The Identity Man (18 page)

New mang!
he cried out in his mind. New mang! New life like princess in fairy tale, huh? Well, bullshit. Bull-shit. How did some plastic surgery and some phony papers make him any different than what he was before? Any thieving punk piece of garbage could get a cut job and a clean sheet. Happened all the time. What did that make him but a liar and a fraud, a fugitive and a fraud? Talking to old Applebee like his long-lost son. Playing with the kid like his father. Flirting with Teresa as if he were man enough to take her husband's place. And what about all those stories he told about himself, those stories stolen from those cornball black-and-white movies? All fake. Even his name was fake. Henry Conor. Every time Teresa called him that, it shot through his blood like grief. What a fraud.

It was an awful night. A terrible, terrible feeling. He sat there naked on the edge of the bed with his body bent over and his hands digging into his eyes and he felt he would do anything—anything—not to be the man he was.

Identity like stain. Identity like stain.

At last, the sculpture was nearly done.

He was putting the finishing touches on it. He had the new head sitting on the dowel, fixed to the body. He was standing over it, brushing at it with sandpaper before gluing it all together and working the angel's robes to hide the join.

"Oh! It's beautiful, Henry!" He hadn't heard Teresa come out of the house, but there she was, standing behind him. "It's better than the original. Even my father says so. It's incredible."

He glanced over his shoulder at her, then turned and faced her. She was wearing jeans and one of those scoop-necked T-shirts, a lavender one that looked good against her skin. She was standing with her hands folded in front of her. Her eyes were bright. He couldn't answer her because of the way she was looking at the angel and the way it made him feel: too filled up to speak. He wanted to take hold of her and feel her soft shoulders in his hands. He thought if he couldn't take hold of her, he would go up in smoke.

Her bright eyes shifted to him. She began to say something and then stopped and then said, "You have a real gift, Henry."

He looked back at the angel. He touched its cheek with a knuckle. It looked at him.
Henry,
he thought, ashamed. She didn't even know who he was.

"It's just something I can do," he said. "I always could."

They were silent and awkward, facing each other in front of the altarpiece.

"Will we ever see you again when it's done?" she asked him suddenly.

"What? Sure. What do you mean?"

"I mean, you won't just go away, will you? When you're finished with the work. You won't just stop coming here."

He was standing there like a kid now, his heart fluttering inside him as if he were a kid. "I guess not. I don't know. I'll be around."

"It's just ... it's Michael, you know—it meant so much to him having you here."

"Sure," said Shannon. "He likes to have a guy around. He misses his dad. I know."

"It's not just that. It's you. He thinks you're great. We all ... my father, too. We all think you're great."

"Yeah, but I'm not," said Shannon with an uncomfortable laugh. He had to say this. With the angel looking at him, he felt compelled. "I'm not great. I'm not even really any good." He laughed again. He wished he could stop telling her these things, but he couldn't.

Teresa shrugged, smiling. "Well ... who is, right? Any good."

"Yeah. Right. Well, not me, that's for sure. I mean, it makes me feel ... bad, Teresa, you know? That you might think—that Michael might think—that I was something I wasn't. I mean, I haven't told you some of the bad things I've done. And there's a lot of them, too, believe me."

"Everybody's done bad things, Henry. You don't have to tell me."

My name's not even Henry,
he wanted to say, but he didn't, he couldn't. "Yeah, but I mean his dad, Michael's dad, your husband, Carter ... he was a ... he was a big man, like you said. He was somebody you could look up to. Fighting in the war and all that. Saving those people and all that. I mean, I am not that guy, no way, Teresa. You ought to know that. Michael ought to know that, too. I am so way not that guy, it's not even funny."

"I know," she said—not unkindly, just straight out. "I know you're not. Carter was a great person, an amazing person. But..." She gave him one of her comic mugs, lifting up one eyebrow, screwing up one corner of her mouth. She gestured at the sculpture. "He never could have done that. He never could've made that angel's face."

Well, hearing that—that was almost more than he could handle. He was already full with wanting her and that was just one thing too many. He didn't move toward her or anything like that, but he realized that his expression had changed, that everything that was in his heart was right there for her to see now, right there for anyone to see on his face. Then, the next thing he knew, she was looking at
him
differently, too. All the comical mugging was gone and her lips were parted and the black centers of her brown eyes were so large they almost filled them. He thought,
Holy shit!
because he realized she was looking at him exactly like that woman in the movie about the casino, exactly the way she had looked at the hero in the end when he sent her away even though they loved one another. He knew deep down she wasn't really looking at him. He just happened to be standing there where her husband should have been. She was looking at her husband through him, really. But just then, he didn't care. Her husband was dead, after all. He, Shannon, was the one standing there.

So then he did start to move toward her. He wasn't an idiot: he could see she was his for the taking. Her eyes were practically begging him to take her. To hell with his fear and shame and whatever. He wanted his hands on her. He wanted his lips on her and his body against her and inside her. Really, he wanted to break over her like a wave—as if he were a wave and she were brown sugar and he could break over her and wash her away so that they were one thing together. That was the crazy idea of it that came into his mind.

He started to move toward her—just started. But suddenly Teresa blinked as if she was waking up. She let out a little noise, a little breath. And before Shannon could do anything, she had turned away from him, she was hurrying away from him, back toward the house, back into the house, leaving him there alone with nothing but his goddamned wooden angel.

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.