The Identity Man (30 page)

Yet, even as he thought that, once again, he felt that instinctive doubt, that awareness of shadow and uncertainty beyond the edges of his understanding. Something still didn't quite add up. Something was wrong.

And then, as so often happens in the moment of crisis, circumstances brought the revelation he needed.

Because, just as Conor reached this side of the street, just as he was approaching the door, his hand lifting to push it open, a waiter came up beside Ramsey. The waiter was a husky crewcut blockhead who looked a lot like a police detective in a white waiter's outfit. He handed Ramsey a pink square of paper from a message pad. Ramsey glanced at the paper. The words on it were scribbled in pencil:

They got a warrant to Trojan horse your phone.

Ramsey looked up sharply. Silently, he mouthed the word:
Who?

The blockheaded waiter-who-was-really-a-cop mouthed a word back at him:
Feds.

***

Shannon pushed through the restaurant door. The voices and the laughter rose around him as the door swung shut. He saw Ramsey sitting in the booth along the wall. The lieutenant was wearing a fine gray suit and a fine burgundy tie. He was holding a pink message slip in his hand, talking to the waiter standing next to him. Then the waiter moved away and Ramsey looked over and saw Shannon coming toward him and Shannon saw the look in his eyes and it was a look like murder. For a second, fear rose uncoiling like a cobra in his stomach, and he actually thought the scenario might play out the way Foster described it: Ramsey just pulling his gun, just shooting him down right there with everyone watching. But no, that didn't make sense. He took a breath and managed to force himself to keep walking forward.

Ramsey stood up as Shannon reached the booth. The waiter stood close to Shannon so that both men blocked him from the restaurant's view. The waiter was a cop, too, it turned out. He searched Shannon quickly, his hands going over his sides, his stomach, down to his ankles. Shannon let it happen, glancing up idly at the enormous plaster buttocks hanging on the wall. What the hell was that about?

Then the waiter was finished searching him. He nodded at Ramsey and moved away. Ramsey sat back down. Shannon slid into the booth across the table from him. He wagged his thumb at the ass over his head.

"I hope that's not a working model."

Ramsey gave a barely visible hint of a smile. "Could be." He crumpled the pink message slip and put it into his jacket pocket. He came out with his cell phone. He placed the phone in front of him, a small black machine on the white tablecloth. "In your case, it could just be."

The lieutenant's calm, still, dignified eyes held his eyes steadily. It made Shannon even more nervous. And that cell phone on the table, the phone that was supposed to act as a listening device ... Shannon glanced away, looked around the room at the men and women talking and laughing over their plates of pasta. At least the restaurant was full of witnesses in case anything bad happened.

"You have something to say to me?" Ramsey asked.

When Shannon looked at him again, Ramsey was toying with the cell phone on the table in front of him, turning it this way and that as if he was getting ready to spin it around. Had the warrant been blown? Did he know the phone was bugged? Did he know this was a federal operation? Shannon couldn't face the possibility. He decided the lieutenant was just playing with the phone, that's all.

Shannon leaned toward him, leaned toward the phone.

"I was there the night you took down Patterson," he said. That was how Foster had told him to open it, go for the shock value. "I was Patterson's backup. I saw the whole thing."

Ramsey turned the cell phone on the tablecloth this way and that. He gazed at Shannon mildly. "Take down Patterson? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. I was there. I saw it happen."

"Saw what? I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know damn well. He gave me copies of his records, too."

"You're not making sense." Ramsey turned the cell phone in his hand, gazing at Shannon.

"I'm not here to bust you, Ramsey. That was Patterson's thing. I don't care. I'm just after money, that's all."

"I'm sure you are," said Ramsey calmly, turning the phone in his hand. "But this is all a mystery to me."

Shannon felt cold sweat break out on his temples and under his shirt. This was bad. It was wrong. He could feel it. He could feel disaster coming at him, a train on a track. He leaned toward Ramsey, his face damp, his arms on the table. He was vaguely aware that the restaurant noise of voices and laughter had grown dimmer around him.

"Look," he said in a harsh whisper. "You brought me here. I thought you wanted to deal. You don't want to deal, don't waste my time."

