The Identity Man

PART IV

LIEUTENANT RAMSEY SAT in the coffee shop, waiting for Gutterson. His oval face with its thin moustache was deadpan in its imperturbable dignity. His thoughts were likewise cool, as cool as his expression. His anguish was no longer operational.

His rage at Augie's betrayal, for instance: it had passed. By force of will, he had transformed it into an icy determination. Much the same was true of his hatred of what had happened to Peter Patterson, his hatred of what he had done and how it had come to be done and the way it hung over him and threatened him with exposure and arrest. Sometimes at night, in his dreams, he relived the event: felt the dying man's pulse through the handle of the knife or saw the corpse staring up at him through the flame-lit, rain-riddled water. But in the daylight-here, now-the incident lived in him only as a kind of chill, motive force. His dead mother could haunt him all she wanted, and he loved her. But for now, at least, he could not afford to pretend that he still lived in her innocent Bible-waving world of moral absolutes. If there was a God, he was not here in this city. Just look around. God was gone and even worse, Augie was gone with him. God and Augie Lancaster had withdrawn their attention and protection from this place and they who were left were left alone to fend for themselves. If Lieutenant Ramsey was going to get clear, not Augie or God or Mama was going to make it happen. It would be he, and he alone.

Ramsey had thought it through. Ironically, it was Augie who had inspired him, who had shown him the way forward. Augie on TV all the time these days, with the crowds of young people singing, swaying, cheering, chanting for him: the hero of the flood and fire, the savior of the city. The news media, too-the reporters were in ecstasy over him, not even reporters anymore but simply heralds of his rise, trailing in his clouds of glory like mandolin-bearing cherubs on a church ceiling. The New Breed, they called him. The Man of the Moment. America's Future. Or once, from their seemingly inexhaustible inkwell of gibberish: New Emblem of the Transfigured African-American Narrative. So swept up were they in that narrative that the truth of the matter seemed only to incense them. If anyone spoke up against Augie-i f anyone mentioned what Augie had really done in his life or whom he'd really known in this city of his-if anyone simply pointed to what the city had become under his hands, saying Look at it, look at it!-the media rounded on the wild-eyed prophet, fanged, and tore at him, drowning out his dying cries with more, almost hysterical, accolades.

Ramsey, in simple envy and ill will at the success of a man who had hurt him, couldn't bear to watch much of this. He had to turn the TV off or turn the channel or turn away, walk away, whenever Augie was on. Ignoring Augie on television, radio, the Internet, and in newspapers and magazines had become part of his discipline, a necessary measure to keep his temper even, his emotions under control. But news of the man was everywhere. Words filtered into his consciousness, images entered his peripheral vision, as these things always will in a city. And they made him think.

Augie Lancaster was a celebrity now, a national name, almost certainly headed for greater success and high office. And it was amazing to Ramsey, amazing how free Augie was of the things he had done here. It was amazing how little his past adhered to him or weighed him down. It made Ramsey wonder, in simple bitterness and envy and ill will: What was his secret? How had he pulled that off? How did a man-a man steeped in such corruption and failure-how did he wreak the sort of havoc he had wreaked here in this city and then just walk away, untarnished, scot-free? Where was the famous burden of history? Where were the consequences of a man's misdeeds? Where was his responsibility? Did these things have no power over Augie Lancaster? Was he uniquely free of them and if so, why?

Ramsey considered these questions a long time. Finally, the obvious answer came to him. Augie was free because he had touched nothing. He had put his hands on nothing. Not for years anyway. He had worked his will throughout the city, throughout the entire state, by a kind of remote control, and he had done that for so long that he had become, in a sense, almost immaterial, an atmosphere of intent, a direction of desire built into the nature of the municipal machine. Things just worked the way he wanted them to. He hardly had to give the command. He had transformed himself from a human being of guilt and responsibility into an intangible force.

Had Augie ever said to Ramsey, for instance: Kill Peter Patterson? Had he ever said anything even vaguely like that, anything at all that couldn't be denied completely in a court of law or a TV interview? Ramsey hardly knew himself anymore whether he had or not. Somehow he had simply known that that was what had to be done.

Or take the case of the Reverend Jesse Skyles. A perfect case, that one. Was it Lieutenant Ramsey himself who had formulated the final plan, as he sometimes believed? Was it he who had come up with the idea as a way to calm Augie down, a way to keep Augie from doing something even more radical or violent? Or was it the other way around? Had Augie planted the notion in Ramsey's head, coaxed it out of him in the midst of one of his anti-Skyles ravings? Even now, even sitting here, thinking back, Ramsey didn't know how or where the whole thing originated.

