Raylan Read online

  “Harry,” Liz said, “has no idea how to get next to people. His personality holds them off, his expression seems nailed on. Though he’s not as stuffy when he’s drinking, not nearly as boring. I think he’d love to be a stallion and get it on with the mares all day.”

  “What do you do,” Raylan said, “go to teas?”

  She said, “Yeah, I love tea,” and turned to the maid coming into the sun parlor with a pitcher of martinis and a bowl of anchovy olives.

  They were both on the sofa now with the drinks, a cushion between them, the pitcher on the cocktail table, Liz still talking about Harry.

  “He’d have a few and he and Cuba would do their Boss and Darky show. Harry scolds him for what he’s wearing, and Cuba says, ‘But, Boss, is your missus dresses me,’ and everyone in the Keeneland bar howls.”

  “Why don’t you get the horse people,” Raylan said, “to call you Liz?”

  She said, “It wouldn’t work. It would sound like Liz Taylor in Tin Roof. She had that Hollywood southern accent, like everybody’s from Virginia.”

  “You like acting a little nuts,” Raylan said. “So does Cuba, the kind of action he gets into.”

  “He was funny,” Liz said. “We had all day to talk, if we wanted, Harry at the stables. We didn’t meet to have sex, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He was, but shook his head.

  “Cuba was funny.”

  “I believe it,” Raylan said.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Liz said. “It did happen now and then, but not on a regular basis. It would just, you know, happen, begin fooling around, you’d be crazy to stop.”

  Raylan said, “I’ve known that experience.”

  “You understand,” Liz said, “Cuba’s a street guy, but very natural about it. I never had to ask what he was talking about. He told me what it was like in prison. He told me the difference between black chicks and white girls in bed”—Liz grinning till she said—“he told me about meeting someone, a girl.”

  “A white girl,” Raylan said.

  “He wouldn’t say but I knew she was. He’d say, ‘What difference is it I see this person once in a while. I’m not gonna marry her.’ He always called her ‘this person.’ We’d meet and I’d have martinis or daiquiris, or pack the shaker with ice and pour in bourbon, sprinkle some sugar . . . And he walked out on me. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I can’t either,” Raylan said. “This was about the time he left?”

  “Disappeared.”

  “I told you he’s selling kidneys?”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “He sells them for ten thousand each.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s done it three times, with help.”

  “You mean the girl?”

  “I think she’s here at UK Medical.”

  “A doctor?”

  “A transplant nurse.”

  Liz edged over the table to refill their glasses and drop in olives, saying, “This is getting good. You’re looking for the nurse, thinking he might’ve mentioned her to me, but he didn’t.” Liz handed Raylan his drink and sat back with her own, nodding. “I’ll bet she’s fat.” She sipped her drink and said, “Why are so many women who work in hospitals overweight?”

  “I’ve noticed,” Raylan said. “Why are they?”

  “He could have met her,” Liz said. “Cuba drove Harry to Chandler at least twice to have his kidneys checked. They still work, despite all he drinks. He’d bitch, order the nurses around. One of them wouldn’t give him his favorite dope and he tried to get her fired. I can’t remember her name.”

  Raylan said, “I hope she’s still there.”

  “It was Layla. Like the Eric Clapton number.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Raylan came off the elevator and crossed the hall to a waiting area, vinyl furniture and magazines, Nichols in there reading People. He closed the magazine and picked up a file folder next to him on the couch.

  “You have lunch?”

  “Ham and lima beans,” Raylan said, settling into the couch.

  “The days we’re lookin at,” Nichols said, “two of the nurses from this floor were away on leave, deaths in their family. Gladys, thirty-five years a transplant nurse, now a coordinator, came back and put her dad’s death notice in the nurses’ room. The other one’s Layla.” Nichols brought a black-and-white head shot from the folder and handed it to Raylan.

  “Thin face,” Raylan said, meaning she didn’t appear to be fat.

  “Five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds,” Nichols said. “She’s thirty-seven.”

  “She’s got great eyes,” Raylan said, “they hold on to you. Who died in her family?”

  “Nobody. Layla took a two-week leave to nurse her old mom back from death’s door, coughing her lungs out, but didn’t die, she’s recovering, quit smoking.”

  “Where’s the mom live?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “You check it out?”

  “Soon as I finish reading about Harrison and Calista gettin married after eight years keeping house. Then catch up on why Jake Pavelka says Vienna cheated on him, whoever they are.”

  “Layla,” Raylan said, “you notice her eyes. She makes you keep lookin at them.” Raylan squinted at the woman in the photo not quite smiling at him. He said, “I’d like to know what she’s thinking.”

  Nichols turned his head to look at the photo. “She’s starin at the photographer thinking, You take one more I’m gonna get up and kick you in the nuts.”

  “I don’t see her impatient,” Raylan said.

  “No, she’s thinking it in a nice way.” Nichols looked at his watch. “She ought to be out of surgery by now. She’s helping Dr. Howard Goldman transplant a kidney. Like Layla doesn’t know how.”

  Raylan said, “She’s our girl, huh?”

