The Shack: An Implacable Man

"What shit?"

He went silent until Delaney waved the screwdriver at him. "Seed. I accidently gave you a half pound of prime seed."

"Gave?"

"I freaked out and grabbed the wrong bag, stuffed the tacos into it and gave it to you. The shit was taped in the bottom. I was storing it in the cooler at work and was about to take it home."

I shook my head. "You're gonna have to buy more seed somewhere, Dumbass. We tossed that bag a week ago. We don't keep fast food bags in the truck."

He looked shattered. "Where?"

"Look, it's probably in a land fill by now. Where ever the trash pickup dumps stuff."

For a moment, I thought he was going to cry. "I can't buy more. You can't buy this stuff at all. It wasn't just seed, it was G13 seed."

Delaney gave a dramatic sigh. "The stuff is bad for you anyway."

"I've been sparking up since I was twelve and it hasn't hurt me at all."

Delaney stared at him in disbelief. "Jesus. You actually think you're fucking normal?"

Rather than let Delaney go down that pointless road, I asked a question I knew I was going to regret. "What the fuck is G13?"

"It's like, the best shit ever. The CIA developed it. It's pure magic. Lotsa people sell shit they say is G13, but this was really it. My cousin worked in a lab at the University of Mississippi, and she smuggled it out. I put new stuff in my trailer, even put on a better door. I wanted to protect it."

"Have her get more."

"She died, man. They said it was a car accident, but I don't know. CIA, you know?"

Delaney rolled her eyes. "Paranoid much?"

He looked over at her. "You don't get it, this shit cures cancer. It really does, Janice heard them say so; that's why she got some seed out of there and gave it to me. A couple of suits came by asking if Janice had sent me anything, said they had a reward for it. I told them I didn't get anything."

"So you can save mankind?" I chuckled.

"I was gonna grow it for seed, give a bunch of it out. That's the righteous thing to do. The suits out there just wanna make money."

We pulled into the Taco Grande parking lot and I shut the truck off. "Can't help you, unless you want to dig through thousands of acres on one of those landfills."

Delaney opened her door, suddenly stopped and looked at me past Mooky. "What if we still had the bag?"

I shrugged. "He could have it. I don't want anything to do with it."

She wrinkled her nose pensively. "I think... we may still have it."

"What?"

"I saved the last two tacos for Mrs. Edwards' basset hound."

"You hate Mrs. Edwards."

"Yeah... I saved two Cheesy Bean tacos."

I thought about the effect of a Cheesy Bean taco on an aging basset hound's digestive system. "You really hate Mrs. Edwards."

She nodded, hopped down and opened the right side tool box, pulling out a ragged bag. "Eeewww, mice got the tacos."

"Which is why we don't keep food bags in the fucking trucks, Delaney."

She tore the bag apart until she found a neatly folded plastic package that had been taped into the bottom of the bag. "The mice got into this a little too, just a little though." She pointed at a chewed-off corner.

Mooky stared at the bag in wonder. "That's it, see the University of Mississippi sticker on it?"

I looked it over, just some laboratory standard batch information, and "Strain G13" in marker letters on the corner of the label. There was no University of Mississippi logo just "Hackmann Pharmaceuticals" neatly written at the top. Delaney studied it, sounding it out as best she could.

She looked at me quizzically and I shrugged. "Big companies give research grants to universities all the time. It costs less than doing it themselves. An agriculture project like this takes space, and the university might be able to get permits to grow stuff a company couldn't."

"Weird."

I pulled his Pinto off the rollback; other than a broken taillight it'd come through okay. Delaney watched him in amusement as he reverently taped up the corner of his precious cargo with some electrical tape from the toolbox.

When he finally walked over to go to work, he had a definite spring in his step. Or maybe he just had to pee.

Delaney watched him and giggled. I looked at her warily. "No."

"No what?"

"Just no."

"We can't keep him? Our very own drug dealer?"

"Jesus, no. He ain't exactly Scarface. He'd hurt himself with a fucking water gun."

She snickered as we watched him walk in the front door, finally pulling it open after trying to push it first.

*****

We stared at the single wide we'd just managed to get into the lot. It was the last thing we'd pulled off the abandoned property that the county had paid us to help clear. Six vehicles, four refrigerators and a water-heater tank that had all been dumped there. The mobile home had been left behind a couple of years earlier. It was in better shape than I expected it to be.

