The Shack series

Chapter 7

After Sheree and I finished breakfast, she headed for the Quickmart and I walked out to the rollback truck. I had to laugh, I could hear the soft buzz of the power sander already droning from the garage where Delaney had her baby set up.

***

Almost two hours later, as I unstrapped another wreck to unload it, Delaney wheeled her little red-and-white mini-nightmare up to me.

"I'm headed up to the Quickmart to eat. Do you want me to save you a spot?"

I rolled the last strap. "It'll take me about 20 minutes to get there, but I'll take one of those foot-long jalapeno dogs with extra hot peppers. Then I have to head out and get that last one picked up."

She pulled her helmet on; it was black with little fanged robot skulls all over it. "Cool. I can get a head start! I'll have Sheree put one back for you."

It was almost 25 minutes later when I started out the gate, only to be interrupted by a call from John down at the tire and auto shop. I did lot of my own work on vehicles, but I had him do regular maintenance. I was pretty sure I didn't have anything down there, so it was a bit odd. And it got much odder very quickly.

"Hey, John."

"Hey...Bill." He said the name with enough finality that I paused in my answer; he damn well knew he was using the wrong name.

"John..."

"Hold a second Bill. There's a guy down here looking for a kid. Says her name is 'Delaney' something or other. Thought you might know about it."

This was no misdial. I turned towards the auto shop. "I'm on my way over."

"Yeah, park around back, got a load of tires coming in, don't need you blocking the entrance."

His shop was only a few minutes from the yard and I pulled in the back like he asked, sliding my 1911 out of the glove box and into my belt at the back of my pants.

John was at the counter facing a big guy with tattoos that flowed up his neck out of his t-shirt collar. As soon as I walked in, John started talking. "Hey, Bill. This guy's looking for that kid that hangs out with Needles."

He turned towards me. Blocky looking Asshole, with a nasty cast to him. As he turned I recognized some of the g**g tattoos and knew why he was looking for Delaney. I shrugged. "Probably down at the salvage yard, like they always are. Couple blocks south of here. Why you looking for her?"

"That's my Damm business."

I held my hands up. "Just asking."

He brushed past me, heading out toward a black SUV, looked like it might be an Escalade, in the parking lot. John looked at me wide-eyed. "You just told him where she is."

"Nah, she's with Sheree, eatin' lunch." I headed out the back. "Think I'm gonna have a little talk with this Dammer."

John just nodded and picked up his coffee.

I followed down the road behind him, let him get into the salvage yard and then put the rollback into low gear and steered it right into the driver's side door, shoving the SUV up against the wall of truck tires on the other side of the parking area.

I already had the door open and swung out with the .45 leveled at him before he could figure out what happened. He started to reach into his jacket but stopped as soon as he looked up the barrel.

"Go for it, Asshole. Give me a Dammin' excuse."

I heard the front door of the trailer open and glanced over as Delaney stepped out, looking around warily.

"What the Damm are you doing here? You're supposed to be with Sheree."

She held up a bag. "Sheree asked me to run back here and get her a clean shirt and b*a. The damn Slurpee machine spewed all down her shirt."

"Shit."

Delaney stepped forward and looked at the Asshole. As soon as she saw the tattoos, her expression changed from confusion to raw hatred. "What the Damm!?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

"He was looking for me, wasn't he?"

I nodded.

She glared at him. "Are you going to kill him?"

"Jesus. We need to cut down on your sugar intake. I haven't even talked to him yet."

She dropped the bag and crossed her arms in front of her. "So what about it, shithead? What are you here for?

I considered telling her I'd ask the questions, but frankly I didn't have any better ones.

He scowled at her. "Damm off."

Delaney shook her head. "Wait, wait, wait. You came out here to grab me or kill me? How Damm stupid are you?" She threw her hands up. "Seriously. The last time some of you Damm asswipes tried that, everybody died. Like, Damm-dead-in-a-ball-of-fire, died." She leaned forward a little like she was studying him. "I mean, are they trying to get rid of you or something? 'Hey! Let's send shithead out to get killed.' Are you banging somebody's Damm sister or something? Jesus."

His hand twitched toward his jacket as he looked daggers at her, but the muzzle of the .45 was a very convincing argument to stay still.

I had to chuckle a little. "You actually have to let the goat-felching strap-faggot answer questions for this to work."

She looked at me puzzled. "What's a goat..."

"Don't ask. And don't look it up on the internet either."

"I'm not old enough?"

"Hell, I'm not old enough."

She shrugged. "He's probably too stupid to answer. We're using words that are too long for him. Probably talking too fast for him, too." She looked at him wide-eyed with mock sympathy. "Does...This...Help?"

The Asshole turned a brilliant shade of red, I could almost see steam coming out his ears. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a car jerk to a sudden stop, the woman in it staring at us while animatedly talking into a cell phone. "s**t, Delaney, get in there and call 9-1-1. Tell them we caught an intruder at the salvage yard."

"Why..." She noticed the woman on the on the phone. "Shit."

She dashed inside, tripping over the bag on her way, knocking everything out.

I looked at the Asshole. "We're gonna talk later."

It took the Sheriff and two of his deputies all of ninety seconds to come blazing into the yard, just as Delaney stepped back out.

"Needles." The Sheriff walked toward me cautiously.

"Careful, Asshole here has a g*n in his jacket."

As soon as the deputies had him covered, I cleared my .45 and offered it to the Sheriff. He waved me off. "I know you have a permit for that. I had to sign the damn thing." He looked at the SUV. "Think you could back the truck off enough for us to get him out?"

I stuck the .45 in my belt, backed the rollback off a bit and slid back out to watch them get his g*n and get him out.

The Sheriff watched as his deputies managed to pry the door open and pull the tattooed guy out of his SUV. "So what's goin' on, Needles?"

"He's some kind of p*****t. He exposed himself to Delaney."

"Seriously? You're going with that? You know he was trapped in his SUV, she's not even tall enough to see in the window of that thing. Kinda tough to do that from there."

Delaney broke in, nodding exaggeratedly, eyes wide in obvious mock-fear. "It's true Sheriff! He did. It was horrible... I saw it!" She narrowed her eyes, then held her hand up, thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. "It was like a p***s, but smaller..."

The guy snarled and shoved the deputies away suddenly, lunging towards Delaney, snarling. "b***h!"

Exactly like I'd expected him to do. With the Sheriff on the wrong side, I had just the right angle to step in and drive my fist into his temple with every bit of my weight behind it; he fell to the ground clutching weakly at his head.

Before I could follow up, the two deputies piled onto him like an avalanche of bricks. Delaney just stood watching with a barely suppressed smirk. She hadn't so much as shifted an inch.

The Sheriff looked back and forth between me and Delaney. "What the hell were you thinking, girl? He could have hurt you."

"With Needles here? Do you really think he'd ever let that shithead touch me?" Delaney moved out of the way to let them finish cuffing and searching him. I noticed her reach quickly into the SUV and tuck something into her pocket.

The Sheriff shook his head. "Jesus. Now I have to process him for assaulting law enforcement officers." He nodded to his deputies. "Get him the Damm out of here. Process him and run him for warrants."

I nodded. "That's good, you can book him on that. At least Delaney won't have to relive that horrible experience."

She giggled.

We watched as the deputies stuffed him ungently into one of their cruisers. The Sheriff shifted his stare to me after they drove off. "We need to talk, Needles. I recognize those tattoos. I saw some like them in a report about the same time you made your little trip to Durham to pick up Delaney here. North County Wild Boyz g**g members who got themselves very dead in some kind of car chase and shoot out."