Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

Shannon held the chair to build up resistance, then let it go suddenly, giving it an extra shove. The guy grunted and staggered back, stumbled, fell on his ass-but never let go of that knife and was already scrambling to his feet.

Shannon turned and leapt to the tool bag on the floor by the closet: the red Milwaukee bag with the hammers and wrenches in the outside pouches. He bent down and grabbed a framing hammer-a real thunder-club with a thick wooden handle and twenty-eight ounces of steel on the end.

Even as he grabbed it, even as he straightened, he saw the guy's reflection in the closet mirror, the guy rushing at him with murder in his eyes and the knife held low.

Shannon spun, whipping the hammer around as he did. He had the guy in the mirror so he could gauge where he was, and the guy hadn't thought of that and was charging top speed to get at Shannon before he had a chance to turn and spot him.

The hammerhead went full force into the guy's temple with a soft and liquid and awful sound. All at the same time, the guy's charge stopped and his eyes went white and his mouth fell open and he dropped to the floor twitching and shuddering and shitting himself, and then was dead.

Shannon had never killed a man before, but it didn't bother him much, not in the circumstances. What did get to him was the craziness of the situation. The dead guy on the floor and his own phony identity and no conceivable reason for any of it, the whole what-the-fuck of it all.

Panting, he staggered over to the bed and sat down on it hard. He held his head in his hands, staring at the body on the floor, which had stopped twitching now and just lay there stinking of shit and still. The malevolence and sadism were gone from the dead man's face. He just looked slack and stupid, staring at the ceiling with his mouth open like an idiot. Shannon wondered if anyone had heard their struggle… but there was so much to think about, he couldn't think about any of it at first. What the hell just happened? What the hell should he do now?

He covered his face with his hands and blew into them, thinking, Okay, okay. Trying to gather himself and figure it out. When he looked again, the dead guy was still there, still staring up at the ceiling, and Shannon thought, Okay again and decided he had to search the guy, find some ID, find out who he was.

He got off the bed and went to the body. Knelt down by it-cautiously-not that he thought the guy was alive or anything-there was no chance of that-but he had this horror-movie image in his head of the guy leaping up at him anyway, dead or no. Flinching at the stench of shit, he held the guy's jacket open and went into the pocket. He found what he thought was the guy's wallet-but no such luck.

He drew the thing out and when he saw it, he groaned aloud in misery. It was not a wallet. It was a leather ID holder. There was a police badge pinned to it, a detective's badge. Inside was the guy's police ID card: Detective Glenn Gutterson.

Shannon had killed a cop. IT WAS A LONG time before the full extent of the catastrophe occurred to him. Oh, he knew it was a disaster right away, but it was a long time before he could take it all in. With the adrenaline still pumping through him and the cop just lying there dead on the floor, he couldn't think clearly. But he had to think. He had to figure out what to do.

He knew right away he couldn't risk calling the cops-not just because of who he was and who he wasn't, but because he didn't know what this was all about. It might be about anything and he didn't know which way the danger lay, so he just had to keep to himself. Which meant he was stuck with it, stuck with a dead cop and no one to turn to, and a murder rap waiting for him if he zigged when he should zag. That sent some more adrenaline through him. Because maybe someone had heard them fighting and was already dialing 911. Maybe the sirens were about to start up in the distance or maybe right outside or maybe there'd just be a sudden pounding on the door…

And what then? What about Teresa? He wasn't thinking clearly, so it took him a few moments to think about her. He was sitting on the bed again by then. Staring at the body, not even seeing it now. Just staring and rubbing the heel of his hand back and forth over his mouth, never mind that his lips were already raw from it. Thinking: What about Teresa and the boy and Applebee? And what about his job and his new life like fairy tale?

Well, that's over with, he thought.

That's when he began to see the scope of this thing. It was global, wasn't it, a total Hiroshima of his hopes and dreams. The new life, the girl, the angel on the mantelpiece-they were all just ashes now. It was a cluster-fuck so epic he couldn't even feel bad about it. What was the point in feeling bad?

Well, maybe he'd feel bad later. Maybe, it occurred to him, he was in shock now. He sure wasn't thinking clearly. It only now occurred to him with any urgency that he really had to get out of here. The sirens might start, the knock might come any minute. That was the main thing, he thought, sitting there, staring at the dead guy, rubbing his mouth raw with his hand.

His new life was over. He had to go.

The things he saw that night-the awful life of the night in that ruined city-it all seemed strange and dreamlike to him as he passed. Everything seemed at once faraway and yet part of him, faraway and yet connected to him, as if it were an emanated dream, a dream that had projected itself onto the world, a world outside that had somehow originated in the nightmare factories of his mind. The tilted, blackened buildings. The slumped buildings with blackened windows like eyes. A building he came to suddenly around a corner with thick black smoke pouring out of it, and crackling, hoarsely whispering flames licking red out of the belly of the blackness. There was a man in the upstairs window, staring out, not even calling for help, not even caring, just staring out as if he was already dead. There were no firemen. No sirens coming. Just a few scrawny beasts of boys watching it like a movie, laughing and exclaiming and slapping hands. He saw another gang of boys in the mouth of an alley not far from there. They were crouched over something alive, like vampires feeding. He saw legs kicking weakly out of the slow melee, flashes of skin and blood. A man leaning against the alley wall smoked a cigarette and watched. A girl crouched at his feet, fearful and fascinated, bright-eyed, helpless and aroused. Shannon moved on. He heard machine-gun fire. On an empty street, he saw girls and boys-dressed-as-girls taking gangly thugs in and out of an abandoned brownstone. He heard sirens. On a street with no lights at all, he saw an ambulance loom out of the dusky distance, its flashers whirling red. It rushed past him and in the screaming noise and strobic red glow, he saw the silhouette of a man lying in the gutter, clawing at the pavement. And then the ambulance went past and the man sank back into the darkness.

It all seemed far away and it all seemed to come from inside him, his heart enacted in the shadows, his brooding fantasies brought to life. He walked-he didn't know how long-deep into the night. Carrying his tool bag, only with clothes and toiletries in it instead of tools. And the gun, the big cop's nine. He had almost left the apartment when he remembered it, had the door open and his foot on the threshold, when he had stopped and gone back and fetched it from under the bed.

He didn't take the car. They'd have the car made too fast. He'd drive and drive and then they'd put out one call and have him. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly, but he knew enough to leave the car. His cell phone, too: he'd dumped that in a sewer. So he walked and walked, disconnected from everything, and the city was like his dreams playing out all around him.