The Identity Man

by Andrew Klavan

  "Mrs. Grey, yes," she corrected him—which he also resented, without quite knowing why.

  Then her eyes went to his badge, and they were startled and filled with worry. She hadn't expected him, hadn't known he was coming. The old man hadn't called her—or maybe he'd tried to and she kept her phone off at work. Conor hadn't contacted her either. Which meant she probably didn't know about Gutterson yet. The news wouldn't have made it onto TV—in fact, there was only one television station and maybe a website or two where anyone still thought a murder in this city was news.

  He said, "I'm Lieutenant Ramsey," and she turned to him expectantly. He couldn't tell whether she recognized his name or not. Was it possible Conor had never mentioned him to her? Or was she just pretending that he never had? He couldn't tell.

  "Mrs. Grey, do you know a man named Henry Conor?"

  "Yes, I know Henry. He did some work for my father. Why, is something wrong?"

  "What sort of work?" he asked her. "Carpentry?"

  "Some ... carving work, that's right."

  The little hesitation gave him everything he needed. She was not thinking about Conor's carpentry. She was thinking about the man himself. She was the girl in question, all right.

  "Is that it? Is that your whole relationship to him? He worked for your father?"

  "Well, I'm not sure what you mean," she said reluctantly. And then—in case he already knew—she confessed: "We were friendly. In fact, he took me and my son to the fair yesterday."

  "To the fair."

  She made the classic female defensive gesture, defiantly brushing her hair back with her hand. "What's this about?"

  "We're looking to question Mr. Conor about a police detective who was found dead in his apartment this morning. He was killed with one of Conor's hammers."

  He said it brutally and got the effect he wanted. She was staggered, her lips parting, her pupils becoming pinpoints. For a moment, he thought she might actually swoon to the asphalt.

  So Ramsey thought he had the whole picture now. A lonely widow with a man in the house, a man who would include the boy when they went to the fair. She had been falling in love with Conor, her feelings flowing powerfully, maybe only checked a little by the memory of her husband and by some mental wrangling a girl like her would do out of obligatory protectiveness toward her son. But hesitation or no, mental wrangling or no, she'd been falling for him. And now here was Ramsey telling her there was a dead detective, that Conor was on the run, being hunted by the police. Telling her, in effect, that Conor was just the sort of damaged criminal-type she had been avoiding all her life, just the sort of bad, needy boy she had fended off while waiting to meet the real man she married—the sort of man Ramsey seemed to be. He sensed all this in a second and sensed he had a moment of psychological power over her here, a moment when all her instincts would tell her to turn away from bad boy Conor, to turn toward the nice policeman who reminded her of her dead husband, and tell him everything.

  "That's ... Henry wouldn't do anything like that," she said.

  "Really. You know him that well?"

  "Well, I..."

  "You know where he came from? What he was doing here?"

  "He was a carpenter, working as a carpenter."

  "Did he ever tell you why he came to this city in particular? Doesn't seem like a very nice place to come to. A lot of people are leaving, as I understand it."

  "He said he came for the work. He said there's a lot of work here—because of all the rebuilding."

  "Did he ever mention a man named Peter Patterson?"

  "Peter ... Uh ... No. I don't think so."

  "What about Jesse Skyles? The Reverend Jesse Skyles."

  "I don't think so. I've heard of him. The story in the paper—about him and the girl. Henry and I talked about a lot of things. We may have talked about Skyles. I don't remember."

  "You may have, though."

  "I'm sorry. I just don't remember."

  "But you talked about a lot of things."

  "He would carve out in the backyard. I would go out there and talk to him sometimes. To keep him company."

  "You and your son or just you?"

  "No, and my son. And my father, too, sometimes."

  Ramsey thought he had the whole picture. "But you can't remember what you talked about?"

  "Not everything. It was just conversation. You know."

  "Did he ever mention my name? Ramsey? Did he ever mention me?"

  "No. Why are you asking me these things?"

  "Mrs. Grey, do you have any idea where Conor is now?"

