The Identity Man

PART I
THE WHITTAKER JOB

A PAGE OF A NEWSPAPER lay sodden on the sidewalk. MINISTER JAILED IN SEX SCANDAL, the headline read. Peter Patterson made out the words before the gusting wind caught the paper up and carried it, wet and heavy as it was, tumbling away through the mist of slashing rain. Patterson watched the paper gray and dim and vanish in the darkness. He kept walking, the wind and water whipping at his face.

The things of the flesh, he thought with an inward sigh. The things of the spirit. The things of the flesh.

He was already nervous-already afraid-and now the headline made him melancholy, too. The minister's conviction had been a great disappointment to him, a stomach-twisting glitch in his moral universe. And yet Peter Patterson was grimly determined not to judge. The Reverend Jesse Skyles was a good man, he told himself, a true man of God. He had just fallen to temptation, that's all. Peter Patterson had plenty of experience with temptation, not to mention falling. True, he'd never tapped anything underage, but the object of Skyles's indiscretion had been fourteen. That was no child; they were juicy then… In any case, he could say this and that, make this excuse for himself and that one, but the simple truth was he had left his own trail of tears, a trail of misused women and abandoned sons. He was in no position to condemn anyone.

The things of the spirit, the things of the flesh.

It was so easy to fall. Easy to choose the life of the moment over the long consequences. A couple of drinks and a woman's perfume began to seem like a thing worth dying for. And to leave her smile sitting there on her face like that, unkissed? Well, it just felt wrong. You'd have to be a corpse or a fool and no kind of man at all…

So the next thing you knew it was some ungodly hour of the morning and there you were, standing over the sprawled and sleeping wreckage of her, looking around the floor for your boxers and your self-respect. Because who were you when you were bare-assed, as it turned out? Surprise: you were that guy who'd looked his son in the eye that very afternoon and said, Do what's right. Hand on his shoulder, expression stern, finger wagging in his face. Do what's right, son. Treat the women with respect. Don't be making no babies you can't take care of. And then that selfsame night after four bourbons and a perfumed smile it was Aw, fuck it. Another mother betrayed, another son ushered into the funhouse of his father's hypocrisy, another relationship shot to hell…

All part of the journey that had led him to this night.

Man, he thought, suddenly coming back into the moment, back into the full awareness of his corrosive anxiety. Man, look at this place.

It was a sight to see, all right, the city in the rain. The night city, empty everywhere, with only the wind moving in it. Without people, without traffic, the avenue was reduced to the shadowy shapes of things. The rectangles of office buildings to the left and right of him, the smaller rectangles of newspaper boxes on the sidewalk, the shepherd's crook of a lamp pole in the light of its lamp… Everything seemed two-dimensional like that. Even the depth of the receding street seemed a trick of perspective.

People had taken the evacuation order seriously this time. There was not a body moving anywhere, not a footfall on the street but his. The rain spat and whispered against the macadam as if it were falling in an empty field. At moments, when the wind subsided, you could hear the stoplights changing color. You could see them swaying there above the intersections, one gleaming circle of red after another in the storm-streaked dark. Then there was a double metallic gulp, like a robot swallowing, and all the red circles turned gleaming green. There was something lonesome and almost poetic about it. The city was practically beautiful, he thought, once you got rid of the people.

Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, Peter Patterson trudged the final half block to the corner and ducked under the overhang of the skyscraper there. The moment he stopped walking, he became aware of how wet and miserable he was. His raincoat and his hat had protected him for a while, but now they were both soaked. His socks and cuffs were sodden from wading through the sluicing gutters. The cold was seeping into his core.

It was a hell of a night for a meeting-with the storm going and the river about to blow. A hell of a night to finally do what he had convinced himself to do.

Lieutenant Brick Ramsey saw Patterson reach the meeting point, but he lingered where he was, watching the man through the windshield of his unmarked Charger. Watching the wavering shape of the man anyway. He couldn't see much more of him than that. He didn't want to turn his wipers on. He was afraid the movement might draw attention to him sitting there. Uninterrupted, the rain spilled down over the glass in gusting sheets, then broken streams and droplets. Through the water, the pink glare of the downtown halogen lamps seemed to melt and run in fluid streaks of illumination. The stoplights ran in fluid streaks of red, then green. And beyond the light, in the blur and shadows, there was the wavering shape of Peter Patterson, an average-sized man in a hat and overcoat, hunched and waiting. Ramsey knew he ought to go to him, but he lingered, watched.

Ramsey figured himself for a hard man, but he didn't like thinking about what he was about to do. Peter Patterson was nobody in the big scheme of things. He was nothing in the city hierarchy. Just a bookkeeper. Just a middle-aged drunk who'd come to Jesus and now fancied himself incorruptible. There should have been a dozen easy ways to shut him up or shut him down. They could've just waited him out probably. The mood would probably have passed.

But they couldn't wait. They couldn't risk it. Peter Patterson had crossed the line. It was one thing to come to Jesus. It was another to go to the feds.

"He wants a meet?" Augie Lancaster had murmured smoothly over the phone. "Arrange a meet. Tell him you're the feds and arrange a meet, that's all."

That's all.

It made Ramsey sick inside. But what else could he do? You got into these things step by step, day by day, and then there you were and you didn't really have a choice when you came down to it. There were people who depended on you, expected things from you. Not just Augie Lancaster but the Chief of Ds and the councilmen and all the rest. You couldn't just turn righteous on them, overnight become another man than the one they knew. Anyway, your fate was tied to theirs by this time. If they went down, you went down with them. Even if Ramsey wanted to turn righteous, that was way more righteous than he was prepared to be. No, whichever way you turned, the exit was closed and a hundred strings were pulling at you. You had to go on with it, that's all. Just as Augie said: That's all.