"You're the one who's wasting time," said Ramsey coolly, smiling slightly. "I thought you had information for me about a murder case. Now you sound as if you're trying to blackmail me. But over what? It doesn't make sense."

It was such a smooth performance that Shannon stared at him. And as he stared, he noticed for the first time that the sounds of voices and laughter all around him had died away completely. The restaurant was quiet. There was a clink of silverware against a plate, then nothing.

Feeling the sweat roll down his chest, Shannon turned. The people sitting at the tables—the men in suits, the women here and there—had all stopped talking, stopped eating. They were all just sitting there at their tables. They were all turned toward him, every single one of them. Just sitting at their tables and staring at Shannon.

Shannon sensed a movement behind him. He looked over his shoulder in time to see a waiter—or a man dressed as a waiter—close the venetian blinds that covered the top half of the front window. Now the whole window was covered. Shannon turned farther at another movement and saw another waiter directly in back of him locking the front door, moving to stand in front of the door so that no one could see past him.

Now there was no noise in the restaurant at all. The place was silent and he understood: they were
all
cops. Everyone in the restaurant. They were all Ramsey's people. It was all a setup, all of it.

Shannon slowly turned back to Ramsey, his eyes passing over all those people—all those cops—at the tables staring at him. When he faced front again, Ramsey gazed at him just as mildly as before. A line of sweat ran down Shannon's temple.

Without looking down, Ramsey opened his cell phone. He pressed the power button. The cell phone gave out a tone and went dark.

"Now let's really talk," Ramsey said.

***

In the abandoned second-floor office across the way, the weaselly federal agent leaned forward in his chair, his face close to the laptop. He was listening to the voices of Ramsey and Shannon coming through the speaker.

"Man," he said. "Thing's working great. They're really coming over five by five."

Foster was still standing at the window, still looking down at the front of the restaurant below. "Well, well," he said. "Will wonders never cease?"

Then the voices coming from the computer crackled once and died.

"Wait a minute," said the weasel. "I think we lost them."

"I guess that answers that question," Foster murmured.

He narrowed his eyes, peering down at the restaurant. His hand was lifted near his face, his thumb rubbing his fingers as if he were feeling a piece of cloth—a nervous gesture. He noticed a movement now at the dark windows. It took him a moment to figure out what it was, then he realized: the venetian blinds had closed. His heart sank.

"Shit," he said. "They've got him."

Shannon felt the silence all around him, the eyes all around him. He felt his own breath go in and out and looked in Ramsey's eyes, which were calm and sad and unmovable. He hoped that Foster was on the run, coming like the cavalry to save him, but at the same time, he knew this was just hope, the everlasting reflex of hope: no one was coming, no one could. Ramsey's mild gaze—no wonder they called him Brick, his mild gaze was like a brick wall, like the dead end of yet another blind alley in a luckless life full of blind alleys, full of brick walls. And all those people—all those cops—sitting at all those tables, in all those booths under the plaster body parts, staring at him without mercy and without a sound ... No one could save him here.

"It's funny, you know." Ramsey frowned down at the cell phone on the table. He considered it, turning it this way and that. "I was actually beginning to get superstitious about you. No, really. All this time, I sensed there was something wrong, something working against me. I thought ... I'm not sure what I thought. But there's a reasonable explanation for everything, isn't there?"

Shannon breathed in and out, and the sweat trickled down his face. He knew it showed his fear, but he couldn't stop it.

"Who are you?" Ramsey asked him quietly. "Who sent you here?"

Shannon licked his lips and started, "I told you, I—"

"The smartest thing"—Ramsey interrupted him without raising his voice—"the smartest thing you could do for yourself now would be to tell the truth quickly. Because otherwise, we'll take it out of you slowly, bit by bit."

Shannon wiped his face with one hand. There was no point trying to hide the sweat; there it was for everyone to see. He took a long, deliberate look around the room—at the giant plaster nose, the torso, the cold, plaster, comfortless breast, and all those expressionless faces underneath the body parts that might as well have been plaster, too.

"Pretty good," he said, nodding. "Pretty good, Ramsey."

"I'm going to ask you one more time," Brick Ramsey said. "I need to know who you are and who sent you. I need to know how far along this has gotten. You're going to tell me eventually, so why don't you just tell me now."