Much the same was probably true of the girl-the girl they had used to bring Skyles down. She probably didn't even know herself what had happened or what she'd done. She was only fourteen years old, after all, one of Ramsey's prostitute informers, already beaten half-crazy by her pimp and poisoned half to death with crystal. She probably didn't know herself where the truth ended and her lies began. That's what made her such a convincing actress. Oh, Reverend, save me from my life of sin. She probably didn't even know herself whether she was begging Skyles for salvation or just diddling around for some extra cash.

And even Skyles-even the reverend had to wonder sometimes, too. At that moment, the critical moment, when the girl deftly slipped the strap of her dress down her shoulder-deftly hiked her hem-and slipped her naked breast against his upraised hand and pressed her shaved and shockingly naked slit against his knee, hadn't he hesitated for just a second before he started back and pulled away? It sure looked like that on the security camera footage-it sure looked like he hesitated a long, long second-a clear, open-and-shut case of Lust in the Heart. That was enough to quiet any questions about the girl and her intentions, especially from reporters whose priest-fucks-kid narrative fell out of them like dog slobber at a dinner bell. And that was enough, in turn, to make Skyles half believe he half belonged in prison. Wracked with guilt, he could only blither weakly in his own defense while Augie Lancaster's judge and jury members worked their will-his will-Augie Lancaster's ever-unspoken will.

So there it was. The perfect case in point. The reverend wasn't sure if he was guilty. The girl wasn't sure if she was lying. Ramsey wasn't sure whose idea the whole thing was. No wonder Augie Lancaster floated free of history, like a soap bubble carried away on a rising atmosphere of abstract desire…

An image that made one corner of Ramsey's mouth lift slightly beneath his moustache…

Just then-in keeping with this theme-into the coffee shop came the animal Gutterson. Tromping thump-footed like a troll guarding a castle gate. Wearing a jacket of white linen that looked like it hadn't been ironed since last spring.

He got his coffee at the counter and sank into his chair across the small round table from the lieutenant. He let out a heavy sigh as he sat and said, "Another day, another dollar." Full of earthy wisdom was the detective.

Ramsey didn't even bother to speak. He simply pushed the blue folder across the table at him.

Gutterson sighed again and cleared his throat. He opened the folder with one hand while he raised his coffee cup to his lips with the other.

It was the same blue folder that had been given to Ramsey by Charlotte Mortimer-Rimsky. It held the same blurry photograph of the man in the car outside the graffito house. But now it also held printouts from Ramsey's long, discreet, difficult, and only partially successful investigation.

Gutterson scanned the printouts, staring dead-eyed and working his lips like some knucklehead reading porn.

"Mysterious," he rumbled after a while.

"I need to know what he knows."

"That could get messy." Unconcerned, Gutterson flipped the blue folder shut. He sipped his coffee, looking over the rim at Ramsey.

It was the crucial moment, but it all seemed more or less inevitable. Gutterson's stupidity was of a wholly moral nature. He was smart enough otherwise. He had survived on this city's police force a long time. He was plenty smart enough to divine his superior's will.

"Well, we can't have a mess," Ramsey said.

"No, we cannot. No, we cannot," said Gutterson with some unfathomable combination of bloodlust and world hatred. He swept up the blue folder with one paw. "I keep this?"

Ramsey gestured as if to say Be my guest.

Then, when Gutterson was gone, the lieutenant sat alone through a half-price refill, looking out the window at the pleasant view of a Westside shopping mall. He daydreamed vaguely about what he'd do when all this was over. How he'd become the law officer he'd started out to be, the neighborhood model of success, self-control, and integrity, his mother's son. He saw himself rescuing fatherless children from their gangster mentors… or something. Whatever. He knew full well that it would never happen. He knew full well that "all this" is never over. "All this" is just the world and you make your choices and you pay your way. He was just soothing his conscience, that's all. That was part of his discipline, too, now: quieting the voice of his upbringing, breaking free of his mother's outmoded philosophical apron strings, willing away his shame.

Because that was the real secret of the whole business, wasn't it? That was the great thing Augie Lancaster knew and that Ramsey, meditating on Augie's success, had now discovered: conscience was history. Conscience was the weight of history, the only power it had over you. And it, too-conscience, too-was nothing more than a current of mass opinion that could be turned this way or that by a strong man's will.

The thought brought Ramsey back to himself, back to his own predicament-left behind here as he was on the history-flooded earth as Augie levitated into the television ether where the young folks danced and sang his praises and the reporters-who-were-not-reporters-anymore appended choral hallelujahs to his name. The thought brought Ramsey back to the blue folder. It was all about the blue folder now.

