Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

"How many ways are there out of the restaurant?" Foster barked at them.

"There's a door into the lobby and one into the service hall," the receptionist said. She was a short, busty woman with an air of competence.

"There a way out of the service hall?"

"A back door to the Dumpsters and the elevator. You need a key for the elevator." The woman slapped a Homak key down on the black marble reception desk.

"This way," said the security guard. "I'll show you."

Foster followed him across the lobby. He already had an idea about where they'd taken Shannon.

Ramsey didn't have to slug or kick Shannon anymore. He could just probe his torn and broken places. Shannon screamed and sobbed at the pain. After a while, Ramsey knelt over him and studied him, expressionless. He was startled at how much he hated this man, how much he wanted to break him and kill him. The sadistic feelings disgusted him, as if they were some squirmy thing he wanted to hold at a distance from himself. Every time the man screamed, Ramsey felt some satisfaction in it and that disgusted him, too. He wanted to end this-and he would have ended it if it weren't for his pride, his fierce desire to break the man's resistance, to have that victory over him before he threw him off the building.

"Damn it, I'm going to find out the answers anyway, whether you tell me or not," he said quietly. "Tell me what you know and who else knows and who sent you, and we can be done."

Shannon tried to say fuck you but couldn't get the words out.

Ramsey grabbed Shannon's broken fingers and made Shannon scream again.

"You said you saw me," Ramsey said.

"Saw you kill Patterson," Shannon managed to answer.

"You're lying. You've got nothing. That's why they sent you, isn't it?"

"I saw you."

Ramsey made him scream again, squeezing his fingers.

"You're lying, aren't you? They sent you because they've got nothing."

"You killed Patterson," Shannon managed to mumble.

Ramsey's anger rose in a red tide. He could feel that he was about to lose control of this. Maybe he already had lost control and just didn't know it yet. He was furious and disgusted and he knew he had to finish it, but he couldn't finish it. So maybe he had lost control. What difference did any of it make? he reasoned with himself. He could trace the warrant, find out which feds had slipped out of the net. They would make the proper phone calls, take care of them, get rid of them. Whoever ran this operation would end up checking parking meters on the moon…

Still… still… this man here. He couldn't quite rid himself of the feeling that this man was, in fact, the nemesis that had pursued him all this time, that was still pursuing him. He wanted vengeance on him for forcing him to go to Super-Pred, forcing him to degrade the very meaning of his biography-his rise out of the ghetto, his service to his country, his service on the force-by begging favors from that fifteen-year-old nightmare version of himself, by letting that nightmare version of himself become his agent in the world. This man had done that to him, forced him to it. He would not be beaten by him now. He would not be defied.

He stood up over the trembling Shannon. He drew his Beretta. He pointed it down at Shannon's knee.

"Look at me, boy," he said.

Shannon looked up at him, blinking through the blood.

"You're making this uglier than it has to be," Ramsey said.

Shannon blinked up at him, open-mouthed. Even in the haze of pain, he realized what Ramsey was going to do. "Aw, don't," he begged.

"Are you going to talk to me or not?"

"Please…"

"Are you or not?"

Shannon sobbed in expectation of the agony. "Fuck you," he said. "Fuck you."

"God damn you!" Ramsey said.

His finger was tightening on the trigger when Foster charged through the door.

It was all like a slow-motion dream to Shannon. He was staring up at Ramsey and he saw the gun and he understood what was about to happen and he couldn't do anything but pray and pray for God to let him die and then there was a bang and he thought he'd been shot but he wasn't and he saw movement and there was Foster in some vague, unfocused distance charging across the background of blue sky and tower tops, shouting words Shannon couldn't hear through the wind noise, holding his gun out before him in his two hands.

Then Ramsey was turning, his gun still pointed down at Shannon, and the blockheaded cop in the white waiter's uniform was whipping around toward Foster and lifting his gun. Shannon heard the first shot, not loud, a distant snap almost drowned by the hoarse roar of the wind and the walls rocking and shuddering. He saw the smoke and fire explode from the barrel of Foster's nine. Then the blockheaded cop was flying backward and crumpling to the floor next to Shannon's feet.

Then there was another shot, a blast echoing through the wind. Shannon didn't know where it'd come from. But then he saw the blood and flesh explode on Foster's shoulder and the agent's face contorted with pain and his body twisted and his gun flew from his hand as he went falling toward the sky.

Shannon blinked upward through swollen eyes and saw that it was Ramsey who'd fired, his gun trained on the spot where Foster had been, smoke curling from the barrel of it.

Foster now lay at the edge of the floor, inches from a break in the charred wall, an open space into emptiness, a forty-story fall. The agent was wounded, writhing like a hurt animal, trying to crawl away from the edge to recover the gun that had fallen out of his reach.

All in that vague, unfocused slow-motion-all beneath the hoarse, shuddering roar of the hot, gritty wind-Shannon saw Ramsey glance down at him from far above to make sure that he wasn't moving, that he was helpless there. And then Ramsey walked away, walked across the room to finish Foster off.

And a thought came to Shannon that was almost like a voice in his ear-that clear-the fi rst clear thought he'd had since Ramsey had started working him over: The gun! The blockheaded cop's gun!

Shannon looked up at Ramsey's back as Ramsey walked into the unfocused distance to kill Foster where he lay, and then he, Shannon, looked over at where the blockheaded cop lay on his back on the floor at his feet. And, sure enough, there was the weapon, the nine the cop had been holding-there it was on the floor not far away, so that Shannon realized that if he could only move, if he only had the strength to move, he might get the gun. He might get the gun.

Shannon understood that this was what he had to do, an un-looked-for chance he had to take. He did not feel he had the strength to move or that his body could stand the pain of moving, but he knew he had to. He did not think or pray. He was all prayer and all pain-unbelievable sickness and pain-as he began to curl his body toward the gun, moving his flesh as if it were a mountain of stone under which he was buried, moving it around by what seemed like inches at a time, over a time that seemed like hours. He still saw Ramsey in his peripheral vision, the gray back of him moving away toward Foster. And then Ramsey was gone, and Shannon thought there must be no more time left and that it didn't matter anyway because the pain was just too much, he could not move another inch, but he kept moving-another inch and another-because he understood this was what he had to do, an unlooked-for chance.

It was his left hand that was broken. He reached for the gun with his right, flinching with the agony of the movement but trying not to cry out. Suddenly he felt the wind again and the grit of the wind stinging his wounds. He reached the gun. He closed his fingers around it and began to lift it, his hand trembling weakly and the weight of his flesh and the weight of his pain crushing him down so that every inch of movement required more strength than he believed he had.