The Death Box by J. A. Kerley

the opposite direction. It would mean we had a solid lead.
    Paul Carosso lived near Richmond Heights in a tired suburban community within listening distance of highway 821 and I figured after a couple months you grew immune to the twenty-four-hour rumble of diesel engines. Or most people would; me it would drive nuts after about a half hour. The driver’s house was a single-story crackerbox bungalow with mildew on the siding and a piece of soffit hanging from the eaves. A palmetto squatted in the front yard, flanked by a banana tree with white rot on the leaves. The scruffy patches of grass were unmowed. The small yard was cyclone-fenced with a sign on the gate saying PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT . The drive was outside the fencing and led to a single-car garage.
    The gate was unlocked so we went to the door and pressed the bell. No reply. Figuring the bell was in the same decrepit shape as the rest of the place, I knocked.
    A curtain parted on the front picture window. “I don’t want nothing,” a voice yelled. “Peddle your shit somewheres else.”
    “We’re not salesmen,” I said, holding up the shield. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
    The door swung open. Carosso was older than his pic in the prison discharge file, but it was the same face: round and poorly shaved, heavy-lidded eyes under a receding hairline. He wore a sleeveless white tee with sweat stains under the arms and the kind of uniform pants you get for ten bucks a pair, as formless as pajama bottoms.
    “Questions about what?”
    “A load of concrete you brought home from Redi-flow last summer.”
    “Concrete? I don’t know nothing about—”
    “How ’bout you invite us in or step outside?” I said.
    He rolled his eyes and stepped to the stoop, Gershwin and I backing up to give him space and to give our noses some distance between Carosso and his body odor.
    “I don’t bring concrete home. I deliver it to other people.”
    “Your boss remembers, Mr Carosso. You brought home a load of concrete to install a new driveway.” I studied the drive across the fence, a dozen feet away, cracked and studded with weeds, the same drive poured when the house was new, maybe forty years ago. “I don’t see any new driveway, Mr Carosso. I don’t see repairs.”
    “The fuckin’ workers never showed,” he said. “It never got done.”
    He looked down, thinking, and I stepped closer by a couple inches.
    “So where did the mix go?”
    “I drove it out by the glades and poured it into a drainage ditch. And no, I don’t remember where.”
    “Try.”
    When he looked west I moved another inch, brushing back my hair to cover the motion. He said, “It was over that way somewheres.”
    Carosso was sweating heavily. He turned his head to cough and I stepped into the edge of his personal space. “Mr Kazankis says you’re not a detail guy, Mr Carosso. It’s hit-and-miss whether you’ll get the barrel clean.”
    “What does that mean about anything?”
    Gershwin sensed it was his turn. “Mr Kazankis checked that day. Says the barrel looked like you climbed inside and scrubbed it out with a toothbrush. What made that batch so different you needed to eliminate every trace?”
    “I just fuckin’ hosed it out like always. Kazankis musta got the trucks mixed up.”
    I shuffled another inch forward. “Mr Kazankis doesn’t strike me as a man who gets much wrong. Except maybe the occasional hire.”
    Carosso’s face spun my way. He hadn’t seen me move, but his body felt my nearness and didn’t like it. “Whaddaya want with me? I drive a goddamn concrete truck for sixteen lousy bucks an hour. Look at the shithole I live in. Why you picking on me?” His last sentence was a peal of desperation, like a frightened child.
    “I need to see that load,” I said, knowing he could feel my breath on his face. “It’s important.”
    “I don’t know where it is. I don’t know nothing. Leave me alone!”
    He backed inside and slammed the door.