To anyone with eyes to see with, to anyone with a mind accustomed to the way things worked in this good old city, in this good old world, the blue folder was nothing less than an order to kill a man. It had come to Ramsey through Charlotte Mortimer-Rimsky, but it was really an expression of Augie Lancaster's will. And now Ramsey had given the blue folder to Gutterson and the folder had become an expression of Ramsey's will. And if ever the deed itself should come back to haunt him, Ramsey would say, "No, no, that wasn't what I meant. It was just a blue folder. I don't know what he was thinking."

Because Ramsey had watched Augie Lancaster on TV. He had seen him floating free of the city and he had learned his lesson. He had learned how to give an order to do murder without uttering an incriminating word. He had learned how to turn the current of his conscience against the directions of his upbringing, against the fact of his own actions and the tug of responsibility. He, too, had learned how to float free.

He sat stirring an extra half spoon of sugar into his coffee cup and gazed mildly out the window at the passing scene. ON SATURDAY, after all those days of spring sunshine, it finally rained. That was the day Shannon finished the angel.

He went to the Applebees' house and carried the sculpture into the house's small garage. He worked on it in there, putting on the finishing touches. When he was done, he and old man Applebee set the altarpiece back on the mantel in the dining room. Teresa and the boy came home from the grocery store and they all four admired it.

Teresa made pork chops and mashed potatoes, and they all had dinner together in the dining room by candlelight. There was an atmosphere of celebration in the house as Applebee and Teresa took turns admiring different aspects of the wooden angel Shannon had made, the angel of Joy and Sorrow. Applebee even raised a glass of wine and toasted it. When dinner was over, he went to it and studied it up close.

"You're an artist, Henry," he said to Shannon.

Shannon laughed that off. He was no artist.

"No, I'm serious. You could make a living at it. I mean, this…" He shook his head. "It really is remarkable."

Shannon felt good. He was aware of how good he felt. He didn't have that feeling he sometimes got as if his skin were crawling. He just felt good. This was the life, he thought: sitting here with these people as if he were part of the family and holding his love for Teresa half-secret in his heart and having the angel he'd made sitting on the mantel there. Somewhere inside, he knew it all had to come apart at some point, because he knew he was a fraud. The angel looked at him from its perch as if it knew he was a fraud, too, a crappy little thief with a face job and false papers. But he, Shannon, put that out of his mind for now, because this was what he'd always wanted, wanted without knowing it, this was the life, the new life the identity man had promised him: here it finally was.

"Well, we ought to do something," he said. "Go out and celebrate sometime or something." He spoke out of his general pleasure with things, but the idea in his mind was that he would take Teresa out somewhere sometime and they would be alone together.

But the kid, Michael, piped up, "We could go to the fair. There's a fair. Junie went to it, Junie at school. We could go."

And Teresa looked at Shannon expectantly.

So what the hell, the next day, Sunday, when Teresa and the boy came home from church, Shannon took them to the fair.

It was really just a carny on the edge of the city. The usual rides and booth games trucked over from the last town before being trucked over to the next. The kid thought it was magical, though, and that was fun even for Shannon. Michael's usual solemn demeanor fell away. He kept running off to one thing and then another, shouting, "Can we go on this? Can we do this?" The Ferris wheel, the bouncy castle, the whirligig. "Can we do this? Can we do this?" Shannon bought him cotton candy and taught him how to throw one of the lightweight baseballs at the booths. After spending about a million dollars on balls, the kid actually knocked over one of the targets and won a stuffed frog worth maybe a buck-fifty. That practically rocketed him into the stratosphere: "Look, Mama, I won, I won!" He held the frog in a death grip the rest of the day.

Shannon could tell it made Teresa happy to see the boy so excited. Whenever Shannon turned to her, she lit up and gave him a big smile. It really got to him. The smile was about the kid, sure, and he was glad to see that, but it got to him and it made him wonder if they could send the kid off somewhere for a while so he could kiss her. After the way she'd looked at him in the backyard, he was pretty sure she wanted him to.

It was a bright, warm afternoon. Saturday's rainstorm had left the air feeling fresh and clean. The weather brought the people out and as the day wore into blue evening, the fair grew crowded. Shannon and Teresa and the kid had to push their way through the mob and wait on line for the rides, but the kid didn't seem to mind.

He went on the carousel. He wanted Shannon to come along, but Shannon wanted a chance to be alone with Teresa. Maybe the kid understood that, because he tugged at Shannon for only a few seconds, then went off on the ride by himself.

