Sheep Meadow Story Page 4

  This guy was gonna do it for him, he thought.

  This guy was gonna shoot the hell out of them.

  The fuck he was.

  He had the.38. He flicked off the safety and aimed and squeezed.

  The guy yelped and stumbled back surprised as hell and then looked down at his belly. His belly was a mess. Stroup had made it that way. The guy screamed. Stroup squeezed off another one and the guy's balls were gone. Stroup was shooting in a nice vertical pattern he thought, down the guy's body. Had to finish it up higher, though. The guy was still howling when his jaw splashed against the tree.

  Stroup pocketed the gun and stood. Carla was looking at him. He walked over.

  "I saved your fucking life, Carla," he said. "Didn't I?"

  Carla was white as paste. So was Randi.

  "Y-yes," she said. "Yes you did, Stroup."

  "You want to forget the rent now?"

  "Uh. O-okay." She nodded.

  "Thanks, bitch."

  He turned and walked away.

  ***

  He was watching New York One that night when his boss called. He was watching coverage of the shooting for the fifth time. He was drinking scotch. It looked like the black kid and his father were going to live and the bubble-lady too but the guy with the headphones was a goner. So was the shooter. The shooter had been identified as one Will Obey, originally from Center Cut, Texas. He'd told friends just the day before that he was six months pregnant with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. They hadn't believed him. So far nobody had mentioned Stroup's name but that couldn't be.

  He turned the volume down. He had to do it manually. He was going to have to get a new remote, goddammit.

  "Stroup?"

  "You're calling me on a Saturday, Max. You're calling me for the second time. That's unusual."

  "I know."

  "You can't fire me, Max. You did that."

  "Downsized, Stroup. Downsized."

  "I don't care what you call it."

  "Listen, are you watching the news, Stroup?"

  "Matter of fact I am."

  "Carla called me."

  "Who?"

  "Carla. I know it was you, Stroup. Carla told me everything. You're a hero, Stroup. You saved people's lives out there."

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

  "I think we can get a book deal."

  "A what?"

  "A book deal. It was Carla's idea, but I think she's dead right."

  "At least she's dead something."

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind."

  "Look, we do it anonymously, under a pseudonym. Nobody's ever going to find out."

  "They found out about Ed McBain, Max. They found out about Richard Bachman. And what's his name? Ketchum or something."

  "We'll be careful. Those guys weren't. Those guys were clumsy. I know plenty of writers who've never been found out. You're not a bad writer, Stroup. This book could be the beginning of a new career for you."

  "And Carla gets a piece of it, right? That's the deal?"

  "Well, yes."

  "She mention a figure?"

  "Well, yes she did."

  "It wouldn't be something around two thousand, seven hundred dollars, would it?"

  "Thirty five hundred. But look, advances for this kind of thing are crazy these days. We do it strictly true-crime. If it were fiction we'd be lucky to make a nickel. But we do this thing right, you could make a million dollars. Would that be acceptable?"

  "Make it two million and you got a deal."

  "I think I can safely say, done."

  Stroup went to bed. And woke up smiling.