She goggles. “You burned him alive?”

Mookie sighs. “Not on purpose. I didn’t burn him alive. I was… listen, he stole from us. From the Organization. He was a stuntman on the side, but a driver for us–”

From inside: “A driver on the side, and a stuntman for real, you fat-necked thug.”

“And he drove whatever needed driving. Dealers, people, pros, pimps, and above all else, packages. Turns out he’d been taking a cut. He got hooked on the Blue, but when he couldn’t get his hands on that he started up with heroin and decided one day to run off with a package of Burmese Brown. They told me to stop him. I stopped him.”

Skelly stares.

Burnsy yells, “Tell her how you stopped me.”

“Goddamnit.”

“Tell her.”

“I hit him with a garbage truck.”

Skelly’s eyes go wide.

Suddenly, a chain rattles and the car hood door whips open. Burnsy stands there, a glistening red finger pointing, his eyes bulging. “So, I’m in my car, right? A ’67 Mustang. Paint the color of mist just before sunrise. I’m hard-charging toward the Brooklyn Bridge around 3am, thinking that I was gonna be free, and who comes barreling up out of a side-street but this sack of lard driving a fucking trash truck. Truck plows into the Mustang. My heart breaks. My ride’s over. But does he quit? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. He keeps driving. My car, my beautiful car, is smooshed on the end of the truck like a booger on a kid’s finger and he pushes it forward into the front of a Duane Reade. Glass and metal crunch up. Car catches fire. And – spoiler alert – I burn alive inside the damn thing. I remember smelling my own hair on fire. Hearing the leather bubble and snap. The dashboard melted. So did my skin. And did he do anything to help? Put out the fire? Drag me out onto the sidewalk? Oh no. The bald prick, far as anyone can tell, hopped out of the truck and sauntered off like he was thinking of grabbing a late-night taco somewhere.”

“I don’t ‘saunter’,” Mookie says. Then, in a quieter voice, “I do like tacos.”

“You fuck!” Burnsy shrieks. “You insensitive fuck.” Flailing his arms, he spins toward Skelly. “You know why I’m still stuck in this body? Because I got family to take care of. Because I got a wife and a daughter. Because they mean everything to me and this dumb hairless ape ripped my family apart–”