The rain drummed hard on the Charger's roof, then crashed on it like thunder, blown by the wind. The calls for backup hissed and whispered from the radio. Looting had started half an hour ago, almost as soon as the city emptied out. The brothers, Ramsey thought with a stab of shame and distaste. The brothers were busting up the Northern District, two miles away.

The City of Hope. The City of Equality. The City of Justice.

All those high words. All those fine Augie Lancaster speeches came back to him.

"Where they have taken away your voice, I will speak for you. Where they have robbed you of your dignity, I will make them repay you. Where they have built their wealth on your exploitation, I will bring that wealth back from Washington to your neighborhoods and your families."

Ramsey could remember the thrill of hearing him. The thrill of the crowd and the roar of the brothers cheering. Those were the same crowds, the same brothers, who were out there smashing the storefronts of the slant-owned groceries and the chain pharmacies and the Stereo World and the old furniture emporium they had shopped at for ages. Flood sale. Everything must go.

He had the radio turned down low to dim the distraction of it. The soft cries for help seemed like the voices of ghosts in the storm, distant and mournful and lost.

The brothers.

Well, they aren't the only ones to take whatever they can get their hands on, Ramsey told himself. When it comes to that, all men are brothers.

He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. He knew it was time. He knew he ought to go and get this over with.

But he lingered, watching.

The things of the spirit, the things of the flesh.

That was Peter Patterson, meanwhile, his restless mind returning to the Reverend Skyles as he stood under the skyscraper's overhang, all shrugged up in his wet overcoat; as the wind-whipped water sluiced down and spattered the shins of his trousers where he stood; as he waited anxiously for the feds to come.

He shivered. He bounced on his toes. He thought: Where are they already?

He thought: How could he do it? His restless mind returning to Skyles, returning to himself and the things he'd done in his life, the journey that had brought him here, the booze, the women. Because he knew how Skyles could do it. He knew exactly how he could do it, and do it again. You weren't even sorry afterward. Not really. You were ashamed, for sure. When you were sober, when you were satisfied and bare-assed, looking for your shorts, looking for some way to dull the contrast between what you knew full well you ought to be and what in fact you were, you were plenty ashamed then. You hated the consequences, the women screaming at you in their hurt and betrayal, the three sons by two mothers that you never saw, the one boy in jail. But how could you say you were sorry for what you remembered with a dreamy smile? How could you say you regretted what you'd do again in a city minute? Oh yes, you would. If the opportunity arose-and you arose-back you'd be in the Country of King Penis, loyal subject of His Majesty, flying to do his bidding at his least command…

Where the hell were they?

He turned his head to the right and the left, searching the rain for his contact. No one. He lifted his gaze to the intersecting street.

That was when he saw the red-white glow above the building tops.

His breath caught. Fire. He knew what it was right away. With the city empty and the high water coming, looters must have swarmed the shops uptown, and now they'd torched the place and had it burning. The glow pulsed into the sky's deep blackness. The slashing rain glimmered silver against it.

And suddenly, for no reason he could put into words, Peter Patterson knew that everything was wrong. This meeting made no sense. This place made no sense. Why here? Why tonight? Why the sudden phone call after all the patient, reassuring overtures back and forth? Why the strange voice, the mysterious instructions…?

He hardly asked himself these questions. He was simply gripped by the urgent conviction that he had to get the hell out of here. Now.

Lieutenant Ramsey was startled to see Patterson break from his shelter. The bookkeeper moved quickly, nearly jogging, with his hands still in his overcoat pockets and his head lowered as if to butt his way through the wind and rain back to his car. Every few steps, he would look over his shoulder and then tumble on even faster as if he'd seen demons chasing him.

Ramsey cursed. In the first moment of surprise, he grabbed the door handle, ready to go after the guy. But then he thought better of it. He had been in situations like this before, plenty of times. Blown meets, blown stakeouts. Things changed, you had to change your plan. You botched things up if you failed to adapt. He decided to follow Patterson and see what was what. He would find the moment. He would bide his time.

One hand left the door and the other went to the keys in the ignition. At the same time, he caught a glimpse of his own eyes in the rearview mirror. He quickly looked away.

Lieutenant Brick Ramsey had-had always had, since his childhood-an appearance of dignity, of restraint, self-control, and moral authority. His mother had instilled these qualities in him. One hand on her hip, the other waggling a finger in his face or sometimes a Bible. Don't you be like them. The brothers, she meant. The street-corner gangsters who held up the walls of his neighborhood with their slouching backs. You gonna do right. You gonna make something of yourself. You gonna be somebody. It don't profit you nothing to gain the whole world if you lose your soul. Hammering at him with that finger, with that Bible, like a sculptor hammering at marble until she made the shape of him, the dignified set of his broad shoulders, the dignified stillness of his oval face with its pencil moustache over a serious mouth, with its intelligent, watchful, soulful brown eyes. Four years in the marines had added to the pride of his carriage. And five years patrolling the streets had reminded him daily of the degraded neighborhood life he had risen above. But it was his mother's work he saw when he looked in the mirror-and he quickly looked away.

