cat till there was nothing left of you but your shit-eating grin. That was the law of the streets.

  "I'm going to leave here with your scrotum in my pocket or the name of the fool with the AK," Lieutenant Ramsey said quietly.

  Detective Gutterson kicked the boy in the stomach by way of punctuation, making the punk let go of his head and clutch his belly now, all curled up and writhing on the shed's dirt floor.

  Gutterson smiled down at his work. And what a likely thug he was, Ramsey thought. Two hundred and fifty pounds of pure contempt disguised as a human being. A six-foot-four frame of deteriorating muscle. A smirking, resentful expression plastered on that crewcut potato of a head, an age-old mask of hatred that spoke trouble to a brother's very DNA. Back in his dreamed-of yesteryears, Ramsey figured, Gutterson probably would have been an overseer on a southern slave plantation, all whip and hard-on. Now he was a bullying cop in whatever was left of this bled-dry city, and it was one of Ramsey's few remaining sources of job satisfaction that he could tell a dog like this to fetch and it would go fetch, despising his colored master only a little more than he despised himself for having to obey.

  Gutterson was loving this, just loving it. It was probably the highlight of his week. And the junior g, Mr. Super-Pred down there—he knew it, too. He knew that his only pathway out of this mini-perdition was through the sympathies of Lieutenant Ramsey.

  "You let that peckerwood do a brother like this?" he whined, clutching his gut, squinting up at Ramsey through his swollen mug.

  Ramsey squatted on the shed floor so he could peer directly in through the purpling lumps of the gang-banger's cheeks to the dim gleam of the swimm
ing child-eyes buried in them. The lieutenant smiled. A quiet, distant smile to let the boy know that the road of racial solidarity ended at the brick wall of his heart. Then he faked a friendly glance up at Gutterson.

  "Used to be a preacher in my neighborhood when I was a boy. Reverend Mack. He could do a Sunday morning, all right. Full of the spirit. One day, I got up to some mischief or other. My mama hauled me into his office so he could put the fear of God in me. Her holding me half up in the air by my elbow and him standing behind his desk, looming over me like Mount Sinai, sending up smoke and fire and the word of God. And all I could think about was this picture hung up on the wall behind his desk. He must've found it in a book somewhere. Tore it out and framed it. It was a picture of Jesus stomping out sin. Couldn't take my eyes off it. Sin was this—this kind of a twisting, hissing, black serpent all writhing under Jesus' foot, with this half-man, half-dragon face, something out of a horror movie. Just writhing there, helpless, spitting hatred up at the Lord." Above him, Gutterson chuckled heavily. Ramsey choked back his hatred of the man. Looked away from him, looked down at the boy. "That's what you remind me of, son. Twisting there, writhing there on the ground. You remind me of that picture."

  Super-P panted through his pain. "I'm just a brother trying to get by on the mean streets, daddy."

  "That right?"

  "Just a brother trying to get by, same as you."

  Lieutenant Ramsey smiled down at the boy patiently but the smile was a fake, and it felt to him even at that moment like the fake it was. His whole demeanor of self-restrained dignity—his lifelong demeanor—felt to him at this point like a hollow construction, a shell he lived in like a hermit crab. The man he seemed was the shell of the man he had once set out to be, his mother's son. But inside, he was not that man. He knew he was not that man.