The Identity Man

EPILOGUE

IT WAS STRANGE to be back in the white room. For the first day or two, he was in a painkiller fog, and it was very strange. He hung suspended in the fog as if in midair, and the fog drifted by him, sometimes black and sometimes gray and sometimes full of present shadows or past faces he remembered. He saw the white room through the breaks in the fog for shapeless moments at a time, and he wasn't sure whether it was really there or he was dreaming. And when he thought it was there, that he was back in the white room again, he wondered if the rest of it had been a dream-the ruined city and the wooden angel and Teresa-everything a dream while he had been here in the white room all along.

Slowly, day by day, the fog thinned. He wafted down from the air and intermittently felt the bed beneath him. The sound of a door opening or footsteps on the floor would alert him and he would fight against the weighted haze, trying to sit up and see more clearly. He caught glimpses of men with guns. Different men at different times. One would stand over him with his thumbs in his belt and look down at him with a deadpan face. Another would sit in a chair against the wall and page through a magazine. Yet another would just sit in the chair and stare. Lawmen of some sort, standing guard.

There were other men, too, sometimes-and sometimes women: doctors or nurses in scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks. They fussed at him and shifted him on the bed and stuck needles into him. Sometimes they gave him water through a straw and he drank gratefully. When they spoke to him, they spoke as if he were an infant or a dog-as if he couldn't really understand or answer them. When he did answer, they always seemed surprised and a little resentful. Then he would be gone again and when he woke up it was all so hard to remember.

One day, he opened his eyes, and there was Foster. Same old narrow, bald, seedy agent in yet another cheap suit. Shannon squinted through sleep and saw him fidgeting in a chair at his bedside. He was wearing a blue sling on his right arm and Shannon remembered that Ramsey had shot him.

Foster rubbed his neck with his good hand. He shifted his neck in his collar. He looked up at a woman working a machine by the bed.

"All right?" he said. "I need him clear."

If she answered, Shannon didn't hear her. He saw her walk away. With lazy nausea, he moved his head so he could look at Foster.

"Teresa," Shannon said. He had a feeling it was not the first time he had said it.

"Yeah, yeah, she's all right," said Foster. "I told you. They're fine, they're in the system. New city, new life. No one even knows they were involved. They'll be okay."

Shannon closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was a great relief to him. He shifted uncomfortably. He was beginning to become aware of a new, unwelcome clarity. The drugs were wearing off, the tendrils of painless fog losing their grip on him, falling away. He could feel cool reality drifting over his skin like air drifting over a rotting tooth. He understood for the first time-or for the first time he could remember anyway-that his body was broken and wrong and the drugs were keeping him from the full feeling of it. He opened his eyes.

"How bad?" he mumbled. "How bad am I?"

Foster gave a jerky shrug. "You got a beating, dog. Ribs broken. Nose, fingers. Lost your spleen. Muscles torn up all over. You'll live, though."

Shannon nodded.

"But we better talk fast," the agent went on. "I need you clear. I need you to understand what I tell you. But once the drugs wear off, you'll be a traveler in the unhappy lands, my friend. So let's get it over with, so we can put you back under."

Shannon managed another nod. "What…?"

"Focus, boy. You understanding me?"

"Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

"All right. Here it is. The situation out there in the world is currently pretty bleak, not to say dire, for both you and me. We're getting hit good and hard. The media have put their heart and soul into the Augie Lancaster dream of life, and the idea that he's the most corrupt, power-hungry organism in the galaxy isn't sitting well."

Shannon had to fight hard to understand this. His head was clearing, but as it cleared, he felt the pain closing on him like a fresh skin of knitted nerve endings, closing on him until it passed through, and he couldn't tell whether it was outside him or rising from within… It was distracting. "Yeah? Okay?"

"Well, you know how the media thing goes," said Foster. "The way they tell it, it's all our fault. It was an illegal operation, blah, blah, blah. We're just trying to bring down a great reformer and defend the status quo, doncha know. We're racists taking vengeance on Augie for exposing the white man's incompetence during the flood. Whatever. People will do and say just about anything to keep from admitting they're wrong. They're wrong about Augie, but they don't care. They'll die to keep from admitting it."