The pounding of the rain on the roof intensified, drowning out the dim calls for assistance from the radio. A fresh sheet of water washed down over the windshield. When it passed, Ramsey saw Patterson reach the line of cars in the parking zone down the street. He saw Patterson reach his own car, a battered blue Chrysler New Yorker, had to be fifteen years old at least. The car's top light went on as Patterson opened the door and lowered himself into the driver's seat. Then he pulled the door shut after him and the car went dark. A moment later, Lieutenant Ramsey saw the New Yorker's headlights, blurry through the water on the windshield. The car pulled out and took off down the street, illuminating the silver streaks of the rain before it.

Ramsey waited a few seconds and then followed in the unmarked Charger, holding back a block, sunk in the darkness, counting on the storm to obscure him.

Up ahead, the New Yorker turned the corner. The Charger reached the intersection a few seconds afterward. It was only then, only when he turned to look down the street, that Ramsey understood what had spooked Patterson.

The throbbing red-white glow gave sudden depth to the strangely flat skyline. The City of Hope. The City of Equality. The City of Justice. It was burning.

The brothers, Ramsey thought, with another gout of disgust and self-disgust.

He brought the Charger around the corner and kept after his man.

Peter Patterson felt strangely safe once he was inside his car. His sudden surge of fear subsided. He felt as if no one could touch him there.

He drove north through the empty city. He drove slowly, careful of the storm. The pavement was slick where it was level and there were troughs and hollows where deep puddles gathered, where the water thundered against the undercarriage and gripped the tires of the old car as they passed through.

As he got away from downtown, the streets grew even darker around him. It took him a while to notice it: the electricity here was out. He looked past the laboring wipers. He saw rain-swept boulevards empty as alleyways, storefronts boarded against the tempest. He was glad to be inside and warm with the heater on. The unreasoning urgency in him-the anxious conviction that he had just been in some kind of danger-was already beginning to recede. Maybe he'd just spooked himself. Maybe he'd just let his nerves get the better of him.

He turned on the radio. Hoping for some news, some voices for company. Nothing came out but static. He pressed the scan button and listened as the tuner automatically ran the band. Still nothing but that hiss, end to end, that hiss with broken fragments of words in it like men sending messages from the belly of a snake.

Look at this. Look at this.

The hollowed brownstones. The vacant businesses. The broken windows like phantoms' eyes. He was in the north now, at the edge of the neighborhoods. He was thinking: The wages of sin.

Because it was all the Country of King Penis, wasn't it? The country of misused women and abandoned sons. That was exactly the message Reverend Skyles had been trying to bring to them, that was exactly why his fall was such a disappointment, such a tragedy. He was a good man, a true man of God, the lone voice of truth against the silken temptations of Augie Lancaster. Augie Lancaster telling folks he would give them back their dignity. How do you give a man dignity if he doesn't have it for himself? Reverend Skyles told them they had to be dignified, had to do right…

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.

Shannon still liked Karen well enough. He was just tired of her, that's all. He figured they were tired of each other. It was just like anything else: if it went on too long, it made your skin crawl. You needed a buzz. You needed to find something new.

"I gotta go out tonight," he told her.

"Okay," she said. She didn't look up from the television. She knew he did jobs. She knew he did something anyway. She never asked exactly what. Sometimes he wanted to tell her about it, about how he wanted to stop but couldn't, about how he lay awake at night, dreading that he would be sent away for life. But he never did. What could she answer? It wasn't her problem. If he wanted to stop, he ought to stop.

"You mind getting the dishes?" he asked her.

"No, I'll get 'em before I go. I may go out later, too, with Jeanette."

"Okay."

A car horn honked on the street outside, then honked again a long time loudly.

"Why don't you just announce it to the neighborhood?" Shannon muttered. "You dumb fuck."

"Who is that?"

"Benny."

"I hate that guy. He gives me the creeps." Karen took a draw of reefer. She never took her eyes off the television. Shannon couldn't figure what she saw in this stuff. Who cared if one of these movie clowns was doing another one or not?

For some reason, though, watching her watch the show, Shannon felt a surge of affection for her. He walked over to the sofa. He bent down to her, and she lifted her face to him and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth so he could kiss her goodbye.

"I'll see you later," Shannon said. He tasted her lips and the ganja. For some reason, he felt sad to leave her.

"See you, baby," she said.

But they never saw each other again.

As soon as Shannon got a look at Benny Torrance, he knew this was going to be a disaster of a night. Benny was aggie-eyed-his eyes looked like streaked marbles. God knew what he was on, but he was obviously juiced out of his mind. You could practically see his bonzo thoughts whooshing through his brain about a hundred miles a minute, like a wall covered with graffiti seen from a fast train.

"Shannon, my boy!" he rumbled.

He clapped a hand on Shannon's thigh as Shannon slid into the passenger side of the pickup. Then, with a thick guttural laugh, Benny jammed his foot down on the gas. The tires gave a banshee shriek and the black truck fired off into the night with a roar that must have rattled windows. The guy was a cluster-fuck in human form.

Benny was thickset, rippling with muscle. He had long stringy hair. He had a brutal face with three days' stubble. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black windbreaker, zipped all the way up. Blue tats peeked out where his flesh showed-the head of a rattler on his right wrist, a woman's bare leg on his left, curling tentacles coming up around his collar: it looked like he was smuggling a whole fantastic menagerie of dream creatures under his clothing and they were trying to squirm free.

He drove fast and, man, he drove loud, some kind of supercharger jazzing the truck's combustion and boosting the HP. He had to shout at Shannon over the roar.

"Talked to my friend an hour ago. He says the place is loaded. Caveman security. We're gonna be doing the money dance before the night is over."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thought Shannon. He half hoped some cop pulled them over for speeding or excessive noise before they arrived.

No such luck.