  "No. No, I don't. I thought he would be at work."

  "He's not at work. He's gone. A police detective has been murdered in his apartment, and Conor has disappeared. If you know where he is, it would be a good idea to tell me."

  "I don't know. I already told you. I don't know. Henry wouldn't do anything like that, I'm sure."

  Ramsey felt a strange flutter of doubt. Something was wrong here, very wrong, but he couldn't place it. For one thing, he couldn't tell whether the girl was lying or not. His instincts told him she wasn't, but he thought she had to be. Would Conor have kept all his purposes secret from her? As they became close, as they became intimate even, wouldn't he want to share with her the burden of his mission? It didn't make sense that he would ask questions and jabber freely on the street and suddenly become secretive with the girl he was romancing. Something here, anyway, didn't make sense. Ramsey felt he had a bright, clear picture in his mind of what had passed between this girl and Conor, but he couldn't quite put that picture together with the Conor he thought he'd come to know. It was as if, outside the bright clarity of his understanding, there was deep shadow—shadow that hid a hunkering disaster. Nemesis.

  "Ms. Grey—Mrs. Grey—I feel you're keeping something from me."

  "I'm not. I'm really not. Why would I?"

  "Are you certain Conor never said anything to you? About why he came here? Why he came to this city?"

  "For the work, that's all. He said he came for the work."

  "All that time you talked to him, and your father talked to him, and your son, that's all he told you." He couldn't stop himself. He couldn't let go of it. Something didn't make sense.

  "Look ... Henry didn't murder anyone," she answered. "He wouldn't do that."

  "That isn't what I'm asking you."

  "I know, but..."

  "He never mentioned Patterson? Or Skyles? Or me?"

  "No. I don't think so. No. I'm almost sure."

  "I find that difficult to believe," he said, looking hard into her eyes, his doubt mixed with anger now because she reminded him so much of his wife.

  A bell rang in the big old cathedral-like building, a long, loud rattling bell. The laughter and shouting of the children came back to Ramsey as if it had been gone, as if the volume of it had dropped to nothing while he talked to Teresa Grey.

  "I—I have to go," she said. "Recess is over. I have to go back to work. You're wrong about Henry."

  But he could see she was uncertain as she turned away—uncertain enough, he thought, that she would have told him what she knew. Or was it all a performance? Was she hiding Conor? Protecting him? Was she that good a liar? She could have been. No one lies better than a good girl in love. And Conor would've said something to her. He must've. It didn't make sense.

  Ramsey stood there another moment, aware of the woman's peculiar valence—the way she touched on his personal sorrows—and yet unable to distinguish it from that lingering suspicion of a shadow zone outside the zone of his understanding, that strange darkness sheltering nemesis and disaster.

  He stood there and watched her walk back into the building, her skirt swishing as the children rushed past on either side of her, as they crowded before her through the schoolhouse door.

  For the first time, he felt afraid of what he was about to do.

  "ALL RIGHT," said Shannon. "Tell me."

  They were in the green Crown Victoria now. The bald guy was
driving. The bald guy's name was Foster, it turned out. Foster glanced over at Shannon and laughed.

  "Where'd you think you came from, dog? Your mama's tummy? You think the stork brought you? You think you were born again through water and the spirit? Or maybe someone told you one time that dirt-bag thieves get brand-new lives for free."

  Shannon faced forward, expressionless, looking out the windshield at the miserable boulevard. Stores boarded up. Hollow-eyed whores. Predators slouched so deep they were shaped like question marks. All this on a bright spring Monday afternoon.

  "I guess I wondered..." he said glumly.

  "Yeah, I'll bet you did. I'll just bet you did. But you're all alike, you bottom feeders, every one of you. You think someone's gonna hand you the moon on a platter. You think someone should, like they owe it to you. Oh, I'm so poor. Oh, I'm so put upon. Where's my money? Like you earned it somehow by virtue of being a worthless piece of shit. Every time I wanna round up a fresh batch of dumb-ass bail jumpers, all I gotta do is tell them somebody's giving them something for nothing. Free tickets to the Super Bowl. Free house. A new car. Never did shit for nobody nohow, but out of the woodwork they come like it's only their due."