"Right, right, right," said Shannon. He was starting to breathe harder, to flinch with the spark and play of his pain. "So what's the point?"

"The point is: I'll probably be fired. Possibly I'll do some prison time. Which means you've got no friends anywhere."

"Well… I never knew you were my friend anyway, so no loss."

"It's a sad fact, dog, but I'm all you've got. Without me, they'll be in here trying to charge you with shit you never even heard of. You don't get yourself a good lawyer, you'll die in prison, maybe get the lethal I."

"Well…" Shannon took a sharp breath as the pain shot through him. It was a tough situation, but he couldn't think about it now. "It is what it is," he said.

"Yeah," said Foster. "It surely is." He stood up out of his chair and moved the chair in front of him and moved to stand behind it. He looked here and there around the room. "The way it's going to go is this. A lot of serious-looking men and women wearing expensive suits the taxpayers were forced to pay for at gunpoint are going to come through here in the next few days and weeks and ask you questions in stern, serious tones of voices the taxpayers were also forced to pay for. They will be full of shit, every single one of them, and they will be attempting to convict you of anything they can in the hopes they can support Augie Lancaster so that the media will make them look virtuous and they can continue to live off the ever-dwindling fat of the land. That is called your government, son, and when it is finished with you, it will put you in one of its prisons or kill you dead. Now you've been warned."

Shannon gave a small groan. Man, he hurt. He hurt all over. He forced himself to focus through it. "Okay. Okay. What do you figure I should do?"

Foster frowned. "Tell the truth. They're not used to it. It fucks with their heads. That's what I'd do. But it's your call. I just thought you ought to know what's coming."

"Okay. Okay, thanks. Don't worry about-" The pain cut a jagged path through him like lightning. He tensed and fought down a cry.

"Hey, Doc," Foster called.

The woman came back into the room. Foster nodded at the machine beside Shannon's bed. The doctor went to it and pushed the buttons.

Foster continued to stand there behind the chair, looking down at him. Holding the chair back with his two hands, drumming his fingers on it. "They gave Ramsey a hero's funeral yesterday," he said. "Bagpipes and everything."

Shannon felt the tendrils of the drug growing back over him like vines. The pain began to ease, his body relaxing. "Did they? What a comedy."

"That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm trying to say. They'll tag you for that, if they can. Killing him. Killing a hero cop. I can only do what I can do."

Shannon gave a small laugh. "I don't expect any breaks. I know how it is." The tendrils spread into fog. His breathing grew deeper.

"Did you hear him at the end?" he heard Foster ask from a dreamy distance. "Ramsey. Did you hear him scream as he went down?"

Shannon shook his head slowly, his eyes fluttering shut. He had not heard. He only had seen Ramsey disappear into the sky like magic. He saw it now again.

"I heard him," said Foster. "Man, I'm still hearing him. At night? It's like he's still around somewhere, still screaming."

Shannon smiled dreamily, letting himself sink away. "I wouldn't worry about it, Foster."

"Yeah, I guess," he heard Foster say. "But when you work for the federal government, it's not such a big leap to believe in hell."

The men and women came in their expensive suits as Foster had said they would. By then, the pain had become bearable. The fog of drugs had thinned to a mere mist. Shannon lay on his bed and gazed quietly at the men and women as they asked him questions and pointed their fingers at him and sometimes leaned over to shout in his face. He told them everything that had happened. He did not hide anything. This only seemed to make them angrier. They accused him of lying. They accused him of murdering Ramsey. At one point, one man, an old guy with big eyebrows bouncing up and down, told him that he was going to go to death row and be executed if he didn't change his story right this minute. Shannon gazed at him from the bed. It was odd, but he was not afraid. He was not afraid of any of these people or of anything they might do to him. At first, he thought maybe it was the drugs dulling his feelings. But it was not the drugs. The drugs were very mild now. He just wasn't afraid, that's all. He just told the truth and lay on the bed and gazed at the government people as they came and went.

One day, Sharpstein came. Sharpstein was a large, flabby man with a large, flabby face. He wore glasses with black frames. He said he was Shannon's lawyer. Shannon never knew who sent him.

