The Identity Man Read online

  "Here," he said. He put out one of his knobbly hands. He was holding a couple of capsules.

  "No, I'm good," Shannon said. "I don't need them anymore."

  "Take. Or I put needle in neck again." Shannon scraped the pills up off the foreigner's palm. "They will make you sleep. When you wake up, you have new life, like princess in fairy tale." He handed Shannon the juice bottle with the straw.

  Shannon swallowed the pills, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Where'll you be?" he asked. It wasn't that he'd miss the foreigner exactly, but he was curious. He'd gotten used to the old guy, the only person he'd seen in ... well, he didn't know how long.

  "Lie down or you will fall on new face."

  Shannon lay back on the bed, looking up at the foreigner, at his disreputable old-world countenance with the hair sprouting in all the wrong places.

  "You just go off to another job or what?" he asked him.

  "I disappear like smoke," the foreigner said. "Close eyes."

  "Identity mang has no identity, huh," said Shannon sleepily. He was already going under, starting to blink heavily. He fought it for another second or two. Now that the time had finally come, he was nervous about all this, his new life and so on. It'd been boring in here, in the white room, but it had felt safe anyway. Without newspapers or the TV news, the cops and Benny Torrance and the Hernandez killings had all seemed very far away. He'd forgotten what it was like to be out there in the world, on the run with the law after you.

  Anxious or not, he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. He let them fall shut slowly. He lay still, countering his nervousness with images of the house from that last movie, the house in the small town with the lights on in the windows and Mom and Dad inside...

  He gave a long nostalgic sigh. He missed those old days.

  PART III

  THE WOODEN ANGEL

  RAMSEY DREAMED he was standing on the flooded street again with the city burning all around him. The water had risen to his thighs and Peter Patterson's body was sunk in it, staring up at him through the rain-rattled surface. Then the water began to thicken and grow opaque. The bookkeeper's corpse grew dimmer. Only his stare remained bright. Ramsey heard a voice. He turned and saw his mother, long dead, walking toward him from a block or two away. She was dressed in her print dress for Sunday meeting, holding a black umbrella over her head. She was pushing steadily between the flaming buildings, through the driving rain.

  "A man who is full of sin is full of shame!" she cried out, shaking her Bible at him.

  He looked down again and Peter Patterson's corpse was no longer visible because, Ramsey suddenly realized, the water had turned to blood.

  The dream haunted Ramsey as he tied his tie that morning standing before the bedroom mirror. He had woken from the nightmare with his heart racing and the image of his long-dead mother walking toward him through the storm made his heart race again as it came back to him.

  A man who is full of sin is full of shame!

  Where had he heard that phrase before? Somewhere. He tucked the tip of the port-red tie down into the Windsor. It looked good against the dark blue shirt. It would add to his air of authority and dignity. That would help at his meeting this morning with Augie Lancaster. He had always suspected that Augie was a little intimidated by him, overawed by his aura of street wisdom and self-control.

  As he pulled the knot tight, he remembered: Skyles. That's where the phrase in his dream had come from. The Reverend Jesse Skyles. What brought him to mind? he wondered.

  The Reverend Jesse Skyles was the most dangerous man in the city. That's what Augie Lancaster had called him anyway, though in Ramsey's opinion, Augie's hatred for the reverend had sometimes shaded over into personal obsession. Every time word got out that Skyles was setting up another of his makeshift churches, Augie would have Ramsey assign precious police resources to find it. He would send building inspectors and fire inspectors to shut it down, or bangers—and off-duty cops pretending to be bangers—to bust it up. At one point, he was threatening to raid the next place right during the service. He had some fantasy about SWAT storming in, rousting suspicious characters, dragging the minister himself away in handcuffs on some trumped-up charge. Ramsey had had a job of it making him see reason. These are good folks gathering, Ramsey said, your folks, home folks who love them some God. You couldn't go in there like it was Baghdad. It would only turn people against you, and give Skyles credibility, too. It might even alert some news media—the national news media, who weren't in Augie's pocket back then. Let me go over there, Ramsey said. Let me go over and have a look. Augie liked that idea. He got the picture of it. Ramsey's very presence during the service—the presence of a respected lawman who had risen up from these very streets—would send a chill of suspicion and danger through the congregation. They would ask themselves: What's the lieutenant doing here? Is the reverend up to something wrong? What's the lieutenant going to think if he sees me here? Maybe I should stay home next time, stay away from this, I don't need the trouble. It might even intimidate Skyles himself.