The carousel was small, with colored light bulbs flashing and a calliope playing fairy-tale music. The kid went around on his painted horse every few seconds, waving to them so that they had to wave back. There was no time to go after the kiss. But Shannon and Teresa were standing next to each other behind a low metal barrier and she had one hand on the top of the barrier, leaving the other free for waving at the kid. After about the fifty-seventh time the kid went by, Shannon figured why not and reached out and put his hand over Teresa's hand where it sat on the barrier. He heard Teresa take a deep breath, and then she wrapped her hand around his. Shannon remembered the first time a girl had let him slide his fingers down her pants, when he was thirteen, the first time he had actually felt the magical damp portal into her flesh. It had set off a pretty substantial explosion in him, an expanding fireball filling him with flame. But this was on another order of magnitude, this was nuclear, and it was just her hand in his. Her hand in his and the carousel bringing the kid around and the cheap carny colored lights and the calliope music, that's all. But he really was crazy about her, he really was. He'd never felt anything like it. He turned to look at her, and she looked at him and smiled again, and that was pretty nuclear, too.

Then a movement caught his eye and his glance shifted, and he saw the man who had been following him all this time.

It was that same guy, the same damned guy with the shaved head and the watchful eyes and the cheap suit. It was a different cheap suit this time, but the exact same motherfucker otherwise, large as life, Shannon was sure of it. In that first moment, when Shannon first shifted his gaze from Teresa's smile and saw the bastard through the crowd, the guy was just standing there, just staring his way.

There could be no doubt about it anymore: the guy was watching him.

He was over by the wheel-of-fortune booth. The big wheel was turning and its colored lights blinking behind him. The flashing colors played on him and the fair lights washed over him so Shannon could see him clearly even in the twilight. The bald-headed goon saw Shannon look at him. Caught off-guard, he started. The next moment, he hurried away, losing himself in the crowd.

Shannon felt sick inside. Who was this guy? A cop? He had to be. What else? Deep down, Shannon had known all along that something like this would happen, that someone would find him. But why did it have to be now, so soon? Why couldn't it be in a few months or a year or a couple of years when he'd had a chance to live out his new life, when he'd had a chance to be with Teresa?

The sickness turned to anger in him. He let go of Teresa's hand and said, "I'll be right back, okay?"

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Nothing. I'll be right back."

He left her and plunged into the crowd, going after this guy, this bastard, meaning to run him to ground.

The next minute everything was racing past him and everything was racing inside him, too. The glittering lights of the turning carousel and the muscular rise and fall of the Ferris wheel and the strangely deadpan faces of parents and their children raced past on both sides of him, and his chaotic angry thoughts raced inside him, disconnected. He didn't know exactly what he was planning to do. But something. He wasn't going to just stand around and let this bastard follow him and torment him from a distance. If the guy was a cop, well, let him show his hand. Or if he wasn't a cop. Maybe he was something else, like a blackmailer or something-or an agent of Benny Torrance, out for revenge. Whatever. Never mind. If he had some proof of who Shannon was, let him bring it out. If he wanted to make a play, let him make it. Christ, couldn't Shannon have ten seconds to hold his girl's hand at the fair like anybody would? Was that too goddamn much to ask from the universe?

He reached the wheel-of-fortune booth, where the guy had been. He was breathless, tense and sweating, the wheel's colored lights flashing in his eyes and the barker calling to place your bets, take your chances. Jostled by some dick-swinging trucker who was swaggering past, Shannon turned unsteadily, scanning the people moving along the line of game booths toward an octopus ride-eight seats spinning round and round and up and down on the end of mechanical arms.

He saw-he thought he saw-the back of that bald head in the crowd by the octopus. He went after it, turning his body and using his hands to work his way past the people jammed up in front of him.

He reached the octopus, the seats going up and down above him, the calliope music playing loudly in his ears. But the bald guy was already gone, lost in the crowd…

No, wait, there he was. At the carnival's exit. Walking fast into the parking lot, walking toward that car of his, that same pale green Crown Victoria with the scrape on the side. Shannon saw its red taillights blink once as the guy pressed the button on his key to unlock it. No chance to catch up to him now, no chance to stop him.

Shannon stood helplessly, jostled by the crowd. He watched helplessly as the guy pulled the car door open and lowered himself inside.

A moment later, the Ford was pulling away.

When Shannon got back to the carousel, the boy, Michael, was leaning against his mother's jeans and sobbing. He was clutching her leg with one hand and clutching his stuffed frog to his runny nose with the other.

"He thought you left," Teresa told Shannon. She didn't sound angry or anything, but she gave him a look of deep meaning, and Shannon understood that this was some kind of big deal because of the kid's father being dead and all. He felt bad about it. He had to force his thoughts back from his run across the carnival, back from that bastard making his getaway in the Ford. He had to force his attention back to the boy-who really did look pretty pitiful clutching his buck-fifty stuffed frog like that.

