I found it interesting what small details the mind picked up after so many years. Shit that didn’t make sense at the time became clear as fucking day, the moment you dumped all the emotional veneer that kept most people hidden.

As a kid, I probably watched Pinocchio about a half-dozen times a week. It was the only movie we had on DVD, and one I never got bored of watching. To the extent that my mom could sneak off to the bedroom with any swinging dick that happened to knock on our door when my dad was at work, and I was completely oblivious. She’d be fucking some asshole in the next room over, while I’d sat mesmerized by the little boy whose nose grew every time he told a lie. So, when my dad had asked me if I’d seen anyone come into the house, even after my mom told me to keep my mouth shut, I guess I’d just felt kind of compelled to tell the truth.

The irony had been somehow lost on my ma, who’d accused me of ruining their marriage, and ended up taking off not long after that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a sidekick cricket telling me my mom was a crazy crack whore, so I’d spent years blaming myself, until the day I decided some people were simply fucked up. Though, probably none so much as the ones who manipulated kids into feeling like shit most of their lives for something they didn’t have any control over.

That was when I realized that, to really move on with my life, I had to not only sever the ties to my guilt, but bury those bastards so deep in the ground, I’d never have to hear them mock me again.

I later found out my mother had died of a drug overdose a few years back, so in some ways she’d buried them for me.

Flicking my cigarette off into the copse of bushes along the street, I rounded the corner to a dilapidated garage, where an older man stood with his back to me beneath a car propped up onto a lift. As I neared, I noticed the rag dangling from his hand, coated in black grease.

“Excuse me,” I called out, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

The man turned, and for one brief moment, so did my stomach. Ten years had quadrupled the wrinkles on his face, giving him a rough, almost petrified appearance, with indentations, and a prominent Adams apple.

“Excuse me.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder and glanced backward in a pathetic attempt to feign an innocent encounter. Odd thing, knowing a man’s fate. In some ways, it made me want to laugh hysterically at his ignorance. “My car …. It broke down a mile, or so, up the street.”

“Huh. Ain’t you lucky to be so close to a garage.”

“Yeah. I was relieved to see your sign.”

His tongue slid across his teeth, as he stuffed the greasy rag into the pocket of his uniform. “Sorry. We’re closed.” He twisted back toward the car, without so much as a glance back.

“I’ve got cash. I can pay you for your help.”

With a snort, he shook his head and turned around. “You fuckin’ suburban snobs think you can buy—”

“Five hundred. Cash.”

“Five hundred.” The air of disbelief in his voice told me he was the kind of man who required proof, so I tugged out the folded stack of hundreds I’d stuffed in my pocket earlier in the night, and held it up for him to see.

He hocked a gob a spit off to the side and brushed a thumb across his nose. “Alright. Five hundred, plus whatever repairs it needs.”

“Deal. I just need to get out of this shitty neighborhood, man. It’s making my skin crawl.”

I was pretty sure he muttered something like fuckin’ yuppy, before waving me over to the beat-up wrecker parked in the side lot. He climbed inside, hand on the key in the ignition, and the moment I hopped in beside him, he fired it up. For one brief moment, my nerves got the best of me, when he stared at me, resting his arm against the steering wheel.

I stole a quiet glimpse of him, and his eyebrows raised. “You gonna tell me where to go, or we gonna sit in this truck all night?”

“Right. Um. Its just up East Grand. I pulled off into the empty lot at the corner there. Right next to the construction site.”

“Your car might not even still be there.” He snorted, shaking his head, and the truck rattled as he shifted it into gear. “I don’t know why the hell people from the city come down here late at night.”

“You … assume I don’t live here.”

He gave me a onceover, sweater to loafers, and back. “I’m pretty damn sure of that.”

“I had a company gathering at the Whitney. Took a few wrong turns, and the clutch seems to have gone out on my car.”

“How the hell did you …? Never mind. What’s the make?”

“Um. It’s an Audi, sir. R8 model.”

His sneer told me he disapproved. “Gonna be pricey. Under warranty?”

“I’m guessing not. It’s at about twenty thousand miles.”

“You’re lookin’ at about eight grand. Plus the five hundred, of course.”

“Money isn’t an issue. This city makes me nervous, after what happened to the one guy. You hear about that on the news? Guy who was thrown into a wood chipper?”

Slanting me a frown, he shook his head. “Nah, I don’t watch the news much. Too depressing. They, uh … say what his name was?”

“I don’t remember. It was a weird name. Anyway, it …” I faked a shiver and banded my arm over my stomach. “I have a really weak stomach. The thought of that just makes me sick.”

“Kids’re so goddamn sheltered these days.” He sneered again, shaking his head. “Hell, I saw my buddy’s hands get blown off by a firecracker when I was ten years old. Skin looked like a T-shirt dangling from his wrists.”

“That’s …. Oh, God, I think I’m gonna puke.” Feigning a gag, I slapped a hand over my mouth, grateful to hide the smile itching to escape at all the theatrics.

“Hey, no pukin’ in the truck, kid. Git yer shit together. It’s just a story.” He pulled the wrecker into the lot I directed him to and, leaning forward, scanned the emptiness. “Where’s your car?”

“Just behind that trailer there.” I pointed to the site trailer, the name of a construction company plastered across its side. The job had been shut down for two weeks, due to lack of permits and a safety violation, so everything sat quiet and still.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught his sly glance, but he drove forward, toward the trailer.

Once I was certain we were out of view of the few cars passing on the road, I slid the gun from my coat pocket and pressed it into his temple. “Park.”