  Shannon could've said it wasn't like that for him. He could've said he had been desperate, on the run, wanted for murders he hadn't committed and a break-in that he had. He could've said a lot of things, but he just said: "So this whole new identity thing was—what? Like, a setup?"

  "Of course it was a setup! Why should anybody give you even the smell of his ass?" Foster shook his head and snorted. "I don't know whether to be amazed or amazed that I am still amazed."

  The car turned a corner onto a side street of shattered houses, some no more than dust and lumber piled on dead grass. Shannon stared out at them but hardly saw them, immersed in what the man was telling him, still all murk and confusion. His sluggish effort to work out the truth of the matter was getting him nowhere. This was way beyond his powers.

  "So what was it then?" he said. "What was it—some kind of scam to steal money?"

  Foster let out a big guffaw. "A scam to steal money? Son, I work for the federal government. We don't need a scam to steal money. We are a scam to steal money. Look up 'scam to steal money' in the dictionary, there's a picture of the federal government right there. Scam to steal money! God save me from an uneducated public."

  Slowly, Shannon turned to face him. Close up, Foster's aura of seediness was even more apparent, the threadbare shine of his suit and the wasted-junkie thinness of his frame even more painful to look upon. Close up, he had a fidgety, watchful junkie demeanor, too, something frantically alert in the smart, bright eyes.

  "That cop," said Shannon. "Gutterson..."

  "Gutterson!" Foster spat back the name as if the dead detective had been a bill for back taxes.

  "He was never after me, was he?"

  "Ah!" Foster took one hand off the steering wheel and tapped a finger against the side of his own head. "Now the clock is beginning to tick."

  "He was after Henry Conor."

  "The mist is parting. Finally."

  The fields of rubble and dead grass fell away as the car turned another corner. Here was a long side street of antique office buildings with elaborate cast-iron facades. Between their tiers of pillars, arched windows, some broken, some just dark, exuded emptiness like a vapor, an atmosphere of abandonment coiling above the entire block. Vaguely, Shannon recognized where they were, realized they were not that far from his own brownstone.

  "Who is he then?" said Shannon. "Who's Henry Conor?"

  "Henry Conor is you," Foster answered, turning the wheel. The Crown Victoria slid to the curb, into the shadow of a building bleak with ruin. "Least, he's you—or he's no one."

  Shannon waited for more. Foster shut the car down with swift, jerky movements, scoping the area all the while, his head turning back and forth, his sharp eyes darting here and there. He pulled the car keys out of the ignition and fiddled with them nervously.

  "I made Henry Conor up," he said with a quick, mirthless smile. "I invented him, dog. And then I got you to take his place."

  Into the louring building. Up four flights of dark stairs. Graffiti on the gray, abandoned walls and chips and scars in the paint where the plaster showed through like an exposed nerve. Down the gutted hallway to a carved wooden door where Foster knocked out a quick code, then used a key.

  Shannon followed him across the threshold. Inside: a loft stripped bare. Chairs and card tables and a cot under the exposed heating pipes and fluorescent bulbs. There were three laptops, two playing various squares of video footage, one showing a series of oscillators. Shannon saw images of his apartment, Gutterson's outline traced in chalk on the floor.

  Two men were here, both in shirtsleeves, both wearing guns, one weaselly, playing Patience at a table, one slick and handsome, lying on the cot, reading a magazine about pretty girls in their underwear.

  Foster shut the door.

  "You were watching me," Shannon said to him. It made him feel sick to see it.

  "Listening, too," said Foster flatly.

  "Don't worry," muttered the slick guy on the cot, turning a page. "We covered our eyes when you jerked off."

  "I didn't cover my eyes," muttered the weasel dealing cards. "I dug it."

  "We were watching out for you, boy," Foster said. "You were our guy in place. You were Henry Conor. We knew they'd come for you."

