Raylan Read online

  Both Crowes stoned, grinning at Cuba like they were glad to see him, the air in the room sweet with reefer.

  Cuba said, “Man, you two are havin fun, huh? Where’s daddy, he home or out someplace?”

  “Upstairs taking a bath,” Dickie said, holding up the bong. “Want a hit?”

  “When I finish my business. Where’s Rita, soapin up the old man?”

  “I don’t think it’s their day,” Dickie said. “Rita’s in the kitchen fixin us a treat.”

  “Somethin for your sweet tooth?”

  “Strawberry shortcake,” Dickie said.

  “How’s Rita, she sweet?”

  “Coover tried to jump her one time—”

  “Years ago,” Coover said.

  “Daddy caught him and whipped Coove with a stick, a green one, like a whip.”

  “Hurt like hell,” Coover said.

  “Lettin you know she’s daddy’s girl,” Cuba said. “Man, how long she been here?”

  “About three years,” Dickie said in that weed voice, holding his breath.

  “That long? Why’s she stay?”

  “The old man pays a lot,” Coover said, “for his nookie.”

  “Coove’s been tryin to find her money,” Dickie said, “but she’s hid it good.”

  “It’s in the house somewhere? What’s he pay her?”

  “Hunnert a day,” Dickie said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Cuba said, “and you can’t find it?” He thought of sticking his head in the kitchen, have a look at this Rita, but said, “How y’all like hidin out?”

  “Nobody’s lookin for us,” Dickie said.

  “Your daddy’s got friends,” Cuba said.

  “Or that marshal can’t get a warrant.”

  “That’s what I mean. It’s good to have friends can do you favors.”

  Cuba asked himself, You through being sociable?

  He reached behind him, hands going under his limp cotton jacket to pull the 9 mm Sig Sauer from the small of his back, both the weedheads staring at it with dreamy eyes, Coover saying, “What you got there, boy?”

  Cuba put the Sig on the two from halfway across the room and shot both Crowes in the chest, Coover first, bam, exploding the bong he was holding, then Dickie, bam, as Dickie was screaming what sounded like “No!” Cuba waited for the gunshots to fade and listened for sounds in the house. He approached the two sprawled on the sofa, then walked over to the front door, opened the screen and banged it closed. Now he turned his attention to the stairs, Cuba thinking the old man would be careful, look out a front window to see who left.

  Un-uh, there he was creeping down the stairs naked, holding a big, must be a .44 revolver out in front of him. The man had a belly, the rest of him ribs and skinny white legs, his bald head shining, Cuba seeing Pervis for the first time without his toupee, said, “Hey, old man,” got him looking this way and bam, shot him off the stairs, watched him drop the revolver grabbing for the handrail and fall nine steps to the floor. Cuba waited for the naked body to move, the man lying on his belly, staining the rag carpet with his blood, his right arm bent funny, looking broke. Cuba waited a few moments, turned to the hall that went to the kitchen and called out, “Rita . . . ?” Waited again and called, “Where you at, girl?”

  She came in from the kitchen drying her hands on a dishtowel. Cuba watched her look at the brothers flopped on the couch; watched her stand over the old man, Cuba’s gaze holding on her ass in the white slip she was wearing against her black skin. Had that saucy type of ass slim black chicks would arch their backs to show it to you. Cuba watched her stoop down to place the dishtowel over the old man’s profile on the floor, and told himself to shoot her, get it done. But he said, wanting to say something, “I believe he broke his arm.”

  “Oh, is that all,” Rita said. “I would have swore you shot Mister and the boys. One each—that’s pretty good. I don’t know why you shot the old man, less somebody paid you good money. You coulda done the boys you happen to be feelin out of sorts.” She said, “Quit aimin that thing at me. Put it away. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, all right?”

  Cuba said, “I don’t know you won’t call the law,” and felt dumb saying it; he did. Like a straightman.

  “I call and say I want to report some homicides? The man wants to know who this is. I tell him I’m the one’s been scoring dope out of your drugstores, with scripts a doctor writes for pussy.

  “I tell the man go look at my picture you got on your wall.” She said, “Honey, Mister was my savior, but he’s dead and me and him are square.”