Shannon was out of bed by now. He was dressed in jeans and a black sweater when Sharpstein walked in with his brown briefcase. He was sitting on the couch in the main room, the room where he had watched all the old movies on the DVD player the last time he was here. But the DVD player was gone, so he was just sitting there.

Sharpstein set his briefcase on the table. "Don't they give you a TV in here?"

"No. I could use a TV. One of the doctors brought me some comic books, but I read them all."

"No computer? No Internet?"

"No."

Sharpstein's big, flabby face seemed to expand. "Jesus. That's gotta be a violation of something or other. What do you do all day?"

Shannon shrugged. "Work out. Try to get my body back. I still sleep a lot." He also spent hours daydreaming about Teresa, making up scenarios in his mind about the life they would never spend together, what it would have been like. But he didn't tell Sharpstein that. Who the hell was Sharpstein anyway?

"Man!" said Sharpstein. "Stuck in here all day with nothing to do? It'd make my skin crawl. Doesn't it make your skin crawl?"

Shannon's lips parted in surprise. He stared at Sharpstein for a long time. "No," he said, wondering. "It doesn't make my skin crawl. You're right, it should, shouldn't it? It always used to. But no-no, it doesn't." It was like not being afraid of prison or death row. It was another odd thing he noticed.

"So no one's telling you anything either? You have no idea what's going on out there?"

"No," said Shannon. "What's going on?"

Sharpstein laughed. He had a high-pitched laugh that made his jowls quiver. He seemed full of glee at the absurdity of people. He told Shannon that a big struggle was taking place. It was all political and hard to understand. As far as Shannon could make out, the people who talked on the radio were battling the people who appeared on TV. It had started with Foster. He had been suspended from his job and had gone on the radio to talk about it. The people on television had not let him come on, but the people on radio let him and he told his story. Then, a detective told his story on the radio. It was the detective Foster had shot on the rooftop, the one who dropped the gun that Shannon used. Somehow, he had changed sides and decided to talk on the radio, too. The people on television didn't like this. They brought people on to attack the detective and to prove he was a bad man and a liar. And he was a bad man and a liar, and they did prove it. But the thing was, when they proved it, they accidentally also proved that Ramsey was a bad man and that he was corrupt, and then the people on the radio began talking about that as well. After that, the public started to get interested, so the politicians also started fighting. The way Sharpstein told it, the politicians who wanted to look virtuous on television were squaring off against the politicians who wanted to sound virtuous on radio and they were arguing back and forth.

Shannon didn't get any of this. "What's it got to do with me?" he asked.

"Well, it saved your life for one thing," Sharpstein said. "The TV pols wanted you moved to prison so you could be killed by a fellow inmate before you gave any public testimony."

"Really? They said that?"

"No! Of course not! They don't just say things like that. What're you, crazy? They don't even know you exist yet. They just know there are witnesses being kept in seclusion, namely you. And they want you put in prison where you can be killed. They call that transparency."

"Me getting killed is transparency?"

"Or the public's right to know. Something. Anyway, luckily for you, the radio pols managed to embarrass the TV pols enough so they backed off on that and let you stay here for now where you're relatively safe… Listen, this is ridiculous. We gotta get you a television in here. And a computer so you can find out what's happening."

"Ah…" Shannon made a face. He didn't care about any of this. He didn't care what they did to him. "Forget it," he said. "Just… Could you get me one of those movie players? And some of those really old movies? You know, the ones before they had color in them."

Sharpstein took a big yellow pad out of his briefcase and put it on the table. He wrote on the pad. "You want to watch black-and-white movies."

"Yeah," said Shannon. "I like those. They're good."

So Shannon went back to watching old movies and working out in the white room, just like before. And now, when the people in expensive suits came to question him, Sharpstein was there and Sharpstein answered most of the questions for him. Shannon appreciated that. He started to like Sharpstein. Sharpstein was entertaining. Sharpstein laughed at the people in the expensive suits-and when he laughed the suit-people looked worried, as if maybe their flies were unzipped and they hadn't noticed it.

"I love this!" Sharpstein said once to a crow-faced woman in a tan pants suit. "My client is telling the truth and you're trying to plea bargain him into lying. It's beautiful!"

"No one wants anyone to lie," said the crow-faced woman grimly. But she had that is-my-fly-unzipped look in her eyes. It was very entertaining.