Shannon knelt in front of him, put his hand on the kid's shoulder. "Hey, hey, hey," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

But the minute he said it, he felt something dark open inside him. Because it was a lie, wasn't it? He was a fraud-a fugitive fraud with a murder rap hanging over his head. And with this bald guy after him, this new life of his was sure to fall apart at some point. And then he would be going somewhere, maybe forever.

The little boy snuffled against his mother's leg, looking at him through his tears, waiting to be told that everything was okay. That's when it hit Shannon full force: if his new life did fall apart-or, all right, when it fell apart-it wouldn't just fall apart for him now but for this boy, too, maybe for Teresa, too, if she gave a damn, but for this boy more than anyone.

Kneeling there with his hand on the poor kid's shoulder, Shannon lifted his eyes. He saw Teresa looking down at him, and he understood that she was thinking pretty much the same thing.

By the time he took them home to the old rectory, it was late, dark. Teresa sent the boy inside to his grandfather and stood alone with Shannon at the front door.

"Thank you, Henry. That was a nice day," she said.

He could see clearly enough what she was going to say next, and he was desperate to stop her. So he stepped close and took her face in one hand and kissed her. It was no good. It was all wrong, because of the desperation and because he was just doing it to shut her up. Still, she let him do it, and for a few moments he had the drunken sense of what it might've been like, the feel of her mouth giving way and her hair tangling in his fingers and the sweetness of the thing starting up between them, not just the kiss, but the whole thing.

She must've felt some of it, too, because, at first, her hand lifted as if she wanted to take hold of him. But she didn't. It was all wrong, and she didn't touch him. After a while, her hand sank down again. Shannon broke the kiss off and stepped away.

"Oh… Listen, Henry…" she began-because he hadn't stopped her from saying what she was going to say, he'd just delayed it.

"I know, I know," he said. "Look…"

"No, I just have to be sure, you know? It's different when you have a kid. I can't pretend I'm just some girl again and he isn't there."

"No, no, you're his mother, I understand that."

"I can't have people come and then leave. Guys, I mean. I can't just start up with them and let him care about them and then have them leave. I can't let him go through something like that again."

What about us? He wanted to argue with her. What about you and me-wanting this, wanting each other? Don't we get anything? But he was embarrassed to sound selfish in front of her. "Look," he said, "about what happened at the carnival…" But he floundered, because what could he say that wouldn't be a lie?

She smiled her screwy, comical smile and silenced him by putting her hand on his arm, shaking her head. "Oh, you know, do me a favor, Henry… I mean, it's not just Michael. I'm not that steady myself. So do me a favor and don't tell me unless I need to know. It's just-if you're leaving, you know, say so. And if you're not, say so. And if you're not sure, then just say that and I'll wait till you know. I will. I mean it. But I can't just start up and have you leave and let him go through that again. I don't think I can go through it again, either. So do me a favor, okay? Just…"

He wanted to say something, to answer her, but he couldn't think of a single thing worth saying, not one thing that wouldn't be a lie and make matters worse in the end. So he just had to stand there and take it, stand there knowing that this was good-bye between them, that he was going to lose her. It was a crushing weight of sadness inside him-he wouldn't have believed how bad it felt. As good as it felt to hold her hand at the carousel, that's how bad this felt now. Man, he could've killed that bald-headed bastard for showing up like that. It had ruined everything. Who the hell was he? Why the hell couldn't he just leave him alone?

"Okay," he said thickly. It was all he could say.

Her hand dropped from his arm. She nodded, still smiling but her eyes damp. He stood there another moment. He wanted to tell her how he felt about her, how crazy he was about her and that he loved her-really loved her-but so what? What good was that to either of them? In a way, that would be the worst thing he could say, the worst of all.

He just turned finally-turned with the crushing weight inside him-and walked back up the path to his car. HE PARKED THE Civic down the street from his brownstone. He shut the car off and sat in it a while, just sort of weighing the car keys in his hand and staring through the windshield.

Though it was not even ten, the area was eerily quiet. It was like that around here, no street life after dark. There were a lot of reasons for that. The worst of the wreckage was right nearby and the gangs of boys might come around prowling, those flood-punks who would kill you for a dime. None of the local nightspots had survived the disaster, so the neighborhood's young people had to drive far afield to find a bar or a club-and the old people weren't much for going out anyway. Plus it was Sunday, the work week beginning tomorrow. So it was quiet.