They came onto a stretch of road south of the city center, a dark street parallel to lower Main. Every shop here had its gates down. There was no one on the sidewalks. There were no street lamps. A breeze brought the smell of the ocean from a few blocks away. A couple of palm trees, sunk in shadow, whispered over the low buildings. A car or two went by when the traffic lights changed. Other than that, nothing was moving. The place was dead.

Benny parked the truck in the center of the block.

"Let's do this thing," he growled.

He got out and led the way to a narrow drive between a fabric store and a dry cleaner. Shannon followed him, alert, looking for trouble this way and that. He was wearing a black windbreaker now. He had a canvas roll tucked into the inside pocket.

They went down the drive to where it ended at a quaint house hidden among trees. It was a three-story Victorian clapboard with a porch and a gabled roof and a fanciful turret and blue trim painted around the windows. There was a painted sign at the entrance to the porch steps: THE WHITTAKER CENTER. There were cheerful swirling vine designs around the words.

It was a foundation of some kind. A charity or something. Benny had a friend who worked security there. The guy had given Benny the patrol times and the alarm codes and told him where there was an old combination safe full of cash. Apparently they kept a lot of cash around. People could just drop in and get a handful of dollars if they needed it badly enough.

Shannon took a look around the place as they went up the porch steps. He was reassured by the location, the way the house was set back from the road. No one driving by on the street was likely to notice them and there were no neighbors who might spot them with a glance out a nearby window either.

But one thing did worry him. The front door had a top pane of beveled glass and he could see a yellow glow through it.

"There's a light on in there," he said in a soft voice.

"Just for security," said Benny. They were shoulder to shoulder and Shannon could smell the vomitous scent of old beer on him. "The guard only comes by on the even hours. I told you. They just walk around outside."

Shannon nodded. Benny had told him that, but he was not convinced.

Shannon knelt in front of the door. He had a small penlight that sent out a blue beam. He held the penlight in his teeth so that the beam shone on his work. He brought out his canvas roll, laid it on the porch, and spread it open. It was the same kind of roll he used for his gouges when he carved wood. It was lined with pockets for his tools. He drew out a snapper pick for the front door and was through the lock in five seconds. The alarm warning sounded, a steady shrill, but soft, too soft to be heard outside the building. There was a sixty-second delay before the real alarm went off. Benny had told him that, too.

Shannon gathered his roll and strode quickly across the foyer to the keypad. He kept the flashlight clenched in his teeth so that the blue beam played over the keys. He tapped in the code Benny had given him-half expecting it to fail, half expecting the full alarm to blow like the last trumpet. But no, the code worked. The alarm was disabled. The house went silent around them.

Benny had his flashlight out now, too. It was bigger than Shannon's and had a bright white beam. He shone it only long enough to pick out the way to the stairs, then turned it off. He moved to the stairs and went up two at a time. Shannon rolled up his tools and followed him.

Later, Shannon remembered that he noticed something at this point. He noticed there were no lights on anywhere in the house. He had seen that glow through the glass of the door, so there must have been a light on before but now there wasn't. That didn't make sense, but Shannon dismissed the thought before he really considered it. Maybe he didn't want to think about it now that he was in so deep.

On the second floor landing, Benny shone his flashlight beam briefly again and picked out a door across from the stairway. He tilted his head at it. Shannon went to the door and picked the lock with one of his triple-nine bump keys. He went through, into a small cluttered office. Benny stayed by the door, but he shone his flashlight at a wooden cabinet built into the wall behind the desk.

"In there," he whispered.

Shannon went around the desk. He knelt in front of the cabinet and spread out his roll of tools. In another few seconds, he had the cabinet door unlocked and open. There was the safe inside, a combination box, as old-fashioned as Benny had said. Shannon used a stethoscope to listen for the tumblers, but he hardly needed it. He could feel the discs fall into place with his fingers. In another few seconds, he opened the door. His flashlight's blue beam danced over the stacks of money inside. It looked like a lot, thousands of dollars.

Shannon was surprised by the sight of all that cash. From the very start, he'd been expecting everything to go ass up. He'd expected the alarm to go off or the guards to show up at an odd hour or the safe to be empty. But here they were and there was the safe with the money inside. For the first time, Shannon began to hope this was going to come out all right.

And, of course, right then and there-the minute he dared to hope-that was when the disaster struck.

A floorboard creaked on the landing. Shannon tensed, his hand frozen reaching for the cash. He turned to see Benny's dark shape likewise frozen by the door. In their silence, they heard light footsteps running on the hall carpet. All the pieces-all the half-acknowledged thoughts-fell into place in Shannon's mind and he understood: there was someone in the house. There had been someone in the house all along. That's why he'd seen a glow at the door. The someone must have heard them break in. The someone must have turned the light off in order to hide his own presence. Now the someone was trying to get to the stairway and escape.

For another second, Shannon hoped things might still turn out all right. All they had to do was let the someone go. Then they could grab the money and get out of here before the police showed up. Even with Benny's supercharged engine roaring for all the world to hear, they might still get away without being spotted.

But then Benny moved-and he moved so fast Shannon had no time to stop him or even call out. His shadow flashed through the door like a streak of black lightning. When he flashed back he had the someone in his hands.

It was a woman. Benny was gripping her by the throat. He shoved her up against the wall hard, hard enough to make the room shudder. He shone his flashlight in her face and then down the whole length of her. She was in her twenties, very pretty, with a curvy figure pressing through her blouse and skirt. In the outglow of the flashlight beam, Shannon could see Benny's bright eyes and the teeth in his fierce smile as he breathed over her. His breath was a low, laughing growl of triumph and desire.