Then there was a startling moment.

Shannon was alone, except for the lawman who, he knew, was sitting in a chair outside the door of the white room. Shannon was watching an old black-and-white movie on the TV Sharpstein had gotten him. The movie was about a British pilot during World War II. The pilot was shot down by the Nazis, and he went diving down to earth in his plane to crash and die. But his plane went into the fog and in the fog Death couldn't find him, so even though the plane crashed, the pilot didn't die. It was a fantasy movie.

So, anyway, the pilot went off to a hospital and he met this girl and he fell in love with her. But then, Death finally caught up with him and wanted to take him away. But the pilot said, well, hold on a second, that's not right, you made a mistake and now I'm in love and it's not fair to kill me because it's all your fault I'm in this situation to begin with.

Shannon was doing sit-ups during the movie, but when it got to this part, he stopped and just sat up and watched. Because wasn't this exactly what had happened to him? Through no fault of his own, he had been given a life he wasn't supposed to have and he had fallen in love, and then they had come to take him away and it wasn't fair.

In the movie then, the pilot had to go up to heaven for a big trial that was judged by all the good people who had died, like Abraham Lincoln and so on. They argued back and forth over whether the pilot should die or be allowed to live and have his love. Shannon thought this was like what was happening now, outside in the world, between the TV people and the radio people. They were arguing back and forth and in the end they would decide what happened to him.

In the end of the movie, the judges decided that if the pilot could prove the girl really loved him, he could live again. So the pilot went back to earth and he collected a tear the girl had cried because she thought he was going to die, and he brought the tear back to heaven as proof of her love. Shannon gaped at the TV screen, because he saw it was just like the face of the angel, wasn't it? The girl's tear in the movie was just like the face he had carved when he had fallen in love with Teresa. He couldn't put it into words exactly why it was the same, but he knew it was the same. And suddenly he understood why he wasn't afraid of prison anymore or even of death row. He understood why his skin didn't crawl when he was just sitting around like this. He couldn't put any of it into words, but he understood that somehow he had won some kind of big victory, that even though good things had never happened to him and he had never had a chance in life and even though they were going to put him in prison or even send him to death row, he had somehow won anyway, like some kind of sports hero in the impossible last minutes of a game, and now his skin did not crawl and he was not afraid and whatever happened, he would be all right and his life was good. His life was good.

The final credits of the movie rolled and Shannon put his face in his hands. He was fi lled with a gigantic feeling of sweetness that he couldn't describe even to himself. He had no words for any of it, and he just sat there with his face in his hands.

It ended suddenly. Things were just going along, and then it was over.

Sharpstein came. He said, "We're done." Then two large men came into the white room. They pulled Shannon's arms behind his back and put handcuffs on him.

"What's happening?" Shannon said to Sharpstein.

"Augie Lancaster's been indicted. Foster's guys on the inside worked the pyramid. They've got testimony all the way up. Lancaster's done. Foster's been reinstated. It's over. The good guys won."

The two big men were pulling Shannon roughly toward the door. Sharpstein followed him to the threshold.

"Where are they taking me?" Shannon said.

"They don't need you anymore," Sharpstein told him. But that was all he could get out before the door shut in his face, and the two men hustled the handcuffed Shannon down the hall.

It was a blazingly bright morning. The air was warm and lazy, but there was a bracing hint of autumn, too, and Shannon smelled grass. The two large men hurried him over a scraggly field to a dark limousine parked on a dirt road. Shannon lifted his eyes, yearning to see the world. He had a glimpse of a vast plain running to a broad open sky. Then one of the large men opened the back door of the limousine and the other lowered Shannon inside.

It all happened very fast. Before Shannon fully understood what was going on, one of the large men reached behind him and unlocked the handcuffs. Then the man pulled out of the limousine and shut the door.

The limousine seemed very dark after the bright day. Dazed, Shannon tried to see the driver, but he was an obscure figure behind a divider of tinted glass. The car started moving.

"We meet again, eh?" said a voice from beside him.

