Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

Shannon gave a small groan. Man, he hurt. He hurt all over. He forced himself to focus through it. "Okay. Okay. What do you figure I should do?"

Foster frowned. "Tell the truth. They're not used to it. It fucks with their heads. That's what I'd do. But it's your call. I just thought you ought to know what's coming."

"Okay. Okay, thanks. Don't worry about-" The pain cut a jagged path through him like lightning. He tensed and fought down a cry.

"Hey, Doc," Foster called.

The woman came back into the room. Foster nodded at the machine beside Shannon's bed. The doctor went to it and pushed the buttons.

Foster continued to stand there behind the chair, looking down at him. Holding the chair back with his two hands, drumming his fingers on it. "They gave Ramsey a hero's funeral yesterday," he said. "Bagpipes and everything."

Shannon felt the tendrils of the drug growing back over him like vines. The pain began to ease, his body relaxing. "Did they? What a comedy."

"That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm trying to say. They'll tag you for that, if they can. Killing him. Killing a hero cop. I can only do what I can do."

Shannon gave a small laugh. "I don't expect any breaks. I know how it is." The tendrils spread into fog. His breathing grew deeper.

"Did you hear him at the end?" he heard Foster ask from a dreamy distance. "Ramsey. Did you hear him scream as he went down?"

Shannon shook his head slowly, his eyes fluttering shut. He had not heard. He only had seen Ramsey disappear into the sky like magic. He saw it now again.

"I heard him," said Foster. "Man, I'm still hearing him. At night? It's like he's still around somewhere, still screaming."

Shannon smiled dreamily, letting himself sink away. "I wouldn't worry about it, Foster."

"Yeah, I guess," he heard Foster say. "But when you work for the federal government, it's not such a big leap to believe in hell."

The men and women came in their expensive suits as Foster had said they would. By then, the pain had become bearable. The fog of drugs had thinned to a mere mist. Shannon lay on his bed and gazed quietly at the men and women as they asked him questions and pointed their fingers at him and sometimes leaned over to shout in his face. He told them everything that had happened. He did not hide anything. This only seemed to make them angrier. They accused him of lying. They accused him of murdering Ramsey. At one point, one man, an old guy with big eyebrows bouncing up and down, told him that he was going to go to death row and be executed if he didn't change his story right this minute. Shannon gazed at him from the bed. It was odd, but he was not afraid. He was not afraid of any of these people or of anything they might do to him. At first, he thought maybe it was the drugs dulling his feelings. But it was not the drugs. The drugs were very mild now. He just wasn't afraid, that's all. He just told the truth and lay on the bed and gazed at the government people as they came and went.

One day, Sharpstein came. Sharpstein was a large, flabby man with a large, flabby face. He wore glasses with black frames. He said he was Shannon's lawyer. Shannon never knew who sent him.

Shannon was out of bed by now. He was dressed in jeans and a black sweater when Sharpstein walked in with his brown briefcase. He was sitting on the couch in the main room, the room where he had watched all the old movies on the DVD player the last time he was here. But the DVD player was gone, so he was just sitting there.

Sharpstein set his briefcase on the table. "Don't they give you a TV in here?"

"No. I could use a TV. One of the doctors brought me some comic books, but I read them all."

"No computer? No Internet?"

"No."

Sharpstein's big, flabby face seemed to expand. "Jesus. That's gotta be a violation of something or other. What do you do all day?"

Shannon shrugged. "Work out. Try to get my body back. I still sleep a lot." He also spent hours daydreaming about Teresa, making up scenarios in his mind about the life they would never spend together, what it would have been like. But he didn't tell Sharpstein that. Who the hell was Sharpstein anyway?

"Man!" said Sharpstein. "Stuck in here all day with nothing to do? It'd make my skin crawl. Doesn't it make your skin crawl?"

Shannon's lips parted in surprise. He stared at Sharpstein for a long time. "No," he said, wondering. "It doesn't make my skin crawl. You're right, it should, shouldn't it? It always used to. But no-no, it doesn't." It was like not being afraid of prison or death row. It was another odd thing he noticed.

"So no one's telling you anything either? You have no idea what's going on out there?"

"No," said Shannon. "What's going on?"

Sharpstein laughed. He had a high-pitched laugh that made his jowls quiver. He seemed full of glee at the absurdity of people. He told Shannon that a big struggle was taking place. It was all political and hard to understand. As far as Shannon could make out, the people who talked on the radio were battling the people who appeared on TV. It had started with Foster. He had been suspended from his job and had gone on the radio to talk about it. The people on television had not let him come on, but the people on radio let him and he told his story. Then, a detective told his story on the radio. It was the detective Foster had shot on the rooftop, the one who dropped the gun that Shannon used. Somehow, he had changed sides and decided to talk on the radio, too. The people on television didn't like this. They brought people on to attack the detective and to prove he was a bad man and a liar. And he was a bad man and a liar, and they did prove it. But the thing was, when they proved it, they accidentally also proved that Ramsey was a bad man and that he was corrupt, and then the people on the radio began talking about that as well. After that, the public started to get interested, so the politicians also started fighting. The way Sharpstein told it, the politicians who wanted to look virtuous on television were squaring off against the politicians who wanted to sound virtuous on radio and they were arguing back and forth.

Shannon didn't get any of this. "What's it got to do with me?" he asked.

"Well, it saved your life for one thing," Sharpstein said. "The TV pols wanted you moved to prison so you could be killed by a fellow inmate before you gave any public testimony."

"Really? They said that?"

"No! Of course not! They don't just say things like that. What're you, crazy? They don't even know you exist yet. They just know there are witnesses being kept in seclusion, namely you. And they want you put in prison where you can be killed. They call that transparency."

"Me getting killed is transparency?"

"Or the public's right to know. Something. Anyway, luckily for you, the radio pols managed to embarrass the TV pols enough so they backed off on that and let you stay here for now where you're relatively safe… Listen, this is ridiculous. We gotta get you a television in here. And a computer so you can find out what's happening."

"Ah…" Shannon made a face. He didn't care about any of this. He didn't care what they did to him. "Forget it," he said. "Just… Could you get me one of those movie players? And some of those really old movies? You know, the ones before they had color in them."

Sharpstein took a big yellow pad out of his briefcase and put it on the table. He wrote on the pad. "You want to watch black-and-white movies."

"Yeah," said Shannon. "I like those. They're good."

So Shannon went back to watching old movies and working out in the white room, just like before. And now, when the people in expensive suits came to question him, Sharpstein was there and Sharpstein answered most of the questions for him. Shannon appreciated that. He started to like Sharpstein. Sharpstein was entertaining. Sharpstein laughed at the people in the expensive suits-and when he laughed the suit-people looked worried, as if maybe their flies were unzipped and they hadn't noticed it.