Blacktop Wasteland(49)

She turned and hugged him against her belly. He felt her hand on the back of his neck. He breathed her in and smelled the scent of her body mixed with her perfume and the remnants of the dryer sheets she used in the laundry. Even if they weren’t going to be alright, he would never let her know.

Kelvin was already at the shop when Beauregard arrived. There were two vehicles in the air on the lifts. Kelvin was under one, a black pickup truck, working on the oil filter.

“Hey.”

“Hey. You just in time. Doing an oil change on this one and the car keeps making a funny noise that’s not a rattle or a clank or a clang or a ping,” Kelvin said.

“Then ain’t a funny noise, it’s just the engine,” Beauregard said.

Kelvin laughed. “I’m just telling you what the lady said. And we got a call from the Cedars Septic Service. Wanted to know if we could look at one of their trucks today. I told them we didn’t take no crap.”

Beauregard frowned.

“Fuck you, that was funny. I suspect we gonna be real busy this week,” Kelvin said.

“Yeah. Precision caught on fire last night,” Beauregard said.

“Oh, I didn’t know if you knew. Sucks for them, but good for us.”

“I guess,” Beauregard said.

They did twelve oil changes, replaced eight sets of brake pads and started on the septic truck. By four, they were both soaking wet with sweat and loving every minute of it.

“Nice being busy, huh?” Kelvin asked. He had just driven a two-seat sports car into the back lot after adjusting its fuel injector. Beauregard was using an impact wrench to take off the back tire of an old Caprice. Before he could answer, they heard two vehicles pull up and the sounds of multiple car doors slamming shut. Beauregard stopped trying to remove the tire’s lug nuts and turned to face whoever was coming into the shop. It wasn’t the cops. If they had come for him, they would have announced themselves as soon as they got out.

Patrick Thompson and his father Butch entered the shop through the first roll-up door. Patrick was a thin wiry figure with a shock of bright blond hair cut into a shaggy surfer-boy style. Butch was a square block of a man. All hard angles and broad shoulders. He was bald but had a prodigious blond and gray beard.

“Pat,” Beauregard said. He had known Pat Thompson before he’d become the competition. He’d seen him at Danny’s a few times. Pat had a ’69 Camaro that he liked to run on the back roads sometimes. They had never gone head to head, but Beauregard knew the Camaro had legs. His daddy used to be a truck driver for a long-haul company out of Richmond. A year and a half ago, Butch Thompson had stopped at a gas station to fill up his rig. While he was in line to pay for his fuel, he’d purchased a one-dollar scratch-off ticket. He’d done the same thing a hundred times in the past. The most he’d ever won was $700. That day he received a huge return on his investment. He hit for $400,000. He called up his boss and told him to send someone to pick up his load because he had just quit. He and Patrick had opened their garage a few months later.

“Beau. You heard about my place?” Patrick asked. His blue eyes bore a hole into Beauregard.

“Yeah.”

“That’s all you got to say? Yeah?” Butch asked. He was clenching and unclenching his hands. They looked like bear traps.

“What you want me to say, Butch?”

“Somebody say they saw a black guy running from the scene, Beau. I thought maybe you might know something about that,” Patrick said.

Kelvin picked up a torque wrench.

“Why would you think I’d know something about that?” Beauregard said.

“Cuz you the only black guy who owns a garage that’s been getting its ass kicked,” Butch said. He took a step forward.

“You think I set fire to your place? Really?” Beauregard asked.

“I think you might know who did. The cops say it was deliberate. My dad told them to come talk to you, but I guess they didn’t take us serious,” Patrick said.

“Pat, I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened to your place. I’m sorry for you, but I don’t know nothing about it.”

“You a lying black bastard,” Butch said. His face was mottled with splotches of red just above his beard.

“What you say?” Beauregard asked. He let the impact wrench slip from his hand and held it by the air hose. It hung loosely by his side.

“You heard me. You know who did it. You sent them. Couldn’t compete with us anymore. Then we got that contract. In three months there was gonna be a CLOSED sign on your door and we all know it,” Butch said.

“The cops say they need proof to arrest you. I just wanted to ask you to your face,” Patrick said. His eyes were red. He’d probably been up all night. Beauregard knew he would have been.

“I told him it was a waste of time. All you people do is lie and steal. And make babies you can’t take care of. Bunch of fucking nig—”

Beauregard whipped the impact wrench up and out by its air hose. It flew through the air and smashed into Butch’s mouth. The bigger man stumbled backwards, his hands covering the lower half of his face. His blond and gray beard was stained with streaks of red.

Beauregard snapped the wrench back and caught it in midair. He ran at Butch and clocked him in the forehead with the wrench. Butch fell onto his ass. He raised his hands and grabbed at Beauregard’s shirt. Beauregard hit him on the top of the head. The impact wrench split Butch’s scalp open like an orange peel. Beauregard raised the impact wrench above his head.