  “You have to love him?”

  “Only once a week, when he gets it up. Listen to him gruntin, like he’s pushin his car stuck in the mud.”

  “But worth it,” Cuba said. “I understand the old man paid you a hunnert a day, pussy or no pussy. Three years, what’s that come to?”

  Rita said, “You can slam a car door on my hand, I won’t tell you where it’s at. All you got left is to cap me. You still won’t know. I don’t have my money, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do.”

  Cuba said, “Hey, we friends, we believe each other, what we say. I already got somethin goin with a fine woman. But I won’t say you don’t tempt me.”

  “She’s your girl?”

  “We close.”

  “She’s white, huh? You one of those think you special get a white chick to fuck you?”

  “Blow me,” Cuba said and they both started laughing.

  “She’s fine, she’s cool—”

  “Has money?”

  “That’s what we into, makin it.”

  “Drugs?”

  “People’s kidneys,” Cuba said to shut her up.

  But Rita said, “Far-out,” serious, thoughtful. “You take their kidneys and let ’em die?”

  “We sell ’em back the next day.”

  “Cool. For how much?”

  Cuba said, “Time for me to leave, get far away from here. You better too, you say they lookin for you.”

  “I don’t know,” Rita said. “I’ll think of something. Send me a postcard, tell me what you doin, all right?” She kissed him and it wasn’t bad. She knew how.

  Rita closed the door after him and locked it, hurried over to Mister, got her face down close to his and heard him breathe. She knew it. You don’t kill this dog with one shot. Rita said to him, “Honey, don’t move. I’m on get you to the hospital.”

  Knox County Hospital called the state police and they got on Pervis’s case, called the marshals service to let Raylan know the two guys he had them looking for were homicide victims. Raylan visited the scene, saw Coover and Dickie dead on the couch and the bloodstained carpet where Pervis had been lying. The hospital said a black girl dropped off Pervis and must have left. They didn’t know her name and Pervis refused to identify the girl or the one shot him.

  He did tell Raylan, sitting at his bedside, “He left me for dead. Shot me with a round that splintered a rib and messed me up inside.” Pervis raised the arm in a cast. “I broke it fallin down the stairs.”

  “While you’re laid up,” Raylan said, “why don’t we see what I can do? It was Cuba Franks, wasn’t it, the shooter? Through using your boys for his felonies? Shot you, you happen to be there. But was Rita brought you here, wasn’t it? Why’d she take off?”

  Pervis said, “Why you grillin me when you think you know everything?”

  Raylan said, “Remember I told you they’re taking kidneys from people while they’re alive?”

  Pervis kept his mouth shut.

  “You’re a hard-ass old man,” Raylan said, “but I can respect how you feel. What I don’t want is you goin to prison for taking out Cuba.”

  Pervis said, “It’s time I did somethin for my boys.”

  He shot the brothers,” Raylan told Art Mullen—the two standing in Art’s office—“while they’re suckin on a bong. Coover’s turn, he’s popped and the glass shatters, got his shirt wet.”

  “You noticed that,” Ar
t said.

  “His blood turned it pinkish. What’s that remind you of?”

  “Angel’s bath,” Art said. “Three kidney jobs in the last few weeks.”

  “But only Angel’s offered for sale. I told him, ‘Pray to St. Christopher you get ’em back’ and he came through.”

  Art said, “What you’re saying, St. Christopher got Dickie and Coover whacked so Angel wouldn’t have to pay for his kidneys.”

  “More or less.”

  Art said, “We’re lookin for Cuba Franks, what he’s been doing since his convictions. A year ago he chauffeured for a rich guy owns horses. Cuba Franks, says he’s from Nigeria. Had the job for nine months and quit.”

  “Wasn’t making enough?”

  “Got tired of putting on his African accent. That’s what Mrs. Burgoyne told us. Harry Burgoyne said, ‘That’s what they do, they walk out on you. Only one African American I’d give high marks to and that’s Old Tom. He died on me.’ ”

  “I know why Cuba quit,” Raylan said.

  “Our office up there’s still lookin for him. Nine months, he must know his way around.”

  “Has friends there,” Raylan said. “You don’t suppose—”

  Art said, “Do I suppose he has a friend, a doctor at the transplant center, a woman?”