Shannon opened his mouth. His tongue felt as if it were coated with some sort of sour dust. He felt all those merciless eyes on him and all those cold, plaster body parts and Ramsey's merciless eyes. And no one was coming to help him.

"Go to hell," he said. He looked around the room and swallowed the sour dust and raised his voice. "You can all go to hell."

Ramsey barely lifted his chin in answer and the blockheaded waiter-who-was-a-cop stepped up behind Shannon swiftly and stuck the hard, hurtful barrel of a Beretta into the hollow behind his ear.

***

The slick agent now rose thoughtfully from his chair. He moved to stand beside Foster. Foster remained where he was, standing at the window, staring out the window at Anatomy across the street, rubbing his fingers with his thumb, rubbing them.

"Should we go in?" the slick agent asked him.

Foster hesitated, gazing down at the restaurant, thinking through the possibilities. Finally, he shook his head. "If they see us coming, they'll kill him on the spot. It'd be over before we got there. Just another dead cop-killer, they'd say." Rubbing his fingers. Thinking. "No. Ramsey is going to want to know who he is, who sent him. If our guy holds out, they'll take him somewhere, somewhere they can work on him, make him talk."

"Why would he hold out?" said the slick agent. "He's just a punk. Why would he?"

Foster's face was blank, his lips parted. He went on rubbing his fingers with his thumb, in a reverie, thinking. "The girl," he said, in a distant voice. "If he gives us up, they'll get to us before we can get her into the system. If he talks, they'll get the girl."

The slick agent considered that, looking from Foster to the window. He grimaced. "He's a punk. He'll just tell them everything."

But Foster shook his head. "He won't. They're going to have to move him somewhere. To work on him."

Now the weaselly agent got out of his chair as well. He moved to stand next to Foster and the slick agent, and they all three stood at the window, looking out.

"They're going to have to bring him out—get him into a car," said Foster. "We'll have a chance then, a shot at stopping them. They've got to bring him out and when they do, we'll see them and make our move."

But he was wrong. They took Shannon out of the restaurant through the service exit in the kitchen. It led to a hall off the ground floor of One City Center. It was an empty concrete hall that led to a service elevator.

Ramsey led the way. Shannon followed him. He had no choice. The blockheaded cop dressed as a waiter was right behind him with the Beretta nine trained on his back. The blockhead kept the gun close to his side so there was no chance to grab it. Shannon knew the blockhead would kill him if he tried.

Ramsey used a Homak key to summon the elevator. The door opened at once. He stood back and let Shannon walk in. Then the blockhead walked in with the nine. Then Ramsey walked in.

Ramsey worked the Homak key in the elevator panel and the door closed. The elevator started up.

Then Ramsey turned and drove his fist deep into Shannon's midsection, right above the groin.

Shannon felt the air rush out of him and doubled over, sick. He was already falling to the floor when Ramsey hit him again, a lead-knuckled blow to the side of the head that dazed Shannon and made his knees give way.

Shannon lay gasping at Ramsey's feet. The moment before Ramsey kicked him, Shannon knew it was coming, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ramsey kicked him in the midsection hard and then kicked him again, aiming for his balls. Shannon spit puke and tried to cover himself. Ramsey grabbed Shannon's windbreaker and lifted him off the floor and punched him, dropping him back down again.

Shannon lay curled on the floor, groaning. He hurt and he was sick, but he didn't think there was anything irrevocable yet, anything broken inside. At the same time, he didn't see any hope of escaping, not with the blockhead holding the gun on him. They would just keep beating him until they were finished, and then they'd shoot him and he didn't see any way out of it. It made him sicker still with fear.

The elevator stopped with a heavy jolt. The door came open. Ramsey grabbed Shannon roughly, lifting him.

"Get up," he said.

Shannon had to take hold of Ramsey as he tried to get his feet under him. He couldn't think straight because of the blows to the head and because his whole body was weak with pain and sickness. He managed to stand up with Ramsey holding him. He stumbled out of the elevator. They were in another concrete hall. Ramsey grabbed him by the collar and hurled him face first into the wall. Shannon felt his nose break, which sent a unique and terrible pain through his head. Hot blood poured down over his face. His legs went rubbery and he started to collapse, but Ramsey grabbed him, held him up, and frog-marched him down the hall.