He did as told and took his hands off the wheel, holding them up in surrender. “Look, I ain’t got a damn dime on me. And this ol’ wrecker ain’t worth shit to steal.”

“I don’t want your money, or your wrecker.”

“What do you want from me, son?”

“I want you to get out of the car and walk. If you try anything funny, I’ll blow your kneecaps off.”

* * *

Having clipped the tow truck cable to the metal handle I’d welded on top of a thick steel plate as a makeshift lid, I gave one hard tug of the line, testing the pulley. The boom of the tow truck hovered over a hole I’d dug down five-foot into the ground days before. Set inside the square plot was an eight-by-four steel casket I’d made myself, from plates and scraps I’d scrounged from the jobsite.

I flipped a switch, and the cable creaked as it lifted the thousand-pound lid over the box, within which Fox lay passed out. Had the cable snapped on route, the plate would’ve crushed him, but the wrecker raised it just enough to set down over the opening of the steel box inside the hole. A metal coffin, custom made. Adjacent to the handle, I’d welded a steel pipe into the lid, which extended four feet high, just clearing the top of the hole.

A breathing hole.

From inside, Fox’s groans told me he’d begun to rouse from his final peaceful sleep, and a quick glance down at my watch confirmed that the chloroform I’d given him would be starting to wear off. Perfectly timed, as usual.

I jumped down into the hole, landing on top of the steel lid, and unhooked the cable from the handle.

A pounding echoed inside the tube, followed by a deep, gurgled shout. “Hey!”

I tugged a pair of gloves from my pocket and slid them over my hands. Grabbing hold of the cable, I clambered up the dirt wall and out of the hole, where I flipped the handheld control for the winch that retracted the cable.

I peered down inside the steel pipe, and though I couldn’t see Fox through the darkness, I could hear his shouts echo from inside the box. “I’ll be right back.”

Hell, he wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

“Wait! Don’t leave me in here! Come back!”

Ignoring him, I hopped inside the wrecker and drove toward the west side of the jobsite, where the obnoxious buzz of a motor had droned on for the last hour. My arms weakened at the sight of the empty pallet, from which I’d spent most of the day loading up almost a hundred bags of premixed concrete into the mixer that sat on a trailer hitched to a truck.

Nabbing the bucket set beside the mixer, I splashed some water inside to loosen it up, before I hopped into the truck’s cab and slowly drove it toward the hole, backing the mixer to the edge. Once angled, I let the concrete fall into the hole, over the steel casket, filling it to just below surface, completely burying the casket with Fox inside.

Only the tube remained sticking out of the wet cement. Three yards of concrete. Twelve thousand pounds of cement. I’d determined the lid of the casket would need to be at least three-quarters of an inch to hold the weight bearing down on it.

Math class hadn’t been completely useless, after all.

I killed the motor on the mixer and made my way to the tube. From down inside, I could hear Fox mumbling and pounding to get free.

“How’s it going down there?” I shouted through to him.

“How’s about you let me out of here, son? You had your fun. Now let me out.”

“Fun’s just beginning. And I told you before, I’m not your fucking son.”

His snort echoed up through the tube, and if not for the fact that he was a dead man, anyway, I’d have capped the breathing hole on him.

A pause of silence followed.

“I knew you looked familiar,” he said. “I knew you did. Just couldn’t place ya.” A chuckle carried to surface, but lacked genuine amusement. “What d’you want? Money? Drugs? A fucking apology? Okay, I’m sorry. But truth be told, I did you a favor. That kid woulda dragged you down with him. He was trouble.”

“He was my best friend. A brother to me. But that’s not the only reason I’m here, and you know it.”

“What? Your daddy? Now that was …. That was just business. Nothing personal.”

“Burning him alive wasn’t personal?”

“He came after us. Took Trevi’s eye out that night.”

“And I took his other one.” I lifted the small cooler beside me and popped off the top of it, carefully removing the hard, white, freezer-burned eyeball I’d preserved from the ice. “Here, I saved it for you,” I said, allowing the organ to drop down inside the small hole.”

“What the fuck! What the fuck! Oh, fuck!”

“In case you get hungry. I actually considered cutting out your tongue, for old time’s sake, but I didn’t want to deprive you of what could be your last meal.”

“You little prick. You sick and sorry son of a bitch! You ain’t innocent. You helped get rid of his body. They’ll know. Gideon has pictures on his phone, too. He’ll know something’s wrong, and—”

“You’ve got no fuckin’ strings on me.” I laughed and lit up a smoke, as I squatted down beside the concrete-filled hole. “I’m not a total prick, though. Like Pandora’s box, I offer you a small glimmer of hope. You’ll have access to air as you try to escape this box. I promise it’ll be plenty of oxygen to keep you alive, and I’ll come back and check on you. See how you’re doing.”

“I get out of here … I make it out of this box, you’ll let me go? Free?”

He surely had no idea that a thousand pounds of steel kept him trapped within the twelve thousand pound tomb I’d buried him inside.

“If you can make it out of that box, I won’t touch a single hair on your head. You’ll be free to go.” I pushed to a stand, staring down into the blackness of the tube. “Now I have to go. There’s one more on my list.”

“You’re a dead man if I get out of here. A dead man! I will fucking kill you with my bare hands …”

His voice trailed off behind me, as I tucked the cooler under my arm and pulled the wrinkled piece of paper from my coat pocket. Beneath ‘The Pawn’, I scratched off ‘The Fox’. Technically, he wasn’t dead yet. But considering no one would be back at the jobsite for another week and a half, he might as well have been.

Making my way toward my bike I’d left parked alongside the trailer, I whistled the tune I’ve Got No Strings.

Hope could be a cruel bitch sometimes.