  “Do you?” Raylan said.

  Layla’s voice said, “Where are you?”

  “I’m about to leave the hills for the four-lane,” Cuba said. “The Crowe brothers left for heaven this afternoon, less they got rules against weedheads. I had to do the old man, since he was in the house.”

  “You told me he has a cute maid.”

  “Only what I heard. I was never up to the house before.”

  “Was she cute?”

  “She was too young for that old man.”

  “She was cute, huh?”

  “I let her go.”

  Now silence on the phone.

  Cuba said, “She don’t know me and I don’t know her, how we left it.”

  “You realize,” Layla said, “if I’d been with you and we could’ve worked it? We’d have six more kidneys in one swoop. Eight,” Layla said, “we throw in Rita. What do you think? Eighty grand.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Lexington office gave Raylan a partner whether he wanted one or not.

  Bill Nichols, fifty-five, half his life a marshal; slim, about five-ten, hair cut short around a tan bald crown. He told Raylan:

  “Fourteen I knew everything, shaved my head to become a hundred-and-thirty-pound white supremacist. Before I got any swastika tats, I got tired of getting beat up by these grown neo-Nazis dumber’n stones. I said fuck this and reversed my field, entered a seminary to become a brother, not a priest, a brother. Play softball, or walk around with my hands in the sleeves of the habit thinking of girls. I quit, went to UK, joined the marshals and married my wife, Julie, twenty-seven years now. We have three boys wanderin the earth, good guys, smart, three-point-fives or better. Max teaches English at a school in France. Alex designs book covers for Italian publishers and French, and Tim’s writing his second novel in New York. The first one sold four thousand. I asked him what it’s about, the one he’s writing. He said the subtext is the exposure of artistic pretension. And my little girl, Kate, senior in high school, wants to be a marshal.”

  “I’m gonna have to get busy,” Raylan said.

  “How long you been married?”

  “I’m divorced,” Raylan said. “You ever look for the Nazi lovers beat you up?”

  “Two of ’em are gone, overdosed. The third guy,” Nichols said, “by the time I found him was a crackhead, his tats hard to read. I stood him against a brick wall, put on leather gloves while I’m lookin him in the eye. I hit him one-two, both sides of his jaw. He went down and I stood lookin at him.”

  Raylan said, “He remember you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Something you had to do before you got too old,” Raylan said. “It’s a shame he wasn’t a wanted felon.”

  “So I could shoot him he resisted.”

  “I meant you’d have a reason to hunt him down.”

  Nichols said, “You’ve shot and killed a man?”

  “Yes, I have,” Raylan said.

  “An armed fugitive?”

  “More than one,” Raylan said.

  “It doesn’t matter how many, does it?”

  “Not a bit,” Raylan said. “Once or twice I might’ve been lucky.”

  “You get to where you have to pull—”

  “Knowing you better shoot to kill,” Raylan said.

  Nichols gave Raylan a nod.

  They knew each other.

  They were in Nichols’s Crown Vic leaving a two-story frame house on Chestnut—the address on one of Cuba’s drivers licenses—that turned out to be a boardinghouse. Cuba Franks? Been more than a year anyone had seen him around.

  The last address for him was out on Athens–Walnut Hill Road. Nichols knew it as Burgoyne Farms.

  “Hasn’t changed his address,” Nichols said, “since he left. I have a brother, all he does is build fences for horse farms. Thirty-five thousand thoroughbreds born in the U.S. every year. Twenty make it to the Derby. One race you can’t buy.”

  Raylan said, “You didn’t talk to Burgoyne, did you?”

  “Couple of young marshals did,” Nichols said. “Mr. Burgoyne told them Cuba Franks walked out on him. He said, ‘It’s what they do, get tired of workin and walk out.’ He means African Americans,” Nichols said. “I’m finally getting use to saying it.”

  “Burgoyne’s wife,” Raylan said, “thought Cuba got tired of putting on an African accent?”

  Nichols said, “She thought it was funny. You get the feeling she knew Cuba better’n her old man did.”

  “Cuba’s our lead,” Raylan said. “We get hold of him, he’ll give up the woman doctor.”

