Cletus and Zeke in East Carolina, Surf fishing

Ralph Skrezya’s mood became increasingly foul through the third day of picketing.

The TV piece absolutely kill his showroom traffic and past customers were inspired to post reviews on Yelp and Google. His reputation was getting absolutely slaughtered.

Craig, his lead mechanic and somebody he had personally recruited from a dealership in Jersey almost had his head bitten off after he suggested that maybe they should just give the girl her car back.

“Listen, shit-for-brains.” Ralph snarled. “I already sold that car to an asshole up in Albany. Alls I need is the signed title and I net $10k. This scam’s made us a pile of money. We give that car back and we can kiss that gig good-bye. You know how these yokels talk.”

Mid-afternoon the third day, Ralph himself walked out to the sidewalk and made a big show of handing each girl an official looking document. “Ladies, you have just been served. Those are personal protective orders telling you to stop stalking me. You have to stay at least two hundred yards away from any of my property. You have fifteen minutes to leave.” and then Ralph stalked back to his office.

Later that afternoon Thess, Cletus and Zeke were looking at the court orders.

“Wow. This guy is really a jerk…and stupid too. I think it is time to step our game.” Cletus said. They had been talking about what they would do next if Skrezya did not roll over.

“Is there somewhere out of town where Bobbi and Kendra can spend the night? Preferable with somebody who can vouch for them.” Cletus asked.

Thess said, “Well, I could run them up to Raleigh. Bobbi’s daddy is a state trooper up there.”

“Perfect.” Zeke said. “We will be setting up while you are doing that.”

“Yeah, but ain’t nobody touching my surf casting rod but me.” Thess said.

Cletus and Zeke popped into the office at the Lidl grocery store across the road from the car dealership. He was holding a cheap air filter. “We are from headquarters and we are changing the AC filters on the roof.”

The store manager was busy and simple waved at them.

Zeke and Cletus parked at the back of the store and started lugging equipment up onto the roof via a ladder. The first thing they did was to 'accidentally' bump a couple of roof cameras. Nobody noticed. When they were done unloading they moved the truck but left the ladder in place.

A few hours later they were joined by Thess who was carrying his 12’ surf casting rod. Thess fished for sharks out on Hatteras and had built his own rig from a blank.

Once on the roof, Thess removed the reel and lashed the bow-release that Cletus had donated to the space where the reel had been.

He did a little bit of fiddling to figure out how long to cut the 80 pound braided fish line so it could be tied in a loop and have about six inches hanging out the end when one end of the big loop was snapped into the bow release.

Then Cletus and Zeke went into mass production mode, pulling line off the reel, cutting and tying the line into loops. Thess was almost weeping because that line was not cheap. One end of each loop was tied to a nut-and-bolt purloined from the job site. They had lugged 80 pounds of nuts and bolts up onto the roof and figured they had 200 of each.

It was nearly full dark when Thess took his first shot at the dealership which was slightly over 100 yards away. Zeke and Cletus had a bet going. Zeke did not think Thess could heave the 6 ounces of steel 100 yards. Cletus bet he could.

They were hampered by the lack of light. They had no clue where the bolts were landing.

Thess said, “I think I am throwing them over the dealership.” He could tell the weight was flying farther than usual unencumbered by three hundred feet of heavy line that would normally be peeled off the reel.

Zeke said “Bullshit.”

Cletus said, “Throw some line-drives that land close and walk your way out.”

Thess waited until there was no traffic going down the highway that separated the grocery store and the dealership before launching a line-drive. Both Cletus and Zeke were watching to see where the bolt landed.

The 6.4 ounces of steel hit the main showroom window at 95 miles an hour and set off the burglar alarm.

“Oh shit!” Thess said.

“Chill out.” Zeke said. “Nobody is going to look up here.”

It took forty-five minutes before things settled down. First the cops showed up. Then Skrezya. Skrezya turned off the alarm. Nobody found the bolt with the 10’ loop of fishline tied to it as it had bounced around and was lodged beneath a table in the next room.

After they left, Thess started line-driving the missiles into the massed cluster of new vehicles in front of the dealership. As he got the range he was able to add more speed and still keep them on-target.

The missiles smashed door windows and scattered glass splinters as fine as sugar through the entire interior.

The missiles hit doors and left sharp in-dings that necessitated a panel replacement and a repaint of the entire side of the vehicle to get the metal flake to match.

Windshields were cracked and aluminum hoods were almost holed.

Two-thirds of the missiles found their targets. Most of them left damage that would have to be repaired. Some of the misses were long and blew out the remaining showroom windows. The guys held their breath when the first one of those hit but Skrezya had not turned the alarm back on.

Thess may have been an old man but he had the shoulders and torso of a bull. He was tireless. Somebody was trying to screw his grand-daughter and he was returning the favor...with interest.

Rain was starting to blow in as they were finishing up.

Thess noted, “Always had the best fishing when the weather was coming in.”

The men went back down the ladder shortly after one in the morning and walked the quarter mile over to where the truck was parked. Then they drove to Thess’s home and sacked out until it was time to get ready work in the morning.

To be continued...