Shannon jumped to his feet. He shone his own flashlight on Benny, the blue beam crossing with the white beam in the dark.

"What the hell're you doing? Let her go," he said in a harsh whisper.

"Shut up. Get the money," Benny said. He shoved his flashlight in his back pocket. He held the girl by the throat with one hand and tore open her blouse with the other. The buttons of the blouse pattered on the carpeting. Benny grabbed hold of the girl's breast. The girl struggled, crying out in anguish and pain.

"I called the police," she managed to say. Then her voice ended in a gasp as Benny squeezed her hard and pressed himself up against her.

"Damn it, there's no time for this shit!" said Shannon.

"Shut up," Benny said. He was crazy. "Get the money."

Shannon hesitated. His blue flashlight beam played over the girl's face. He could see her terror and then her despair as Benny's hand started fumbling under her skirt. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her eyes went up and her lips moved silently. Shannon could tell she was praying.

His heart went out to her. He was surprised by the force of the feeling. It was just one of those things you didn't know you would feel so much until you were in the situation. Now he was here and he was looking right at her, looking at her tear-streaked face. He could see her praying and choking, helpless in Benny's hands. And he felt awful for her. He knew he ought to forget about it, ignore Benny and just grab the money so they could get out when Benny was done with her. He knew if he started trouble now, they were sure to get caught. That meant prison for Shannon, prison for life.

But look at her, he thought. An image flashed in his mind of the girl getting dressed for work in the morning, turning this way and that in front of her mirror, pleased because her blouse looked pretty on her. And now Benny had torn the blouse and her face was twisted in fear and agony.

Shannon had one more moment of indecision. Then he thought: Shit. Then he thought again: Shit! Because he realized there was no way he was going to just stand there and let this happen.

Shannon had fought characters like Benny a couple of times in prison, and this is what he knew: there was no talking involved in it. Benny was big and mean and drugged out of his mind. There could be no threats or poses or hard-guy exchanges with him because by the time you got through with that garbage you'd be dead. So he simply bent to his roll and slipped his crowbar out of its pocket. It was small but it was heavy enough. He stepped around the desk and took half another step and he was next to Benny. Benny was choking the girl hard and mashing her hard with his hand under her skirt. Shannon could hear strangled phrases of her prayer: "Santa Maria… Madre de Dios…" That settled it for him somehow. Without another thought, he brought the crowbar whipping around in a low Laredo sidearm and shattered Benny's kneecap.

Benny did a sack of potatoes, dropped right down to the floor, boom, clutching his leg and shrieking like a woman in a horror movie. All of which was fine with Shannon, because what a piece of garbage this guy was.

The girl, meanwhile, staggered away from the wall, clutching her throat with one hand and the front of her skirt with the other. She straightened and glanced at Shannon, confused. Then she looked down at Benny. Benny was writhing on the floor. His shriek had sunk away to a series of gibbering sobs. What a piece of garbage.

The girl looked up at Shannon again, hesitating, uncertain. Even in the dark, he could see she was trembling violently.

"My knee!" groaned Benny Torrance.

"Aw, shut up," said Shannon. Then he turned back to the girl. "Go on, sister, get out of here. No one's gonna hurt you now."

He didn't have to tell her twice. She stumbled to the door and out onto the landing. But just as she got there, the long, urgent cry of a siren came to them through the night outside. The police. She really had called them, like she said. By the sound of it, they were turning off the street, coming down the drive to the house. Shannon's heart just about broke when he heard them. He was finished. He was going to grow old in slam. He'd always known this was going to happen if he kept at it and it was his own stupid fault, but that didn't make it any easier now that the time had come.

"You broke my knee!" cried Benny Torrance.

"Shut up, I said," said Shannon sadly.

The girl was still on the landing. She had halted there at the sound of siren. As the siren drew closer, she looked back at Shannon. He could see the whites of her eyes in the shadows. She tilted her head down the hall.

"There's a back way," she told him.

Shannon gaped at her. The sudden rush of hope gave him vertigo. The siren stopped. He could hear the police radio right outside the door.

"Hurry," the girl said.

Dumbfounded, Shannon glanced back at the money in the safe, at his tools on the floor. He glanced down at Benny. Benny writhed and held his leg and went, "Ah God. Ah God."

"Hurry," the girl said again.

Shannon let the crowbar slip from his fingers. He took two long steps and was out on the landing next to her. Instinctively, she recoiled from him, her arm pressed protectively against her breasts. He was close enough to smell her fear and her sex and her perfume and the vomitous smell of Benny on her.

"Thanks, baby," he said.

Still recoiling fearfully, she nodded.

Down the stairs, he saw the flashing red and blue lights of the police cruiser playing over the beveled glass of the door. He saw the shape of a lawman approaching.

"Don't leave me here!" cried Benny Torrance, clutching his knee.

Shannon took off down the hall. IT WAS A LONG WAY back to his place on foot. Up hills, down empty streets, the night full of sirens. By the time Shannon pushed through the door of his apartment, he was breathless and sweating. He was scared, too. It wasn't hard for him to figure out what was going to happen next.

Benny was done-that was the fi rst point. Benny was diddled, heavily diddled every which way. Once the shock wore off and the girl started talking, she'd get her Mex temper going and give the cops an earful. She was no illegal. You could tell just by looking at her. She had nothing to hide and no reason to hold back. She'd have Benny on agg sex assault and attempted rape and felony B and E, plus God only knew what the law had working on that psycho already. That was it for Benny. Jesus Christ would be back on the street before him.