  “I don’t see anyone else,” Nichols said.

  They both got up from the couch: Raylan to stand in the opening to the hall, looking at the far end where they’d come out of surgery, Nichols to go check on Layla’s mom.

  Raylan watched them come out, both in white lab coats, Layla holding the door for Dr. Goldman, the young doctor doing most of the talking, Layla using her hands to gesture, shaking her head, talking her way out of what he wanted to do. Like get laid. Raylan had stopped him earlier in the day to ask about nurses. Stopped him and committed his name to memory. Howard Goldman, that was it. The doctor had no time for him, waved his hand in front of his face and kept going. Now, down the hall, he was opening his hands to Layla, the hands he had used to restore someone’s life and it had given him a hard-on.

  They were coming this way again.

  Raylan walked up to Dr. Goldman—didn’t look at Layla—and said, “Excuse me, Doctor, but my sister’s suppose to be here, seein about having a kidney transplant?”

  Layla said, “What’s her name?”

  “Raejeanne Givens,” Raylan said, his younger sister’s name. “I don’t know why I don’t see any family. I came straight from the airport.”

  Layla said, “Let’s check on Raejeanne,” laying her hand on Raylan’s arm and giving the doctor what Raylan saw as a kiss-off look with a shrug. Dr. Goldman walked past him without a word and on down the hall.

  “I’ve been here an hour,” Raylan said, “trying to get information. You just come out of surgery, huh?” He held out his hand. “I’m Raylan Givens, deputy United States marshal. I’m sorry if I intruded on you and the doctor. I’m concerned about my sister.”

  She said, “Hi, I’m Layla. The doctor just finished a kidney transplant and you say Raejeanne needs one? That’s funny, cause we don’t have a Raejeanne scheduled for anything, not even an exam.” Layla raising her eyebrows with kind of a smile.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Raylan said. “You didn’t look happy talking to Howard. I thought I may as well step in, see if I could free you. You seemed to pick up on it.”

  She said, “You want to question me about somethi
ng?”

  “What I’m looking for,” Raylan said, “is a doctor takes out kidneys in motel rooms and sells them on the body-parts market.”

  She was smiling now. “You’re crazy.”

  “A doctor here can’t have a gambling problem? Goes broke out at Keeneland and gets in debt to a shylock?”

  “They bet playing golf,” Layla said.

  “I understand,” Raylan said, “to take out a kidney, you make your incision in the front.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Talkin to guys. Two of ’em said it was a woman took their kidneys. I thought, Well, maybe the doctor had a woman’s mask on. You put the donated ones in the front too?”

  “You put them anywhere you want,” Layla said. “What kind of mask was it?”

  “Rubber, slips over your head. I think it was suppose to be Mrs. Obama.”

  “Really.”

  “Well, the other mask, I’m pretty sure, was the president.”

  Layla said, “The other mask . . . ?”

  “The one Cuba Franks was wearing.”

  Raylan let that hang to see if Layla could handle it.

  She took a moment to shake her head and shrug in her white transplant nurse outfit. Layla said, “I wish I could help you,” started to turn away and stopped. She said, “Why can’t the doctor be a woman?”

  “I’m told all the MDs here are men.”

  “She could be from another hospital.”

  “You’re right, except Cuba knows this place. He’s been here once or twice with his boss. You know Cuba Franks?”

  “I don’t think so,” Layla said. “I wish I could help you,” and started to walk away.

  Raylan let her take a few steps before saying to her, “Layla, you’re not the one stealing kidneys, are you?”

  He may as well get that said, thinking it would stop her and she’d turn around. Not Layla. She raised her hand over her head to give Raylan a lazy kind of wave, often seen in movies.

  Again in the waiting room, with all its old magazines, he thought of what he’d say to her the next time. He wasn’t sure until Nichols came in saying, “She lied about nursing her mom back to health. The old lady’s been in a home with Alzheimer’s the past three years.”

  Cuba was staying with Layla in her apartment on Virginia Avenue, the other side of South Limestone from the UK campus and hospitals; Cuba on the pull-out sofa, Layla with the bedroom to herself when they weren’t using it. She liked to come home and have a drink while she took off her whites and sat down to watch the news in a T-shirt and panties. It would turn Cuba on and they’d go in the bedroom so Cuba could satisfy himself; her too most of the time. He knew when a chick was faking, always overdoing it. Layla never said a word and he’d wait for the gasp, the groan, like all the air was being sucked out of her. They’d watch TV then and have some more vodkas while he deep-fried supper.

  This evening she came in talking about Raylan Givens and Cuba felt a tug in his gut and thought, Shit, though it didn’t surprise him. The man kept on the job. He said to Layla, “How’d he get on us?”

  “You worked for the Burgoynes.”

  “You layin it on me? They already lookin at dead Crowes.”

  “You had to do it,” Layla said. “But, you let the maid go, Rita.”

  “I knew you’d bring her up.”

  Layla stepped up to him in her nurse outfit, put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth from tender to hard. Finally easing off she said, “Don’t worry about it. But I think we should hold up on doing Harry. The marshal would’ve talked to him. Probably asked his wife a few questions. You got it on with her, didn’t you?”