Shannon sat and weighed the keys in his hand and stared. He was down, way down. Heartbroken, to put it plainly. He wished none of this had ever happened. He wished he'd never come to this city, never carved the angel, never met Teresa-that most of all. He had always known deep down this new life couldn't be real, couldn't last. The bald guy-the cops-someone-he had always known someone would turn up sooner or later and expose him. But it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't met Teresa. He couldn't put it into words exactly, but it was like, when he was with her, he could see the life he was supposed to have lived, the shape of the life he was meant for, like a beautiful city in the far distance, a beautiful crystal city in the mist. To find her and then lose her-to have the mist close over that city again just as he'd seemed about to break through to it-that was a real piece of mean luck, cruel, as if the gods were tantalizing him, entertaining themselves with his emotional torture.

He stared out the windshield. Slowly, his left hand went to his right arm and he massaged the spot where the old scars had been. He had a hint in him of that old feeling, that crawly feeling that told him he had to get out, had to do something, find some action, anything, fast. He thought for a moment maybe he'd go somewhere, drive somewhere, some bar where he could get a girl maybe. But he was too down for that, too down in the dumps. He just wanted to go home. It hurt to think about Teresa, but that was all he wanted to do, just go home and lie on his bed and think about her.

He sighed heavily and got out of the car. He walked heavily down the silent sidewalk, his sneakers padding, the only footsteps in the night. There were sirens in the distance. There were always sirens. And when he glanced up, he could see the pale yellow glow of fire on the dark horizon. Something was always burning somewhere in this city. He reached the brownstone's stoop and heavily climbed.

His apartment was on the third floor, three long flights. The decaying wooden banister. The peeling yellow walls. The faded runners beneath his feet. Then he was on the landing. Then down the hall to the wooden door, the keys in his hand.

He stepped over the threshold into the dark apartment. He reached for the light switch as the door swung shut.

He didn't see the man who hit him, never knew the blow was coming. That made it much worse. Before he had a clue, a fist like concrete drove into his belly. He wasn't tensed for it, so it just drove deep. The breath was forced out of him and he doubled over, dropping his keys, clutching his gut, stumbling once in the dark and falling, his knee cracking on the wooden floor, his shoulder hitting the side of the bed as he went down.

He lay there gasping, still clutching himself. The light came on. He had a second to see the lower half of the man's legs, the black shoes, the green slacks. A second to think wildly, The bald guy…? Then the guy swooped down and grabbed the front of his windbreaker. Shannon was a big man, but his attacker hauled him easily off the floor. Shannon saw his face. It was not the bald guy. This guy was much worse, much bigger, meaner. He punched Shannon in the head with his concrete fist. Shannon went down again, in a rattled, painful daze, the light suddenly glaring, lancing into his eyes.

The man towered above him. No, it was not the bald guy. It was another guy, big, really big. A linebacker gone to seed. Acne-scarred face and a crewcut that made it look like his hair was standing on end with pure, electric malevolence. And the look on his face-oh Jesus-Shannon was already hurting, but that look weakened him even more with panic and despair because he could tell: the guy dug this shit. He was going to enjoy it.

So in the same second he saw him, Shannon was desperately looking for a way out. His panic and the vibrating pain in his head made the room nauseatingly bright and clear to him. With aching, pulsing clarity, he saw the wood floors and the gray walls and-oh Jesus-the shades on the windows pulled down so no one could see what was about to happen and the rumpled white side of the mattress above him and the dark shadows beneath the bed and the pale, colorless braid rug the big thug was standing on and the red tool bag lying against the mirror on the closet door.

And, at the same time his panicking mind searched for a means of escape, it searched also for an explanation, trying to understand what was happening, racing wildly through the possibilities… The cops… Benny Torrance… the bald guy… who the hell sent this thug…?

Then the big man, smirking, opened a knife, and Shannon's thoughts were cut off like a door had shut on them.

The knife was a no-shit killing tool, a short tanto blade unfolding from a butt-pommeled black hilt built to grip. As the big man opened it with his two hands, his white linen jacket brushed open and Shannon saw there was a 9mm Glock in his belt holster, too. With that and the look on the guy's face Shannon got the whole picture like prophecy: he was about to enter a long tunnel of pain and come out the other end dead.

Crazy-scared, Shannon managed to grunt, "What do you want?" Clutching his gut, his head throbbing.

"We're gonna talk," the man said. "But first, you gotta find out I'm serious."

"You got the wrong guy, man."

"You're not the wrong guy."

And Shannon had no answer because who was he? And who was the thug after? Shannon? Henry Conor? Some other guy he wasn't even supposed to be?

But that was the end of the conversation, anyway. The guy knelt down over him, his eyes shining with mean. Holding the knife in his right hand, he grabbed Shannon's ear with his left and hauled his head off the floor, ready to cut the ear off.

Shannon punched him in the balls as hard as he could, but the guy was so tough that only made him grunt, so Shannon hit him again in the throat this time and that got him. The guy gagged and let Shannon go. He clutched his throat, kneeling there, his eyes rolling. But he still had the knife in his hand.