Which meant Shannon had to hit the wind. He had to grab his bag and go-now, right now. Benny would give him over as soon as he could get the words out of his mouth, before they patched up his knee even. He'd be screaming Shannon's name as they gurneyed him into the ER. Why not, after what Shannon had done to him? It would be sweet revenge and a chance to deal down, all wrapped up in one. It had probably already happened. The cops were probably already on their way. Shannon was just lucky he'd gotten here before they did.

The apartment was empty. Karen must've gone out with her friends like she said she would. Shannon was sorry about that. He would've liked to see her one last time. He would've liked to say goodbye. She was a good girl, easygoing and good-tempered, and always willing to get it on unless she was pissed off about something. They'd had some laughs.

He went to the closet in his bedroom. On his hands and knees, he knocked a panel out of the back wall and pulled his stash from the hole there. He left a couple of fifties for Karen, but he couldn't afford to be too generous. She had her own job and she could sell his car if she needed more cash. He stuffed the money in a gym bag and stuffed some clothes on top of it. He got his traveling kit out of the bathroom and stuffed that in, too.

Before he left, he stood in the center of the living room and looked around, trying to think if he'd forgotten anything. His eyes made natural stops at the wood sculptures decorating the place here and there, sculptures he had made himself: a wall relief of a sailing ship on a stormy sea, a free-standing Indian on the coffee table, a freestanding city skyline on a shelf, a wall clock set in a relief of an eagle gazing at the moon.

He was sorry to go. He was sorry to lose Karen and the life they'd had here. He was sorry he would never see the face of the woman he'd been planning to carve in the block of white ash. He didn't have much hope for the future. He didn't think he had much chance of escaping in the long run. A traffic stop, a D-and-D-anything-and he'd be behind bars until he died. He was sorry about all of it.

As he stepped out of the apartment door, he heard a siren approaching on the street below. He halted in the doorway, his stomach turning sour. But the siren passed by.

Calm down, he told himself. Don't go paranoid on me. It was only a break-in, after all. He didn't even get away with the money. It wasn't like the cops were going to send the dogs and choppers after him.

That's what he thought anyway. He had no idea how bad things really were. But he was going to find out soon enough.

About half an hour later, not four blocks from where he'd done the job, he was outside the Greyhound station. He stood across the street, watching the place. A late wind had risen, a warm wind smelling of dust. The tangled fibers of eucalyptus bark rolled down the pavement like tumbleweed.

The bus station had storefront windows on two sides and was brightly lit so he could see the interior clearly. There were a couple of travelers on the benches in there and a couple of scurvy characters who might be ticket-holders or might not. No cops for now, but Shannon knew they'd be around in the normal course of things. They would drop by to chase the bums and scout out whatever types were hanging around or passing through.

Shannon figured this was as good a time to go in as any. He put on a self-assured demeanor. He crossed the street with swift, businesslike steps and pushed into the station, out of the hot, dark night and into the cold, stinging brightness of the interior. He crossed to the Plexiglas window of the ticket booth without looking to the left or right. He was aware of the voice of a newswoman speaking from the TV hung on the wall behind him.

The woman in the ticket booth was old and bent and shapeless. She moved to him slowly and stiffly, as if her bones hurt her. He asked her for a ticket to Vegas. He'd checked the schedules and it was the next bus out of state. It left in an hour. He figured Vegas was a city he could get lost in, find work in. He'd make some contacts there, score himself a new name and driver's license. Maybe eventually head farther east.

The woman pushed his ticket to him under the slot in the window. It was the first time she'd looked up at him. He thought she hesitated when her eyes reached his face, as if she recognized him and knew he was a fugitive. But that really was paranoid. It was only a break-in. Why would she know?

Just the same, he took the ticket and left the station quickly, feeling her eyes on his back all the way to the door. There was a bar across the street, the Cocktail Hour. He figured he'd wait for the bus in there. That way, if the police patrols came by the station, he'd be able to see them through the bar's big window.

The Cocktail Hour was small and dark. There was room for a bar and two tables and a video game and that was pretty much it. There was a fat guy playing the video game and two other fat guys sitting together at the bar, talking. There was rock music playing.

Shannon sat on the side of the bar where he could look out the window and keep an eye on the bus station. The bartender came over to him there. She was a woman in her forties. She was pleasantly slender in her black skirt and white blouse. Her face was showing some wear on it, but it was a friendly face. Shannon asked her for a Miller draft.

There was a TV behind the bar. It was hung up high, a rectangle of colored light and motion against the wall's dark wood paneling. The TV's sound was off because of the rock music, but the captions were turned on so you could read what people were saying.

That's how Shannon found out what had happened.

The bartender set his beer in front of him and turned away. Wiping her hands on a towel, she looked up at the TV, her profile to him. Shannon drank. He watched the TV, too. The local news was just coming on. Shannon had his glass at his lips when his own face appeared on the screen.

He nearly choked on his beer. The picture was a mug shot from five years ago, but it was a good enough likeness. Shannon's eyes shifted quickly. He saw the bartender draw a deep breath. He saw her body stiffen. She was careful not to look at him, but he could tell she had recognized him from the picture.

But that wasn't the worst of it, not by half. The words spelling themselves out under his mug shot told what the newswoman was saying: Local and state police have launched a massive manhunt for John Shannon, a suspect in the Hernandez killings.

Shannon stared, his lips parted. The Hernandez killings? What the fuck?

