Page 84 of Intrepid

“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.”