Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

"I'm going to leave here with your scrotum in my pocket or the name of the fool with the AK," Lieutenant Ramsey said quietly.

Detective Gutterson kicked the boy in the stomach by way of punctuation, making the punk let go of his head and clutch his belly now, all curled up and writhing on the shed's dirt floor.

Gutterson smiled down at his work. And what a likely thug he was, Ramsey thought. Two hundred and fifty pounds of pure contempt disguised as a human being. A six-foot-four frame of deteriorating muscle. A smirking, resentful expression plastered on that crewcut potato of a head, an age-old mask of hatred that spoke trouble to a brother's very DNA. Back in his dreamed-of yesteryears, Ramsey figured, Gutterson probably would have been an overseer on a southern slave plantation, all whip and hard-on. Now he was a bullying cop in whatever was left of this bled-dry city, and it was one of Ramsey's few remaining sources of job satisfaction that he could tell a dog like this to fetch and it would go fetch, despising his colored master only a little more than he despised himself for having to obey.

Gutterson was loving this, just loving it. It was probably the highlight of his week. And the junior g, Mr. Super-Pred down there-he knew it, too. He knew that his only pathway out of this mini-perdition was through the sympathies of Lieutenant Ramsey.

"You let that peckerwood do a brother like this?" he whined, clutching his gut, squinting up at Ramsey through his swollen mug.

Ramsey squatted on the shed floor so he could peer directly in through the purpling lumps of the gang-banger's cheeks to the dim gleam of the swimming child-eyes buried in them. The lieutenant smiled. A quiet, distant smile to let the boy know that the road of racial solidarity ended at the brick wall of his heart. Then he faked a friendly glance up at Gutterson.

"Used to be a preacher in my neighborhood when I was a boy. Reverend Mack. He could do a Sunday morning, all right. Full of the spirit. One day, I got up to some mischief or other. My mama hauled me into his office so he could put the fear of God in me. Her holding me half up in the air by my elbow and him standing behind his desk, looming over me like Mount Sinai, sending up smoke and fire and the word of God. And all I could think about was this picture hung up on the wall behind his desk. He must've found it in a book somewhere. Tore it out and framed it. It was a picture of Jesus stomping out sin. Couldn't take my eyes off it. Sin was this-this kind of a twisting, hissing, black serpent all writhing under Jesus' foot, with this half-man, half-dragon face, something out of a horror movie. Just writhing there, helpless, spitting hatred up at the Lord." Above him, Gutterson chuckled heavily. Ramsey choked back his hatred of the man. Looked away from him, looked down at the boy. "That's what you remind me of, son. Twisting there, writhing there on the ground. You remind me of that picture."

Super-P panted through his pain. "I'm just a brother trying to get by on the mean streets, daddy."

"That right?"

"Just a brother trying to get by, same as you."

Lieutenant Ramsey smiled down at the boy patiently but the smile was a fake, and it felt to him even at that moment like the fake it was. His whole demeanor of self-restrained dignity-his lifelong demeanor-felt to him at this point like a hollow construction, a shell he lived in like a hermit crab. The man he seemed was the shell of the man he had once set out to be, his mother's son. But inside, he was not that man. He knew he was not that man.

And because he knew, Super-P's you-and-me-brother strategy was getting to him more than he let on. In fact, his own mental image of that bygone picture on the preacher's wall was getting to him, too. Crouching over the banger in the shed, he could almost feel that snake of sin writhing and twisting and spitting sourly in his belly. And because it really did remind him of Super-P, it was almost as if it was Super-P himself writhing inside him. Not that Ramsey's sin was this gangster's beatdown. That was nothing. That was street business. That just had to be. No. His sin was Peter Patterson, killing Peter Patterson. Even now, weeks after the storm, the memory of the bookkeeper's pitying eyes stared up at him from the memory of the flame-streaked black water, the dead man's face liquid and wavering.

"You loose this cracker on me?" Super-Pred whined. "You think he your beast, but he own you same as slavery. You and me both."

Lieutenant Ramsey gave a single silent laugh but the laugh was a fake, too. This punk didn't know how close he was, how close to getting Ramsey's goat, setting him off. The lieutenant went on smiling but he wanted to shut this punk up with a bullet. Shut him up with a bullet and then do Gutterson, too-do him slow-kneecap, then belly, and finally no-longer-smirking-but-pleading-sweating-cowardly face. Kill them both as if they were the snake inside him.

"You're gonna tell me the shooter's name, little man," he said. "That's a fact." He spoke with his lifelong tone of quiet self-control and moral dignity, his fake tone now that he had Peter Patterson's pitying stare and his own writhing shame inside him. "Detective Gutterson has all day to deal with this. But me, I've got better things to do."

He stood up, making as if to leave.

That did the trick. Panic went flaring through the beaten boy. A day alone with Detective Gutterson would be a day without sunshine for damn sure.

"No, wait! Now hold on! Hold on, daddy."

Ramsey waited. Looked down with his demeanor of lofty dignity at the punk on the floor.

Super-P's body sagged there, the twisting, snakelike tension dying in him. He was finished. He just needed a moment to swallow his shame now, swallow his self-disgust at breaking down, at showing his ass and giving over. There was always that moment at the end before they gave over.

He gave over. "Fatboy," he said.

Ramsey sighed. Fatboy. Figured. Sixteen-year-old lardbutt bully-bait trying to make his bones by unloading on the police. He could be tried as an adult for this, do twenty years, two decades grabbing his ankles, asshole spiked on jail yard meat. It was a world without justice.

"Don't feel so bad," he told Super-P. "You're ashamed 'cause we see your ass? You're ashamed 'cause it turns out you're no tough guy like the rapper on your shirt or your big brother in prison? Turns out you're just another scared, fatherless punk doesn't know how to be a man and you're ashamed? Well, guess what. Rapper on your shirt? Your big brother in prison? They're scared, fatherless punks, too. Show their ass for a dollar and a kick in the shin. It's just who you all are, boy. You just gotta swallow it. Swallow it like a whore swallows cum." He spat in the bloodstained dirt. He sighed again. Fatboy. Then, to the ape Gutterson he said, "Come on."

He gestured the big thug toward the shed door and began to head that way himself. Gutterson paused to snort his disdain over the broken child in the dirt. Then he followed.

But Super-Pred wasn't done. Or that is, he was done, but he needed to pretend there was still some man in him.

"You think you're better than me?" he called up from the floor, called at their backs. "You no better than me, daddy. You just the same."

Ramsey felt Gutterson glance at him as they walked away together. Ramsey only just bothered to roll his eyes to show how little he cared. But he did care, the snake writhing in him.

"What are you but a g with a badge?" ragged Super-Pred from the floor, trying to salvage some self-respect. "Why shouldn't Fat-boy fight his turf? You just another crew out here, my man. You think we don't know? What about Peter Patterson? Whole street knows about him."

Ramsey stopped in his tracks. Gutterson didn't catch it. The big thug kept going, reached the shed door, had his hand on it. Only then did he look behind to see Ramsey frozen.