"What are we doing with this?" Delaney looked over the trailer.

"Sell it. Its 30 years old, but somebody will probably want it if we deliver it. It's not in bad shape and it'll make somebody a decent little home. We don't have to charge a lot; we got it for free, so anything is a profit."

"That's kind of neat." Delaney had a different idea of what was 'neat' in a house, but obviously, the idea of a little house for someone who couldn't afford more than fit the bill.

We walked up into the office, and Delaney picked up her helmet and pulled it on. "You want a Jalapeno dog?"

"Maybe a ham roll this time. Shake it up a bit. I'll head over there in a couple of minutes, I just have to finish the quarterly report." I sat at the little desk in the office and started painfully tallying up numbers.

She snapped the chinstrap. "I'm taking the alley behind the Sheriff's department."

"Stein may still be out there. I agree with Tara on him. He had to have serious incentive to try what he did."

She nodded. "I won't take any chances."

Less than twenty minutes later I was at the Sheriff's office, watching Sheree calm an alternatingly horrified and furious Delaney.

"That fucker destroyed my moped." I'd seen it on the way in, all that was left was a mangled red and white heap of metal, half-shoved under the fence around the department. Delaney had repeated herself a half dozen times, getting a little calmer as the adrenaline shakes started slowing down. The tears in her eyes were more from fury than fear, though.

The Sheriff came in and sat down at his desk. "We already found the F150. It was stolen in Richmond last night, and one of my guys found it abandoned a couple miles out of town. I have guys out, but..." He held his hands up.

Delaney sucked in her lower lip for a second and blew out a long breath. "The driver was a big muscle guy. It wasn't Stein. He was waiting in the auto parts store parking lot. Just..." she slapped her hands together, "like that."

"I have the video here." He pulled it up and we walked around to look over his shoulder.

We watched the grainy video. Delaney on her moped carefully riding along the fence, then the truck erupting onto the screen at full speed, catching the moped and raking it along the fence for a dozen yards.

He stared at the screen. "That wasn't an accident. And it looks like the truck was sitting here for at least an hour and a half, waiting."

Sheree pulled Delaney in tight. "How did you even..."

The sheriff backed it up, ran it slowly and we watched Delaney kick free of her moped and roll under the front bumper of the truck, let it pass over her and throw herself under the damaged fence, dashing towards the camera.

Delaney shivered. "I don't even remember doing that." She looked over me with a weak smile. "At least I didn't pee myself." She paused. "I need to go to the bathroom."

Sheree went with her, refusing to relinquish her hold, even for a second.

I looked at the Sheriff silently.

He grimaced. "Fuck. I get it. You do what you have to do, but try to keep it out of my house as much as you can. Do you have any idea what the hell this is about?"

"Not a goddam clue what started it, but it's obviously about Delaney."

Sheree, tight lipped and grim led Delaney back into the office. "Les. I think you need to call Tiffany and tell her you have to have word with your ex-wife. This all started the same time she got shot."

I couldn't argue with that.

*****

We walked in past a pair of nurses checking the heart and oxygen monitors attached to Charlotte by tubes and wires. Charlotte took a slow breath and looked steadily at Sheree. "I don't want her here."

I shrugged. "Want in one hand and shit in the other, see which fills up faster, Charli." I noticed Sheree give me a slightly jaundiced look, but there was a hint of a smile.

"What is she doing here, anyway?"

Sheree gave her a patently fake smile. "I'm just here to keep Les from givin' in to his baser reflexes. Like, maybe smotherin' you with a pillow."

Charlotte looked over at me. "I don't feel comfortable with her here. She used to be an exotic dancer, you know." She said it a bit triumphantly like it was supposed to shock me.

I looked over at Sheree. "An exotic dancer? Really?"

Sheree shrugged. "Don't know 'bout 'exotic,' I was born less'en 50 miles from here." She screwed her face up a bit. "Not really much of a dancer either, really, but nobody seemed to mind as long as I got the 'girls' out."

I nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I can see that."

Charlotte realized I already knew and stared at me hatefully. "Strippers are whores; everybody knows that."

Sheree leaned forward with a saccharine smile. "It'd probably be best if you jest stopped talkin' for a bit."

"Or what?" Charlotte rolled her eyes.

"Or nothing, Honey. Just tryin' to help you out."

"Really?"

