Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

IT WAS STRANGE to be back in the white room. For the first day or two, he was in a painkiller fog, and it was very strange. He hung suspended in the fog as if in midair, and the fog drifted by him, sometimes black and sometimes gray and sometimes full of present shadows or past faces he remembered. He saw the white room through the breaks in the fog for shapeless moments at a time, and he wasn't sure whether it was really there or he was dreaming. And when he thought it was there, that he was back in the white room again, he wondered if the rest of it had been a dreamthe ruined city and the wooden angel and Teresaeverything a dream while he had been here in the white room all along.

Slowly, day by day, the fog thinned. He wafted down from the air and intermittently felt the bed beneath him. The sound of a door opening or footsteps on the floor would alert him and he would fight against the weighted haze, trying to sit up and see more clearly. He caught glimpses of men with guns. Different men at different times. One would stand over him with his thumbs in his belt and look down at him with a deadpan face. Another would sit in a chair against the wall and page through a magazine. Yet another would just sit in the chair and stare. Lawmen of some sort, standing guard.

There were other men, too, sometimesand sometimes women: doctors or nurses in scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks. They fussed at him and shifted him on the bed and stuck needles into him. Sometimes they gave him water through a straw and he drank gratefully. When they spoke to him, they spoke as if he were an infant or a dogas if he couldn't really understand or answer them. When he did answer, they always seemed surprised and a little resentful. Then he would be gone again and when he woke up it was all so hard to remember.

One day, he opened his eyes, and there was Foster. Same old narrow, bald, seedy agent in yet another cheap suit. Shannon squinted through sleep and saw him fidgeting in a chair at his bedside. He was wearing a blue sling on his right arm and Shannon remembered that Ramsey had shot him.

Foster rubbed his neck with his good hand. He shifted his neck in his collar. He looked up at a woman working a machine by the bed.

"All right?" he said. "I need him clear."

If she answered, Shannon didn't hear her. He saw her walk away. With lazy nausea, he moved his head so he could look at Foster.

"Teresa," Shannon said. He had a feeling it was not the first time he had said it.

"Yeah, yeah, she's all right," said Foster. "I told you. They're fine, they're in the system. New city, new life. No one even knows they were involved. They'll be okay."

Shannon closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was a great relief to him. He shifted uncomfortably. He was beginning to become aware of a new, unwelcome clarity. The drugs were wearing off, the tendrils of painless fog losing their grip on him, falling away. He could feel cool reality drifting over his skin like air drifting over a rotting tooth. He understood for the first timeor for the first time he could remember anywaythat his body was broken and wrong and the drugs were keeping him from the full feeling of it. He opened his eyes.

"How bad?" he mumbled. "How bad am I?"

Foster gave a jerky shrug. "You got a beating, dog. Ribs broken. Nose, fingers. Lost your spleen. Muscles torn up all over. You'll live, though."

Shannon nodded.

"But we better talk fast," the agent went on. "I need you clear. I need you to understand what I tell you. But once the drugs wear off, you'll be a traveler in the unhappy lands, my friend. So let's get it over with, so we can put you back under."

Shannon managed another nod. "What...?"

"Focus, boy. You understanding me?"

"Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

"All right. Here it is. The situation out there in the world is currently pretty bleak, not to say dire, for both you and me. We're getting hit good and hard. The media have put their heart and soul into the Augie Lancaster dream of life, and the idea that he's the most corrupt, power-hungry organism in the galaxy isn't sitting well."

Shannon had to fight hard to understand this. His head was clearing, but as it cleared, he felt the pain closing on him like a fresh skin of knitted nerve endings, closing on him until it passed through, and he couldn't tell whether it was outside him or rising from within ... It was distracting. "Yeah? Okay?"

"Well, you know how the media thing goes," said Foster. "The way they tell it, it's all our fault. It was an illegal operation, blah, blah, blah. We're just trying to bring down a great reformer and defend the status quo, doncha know. We're racists taking vengeance on Augie for exposing the white man's incompetence during the flood. Whatever. People will do and say just about anything to keep from admitting they're wrong. They're wrong about Augie, but they don't care. They'll die to keep from admitting it."

"Right, right, right," said Shannon. He was starting to breathe harder, to flinch with the spark and play of his pain. "So what's the point?"

"The point is: I'll probably be fired. Possibly I'll do some prison time. Which means you've got no friends anywhere."

"Well ... I never knew you were my friend anyway, so no loss."

"It's a sad fact, dog, but I'm all you've got. Without me, they'll be in here trying to charge you with shit you never even heard of. You don't get yourself a good lawyer, you'll die in prison, maybe get the lethal I."

"Well..." Shannon took a sharp breath as the pain shot through him. It was a tough situation, but he couldn't think about it now. "It is what it is," he said.

"Yeah," said Foster. "It surely is." He stood up out of his chair and moved the chair in front of him and moved to stand behind it. He looked here and there around the room. "The way it's going to go is this. A lot of serious-looking men and women wearing expensive suits the taxpayers were forced to pay for at gunpoint are going to come through here in the next few days and weeks and ask you questions in stern, serious tones of voices the taxpayers were also forced to pay for. They will be full of shit, every single one of them, and they will be attempting to convict you of anything they can in the hopes they can support Augie Lancaster so that the media will make them look virtuous and they can continue to live off the ever-dwindling fat of the land. That is called your government, son, and when it is finished with you, it will put you in one of its prisons or kill you dead. Now you've been warned."

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.