Shepard looked across the street at Virgil’s truck, then turned, reluctantly, and said, “I’m going in,” and went inside.
Inside, he said hello to a woman, who said, “Hi, Pat. Burt’s in the back, go on in.”
DIALOGUE:
Block: “Hey, Pat. What’s up?”
Shepard: “Hey, Burt. Man… I gotta sit down. I’m really screwed up here, man. My wife bailed out on me last night. She found out I… I’ve been fooling around. She’s so pissed, she knows about the PyeMart deal, she knows about the money.”
Block: “Whoa, whoa, whoa… She knows about me? She knows about all of us?”
“Got him,” Wills said, gleefully.
Thompson said, “Shhh.”
Shepard: “She doesn’t know exactly about you or Arnold, but she knows about Geraldine.”
Block: “But she doesn’t know about me?”
Shepard: “She knows… you know… but I never said your name or anything. But she knows.”
Block: “Ah, man, you gotta shut that bitch up. If she talks, we’re toast.”
Shepard: “I can’t shut her up. She left me. She took what was left of the money, and she knows where it came from, so… maybe we’re all right, but I don’t know. I was thinkin’… I was lookin’ for a way out.”
Block: “Like what?”
Shepard: “If we got to… maybe we could buy her off? I mean, she’s gonna need money. I only got twenty- five, I figured you guys got a lot more, you could help out-”
Block: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s my money. We all got exactly the same. You’re gonna have to find some other way to shut her up.”
Shepard’s voice broke: “I wish I’d never seen any of you. Geraldine said it was no problem, but now, oh my God…” He began blubbering.
Block: “Jesus, man up, Pat. If we just find a way to shut her up. .. Maybe we go back to the PyeMart guy, tell them that we’ve got a problem, need to smooth it out.”
Shepard: “That might work. Maybe. You think Geraldine only got twenty-five? I figured that you guys all did a lot better than that.”
Block: “I don’t know about Geraldine, but Arnold and I only got twenty-five. I mean, that’s all there was. Maybe Geraldine clipped a little off our shares, she’s crookeder than a bucket of cottonmouths. …”
They went on that way for a while, then Shepard asked, “So what do you think I oughta do? Talk to Geraldine? See if she’ll talk to PyeMart? I’m not that tight with her.”
Block: “I’ll talk to her. But I’ll tell you what. We’d all be better off if, you know, if Jeanne just went away.”
There was a moment of silence in Block’s office, but in the truck, Good Thunder blurted, “I don’t believe he said that.”
Shepard: “What? Went away?”
Block: “You, know, if she had some kind of accident. Then you wouldn’t be getting a divorce, you wouldn’t have this threat hanging over you.”
Shepard: “Okay, that’s fucking ridiculous.”
Block: “I’m just sayin’.”
Shepard: “I’m getting out of here. Nothing better happen to Jeanne. If it does…”
Block: “What? You’re gonna talk to the cops? You’re in just as deep as we are, you silly shit. Anyway, think about what I said. I’ll talk to Geraldine, and we’ll figure something out. Maybe if the PyeMart guy gets worried, we could sting him for a little more. Tell him we need a hundred to shut up your old lady, give her twenty, keep the rest. You know, we should have thought of this before.”
Shepard: “I’m outa here.”
Block: “Hey, Pat. Have a good day. Keep your fuckin’ mouth shut.”
Good Thunder said, “He is so implicated. We could talk conspiracy to commit murder.”
Wills nodded: “We will. The thing is, if we agree to drop that charge, but leave jail time up in the air for the bribe… we could flip him, too, and get him talking to Geraldine. Man. We are looking. .. What’s that asshole doing?”
“He’s talking to himself,” Thompson said.
Shepard was standing outside Block’s office, looking through the window into the office, making an incoherent growling sound, like a nervous collie. Every once in a while, a word would pop out, but it didn’t sound good.
Virgil said, “I’m gonna go reel him in,” and he popped his truck door.
Good Thunder said, “Wait. He’s moving.”
Virgil stopped and looked over at Shepard. Shepard walked around to the back of his car, looked across the street at them, and lifted a hand.
“Got a flat tire?” Thompson suggested, as Shepard rummaged around in the trunk of his car.
“I don’t…” Virgil began.
Then Shepard straightened, and in his hand he was holding a largeframe chrome revolver. A Smith, Virgil thought, vaguely, as Good Thunder said, “Oh, no,” and Wills said, “Holy shit,” and Thompson said, “Uh-oh, got a gun, Virgil?”
Virgil thought about his gun in the lockbox, turned to say something about it to Good Thunder, who was essentially sitting on it, but Good Thunder, still looking through the windshield said, “He’s gonna…”
Virgil looked back in time to see Shepard turn the gun toward his own chest, and pull the trigger.
And Shepard went down.
18
Virgil got to him first.
Shepard was lying flat on his back, his eyes open and focused, and he was making the growling sound, his breaths short and harsh. His arms lay down his sides, and the gun was a few inches from his right hand. Virgil pushed it out of reach, heard Good Thunder shouting into a cell phone, calling for an ambulance. People were shouting on the street around him, and Wills was telling them to stand back, as Virgil pulled open Shepard’s shirt, saw the wound just to the right of his breastbone, a small hole through which bright red, frothy blood was seeping.
Virgil looked around, for something soft and plastic, didn’t see anything, shouted at Wills, “Keep them away,” jogged back to his truck, got a trash bag out of a seat-back pocket, ran back to Shepard. Good Thunder was kneeling over him, saying, “Ambulance on the way, Pat. Ambulance is coming…” Virgil elbowed her aside, ripped a square of plastic out of the bag, and slapped it across the bullet hole and pressed it down.
The audio gear had been tucked under Shepard’s belt line, and Virgil pulled it loose, and then ripped off the tape that held the microphone to his chest.
Shepard made another growling, coughing sound, and the first of the deputies arrived. Wills organized them to push back the rubberneckers. The ambulance was there a minute later, probably five or six minutes after the shooting, which was great time; the paramedics put oxygen on Shepard, moved him onto a gurney, and they were gone.
Virgil walked back to his truck and gave the audio gear to Thompson, got some Handi Wipes and washed the blood off his hands as he went back across the street. Good Thunder asked, “What do you think?”
Virgil shook his head. “Hard to tell with a gunshot. Depends on what it hit. If it hit a major artery, he’ll die, and in the middle of your chest, that’s easy to do. If he didn’t, he could be walking around tomorrow. Bullet didn’t go through…”
He went to the pistol and knelt next to it: the frame was big, longbarreled, a Smith amp; Wesson, as he’d thought, but in. 22 caliber. A practice gun for the bigger calibers.
“I’ll let the deputies pick that up,” he said, getting to his feet. “It’s a. 22. He’d have to be fairly unlucky to die.”