Shannon quickly rolled away from him toward the middle of the room. He was climbing to his feet, his gut screaming with pain, when he saw the guy go for his gun.

The guy still had the knife in his right hand, so he went for the nine with his left. All the same, he drew it smoothly and fast. But by then, Shannon was standing. He lashed a kick at the guy's hand-got him-and the gun went flying-under the bed, damn it, out of sight, out of reach. So Shannon made a move to go after the guy while he was still kneeling, but the guy slashed at him with the knife, driving him back, and then came off his knee and stood.

People joke about how dumb it is to bring a knife to a gun fight but guess what: close quarters, a knife is deadlier if the guy knows how to use it, and this guy did. He was on Shannon fast, in a split second, keeping the knife point toward his eyes so it was hard to see. Shannon only saved himself by grabbing the desk chair. Lifting it. Jabbing the legs at the guy to keep him at bay. The two men shifted so that Shannon's back was to the closet. There was no sound in the room but their breathing. Then the guy managed to get hold of the chair leg with his free hand. He was strong and started to rip the chair out of Shannon's grip.

Shannon held the chair to build up resistance, then let it go suddenly, giving it an extra shove. The guy grunted and staggered back, stumbled, fell on his ass-but never let go of that knife and was already scrambling to his feet.

Shannon turned and leapt to the tool bag on the floor by the closet: the red Milwaukee bag with the hammers and wrenches in the outside pouches. He bent down and grabbed a framing hammer-a real thunder-club with a thick wooden handle and twenty-eight ounces of steel on the end.

Even as he grabbed it, even as he straightened, he saw the guy's reflection in the closet mirror, the guy rushing at him with murder in his eyes and the knife held low.

Shannon spun, whipping the hammer around as he did. He had the guy in the mirror so he could gauge where he was, and the guy hadn't thought of that and was charging top speed to get at Shannon before he had a chance to turn and spot him.

The hammerhead went full force into the guy's temple with a soft and liquid and awful sound. All at the same time, the guy's charge stopped and his eyes went white and his mouth fell open and he dropped to the floor twitching and shuddering and shitting himself, and then was dead.

Shannon had never killed a man before, but it didn't bother him much, not in the circumstances. What did get to him was the craziness of the situation. The dead guy on the floor and his own phony identity and no conceivable reason for any of it, the whole what-the-fuck of it all.

Panting, he staggered over to the bed and sat down on it hard. He held his head in his hands, staring at the body on the floor, which had stopped twitching now and just lay there stinking of shit and still. The malevolence and sadism were gone from the dead man's face. He just looked slack and stupid, staring at the ceiling with his mouth open like an idiot. Shannon wondered if anyone had heard their struggle… but there was so much to think about, he couldn't think about any of it at first. What the hell just happened? What the hell should he do now?

He covered his face with his hands and blew into them, thinking, Okay, okay. Trying to gather himself and figure it out. When he looked again, the dead guy was still there, still staring up at the ceiling, and Shannon thought, Okay again and decided he had to search the guy, find some ID, find out who he was.

He got off the bed and went to the body. Knelt down by it-cautiously-not that he thought the guy was alive or anything-there was no chance of that-but he had this horror-movie image in his head of the guy leaping up at him anyway, dead or no. Flinching at the stench of shit, he held the guy's jacket open and went into the pocket. He found what he thought was the guy's wallet-but no such luck.

He drew the thing out and when he saw it, he groaned aloud in misery. It was not a wallet. It was a leather ID holder. There was a police badge pinned to it, a detective's badge. Inside was the guy's police ID card: Detective Glenn Gutterson.

Shannon had killed a cop. IT WAS A LONG time before the full extent of the catastrophe occurred to him. Oh, he knew it was a disaster right away, but it was a long time before he could take it all in. With the adrenaline still pumping through him and the cop just lying there dead on the floor, he couldn't think clearly. But he had to think. He had to figure out what to do.

He knew right away he couldn't risk calling the cops-not just because of who he was and who he wasn't, but because he didn't know what this was all about. It might be about anything and he didn't know which way the danger lay, so he just had to keep to himself. Which meant he was stuck with it, stuck with a dead cop and no one to turn to, and a murder rap waiting for him if he zigged when he should zag. That sent some more adrenaline through him. Because maybe someone had heard them fighting and was already dialing 911. Maybe the sirens were about to start up in the distance or maybe right outside or maybe there'd just be a sudden pounding on the door…

And what then? What about Teresa? He wasn't thinking clearly, so it took him a few moments to think about her. He was sitting on the bed again by then. Staring at the body, not even seeing it now. Just staring and rubbing the heel of his hand back and forth over his mouth, never mind that his lips were already raw from it. Thinking: What about Teresa and the boy and Applebee? And what about his job and his new life like fairy tale?