A detective was speaking on the screen now. His words spelled themselves out beneath him. Benjamin Torrance was arrested earlier this evening during a robbery of the Whittaker Charitable Foundation, he said. Under questioning, Torrance confessed to the home invasion two months ago in which a family of four were brutally slaughtered. Torrance implicated Shannon as his accomplice in that crime.

Shannon felt the room telescope to nothing around him. He felt suddenly spotlit, white bright, as if everyone must notice him, must see that he was a wanted man. The Hernandez killings. The cops had Benny on the Hernandez killings and in a fury, for revenge, Benny had told them Shannon was in on them. He'd given Shannon up for slaughtering an entire family.

Shannon's wide, suffering eyes returned to the bartender. She was still trying not to look at him, but he knew she would. How could she help herself? He waited for it and when, in fact, she stole a glance his way, he shook his head at her back and forth: I didn't do it. Terrified, the bartender quickly looked away at the TV again.

At that moment-as if his luck was collapsing stone after quickening stone, gathering into an avalanche of bad news coming down on top of him-at that moment, a red light caught his eye, and he turned to see two police cruisers pulling up at the curb in front of the Greyhound station.

The rock music in the bar went on playing. The fat guy went on playing the video game, the screen flashing with make-believe explosions. The two other fat guys went on talking, eating peanuts from a bowl and ignoring the TV.

Two cops got out of one of the cruisers across the street. They went into the bus station. Two other cops got out of the other cruiser and just stood there, scanning the area, their eyes passing right over the place where Shannon was sitting.

Shannon turned back to the bartender. She was still staring up at the TV, trying to pretend she hadn't recognized him. Shannon, nauseous, dying inside, followed her gaze.

There on the screen now was the girl, the girl from the job, the one that Benny had molested. Shannon read what she was saying as the words spelled themselves out under her.

It doesn't make sense to me. He could have let this man rape me. He could have taken the money, but he helped me instead. I don't think he could be a killer. It just doesn't make sense. The police must've made a mistake.

When she read that, the bartender couldn't help but glance at him again.

Shannon poured his thoughts into his suffering eyes: Please, sister, believe her. I didn't do it. I'm not that guy.

This time, the bartender did not pretend to look away. She looked over her shoulder at the window. Shannon looked, too. The two cops in the Greyhound station were talking to the ticket lady. She was lifting an unsteady hand to point at the bar across the street-at him. She must've seen him come in here.

Shannon and the bartender looked at one another. He poured his thoughts into his eyes, begging her to help him. He didn't dare speak out loud. He knew if one of the men in the bar realized what was happening, he would be done for. The men would turn him in. They would figure he was probably guilty anyway and if he wasn't, then let the law work it out. But a woman-a woman might go with her instincts. A woman might feel some sisterhood with the girl on TV. She might feel the romance of reaching out to him in his most desperate hour. A man would do the smart thing, the right thing, but a woman might help him. He begged her to help him with his eyes.

Outside, the two cops were pushing back into the night through the door of the bus station. One of them was talking into his shoulder mike, calling for backup. They joined the other two cops standing by the cruiser. Then all four cops began to cross the street toward the bar-although they had to wait a moment as a truck rumbled past.

Shannon turned to the bartender once again and now she was standing right in front of him. She put her small fist on the bar between them and when she withdrew it, there was a keychain lying there with about twenty keys on it. Shannon put his own hand over the keys, then lifted his eyes to her. She made the slightest gesture with her head. He followed it and saw there was a door in the wall behind her.

It was the second time that night a woman had helped him get away from the cops. He felt a passion of gratitude to her and to her entire sex, fools that they were for a man in trouble, fools that they had been for him all his life, he didn't know why. This, too, he expressed through his eyes when he looked up at her for the last time.

But now, the four cops were coming fast across the street, their expressions alert, their hands on their holsters. Shannon closed his fingers around the bartender's keychain. He stood off his barstool and, as he did, the bartender lifted the flap in the bar to let him pass through. With a final glance over his shoulder, he saw the four oncoming cops reach the sidewalk just outside the Cocktail Hour. Then he pushed through the door behind the bar.

He came into a narrow, crowded pantry. A long table filled the center of it. Shelves and boxes lined the walls. Shannon had to squeeze between the table and the boxes to get to the heavy metal door at the far end. The door was locked with a deadbolt. Shannon started flipping through the keys on the bartender's keychain, searching for the right one. He could hear the rock music playing in the bar, but he couldn't hear whether the police had come in yet. He thought they must have. And he thought the fat guys at the bar must've noticed him leaving. There wasn't a lot of time before the cops pushed into the pantry behind him. He fumbled hurriedly through the keys.

There it was: the key he wanted. Quickly, he had the heavy door unlocked. He left the keys dangling there and pulled the door open.

He stepped out into a parking lot. It was a dark expanse with only a single car parked in it. All over, in the cool night air, there were sirens-sirens coming from every direction, growing louder from every direction. Shannon's throat closed with desperation. He understood the truth now: they were all-all of them-coming for him.

The metal door swung closed. Just before it shut with a clank, he heard the rock music grow louder as the pantry door burst open inside. The cops were right behind him.

A moment later, he was running as fast as he could into the darkness. FOR THREE DAYS he lived in a graveyard. It was on a cliff top overlooking the sea. There were acres and acres of gently rolling lawn. There were paved walkways winding through the grass. There were stones and steles, crosses, and the occasional statue rising white on the green hills amid shrubs and eucalyptus and palm trees. Shannon knew one of the groundskeepers here, a sad-eyed, egg-shaped dude named Hector Medeiros. They had done a few jobs together. Hector helped him hide out.