  That Sunday, the reverend held his service in a storefront in the Five Corners. He and his deacons must've thrown the place together Saturday night. Nothing but metal folding chairs for pews and a card table for an altar. No light in the cramped room but the morning sun through the big window and a couple of desk lamps set on top of stools, their extension cords running to the outlets next door. They'd put out the come-to-meeting at the last possible minute, with phone calls and runners to keep it within the congregation. It was the only way they could outsmart Augie's inspectors and the bangers and the off-duty cops.

  But Ramsey found them. Of course. Ramsey pushed gigantically through the door just as the sermon was beginning. He stood in the back of the room large as life and watched with his grim, threatening dignity hanging over the church like a vulture. The worshippers felt him there from the outset. They shifted uncomfortably in their folding chairs. They cast sidelong glances at him.

  But not Skyles. Skyles had the spirit in him that morning. It was as if he had swallowed a Roman candle: he was jumping around and there were sparks flying out of him every which way. No lawman—and no man's law—were going to hold him back.

  "The white man in America is full of sin and a man who is full of sin is full of shame. He's full of the shame of racism, the shame of slavery and Jim Crow. And he'll do anything to make that shame go away. He'll give you money—welfare money for doing nothing. He'll give you government jobs you didn't earn and don't deserve. He'll say: 'You wanna take drugs? You wanna get your girlfriend pregnant? You want to live without morality? Why, that's okay, little black man, you go right on ahead. I give you abortions to kill those babies. I give the mother money so you don't have to marry her. I give you some pro-grams for those drugs. Pro-grams, that'll set you right up. Just don't be calling me racist. I'll give you anything you want, just set me free of my shame.'"

  In appearance, Skyles was a prim little man. Old—Lieutenant Ramsey noticed with some bitterness—old enough to remember segregation and the rest. Wore a three-piece suit. Had a receding hairline and wire-rimmed glasses. When he was standing still, he had the punctilious, slightly sour aspect of a man who sold ladies' underwear and found it rather distasteful—though in fact he ran a Donut Land franchise over on Pearl Street. But when the spirit was in him like this, he never did stand still. He jumped and strutted like a chicken on fire. Back and forth behind the folding table with the flames and sparks shooting out of him and the words bubbling out of his mouth in a high frantic rasp.

  "You say to me, 'No, no, no—no, no, no, Reverend Skyles, we don't take nothing from the white man. We got the black man in power now. We got Augie Lancaster in power. He give us that money. He give us them abortions. He give us some pro-grams! We do love us some pro-grams, Reverend Skyles, they set us right up.' But I tell you truly. I tell you: Augie Lancaster is the white man. Augie Lancaster has made himself the tool of the white man's shame. He understands the agony of
their sin. He goes right to Washington, he says, 'If you don't want me to call you racist, you better give me some of that money you take from people who earn their livings. You don't want that shame, you gotta give me some more jobs, some more pro-grams.' That's how he buys his homes and his boats and his mistresses. That's how he buys his friends—by giving them those jobs. And that's how he buys you, too. That's right. He buys you, too, just like the rest. And yes, I see his police thug standing in the back there—" he shouted suddenly. He didn't even deign to glance at the imposing Ramsey. He just shouted: "You don't need to be stealing looks back there at him, you keep your eyes on the truth! You keep your eyes on the Word!"

  That got some amens going for a moment, little eruptions of them here and there. Annoyed, Lieutenant Ramsey let his eyes move sternly over the heads of the parishioners. I'm seeing you, he was telling them. I'm seeing your faces. The people cast their sidelong glances at him. Fear and anxiety tightened their lips. The amens petered out and died.

  But Jesse Skyles went on, unstoppable. He had the spirit in him.