Shannon turned and, son of a bitch, there was the identity man, the foreign guy who had given him his new face. Shannon gave a startled laugh. The disreputable old buzzard cut an elfin figure sitting there in his tweed jacket with his spotty hands and his slicked-back red-silver hair and his unkempt eyebrows. And that gleam of disdainful foreign humor in his eyes.

"Hey!" Shannon said. "What are you doing here?"

"You are not happy to see me?" said the foreigner. Cheppy, he said. You are not cheppy to see me, with the ch being the sound you make when you're about to spit.

"That depends," said Shannon. He didn't know what to think about any of this. "Last time I saw you, you stuck a needle in my neck and cut my face up."

That made the foreigner chuckle. "I remember. Good times, yes?"

"You gonna do that again?"

"Only if it amuses you. For my part, it is not necessary."

"Yeah, then I'll pass, thanks."

Shannon felt the car begin to speed up. He turned to look out the window. They were on a freeway now, racing past long fields of sparse grass. It was the first moment since Sharpstein had barged in on him that he had had a chance to think. Now, he began to put things together. What Sharpstein had said: "They don't need you anymore." The fact they had taken the cuffs off him. The identity man. There was a slow dawn of hope and amazement inside him.

He turned back to the foreigner quickly.

"We're not going to prison? No prison?"

The foreigner had turned to look out his window, too. He answered without turning back, casually, as if the whole business meant nothing to him. "No prison, Shannon. You are to go free."

Shannon was surprised at how powerfully this hit him. He had not been afraid of going to prison. He was resigned to it. He had not even been afraid to die, if it came to that. But when he heard it would be this way instead… When he heard: You are to go free… Well, there was a great surge of pleasure and celebration inside him, champagne corks and fireworks all around.

"No kidding," he said. Then the interior party sort of rose up and overwhelmed him. He put his hand over his eyes. "No kidding. Free."

The foreigner glanced at him and shrugged. "Look at you. Great powers are going back and forth in world, winning and losing. You are nothing in it. Just cork on sea."

Shannon took a breath to settle himself. "I don't care about them. The great powers. I just want my life, that's all."

"So. You have life. Lots of life, all the life you want. No one cares damn about you. They are just as happy for you to go away."

Shannon nodded. "Sure. Foster. I'm just trouble for him, aren't I? That whole stupid operation. Now he's a hero and I'm just an embarrassment to him."

The foreigner gave another of his disreputable chuckles. "There is no one who wants anything from you except you disappear."

"Right," said Shannon. "Right." Thinking of Foster, he felt a wave of gratitude toward the seedy little agent. Or something. He did not know what he felt. There was too much to take in.

After that, they drove for a long time in silence. Shannon looked out the window, thinking about things, a lot of things, letting his mind range over it all. He kept coming back to Teresa. He kept wondering if there was any way… Probably not, but he couldn't help hoping. That was the thing: he just couldn't help it. He thought about being with her all the time. He didn't seem to be able to let her go.

At one point, after a long silence, the foreigner broke into his thoughts. "I hear you make statue," he said.

Shannon came out of his reverie. "What's that? Oh. Yeah. Yeah."

"I am curious. You can do this?"

"I can carve wood, yeah."

"You learn this somewhere?"

Shannon shook his head. "Not really. I can just do it. I always could."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"You read book or…"

"No, I just… I just find a piece of wood, that's all. And I see something in it. It's kind of, like, it's partly in the wood and partly in my head. And I carve, I guess, until the thing in the wood and the thing in my head come together into one thing. It's cool. I like it."

The foreigner studied him thoughtfully.

"What," said Shannon.

"You are interesting case."

"Oh yeah?"

"Different."

"Really? Different how?"

"I did not expect."

"Well," said Shannon. "There you go. You never can tell, right?"

The foreigner shook his head, his eyes humorous.

"What?" said Shannon. "What's so funny with you all the time?"

"You Americans," said the foreigner. "You are so stupid you don't even know what you know." He turned away to study the passing landscape.

Shannon shrugged. Maybe he was stupid. Maybe he was American. Let the foreigner laugh. It was all right with him.

They drove on a long time and passed over mountains into meadows. Towns went by with mountains in the distance against the sky. Then there was a cluster of towns, more and more traffic on the freeway around them. They were coming to the outskirts of a city.

