Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

He didn't know what it was, what stopped him, but he couldn't move from the spot, even though the tension and urgency of his danger twisted his gut inside him. Then, after a few moments of standing there, staring, he did know. It was Teresa. He couldn't leave because of her.

Slowly, he sat down on the floor. His gut went on twisting, the tension terrible. He knew he had to go, had to run, had to get out of this city any way he could or the police would kill him. So he loved Teresa-so what? It wasn't as if she was going to run away with him. Hell, if she did, it would only ruin her life. And he didn't have to worry anymore that she would think he was a killer after he was gone either. Now that he knew the truth, he could write her a letter and explain it all. Why should he stay because of her?

But the answer was already in his mind, beneath the tension, beneath his conscious thoughts. Foster's words were there:

Our target is smart-a cop-Ramsey, his name is-he's smart and he'll unravel this jig-time once he starts looking for you, digging into your life. He'll go everywhere you've gone, talk to everyone you've met, and sooner or later, he'll figure out there's nothing there and it'll dawn on him he's been played.

Ramsey. He was the one who had murdered this Peter Patterson. He was the one who had sent Gutterson to his apartment, the one who was looking for him now and who would go to his worksite and would find out about the Applebees, and who would go to the house on H Street and look for him there.

Shannon lay down, his bag under his head. He stared up at the ceiling. He didn't think Ramsey would hurt the Applebees-why would he? He didn't think so, and yet his sense of their danger was even more urgent to him than his own.

He lay there a long time, thinking about it. The sunlight shifted to slanted afternoon beams in which motes of dust were dancing. He stared up through the yellow beams, through the dancing dust, his mind drifting, his stomach in knots.

What could he do anyway? What could he do about Ramsey? How could he protect them-Teresa, Michael, the old man? It wasn't as if he was really Henry Conor, an honest guy free to play the hero without fear. All that-his new life-had just been a lie, not even a lie, an illusion, a federal setup, a lawdog scam, gone not even like mist in the morning, more like a dream of mist in the morning, because it had never been real to begin with. So? What? Was he just trying to keep that fantasy alive? Was he just looking for an excuse to see her again? Wouldn't Ramsey be waiting for that? Wouldn't he be waiting for him to turn up at the house on H Street? Maybe he'd kill Shannon there, and then the Applebees would be witnesses and he'd have to kill them, too. Wouldn't he just be bringing more trouble to Teresa's door if he stayed, if he tried to protect her?

He lay there with the sun above him slanting and the light of the sunbeams growing mellow. He thought and thought about it. He had to go. If he didn't get out, they'd kill him. There was nothing he could do if he stayed. But to just run like that, to just leave her behind with this Ramsey bastard coming after her…

His mind drifted. He saw himself in the future. Maybe on the run, maybe in prison. It was bound to be one or the other. He thought he would be able to bear the fact that he would never see Teresa again. Hell, he knew he could bear it. He would be sad, but so what? He would not have the life he wanted, the good life he thought he had been meant to have, but so what? A broken heart wouldn't kill you. The sadness would get better over time. He would forget that other life. He was a hard guy-he had always been a hard guy. He could deal with all that if he had to, all that and a side of fries if he had to.

What he couldn't bear, what he couldn't bear even to consider-even just now, even just lying there on the floor-was the idea that some harm might come to Teresa because of him, the idea he might be in his cell one day or hiding in some backwoods town one day, and news would reach him. A murder in the city…

Teresa's face came to him. The boy's face. The angel's face. Their eyes.

He lay there. He thought about it. He thought about… well, he thought about a lot of things. He thought about sticking his Beretta in his mouth and blowing his brains out-anything just to end this tension and indecision and helplessness. He thought about walking out in the open and letting some trigger-crazy cop do the job for him. And he daydreamed about going to see Teresa one last time, not to try anything with her, he told himself, not to convince her to come with him or even to touch her, so help him, he wouldn't even touch her-but just to warn her, to explain himself, justify himself to her, face to face, and see the forgiveness in her eyes and warn her to get out, to run, to save herself and her family…

All through the day, tortured in his heart, he lay there in the dust on the floor of the ruined house, his head on his bag, his hands behind his head, staring up through the motes in the slanting afternoon sunlight, watching scenarios and disasters play out in his mind, trying to figure out what to do, and waiting for nightfall. LIEUTENANT BRICK RAMSEY waited, too, suffered tortures that long day, too, tortures of indecision and of what he disdained to name as fear. But he was afraid-there was no other word for it. It had been building in him since that morning.

It had started when he'd seen Gutterson lying dead on Henry Conor's floor. There had been that wisp of superstitious dread, that suspicion of nemesis working against him. Then there'd been the old man in the white house-Applebee-leaning on the mantelpiece under the wooden carving of the angel, the old man looking at him and the angel looking at him as if they knew what he'd done and who he was inside.

Finally, there'd been the daughter-Teresa-and his sense that something was going on here that he didn't understand. That sense-and the old man's look-and the wisp of dread he'd felt when he saw Gutterson-they'd all combined until he felt like a kind of darkness was closing in on him, strangling him. That's when he began to suspect what he would have to do. That's when he began to become afraid.

He went back to the Castle-that was what they called Police Headquarters. He went up to his office on the tenth floor and sat alone. Swiveling back and forth in his high-backed chair. Gazing out the long window without really seeing the expanse of the fire-and flood-blasted city laid out below him.

He tried to think things through, but there's no point in following his logic. There wasn't much logic, in fact. It was all just that strangling sense of things closing in. The superstitious dread. The look in Applebee's eyes, the angel's eyes. Teresa.

They knew. That, at last, was the only sense he could make of it all. That explained the old man's hostility, and the girl's ignorance, which had to have been feigned. They knew what Conor knew. They knew who Ramsey was and what he'd done. They were part of this-this thing he was feeling, this evil fate that he felt in the air around him, this will opposed to his will. That's what he was battling here. That's what was lurking in the shadows beyond his understanding, that spirit of nemesis like a stern, relentless phantom, her hand upraised as she waved the Book of Judgment at him, hammering it against the darkness as she hunted him down.

Sitting there, swiveling back and forth, staring blindly out the window, Ramsey realized there was no way out of this for him anymore. He was going to have to see it all the way to the end.

Across town at that hour, the fifteen-year-old gangster who called himself Super-Pred was committing an act of violence so grotesque that even the thugs who attended him found themselves nauseated and quailing. The gnarly-assed junky called Speedball had been scamming on the Pred, no question, and had shorted a detective on his payoff, pocketing the skimmed cash to feed his own habit. Which was not only dishonest but unforgivably stupid, because the cop was a cop and sure to complain. Everyone knew S-P was going to deal out some shit to the junky, and everyone also knew that when the Pred got going, he sometimes lost himself in the work. There was always, therefore, a 50 percent chance that Speedball might not survive the discipline-which was probably why the poor zombie pissed himself when he saw Super-Pred had come to deal with him personally. Still, no one was prepared for the elaborate bloodfest that followed. It was something you'd expect to get more from some Afghan warlord than a city g. When Super-Pred finally hitched up his pants and strutted out the warehouse door, the boyos he left behind could only whistle and curse and steal frightened glances at each other as they mopped up what was left of Speedball's body and the pools of their own vomit besides.