Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

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.