The foreigner cleared his throat. He took a manila envelope from the pouch on the door beside him. "Here," he said. He handed the envelope to Shannon.

"What's this?"

"You wanted life. It is life. Papers, records, license, and so on. Some money to start with." He reached down to the floor. There was a small, soft overnight bag there that Shannon hadn't noticed. The foreigner set it on the seat between them. "Change of clothes," he said.

"But no new face this time, huh."

"You do not need. No one is looking for you. No one wants to find you. They hope you are gone for good."

Shannon took the envelope. "So who am I this time?"

"Your name, you mean."

"Yeah. What's my name?"

The foreigner's eyes gleamed with wit and contempt. "You are John Shannon. But not that John Shannon. You are new John Shannon. No crimes, no record with police, no-what you call?-strikes against you."

Shannon weighed the envelope in his hand. He made a face of appreciation. "Not bad. How'd you manage that?"

"I am very good identity man."

"I guess so. Whole new life again, huh. Just like that."

"Not even scars on arm."

One corner of Shannon's mouth lifted. "Right. Just… identity like stain."

The foreigner hesitated. He seemed more thoughtful than usual. "You are interesting case," he said finally.

"Oh yeah? No identity like stain?"

The foreigner tapped the envelope with a thick finger. "We will say it is like block of wood with shape inside and shape inside your head."

Shannon laughed. "Fair enough." He unzipped the overnight bag and wedged the envelope inside and zipped it up again.

Soon after, the car pulled to a stop.

"Here we are," said the foreigner.

For a moment, Shannon just sat there. He didn't know what to do.

"Well?" said the foreigner. He gestured toward the door.

"I just get out?" said Shannon.

"Unless you want to live in car."

A dozen questions went through Shannon's mind. Where would he go? Where would he work? Where would he start? But he didn't say anything. He would figure out the answers himself. They were no one's business but his. He would find his way.

"Well…" he said. He offered the identity man his hand. He didn't know what else to do. The foreigner smiled contemptuously and shook it. Shannon took the handle of the overnight bag and got out of the car.

He found himself standing on a road that passed through a small field. Wheat was growing high on either side of him. Up ahead, he saw a little house, and beyond that he saw another house and then houses spreading away into the distance until there was a city glinting silver in the afternoon sun.

He shut the door of the limousine. He set the bag down on the road at his feet. He stood beside it. He looked back over his shoulder at the fields and then off toward the silver city. He figured he would start walking toward the city and see what was what.

While he stood thinking about it, the limousine backed up on the road and maneuvered through a Y turn and turned around. It came to a stop beside him. The identity man lowered his window and looked out, considering him.

"You are interesting case," he said again.

Shannon smiled.

The next moment, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to it-it had come from the nearest house. It was a small green house with a gray roof. It was right at the edge of the field of wheat. The door of the house was opening. As Shannon stood watching it, Teresa stepped out onto the front step.

Shannon drew a slow breath. He had known it was going to happen as if he had seen it in a dream, and yet when it did happen, it was too big, his heart could barely hold it. He had never had a good break in his life and now it seemed like there was one good break after another and, even if they weren't much in the way of the whole world and all the powers working in it, they were a lot for him and he was moved and grateful.

Teresa held the door open and looked out of the house, this way and that. She was looking for him, Shannon realized. She was waiting for him. Then she saw him, and her face brightened with a smile. She lifted her hand to wave. His heart could barely hold it.

"Shannon," said the identity man.

Shannon forced himself to turn away from Teresa and look at him. Looking out the window of the car, the foreigner glanced back to where Teresa was standing in the doorway and then glanced back at Shannon with the gleam of old humor in his eyes.

"Carve good, yes?" he said.

Then he laughed and the window went up and the limousine rolled away.

Shannon didn't watch it go. Teresa was waving eagerly to him from where she stood in the doorway at the end of the field of grain.

He picked up his bag and started walking toward her up the long road.

Andrew Klavan is the author of such classic suspense novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood; Don't Say a Word, starring Michael Douglas; and Empire of Lies. He is a contributing editor to City Journal and his essays and commentary have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He also wrote the screenplay for A Shock to the System, starring Michael Caine. He's been nominated for the Edgar Award five times and has won it twice.