Well, that's over with, he thought.

That's when he began to see the scope of this thing. It was global, wasn't it, a total Hiroshima of his hopes and dreams. The new life, the girl, the angel on the mantelpiece-they were all just ashes now. It was a cluster-fuck so epic he couldn't even feel bad about it. What was the point in feeling bad?

Well, maybe he'd feel bad later. Maybe, it occurred to him, he was in shock now. He sure wasn't thinking clearly. It only now occurred to him with any urgency that he really had to get out of here. The sirens might start, the knock might come any minute. That was the main thing, he thought, sitting there, staring at the dead guy, rubbing his mouth raw with his hand.

His new life was over. He had to go.

The things he saw that night-the awful life of the night in that ruined city-it all seemed strange and dreamlike to him as he passed. Everything seemed at once faraway and yet part of him, faraway and yet connected to him, as if it were an emanated dream, a dream that had projected itself onto the world, a world outside that had somehow originated in the nightmare factories of his mind. The tilted, blackened buildings. The slumped buildings with blackened windows like eyes. A building he came to suddenly around a corner with thick black smoke pouring out of it, and crackling, hoarsely whispering flames licking red out of the belly of the blackness. There was a man in the upstairs window, staring out, not even calling for help, not even caring, just staring out as if he was already dead. There were no firemen. No sirens coming. Just a few scrawny beasts of boys watching it like a movie, laughing and exclaiming and slapping hands. He saw another gang of boys in the mouth of an alley not far from there. They were crouched over something alive, like vampires feeding. He saw legs kicking weakly out of the slow melee, flashes of skin and blood. A man leaning against the alley wall smoked a cigarette and watched. A girl crouched at his feet, fearful and fascinated, bright-eyed, helpless and aroused. Shannon moved on. He heard machine-gun fire. On an empty street, he saw girls and boys-dressed-as-girls taking gangly thugs in and out of an abandoned brownstone. He heard sirens. On a street with no lights at all, he saw an ambulance loom out of the dusky distance, its flashers whirling red. It rushed past him and in the screaming noise and strobic red glow, he saw the silhouette of a man lying in the gutter, clawing at the pavement. And then the ambulance went past and the man sank back into the darkness.

It all seemed far away and it all seemed to come from inside him, his heart enacted in the shadows, his brooding fantasies brought to life. He walked-he didn't know how long-deep into the night. Carrying his tool bag, only with clothes and toiletries in it instead of tools. And the gun, the big cop's nine. He had almost left the apartment when he remembered it, had the door open and his foot on the threshold, when he had stopped and gone back and fetched it from under the bed.

He didn't take the car. They'd have the car made too fast. He'd drive and drive and then they'd put out one call and have him. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly, but he knew enough to leave the car. His cell phone, too: he'd dumped that in a sewer. So he walked and walked, disconnected from everything, and the city was like his dreams playing out all around him.

In the end, he found himself in a neighborhood of small houses ruined by the flood. He didn't know how late it was. He looked at his watch and he still didn't know, it didn't register. A damp breeze that smelled of sewage reached him. The black of the broad sky seemed as if it was slowly being stained from within with a lighter indigo-so he thought it might be nearly dawn.

In any case, he was exhausted now. He looked around him. There were no lights anywhere. The houses were lopsided wrecks, all empty. Animals moved over fields of debris-not just rats and squirrels, not just the bats jiggering in the indigo sky-but big, loping, red-eyed creatures that might have been dogs or something else nosing through the garbage, and great hunched, brooding birds that might have been vultures, and other bony creeping beasts that might have been children or something else.

Shannon made his way to one house that stood slanted like a man with a shortened leg. He saw it in starlight against the sky. Its broken windows stared. Its door hung open. The door flapped and banged and gasped-the latch catching and letting go-as the damp wind smelling of sewage blew stronger.

Shannon went to it. He stood in the doorway and held the door open. It smelled no worse than the outdoors and he could feel the emptiness of it. Nothing moving anywhere. As his eyes adjusted, he could see the emptiness, too. No furniture. Nothing. The place was stripped bare.

He stepped in and pulled the door shut behind him, pulled it hard until it held. He sat down and made a place for himself on the dark floor. He lay his head on the bag. He pulled his windbreaker tight around him. He wasn't thinking clearly. He was worn out and had to sleep. Then it would be better.

He curled up on his side, shivering and clutching his coat. For a moment, his face crumpled as if he would cry, because he had witnessed his own heart in the night city and everything was ashes.

Identity like stain.