During the daylight hours, Shannon kept out of sight in a mausoleum near the edge of the cliff. It was a small classical temple of white marble. Inside there was a stone bench against one wall. On the opposite wall there were square stone panels with brass plates on them. The plates had the names of the people whose corpses were behind the panels. There was a small window on another wall. It was stained glass, yellow with a dark yellow cross in the middle. You couldn't see much through it, only shapes moving when someone went by.

Being in the mausoleum made Shannon jumpy and claustrophobic. The place was the size of a prison cell, only a few paces wide and long. He couldn't go out during the day because there were groundskeepers out there and visitors sometimes. He couldn't see through the window so he was constantly paranoid about someone approaching, someone coming in on him, even though Hector told him no one would. He gathered some sticks and whittled them with his pocketknife to calm his nerves. Even so, after the first day, he began to feel he was buried in here, the same as the dead people. Once, when he fell asleep on the stone bench, he had a dream the dead people had come out of the wall and were standing over him-just standing there, looking down at him. He woke up with a start, sweating.

It was better in the evenings. When the groundskeepers went home, he would carefully emerge from the mausoleum. Hector would let him into the groundskeepers' building, a one-story house with offices and storerooms and a kitchen. Shannon gave Hector money and Hector brought him food and a newspaper. Then, once dark fell, he could go outside and get some air among the graves-as long as he kept an eye out for the security guards who came through on patrol all night long.

Staying at the cemetery, he had time to take stock of his situation. The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. Benny had screwed him but good. Setting him up for the Hernandez killings-well, it paid Shannon back in full for the kneecap, that's for sure. It was an excellent vengeance. It really got to him, got on his nerves, got into his imagination, especially in that first rush of panic and anxiety after he heard about it in the bar. He had no alibi for the killings. They had gone down two months ago in the small hours. He'd probably been in bed at the time. He couldn't even remember. He could imagine himself getting convicted for the crime. He could picture himself on death row. The strap-down. The needle. The images ate at him.

Later, when he'd had a chance to calm down a little, Shannon told himself the rap would never stick. The police weren't stupid. They had fingerprints and DNA and all that stuff. They weren't going to pump him full of poison on the say-so of a little psycho like Benny. Were they?

But that was the thing: it didn't matter. That was the beauty of it, speaking from Benny's point of view, that was the excellence of his revenge. It didn't matter if the rap stuck or not. By setting him up for the Hernandez killings, what Benny had done was make sure that the cops would hunt him down. They'd put it all on him: feds, choppers, dogs, the TV news. There was already a quarter-of-a-million-dollar reward on his head. So they'd bust him for sure eventually, and even if they cleared him for the Hernandez job-he'd skip the needle; great-but he was a three-time loser. He'd still go down for life.

So nice work, Benny.

But then, on the third night he was at the cemetery, something happened, something flat-out bizarre. This is really where the whole story about Shannon gets started.

It was evening but still light. The grounds crew had gone home and Hector had let Shannon into the building. He had brought him some food. A chicken wrap and a Coke and some potato chips and another sandwich for later.

Shannon was famished after sleeping and pacing in the mausoleum all day. He plunked down at the table in the kitchen and tore into the wrap. While he ate, he read the newspaper Hector had brought him. That was when he saw the news about the price on his head, the quarter of a million reward. Just as he saw it, he felt Hector's eyes on him. He looked up. Sure enough, Hector was standing just behind him, gazing at him. His expression was full of sorrow and greed, like a poor but honest man gazing at the loaf of bread he was about to steal.

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

Hector looked away quickly. "Nothing, man, nothing."

"You saw about this reward, didn't you? Gonna sell me out, Hector? Gonna get you your quarter of a mil in blood money? Huh?"

"No, no, my friend, of course not, never."

Yeah, he was. Shannon could tell. Maybe tonight. Or maybe he'd wrestle with his conscience tonight, but then he'd do it tomorrow for sure. He'd go home and talk to Carmen and she'd point to their forty-seven kids or however many it was and say, "A quarter of a million dollars, Hector," and then you could butter Shannon's ass because it was basically toast.

So Shannon knew his time was running out. When the sun was going down, he went outside. He went to the edge of the cliff and sat on the grass under a palm tree. His hands whittled a stick, but his eyes were on the ocean, watching the orange light of the sinking sun moving on the waves. He watched the water go slate gray as the sun went down.

He had to get out of here. There was no point waiting for things to cool off. They would never cool off. There was no point heading for another city either, Vegas or anyplace else in the U.S. With the Hernandez killings hanging over him, they'd be after him everywhere. He'd have to try for Mexico, maybe even South America. He hated the idea. It was no picnic down there for a foreigner on the run. Hard to get work, dangerous to steal. Anyone with a sharp eye could turn you in or own you. And with the hellhole jails down there and the dirty cops and the gangs and the feds up here still after him, he could just imagine what he would turn into over time, scurvy and low four seasons of the year, lower with every season, a perennial bottom-feeder creeping feverishly from job to job.

But what choice did he have?

He sat on the edge of the cliff as night fell over the field of headstones. The wind rose and the surf below him whispered and plashed.

Finally, when it was fully dark, he took his cell phone out of his pocket. It was turned off. He kept it that way because he knew the police could track a cell phone even if you didn't make a call from it. He probably should have ditched the thing, but somehow he couldn't. It was his only link to his old life, the only antidote for his crushing feelings of loneliness and regret. Once a day, he took the phone out and turned it on-just for a minute-too short a time for the law to track it-or at least he hoped so. He wanted to check his messages, hear some familiar voices, hear Karen's voice maybe. Anything.

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 man. 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.