  "Now the white man has enslaved you again, but it's worse this time, because this time you're his accomplice. Augie Lancaster is an accomplice, and you're an accomplice in your own slavery. You looking to massa to help you instead of helping yourself. You're taking his money and giving up your self-reliance. You take his abortions and give up your responsibilities. You take his pro-grams and give up your morality. You getting fat on the milk of his sin, on the honey of his shame. You get all that sweetness by blaming the white man, so you don't need to take no responsibility for yourself."

  Ramsey continued to stand there, lithic and imposing, his hands folded in front of him, his roving stare picking off amens like they were ducks at a shooting gallery. He was aware of the anger burbling volcanically in the core of that tightly controlled self of his. He was beginning to see Augie's point about this loudmouth. What did he have to be saying this kind of thing for? Didn't these people have troubles enough? They needed those jobs and pro-grams Augie got for them. What else did they have? And who else would give them? So why make them feel bad about it? Why make them look bad to themselves—or to the white man if he was listening? And why make Augie look bad? Ramsey was beginning to understand why Augie was so intent on bringing Skyles down.

  "Let me ask you a question." Skyles shot the words at his congregation, undeterred by their intimidated silence, hopping back and forth, back and forth behind the folding table. "Who is it who does you like this? Who gives you money but takes your self-reliance? Who gives you jobs but robs you of your desire for excellence? Who takes care of your babies for you but steals your morality and your dignity? Let me ask you this question so you understand: Who gives you the things of the body and lures you away from the things of the spirit?"

  "The devil!" an older woman shouted from the folding chairs—the spirit had caught her and she couldn't help herself. Half a dozen worried sidelong glances went toward Lieutenant Ramsey. The woman realized what she'd done and half glanced at him, too. But then she must've figured it was too late. She settled back into her folding chair with a defiant sniff and an I-don't-care wiggle of her bottom.

  And Jesse Skyles's spirit fed off hers. "The devil!" he answered back, riding a fine, high wave of indignation. "It's the devil who gives you the things of the world and lures you away from the soul things, the real things. It's guilty white folks trying to buy their way out of history. It's Augie Lancaster making his money and his power off their shame. And it's the devil himself. And if you ask me, they all three's the same!"

  Lieutenant Ramsey shrugged into his blue blazer now and examined himself one last moment in the mirror. He had the effect he wanted: distinguished and commanding. He looked into his own eyes.

  The nightmare was still in his mind and the memory of Skyles was in his mind, too, and out of the interplay between them, a truth came to him.

  Down deep, way down deep, he had agreed with Reverend Skyles that day. He understood that now, only now. He had been angry at Skyles for defying him and for saying what he said, but down deep he had agreed. How could it have been otherwise? What Skyles was telling the people was no different from what Ramsey's mother had told him, what his mother had pounded into him as she sculpted his heart with that hammering Bible. Self-reliance, morality, dignity, self-control. Don't be looking to anyone else to take care of you. Pull yourself up and walk like a man.

  That day at that makeshift church—that day marked the first inkling Ramsey had in his heart that the logic of his life had been skewed and twisted, even corrupted and spoiled by Augie—by Augie and his promises and his high rhetoric and his flash. It was the first time he was forced to brush away the suspicion that there was no excuse for this man, that his ends did not justify his means, that he was in fact empty and disreputable in every particular, and had led Ramsey astray step by self-justifying step. That's why Ramsey had come to feel that Augie was right about Skyles, that Skyles was dangerous. Because down deep he realized that Skyles could overturn everything, the whole city. Because down deep, he realized that Skyles was speaking the unholy truth of his own mistakes.

  That's why he had agreed to help Augie destroy him.

  He turned from the mirror and left the bedroom. He went into the living room and stood beside the small round dining table near the kitchenette. He lifted his coffee mug from the table and brought it to his lips for a last sip, even though he knew the coffee had grown cold and bitter. He looked over the mug's rim at the apartment. Hard to believe he'd been living here almost a year now. Hard to believe it was a year since his wife had asked him to go. The apartment was small and drab, furnished as impersonally as a hotel room. Even looking straight at it, he barely saw it anymore.

