Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

"My Daddy, he build things, too," the boy said to Shannon once.

"Oh yeah?" said Shannon, chewing his sandwich.

"Yeah, he build all kinds of things. He come home, he gonna build us a house like this one."

Shannon figured the boy was making it up. He figured the boy's father was really in prison. It made him feel sorry for the little guy. The next weekend, he went out and bought some carving equipment, chisels and gouges and turning tools and so on. When he came back to work, he went to the lead man on the site, Joe Whaley, and asked if he could use some of the blocks sawed off from the studs. Joe said sure, because they just got thrown away anyway. Shannon cut the blocks and carved them and made a dump truck, with a bed that lifted and a gate that opened and wheels that turned and everything. He gave it to the little boy as a present. The little boy got all big-eyed and open-mouthed, like the truck was worth a million dollars. It made Shannon feel good. He made a couple of other trucks for some of the other kids and he carved a few soldiers and whistles for some of the others.

One day, Handsome Harry was checking out the site and he noticed this going on.

"Hey, Conor, look at that, that's all right," said Handsome, admiring one of Shannon's trucks, holding it and turning it this way and that in front of his scrunched-up gorilla face. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

Shannon shrugged. "I can just do it. I always could."

Handsome nodded with appreciation. "Look at that," he said. "That's all right."

So it went. One fine spring day after another. Out at the site, up on the joists, wind in his hair, song in his heart basically. Sometimes he'd get worried, nervous. He'd scope the newspapers or watch some true crime show on television to see if anyone mentioned him. Once or twice, someone did. The police were still "searching nationwide for murder suspect John Shannon," as one TV newswoman put it.

But day after fine spring day, no one came looking for him. No cops cruised slowly past, eyeing him from the patrol car window. No curious civilian tilted his head, and thought, Where have I seen that face before?

And so, slowly, day after day, it became real to him: he was free. The foreigner had done it, done just what he'd promised: new face, new papers, new life entirely, like princess in fairy tale. No more three strikes. No more Whittaker job. No more Hernandez killings. No more John Shannon at all. John Shannon was gone. He was Henry Conor now.

Ironically, that's when he started to get crawly. As soon as he started to feel safe, as soon as his new life started to fit him comfortably and he started to get used to it, he began to get that itchy feeling he got sometimes where his skin felt like it was made of spiders. He couldn't sleep at night. He stayed awake, pacing, rubbing his arm where the scars used to be. He got angry. He thought: What am I supposed to do, just hammer nails every day for the rest of my life? Well, fuck you. It took half a bottle of bourbon sometimes just to put his lights out.

He needed a woman, that's what. He went out and prowled some bars. He picked up a girl who said she worked in a hair salon. She took him back to her room. Sat him naked in a chair and climbed aboard. For two days, she rode him as if he would take her to the coast nonstop. It was pretty wild. He thought maybe they'd have a thing together. But that was it for her. One weekend and she was done with him. She liked to go with different guys, she said. She didn't want to stick with anybody. A few days later, Shannon was just as crawly as he'd been before.

Now this guy Joe Whaley, the lead guy on the site: he was a watchful character. He was the kind of guy who could just look at a person and tell you a lot about him. He had all kinds of insights about the workers on the site, and the bosses who came by, and the inspectors who came by for payoffs. He must have noticed what was going on with Shannon, how crawly Shannon was, because one day he said to him, "Hey, Conor. Let's have a beer after work."

Whaley was about forty. He was big: broad shoulders, a gut on him. He had a smart, sly face that looked like it had been places. He sat across from Shannon in a booth in a tavern. They each had a mug of beer. It was a quiet place, with no music.

"Where you from, Conor?" Whaley asked.

"Utah, originally," Shannon said. He got that from the movie he'd watched in the white room, the Western about the people on the stagecoach. It had been filmed in Monument Valley, Utah-it said so in the credits. The freedom of its desert distances and the mystery of its stark rock formations had appealed to Shannon. He dreamed of what it would have been like to grow up in the clean wilderness air. But he'd never actually been to Utah and didn't know anything about it, so he added, "But we moved around a lot."

Whaley didn't care. He hadn't brought Shannon here to talk about Utah. He hunched forward over the table. He spoke in a low murmur out of the corner of his mouth.

"There's a lot of money to be made in this town, you know."

"Yeah," said Shannon. "A lot of work."

"There is. And other stuff, too."

"What do you mean?" Shannon already knew what Whaley meant. He wondered how he could just pick him out like that. Identity like stain, he thought.

"Look around, man. Fucking place is lawless. All the gang-bangers everywhere. Minute the sun goes down, there's AK's and nine-a's firing all over the place. You can hear them as we're sitting here."

Shannon nodded. He heard them. Bang, bang. Rat-tat-tat.

"Police have their hands full," Whaley went on. "They can't be everywhere, right? Lot of nice houses on the west side, nobody patrolling them. And the phone lines are still wonky, too. I know people at the alarm companies. Alarms don't always work, know what I'm saying? No one to blame, just wonky wires."

Shannon nodded.

"Know what I'm saying?" Whaley asked again.

"Yeah," said Shannon. He was thinking: No. Don't do this. You're free. Don't blow this. But he felt crawly and crazy, too, and he was feeling, Well, if identity like stain then it's like stain, right? What can you do?

"I might have something for you Saturday."

"Saturday," Shannon repeated.

"A job. You interested?"

Shannon nodded, sort of as if he was thinking about it, and sort of as if he was saying yes. "Saturday."

A couple of days later, with the weather still so fine, Shannon decided to walk to work. When he was a couple of blocks away from the site, he passed by a green Crown Victoria parked at the curb. He remembered the guy with the shaved head and looked around to see if he was anywhere nearby. He wasn't, of course. Shannon couldn't even be sure this was the same car although-look at that-it did have a scrape on the side just like the one he'd seen before.

He approached it. He looked in the window. There was nothing special in there. Just some stuff lying on the passenger seat: a packet of Kleenex, some cheap sunglasses, some kind of gum or candy wrapper, and a receipt. Shannon read the receipt. It was from a restaurant called the World Cafe.

He looked around again. There was still no sign of the guy with the shaved head. He thought, You don't even know it's the same car. Not for sure. You're being totally paranoid.

And he went on to work.

But all day long, he had the feeling he was being watched. He kept looking around to see if there was anyone there.

Late in the afternoon, he was skinning the second story, laying in some plywood, when he got that feeling and glanced over his shoulder. There, beyond another frame rising in an empty lot, there was a brick apartment building, about five stories tall. At that time of day, the building cast a long shadow on the sidewalk. Shannon thought he saw someone in that shadow, someone just standing there suspiciously. Shannon was too far away to be sure, but he thought it could've been that guy, the Crown Victoria guy with the shaved head again. He stared harder, trying to make the man out, but just then…