  They were moving east on New Circle, coming up on Richmond Road, where they’d turn south. Nichols glanced at Raylan.

  “You saw the list of doctors? Thirteen workin on transplants?”

  Raylan shook his head. “I haven’t seen it yet. There only thirteen?”

  Nichols turned on to Richmond and looked at Raylan again.

  “They’re all guys. No women doctors doing transplants.”

  Raylan did not want to give up the idea and said, “You sure?”

  “I have the list in my case,” Nichols said. “All professors of surgery or associates.”

  Raylan said, “She’s not an MD—”

  “Least not at Chandler. It’s part of UK Medical.”

  “But she knows how to do it,” Raylan said.

  “She knows how to take kidneys out,” Nichols said. “She know how to put ’em in?”

  Raylan had to think about it, looking at horse country cut with fences, thoroughbreds grazing, looking up to see their Crown Vic drive past, on Old Richmond now, on their way to Burgoyne Farms.

  “She doesn’t have to put ’em in,” Raylan said, “does she?”

  “That’s right,” Nichols said, “not if she’s takin out kidneys to sell ’em. But I don’t see an MD doin that.”

  “I don’t either,” Raylan said. “But I’d like to find her working on transplants.”

  Nichols said, “She watches doctors exchange organs three times a week, about a hundred and fifty a year. She mops the doctor’s brow under those lights and he likes her touch. They close up and he bangs her in the linen closet standing up.”

  Raylan said, “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Life in the OR,” Nichols said. “He’s playin doctor with his good-lookin nurse.”

  “You’re telling me,” Raylan said, “that’s the reason the good-lookin nurse is taking out kidneys in motel rooms?”

  “I’m settin a scene,” Nichols said. “Does getting banged in the closet have anything to do with her stealin kidneys? She knows how to take ’em out and finds out how to sell ’em. Money is what moves her. She sees how being Mrs. Obama once
a week could make her rich. Still, I like the idea of human sexual feelings involved. Doing it standin up is all right with me.”

  They were on Athens–Walnut Hill now, closing in on Burgoyne Farms. They’d called ahead and made arrangements to stop by for a visit that had to do with a former employee, if they didn’t mind the intrusion?

  Raylan said, “You take Harry and I’ll talk to Elizabeth. She gives her age as fifty-five, Harry’s wife sixteen years, a second marriage for each.”

  “You take Harry,” Nichols said, “get him talking about African Americans and have some fun.”

  “It’s my case,” Raylan said, “I’m going with Elizabeth.”

  The maid took Raylan from the front door and down a hall saying Ms. Burgoyne would see him in the sun parlor. They came to a room as high-end formal as the rest of the house and Raylan said, “Why’s it called a sun parlor? It doesn’t look like one.” He saw the maid in her yellow uniform look toward Elizabeth Burgoyne coming in from outside, her white cotton shirt hanging out of low-slung jeans.

  “It’s been the sun parlor for eighty-five years,” Elizabeth said coming in, the way it was done in the movies. “Why call it somethin else?”

  “It’s all right with me,” Raylan said and told her who he was.

  She said, “You want to know about Cuba Franks. Why, what’s he done?”

  “We think he’s stealing kidneys,” Raylan said. See what she’d do with that.

  She said, “Really?” Paused a moment and asked, “What would you like, iced tea or a martini?”

  “Whatever you’re having,” Raylan said and watched her hold up two fingers to the maid in her yellow maid’s outfit. He’d bet ten dollars they were having martinis.

  She said, “I’d like your opinion about something, okay? All of my horse-country friends call me Beth. I think cause my mother does when she comes to visit. But my older friends—from a different life you might say—call me Liz. Which do you think I am, Beth or Liz?”

  “You’re testing my power of observation,” Raylan said.

  “Come on, which am I?”

  “Liz,” Raylan said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you had more fun with your old buddies than the horsey set.” Fifty-five—she looked no more than forty. A lot of dark hair she stood twisting around her fingers. “You miss them,” Raylan said. “I wouldn’t mind hearing where you came from and how you met Harry—I bet it’s a good story. But I need to learn about Cuba. I think you got to know him better’n your husband did.”