  A man who is full of sin is full of shame.

  So it was, no question. His mama never lied.

  He paused before he took another sip of the coffee. All his life, he reflected, he had kept control over his emotions. It was no different now. His shame was just one more emotion he had to control, bad dreams and all.

  He set the mug down and left for his meeting with Augie.

  He was asked to wait in the Media Room. The Media Room, they called it now. That was new. It was the Conference Room last time he was here. But today it was, "Of course, Lieutenant, go right in and have a seat in the Media Room," from the white boy at the front desk. The white boy was new also, one of the volunteers who'd come in from the coast after the flood.

  The flood had changed a lot of things around here.

  The Media Room was a long chamber paneled in dark wood with one wall of windows overlooking the city park. The glass table was still here from its more modest Conference Room days. And there were still those fancy overpriced chairs around it, the ones with the aerated backs: your tax dollars at work. Now, though, your tax dollars were working overtime, because there were also three, count them three, flat-screen TVs on the wall opposite the windows. TV on the left showed local channel eight; TV on the right showed local channel five; and TV in the middle showed CNN in a little square surrounded by a lot of other little squares showing other news channels. And what do you know? Right this minute, as if it were planned, as if it were timed for Ramsey's edification, all three stations, eight, five, and CNN, were featuring none other than the increasingly famous Augie Lancaster. Augie had made a speech last night before the Council on Justice. It had been touted in the media as his debut on the national political scene. So there he was at the lectern, gazing like a visionary into the distance or at least into the TelePrompTer. The audio on the TVs was off, thank God, but the TV on channel eight was running captions, the white words on the black background appearing under Augie's image, line by line: "We can't have faith until we have hope and we can't have hope until we learn to dream again as a nation..."

  Nigger, what you on about? Ramsey thought, and the hint of a shadow of a whisper of a smile played at the corner of his lips.

  Shaking his head, he turned hi
s back on the TVs and faced the window. He gazed out at the park three stories below. From here, the city looked whole and brilliant. This little corner of the city anyway, the square of government buildings surrounding the sculpted lawn. Men and women walked busily to and fro on gracefully curving asphalt paths. They wore colorful spring shirts and blouses, solid reds and oranges and yellows. The tulips were red and orange and yellow in their beds. Above it all, the dome of city hall presided stately and golden against the blue sky. City of Hope. City of Justice. From here, the little square looked like Augie Lancaster's rhetoric made real.

  Watching the people below, it occurred to Ramsey that it was a beautiful, warm spring day out there. It occurred to him that he had taken no joy in it, that he'd barely noticed it as he walked from his car to the building. It occurred to him that all his joy in life, in fact, was gone.

  Just then, the door opened behind him.

  Ramsey turned and saw a young woman come in. It was a terrible and wholly unexpected moment. As soon as he saw her, he felt a kind of spiritual vertigo, as if a trapdoor had opened inside him, the Inner Man falling through. Nothing in his expression changed, of course. His aura of authority and dignity glowed as brightly around him as ever—brighter because of the extra effort required to keep it there, a hollow persona willed into place around a now empty core. But just that one look at the woman and he understood everything that was about to happen.

  He'd never seen her before, but he knew her all right. Graduate from some hall of intellectual mirrors. Bard, Sarah Lawrence, Earlham, one of those. Just out of grad school or law school or still in or about to go. Studying something about the environment probably. Advanced Self-Righteous Hysteria 101. With her porcelain skin and the golden blond hair and that body they seem to issue these women along with their degrees nowadays: the taut, slender body with just enough Girl in it to get them what they wanted but not enough so they could be blamed. She had been in her dorm room when she'd first seen Augie on TV. Or maybe in her bedroom at her parents' house or in the apartment they'd bought her. After hours of wallowing in teary-eyed indignation, staring at images of helpless brown victims, listening to grim-faced newscasters calling it "the worst flood since Noah," hearing wise men, movie stars, and pop singers tell her that the gibbering black punks who'd set their own city on fire were nothing but symptoms of the white man's uncaring: she was primed for Augie, and then along he came.