And even Skyles-even the reverend had to wonder sometimes, too. At that moment, the critical moment, when the girl deftly slipped the strap of her dress down her shoulder-deftly hiked her hem-and slipped her naked breast against his upraised hand and pressed her shaved and shockingly naked slit against his knee, hadn't he hesitated for just a second before he started back and pulled away? It sure looked like that on the security camera footage-it sure looked like he hesitated a long, long second-a clear, open-and-shut case of Lust in the Heart. That was enough to quiet any questions about the girl and her intentions, especially from reporters whose priest-fucks-kid narrative fell out of them like dog slobber at a dinner bell. And that was enough, in turn, to make Skyles half believe he half belonged in prison. Wracked with guilt, he could only blither weakly in his own defense while Augie Lancaster's judge and jury members worked their will-his will-Augie Lancaster's ever-unspoken will.
So there it was. The perfect case in point. The reverend wasn't sure if he was guilty. The girl wasn't sure if she was lying. Ramsey wasn't sure whose idea the whole thing was. No wonder Augie Lancaster floated free of history, like a soap bubble carried away on a rising atmosphere of abstract desire…
An image that made one corner of Ramsey's mouth lift slightly beneath his moustache…
Just then-in keeping with this theme-into the coffee shop came the animal Gutterson. Tromping thump-footed like a troll guarding a castle gate. Wearing a jacket of white linen that looked like it hadn't been ironed since last spring.
He got his coffee at the counter and sank into his chair across the small round table from the lieutenant. He let out a heavy sigh as he sat and said, "Another day, another dollar." Full of earthy wisdom was the detective.
Ramsey didn't even bother to speak. He simply pushed the blue folder across the table at him.
Gutterson sighed again and cleared his throat. He opened the folder with one hand while he raised his coffee cup to his lips with the other.
It was the same blue folder that had been given to Ramsey by Charlotte Mortimer-Rimsky. It held the same blurry photograph of the man in the car outside the graffito house. But now it also held printouts from Ramsey's long, discreet, difficult, and only partially successful investigation.
Gutterson scanned the printouts, staring dead-eyed and working his lips like some knucklehead reading porn.
"Mysterious," he rumbled after a while.
"I need to know what he knows."
"That could get messy." Unconcerned, Gutterson flipped the blue folder shut. He sipped his coffee, looking over the rim at Ramsey.
It was the crucial moment, but it all seemed more or less inevitable. Gutterson's stupidity was of a wholly moral nature. He was smart enough otherwise. He had survived on this city's police force a long time. He was plenty smart enough to divine his superior's will.
"Well, we can't have a mess," Ramsey said.
"No, we cannot. No, we cannot," said Gutterson with some unfathomable combination of bloodlust and world hatred. He swept up the blue folder with one paw. "I keep this?"
Ramsey gestured as if to say Be my guest.
Then, when Gutterson was gone, the lieutenant sat alone through a half-price refill, looking out the window at the pleasant view of a Westside shopping mall. He daydreamed vaguely about what he'd do when all this was over. How he'd become the law officer he'd started out to be, the neighborhood model of success, self-control, and integrity, his mother's son. He saw himself rescuing fatherless children from their gangster mentors… or something. Whatever. He knew full well that it would never happen. He knew full well that "all this" is never over. "All this" is just the world and you make your choices and you pay your way. He was just soothing his conscience, that's all. That was part of his discipline, too, now: quieting the voice of his upbringing, breaking free of his mother's outmoded philosophical apron strings, willing away his shame.
Because that was the real secret of the whole business, wasn't it? That was the great thing Augie Lancaster knew and that Ramsey, meditating on Augie's success, had now discovered: conscience was history. Conscience was the weight of history, the only power it had over you. And it, too-conscience, too-was nothing more than a current of mass opinion that could be turned this way or that by a strong man's will.
The thought brought Ramsey back to himself, back to his own predicament-left behind here as he was on the history-flooded earth as Augie levitated into the television ether where the young folks danced and sang his praises and the reporters-who-were-not-reporters-anymore appended choral hallelujahs to his name. The thought brought Ramsey back to the blue folder. It was all about the blue folder now.
To anyone with eyes to see with, to anyone with a mind accustomed to the way things worked in this good old city, in this good old world, the blue folder was nothing less than an order to kill a man. It had come to Ramsey through Charlotte Mortimer-Rimsky, but it was really an expression of Augie Lancaster's will. And now Ramsey had given the blue folder to Gutterson and the folder had become an expression of Ramsey's will. And if ever the deed itself should come back to haunt him, Ramsey would say, "No, no, that wasn't what I meant. It was just a blue folder. I don't know what he was thinking."
Because Ramsey had watched Augie Lancaster on TV. He had seen him floating free of the city and he had learned his lesson. He had learned how to give an order to do murder without uttering an incriminating word. He had learned how to turn the current of his conscience against the directions of his upbringing, against the fact of his own actions and the tug of responsibility. He, too, had learned how to float free.
He sat stirring an extra half spoon of sugar into his coffee cup and gazed mildly out the window at the passing scene. ON SATURDAY, after all those days of spring sunshine, it finally rained. That was the day Shannon finished the angel.
He went to the Applebees' house and carried the sculpture into the house's small garage. He worked on it in there, putting on the finishing touches. When he was done, he and old man Applebee set the altarpiece back on the mantel in the dining room. Teresa and the boy came home from the grocery store and they all four admired it.
Teresa made pork chops and mashed potatoes, and they all had dinner together in the dining room by candlelight. There was an atmosphere of celebration in the house as Applebee and Teresa took turns admiring different aspects of the wooden angel Shannon had made, the angel of Joy and Sorrow. Applebee even raised a glass of wine and toasted it. When dinner was over, he went to it and studied it up close.
"You're an artist, Henry," he said to Shannon.
Shannon laughed that off. He was no artist.
"No, I'm serious. You could make a living at it. I mean, this…" He shook his head. "It really is remarkable."
Shannon felt good. He was aware of how good he felt. He didn't have that feeling he sometimes got as if his skin were crawling. He just felt good. This was the life, he thought: sitting here with these people as if he were part of the family and holding his love for Teresa half-secret in his heart and having the angel he'd made sitting on the mantel there. Somewhere inside, he knew it all had to come apart at some point, because he knew he was a fraud. The angel looked at him from its perch as if it knew he was a fraud, too, a crappy little thief with a face job and false papers. But he, Shannon, put that out of his mind for now, because this was what he'd always wanted, wanted without knowing it, this was the life, the new life the identity man had promised him: here it finally was.