"See, I was dancin' to pay off a court fine. I got myself in trouble smashing up the truck of a cheating asshole boyfriend. Spent three months in county lock-up, then had to pay a three thousand dollar fine. It was a brand new truck." Charlotte's face fell as she grasped Sheree wasn't hiding anything from me. Sheree noticed but drove on. "That was a lot of money and the Judge don't have a sense of humor if you don't pay the fine. I had to do somethin'. But that's not important part fer you."

Charlotte's patience was clearly running out. "So what is important to me?"

"Well, see, I was workin' there to pay the fine off, but most the girls was workin' there to pay their way through college." She paused and I noticed the same glitter in her eyes she usually had when she drew a straight flush in poker. "Nursing students, mostly."

Charlotte took just a second to soak that in then looked over at the two nurses who'd been working on the equipment. The older nurse was looking at her coldly with narrowed eyes while the younger redhead was openly glaring at her. "Oh."

The older nurse straightened up. "We'll just give you three some privacy." She nodded to Charlotte. "I'm the day shift Nurse Supervisor. You can just call me 'Jasmine'." She reached out and touched Sheree's shoulder. "Nice to see you again 'Candi.' Be sure to say 'hey' on your way out."

I waited until they shut the door. "You put an investigator on us? Not very fucking bright to put a private eye on me with everything Charles was involved in. Could have dragged you down on accident."

Charlotte gave an exasperated breath. "Just a computer background check on you and her. I did it after Delaney... chose to go live with you, before Charles' unexpected death. I just wanted to be sure she'd be okay... I wasn't expecting you to kill off half of North Carolina."

I wasn't responding to that, not in a room full of electronics. I changed the subject. "So what the fuck is going on? Somebody shoots you, I get rolled up by a crooked cop on a bad warrant who seems awful interested in Delaney. The judge is connected to Chucky's old law firm."

"I may have... inadvertently triggered something." She shifted uncomfortably.

"May have?"

"You know Charles wasn't Delaney's father."

A bad feeling soaked through me. "So who was?"

"I'm afraid I'm not certain."

"Jesus Christ, Charli. Is this one or two guys and uncertain timing? Or are we talking half the Virginia Bar Association and 'I don't have eyes in the back of my head' here?"

She sat up primly. "We were entertaining a great deal at that particular period in time."

Sheree raised one eyebrow at me and I could see her fighting the urge to ask Charlotte how she had the nerve to accuse anyone of being a whore.

"Fuck." I took a second to look out the window. "So all real movers and shakers, guys that could help Chuck's fucking career, right? But it's been over 14 years, why would anybody do anything now?"

She sat silent, looking out the window.

"Charli, what the Holy Hell did you do?"

She pursed her lips. "You have to understand. The election campaign very nearly bankrupted us. We spent a great deal and even had to borrow money."

"Charli."

"I may have let a few men know that I would appreciate some assistance in supporting their daughter." She said it quickly, spitting it out as if that would keep me from understanding it.

Charlotte had never so much as offered a dime to help with Delaney. Not that'd I'd have taken it. We stared wordlessly at each other. "Fuck. You were blackmailing lawyers and judges?"

"Not blackmail, I was just looking for a little help re-establishing my financial security. I have to maintain some standard of living."

"That CM Consulting financial record, that was it, wasn't it? Your little game is going to get Delaney killed."

There was at least a small flicker of guilt over that. "I didn't think anyone would be that aggressive. They're respectable men and I was careful not to ask for too much."

"Respectable? Like Chuck? That fucker tried to have Delaney killed for votes, and planned to whore Tara out at the firm, just like he did you." She winced at that and I hoped there really was a recording device so she could relive that later.

"That's not... relevant at the moment."

"Okay then let's talk about 'relevant.' Let's fucking forget about just how many guys you banged to give Chuck a fucking hand. Let's just narrow it down a bit from half the fucking population. How many of them could have influenced Judge Knowlton? Knowlton issued the warrant against me."

"I thought you said it was a bad warrant."

"He claims he didn't sign it, and that one of the court clerks must have forged it. Nobody can prove shit, but I'm not buying it."

She looked thoughtful. "Just the senior partners, I suppose. Not Burns, he's gay. So Sharpton, Franks and the Calloways."

"The Calloways?"

"Father and son. They're both partners."

"So which one..." I trailed off as she gave me a stone face. "Jesus. Both, right?"

She nodded.

Sherry looked at her. "Oh, Honey. Please tell me it wasn't at the same time."

