He looked at her, at her tailored back, as she faced the window. He let the silence of his doubt play over her, weigh on her. They both knew she didn't have any goddamned city contacts. Only Augie himself could've thrown his net wide enough to haul in something as random as this. She was protecting Augie. She'd been in town for ten minutes and she had the gall to stand between him-between him-and Augie Lancaster.
She kept her eyes on the window, on the scene outside, but he could see by her uncomfortable posture that she felt his accusation. She felt compelled to explain. "The thing is, Augie is at a transitional moment," she said finally, with a defensive glance back at him. "I don't have to tell you that. It's a key moment, maybe the key moment in his trajectory."
"His trajectory," Lieutenant Ramsey said with an aspect of stone.
She faced him. He wanted to rip that porcelain mask of earnestness right off her. "Yes. I mean… look… It's a transformational moment in the whole country. We all know that. It's a time of real hope and… and change."
So he had fucked her. Well, good for him. That was fast work. He must've explained all this to her in the afterglow. We can't have hope until we have dreams and we can't have dreams until you suck my black dick…
"Augie has a real chance to become one of the new transformational figures. Isn't that what we've all been working for? To get beyond race? To bring some of the same progressive policies to the federal level that Augie's implemented here at the municipal level?"
Even in his rage and shame, Ramsey nearly laughed out loud. Had Miss Dreams ever gone ten steps beyond this pristine government complex? Had she ever set her baby blues on exactly what Augie's progressive policies had accomplished at the municipal level? The city is in fucking ruins, you dumb bitch!
"Look, we all know," this girl-who was too young to know much of anything-went on desperately. "We all know that in the rough and tumble of city politics… associations are made… things get done by the people around you… Augie would never turn his back on his friends, believe me. It's just that… with this degree of scrutiny on the national level, he has to take appearances into account in a new way. For a period of time, I mean."
He stared at her. He couldn't help himself. For a moment, he was simply dazed, astonished at the wonderful perfection and complexity of Augie's treachery, as if it were some kind of magnificent crystal suddenly revealing its infinite network of facets to the light. Then, as his astonishment receded, anger rushed back into its place with a new force. Ramsey had seen this kind of fury in the faces of men twisted up like pretzels on cell floors, the froth of seizure on their lips, words of such filth and savage desire spewing from them it was enough to make you believe in hell and the devil. He had seen it, but he had never felt that sort of titanic rage himself until this minute. He wanted to shove this girl, this created suburban thing, against the wall, wanted to seize a handful of her throat and a fistful of her breast and ram himself up inside her like he was planting a flag on the moon. He wanted to cram his face a whisker's breadth from her terrified eyes and tell her everything, everything that was going to happen to her next. Come a day, he wanted to spit into her porcelain face through his gritted teeth, come a day, you will stand before judgment, so help me, before a judge, in fact, or a Senate committee or God his own fat, happy self, and Augie will do as much to you as he has done to me here now. "I never knew her," he'll say. "I never knew what she was up to. We had a fling. She took it too seriously. She was overzealous on my behalf. That wasn't what I meant at all." Then oh then, so help me, so help me, you will strip off that sexless suit of yours, you will ditch your degree in environmental horseshit and scurry to put on some tears and lace blouses and any other waif-like wile of femininity that might just charm your sweet white ass out of prison or your sorry soul out of the flames of hell. And even if you do escape, that's your life ever after, cooz. That's the definition of your future life: a bewildered slag announcing your redemption-through-rehab to some bored reporter from www.excelebrityfelons.com, a ragged exile from your daydreamed self, a half-damned half-spirit in a perdition of philosophical somersaults and rationalizations and glasses of wine-anything-any trick you know to stave off the hour when you make a priest of your mirror and confess to yourself what you did here today.
He wanted to tell her that, throttling her, clutching her, pumping into her until he finished to the pounding rhythm of the final syllables and ejaculated acid in her, burning right through her womb to poison her bleeding heart…
But instead, expressionless, he nodded once, the image of dignity, of authority and calm. He looked away from her studied earnestness, down again at the blue folder open in his hands, at the picture in the folder. His eyes went from the green-shingled house to the line of cars parked at the curb outside. His eyes went to the figure behind the wheel of one of those cars, a man in shadow with his features obscured by the glare of the streetlight on the windshield, the same streetlight that illuminated the right half of the car's license plate. Just enough of the license plate so that Ramsey would be able to track the man down.
This was all Augie would give him, the last thing he would give him-and he would never admit that he had given him even this. This picture. This figure. This man who had written the graffito in the green-shingled house-or who had made the remark to the gang-bangers there that caused the graffito to be written-who somehow-somehow-knew:
Ramsey murdered Peter Patterson!
The image of dignity, of authority and calm, Ramsey lifted his eyes. He looked away from the doomed white girl, done with her. He gazed thoughtfully instead at the televisions on the wall. Augie on all three screens. Standing behind the lectern, before the new post-racial world. Gazing visionary into the TelePrompTer.
We can't have Me until we have Me and we can't have Me until we learn to have Me-Me-Me as a nation.
Augie sailing off into the new age-and here was Ramsey left behind in the Media Room with this picture, this picture somehow magically in his hands. That was the way of these things, wasn't it? Someone had to stay behind. Someone had to clean up the mess. Someone had to find the man in the picture, had to find out what he knew and how he knew it.
And someone, in the end, was going to have to kill him. SHANNON OPENED HIS EYES. At first, he was startled to find himself somewhere new, somewhere other than the white room. He lay still on the strange bed, wary. Then he remembered. He sat up, dragging his hand down his cheek, trying to swipe away the tranquilizer haze.
Stretching, craning his neck, he took in his surroundings. A small studio apartment. Gray walls with a couple of pictures hung on them. Nice wooden floors with a braid rug by the bed. A dresser, a desk, a chair, a mirror on the back of the closet door. He could see himself in the mirror, sitting there with his jockey shorts and his brand-new face on. Look at that: a brand-new face. This time, the sight of it struck him as wonderful. He broke out in a big silly grin. It was just like the foreigner said. He was new mang.
Excited, he got up to explore. He looked out the windows first. There were only two of them, both on the same wall. Not much of a view. Two brownstones across the street. The entrance to a wide alley next to a small grocery. Just the same, after all that time locked up in the white room, he was eager to get out there. Was he ever! Out in the open air again! He couldn't wait.
He checked the front door. Yup, it opened. He was free. A new mang and a free mang, too.
Humming to himself, he wandered around the apartment some more. The fridge in the kitchenette was stocked with food. The dresser was stocked with clothes. The foreigner's folders were on the desk, the ones with all his new identity papers in them-Henry Conor's papers. There was a computer there, too. When he pressed the keyboard, the machine whirred and the monitor lit up, showing classified ads. Carpenters wanted all over the place. Next to the computer: a receipt for the first two months' rent on the apartment. Plus car keys with a Honda logo. Plus a wallet with three hundred-dollar bills in it. Nice.