  "You invented this guy..."

  "A follower of Reverend Jesse Skyles, a friend of Peter Patterson, a man who knew what Patterson knew, a man on a mission."

  Shannon looked at the videos of his empty apartment, the hallway outside the door, the street outside the brownstone. The whole place must've been rigged with cameras and microphones.

  "Why me?" he asked.

  "You showed up for it, darling. You answered the call and came to the mall. Guess you wanted it more than the others we tried. Or maybe you were just the first one stupid enough to check his cell phone. I don't know."

  "No," said Shannon. "No, I mean..." He stared at the videos, fascinated, thinking about all that time he was being watched. "No, I mean, why me instead of one of you? If you needed a man in place, why didn't you use an agent, one of your own?"

  "We're breached, baby face. Augie Lancaster's got more men in my agency than I have. That's why we're flying a little bit off the radar here. Way off the radar, the truth be told. What you're looking at right now is every agent I have that I can trust, minus a higher-up who's funneling the money."

  The two men waved without looking up from what they were doing. Shannon stared at them dully.

  "Anyway, I didn't need an agent. I didn't want an agent." Foster moved to one of the big arched windows. He stood to one side and looked out and down, checking the street below. "All I wanted was a body, an identity. A treasure at the end of the treasure hunt. Someone the trail led to, if you see what I mean."

  Shannon did not see what he meant. "The trail..."

  "The clues. We left clues for them to find. Computer traces. E-mails. Graffiti in empty houses. Remarks made to informants on the street. A photograph of a man sitting in a car. Signs that Peter Patterson hadn't been alone, that he shared his information with someone—and that now that someone had come to town, a man on a mission, looking for justice."

  Shannon shook his head. More murk, more confusion.

  Foster, glancing over at him from the window, laughed. Gestured at him for the benefit of his colleagues. "Look at this fool. Doesn't even know who Lancaster is." Then, explaining it to Shannon: "Lancaster runs this town. Runs this state. Could run this country if no one stops him. And his network goes so deep, we've never been able to get near him without getting derailed or blown or reassigned. Then—by the grace of God—literally by the grace of God—along came Peter Patterson. Low-level city bookkeeper, nobody even knew he was there. But he was well enough placed to see where the money was going, federal money, state money, programs, going where it
always goes, into the pockets of the people who control it, in this case Lancaster and his gang. For years he lived with it—this Patterson, I mean. Sure, he lived in a bottle to kill his conscience, but it seemed to be working for him. Then, one day, he heard the Reverend Skyles preaching in some asshole of a church somewhere and he got the word and came to Mr. Jesus. Climbed out of the bottle. Found his conscience. Began to make overtures to us. Feeling us out. Working up his courage, you know. We were reeling him in slow by slow. We almost had him. But we're so damned breeched. They got to him first."

  Finally—and it really did feel like clouds parting in his head—the light began to shine for Shannon. He began to understand. His lips parted as he gazed at Foster. "They killed him. Your informant—Patterson. Lancaster killed him."

  "Had him killed. Just as dead as ever he could be. Right in the middle of the storm and the riots, too, so whatever evidence there was was lost in the rain and confusion. There was no way to make the case. Oh, we knew who did it, all right. Only one man Lancaster could trust with a job like that. But we'd never have broken him. In fact, with our agency so corrupted, we could barely move without giving ourselves away. So we had nothing. Again. And in a single leap, Augie was free—free and going national to boot. A hero because his city was so corrupt it collapsed in a rainstorm. That's the government for you: it fails upward. It has three new remedies to fix everything it just destroyed."

  Foster had moved away from the window now, moved back toward Shannon, talking. Shannon, a much bigger man, stared down at the frenetic, seedy little figure.

  "So you made them think there was someone else, another guy with the same information Patterson had. A guy you just made up."

  "Henry Conor. Another Skyles disciple. A private detective from down the road. A man on a mission. We needed someone we could trust, someone no one knew, someone who couldn't give himself away, because even he didn't know he was the guy..."