"Of course not."

Charlotte turned to me, away from Sheree. Over her back, I could see Sheree mouth the word "Ho" and roll her eyes.

"The older Calloway couldn't be her father though, it was only one time. He had prostate surgery shortly after that."

We left as soon as we could, Sheree dragging me out. I suspect she caught me eying the extra pillow.

*****

I'd just come out from rearranging the battery shed and nearly tripped over Delaney.

"I wonder what that's about?" Delaney had stopped rolling a worn out tire to the tire stacks for a moment. If it had been any other teenager I'd ever met, it'd have been just an excuse to stop working, but Delaney worked as hard as possible just so she could get back to working on her car. The meticulous work of rebuilding the engine was almost weirdly fascinating to her.

I followed her gaze. A black SUV was sitting just outside the closed gate, and a county Sheriff's car was pulled up behind it, the deputy, probably Hyatt, from her lack of height, was talking with the driver, but she didn't have a ticket book out. He handed her something and she looked over it, stepping back toward the rear of the vehicle as she did it.

It didn't look like a pleasant exchange, and we watched until the SUV drove away. The deputy turned like she was going to get back in her cruiser, but saw us and headed our way. I waved her over to the smaller gate on the sidewalk and we met her there.

She shot Delaney a smile, but turned serious as she turned to me. "Sir."

"What can I do for you?"

"I have reason to believe the man in the black SUV was taking pictures of Delaney, but the camera SD card was pulled out, so I didn't have proof. With everything that's happened, I thought you should know."

"Shit, even if you did there isn't much you could have done about it."

"He had a gun. He's licensed as a personal security guard. With everything that's happened, I thought you should know."

"Any idea who he is working for?"

"He didn't seem like any kind of security guard I'd ever met. Had the whole hoody and baggy jeans thing going on, and I got the impression he's had a lot of run-ins with police. He seemed to find the whole thing kind of funny in a nasty way. The license said Gold Shield Security. I've never heard of them. But it ran okay when I checked it."

"Did you get his name?"

"John Ellis. I ran him and he doesn't have any wants or felonies, but he has a string of misdemeanor battery and assault charges."

Delaney stared at her steadily. "Did you see him taking pictures of me?"

Hyatt shook her head. "I didn't, but the missing SD card is a pretty good indicator. Nothing I could hold him on, and it wouldn't stand up for probable cause. It was called in by Burton Merkowski. He drove past on a taco delivery to Friendship Village. They seem to eat a lot of tacos out there. He thought the guy was some kind of pervert."

"Mooky?" Delaney half smiled. "Delivering tacos to Friendship Village?"

Hyatt smiled and shook her head. "Mooky. Lord knows, he's a goofball, but he usually means well. They eat a lot of tacos out at the Village." From her expression, she knew damn good and well why they did. She confirmed it a second later. "If Mrs. Ramirez offers you a brownie, you should probably decline it."

"So we've heard. Glad he called it in. And thanks for running the goon off."

She nodded. "Be careful, I have a bad feeling about that guy."

Delaney gave her a grin. "You up for a few more rounds of poker?"

Hyatt shook her head laughing. "No way. I don't think you play fair."

"A fair is a place you buy corndogs and funnels cakes..." Delaney paused. "Oooh Funnel cakes..."

*****

I could tell by her expression Delaney was thinking about the same thing I was. Maybe Mooky knew more. He was afraid of the cops. Probably afraid of us, too, but that would work in our favor.

"We should drop by and see Mooky, thank him for calling that in, you think?"

Delaney nodded. "Maybe he saw something else."

Mooky's shift at Taco Grande had ended by the time we go there, so we decided to drop by his trailer. It was kind of on the way home, anyway, and Sheree was getting off a bit late.

We grabbed the piebald Mustang Cobra, my "Sally," out of her garage for a change. It'd been a while and I needed to run her a bit.

It wasn't hard to find the spur that ran to his trailer, I was pretty sure I'd picked up a couple abandoned cars for the county there about six years before, long before Mooky was able to set up his grow house.

A black car shot past us as we rounded a long wooded bend. It wasn't a good angle, but l I got a look at the two men in it. Tactical 501 shirts. They might as well have had a huge sign that said "expensive corporate security." This sure as hell wasn't the hoody-and-baggy-pants goons. I caught just an impression of the driver's face, but his obvious annoyance was enough to tell me we might be about to run into a problem.