  “Not too much,” Cuba said. “I been thinking, I go see Mr. Harry and apologize for leavin, this poor, uneducated Negro not knowin shit how to act. But that darky skit depressed me. I tell him I got a new gig we can try.”

  “What is it?”

  “I make up something—bring tears to his motherfuckin racist eyes laughing. I say I got a tape he can listen to. Bring him here and you pop him with the needle.”

  “How does he pay us, say, two hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “I’m workin on it.”

  Layla said, “We’re not doing Harry just yet. I’ve been thinking, we could be gathering a few more organs. Gregg Allman just had a liver transplant, he can drink again—yeaaah! We’ll extract kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas. Hearts are too tricky. You have to keep it pumping.”

  Cuba thinking, Like sellin used auto parts, a transmission, a manifold. She made it sound easy, reminding him that time, “You don’t do the Crowes they’ll tell on us.” Her bein cool about it’s what scared him. Like telling him to close the window so it don’t rain in.

  “This might blow your mind,” Layla said, “but I’m thinking the one to do next is the marshal. We wouldn’t even have to lure him. Raylan has more questions for me.”

  Cuba’s mind saw Dickie holding a gun while Raylan good as dared him to raise it. He said to Layla, “Where you want to do it, here?”

  “I was thinking right in the tub, instead of lugging him around, then add water. I don’t see why we’d need ice.”

  “How we get him out of here?”

  “In the wee small hours of the morning,” Layla said, not quite singing it, “we drop him out the window, put him in the car . . . Or we wait till he’s coming to and walk him out to the car.”

  “You haven’t figured it out yet,” Cuba said.

  “I’m thinking,” Layla said. “We have until I decide to answer the phone.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Raylan didn’t want to be seen hanging around the fourth floor of Chandler, risk Layla spotting him and duck out. He stood outside, away from the entrance and watched nurses coming out till almost five. No sign of Layla. He went up to the transplant floor and found out she was off today. He called Nichols.

  “You know it’s Saturday?” Raylan said.

  “It wasn’t, I wouldn’t be mowin the lawn.”

  “Layla’s off till Monday.”

  “You call her home?”

  “Her voice said leave a message and hung up.”

  “You called last night you’d of had her in cuffs.”

  “I wanted to give her time to get jumpy before I make my appearance.”

  “I can stop mowin this minute,” Nichols said, “you want me along.”

  “I got to locate her first. I’ll call her again or go over there, 156 Virginia Avenue, push her buzzer till she answers.”

  “If she’s home,” Nichols said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, see how you’re doin. Come on over, we’ll grill steaks, have a few beers.”

  “I was gonna tell you,” Raylan said, “I checked out of the Hilton, didn’t work with my per diem. I took a cab to the office and got a Chevy assigned to me—it’s okay—I’m not goin anywhere, but I’m now stayin at the Two Keys Tavern on South Limestone. I got an apartment upstairs, no charge.”

  “You’re kiddin me,” Nichols said.

  “So UK students don’t walk out skunked and get arrested or hit by a car. I spoke to management, I said if you have a spare room up there you can let me use while I’m in Lexington . . . I told him he’d have a U.S. marshal keeping the peace. The fella said he didn’t want to shut the students down, especially on Crazy Night. I told him goin crazy’s okay with me.”

  Nichols said, “You’re a bouncer in a dive bar?”

  “When I’m there. I don’t think this’ll take long.”

  “You’re younger’n I am,” Nichols said. “You might come out of there alive.”

  “Martinis,” Raylan said, “are only three bucks.”

  Saturday evening he talked to the manager, a cautious but pleasant guy running a saloon on the edge of the University of Kentucky campus. Why wouldn’t he be pleasant? He had droves of patrons, boys and girls coming in for rum or vodka in different flavors; for the three-dollar martinis; five dollars for a pitcher of beer, and for ten bucks you could drink all the
beer you wanted. “But just for yourself,” the manager told Raylan, “or everybody in here’d get sloshed on the ten bucks.”

  Raylan had on the suit and tie he’d worn to the transplant center yesterday. Hanging around in the Two Keys Tavern, there wasn’t any doubt, this guy with the star on a chain was a lawman. He expected to get some remarks. They were all twenty-one going on thirty. A guy stared and Raylan would nod with his nice-guy look. He saw a lot of zip-neck sweaters over all kinds of shirts. He saw girls talking loud, girls making faces. They had a goldfish race in a plastic trough, hit the fish with water pistols to quit swimming in a circle and race, goddamnit. Not many beer drinkers seem to care about it. A celebrity deejay Raylan had never heard of came on and the crowd went crazy for about a minute.

  He saw some good-looking girls here. One of them came up to him and said, “My friends think you’re a rent-a-cop and I bet them you’re for real. Are you?”

  Raylan opened his coat to show his star hanging on the silver chain. He said, “I’m a United States marshal, miss. Tell me what your friends call you?”

  A guy with some size standing there said, “Anybody ever rip your badge off you, hangin there?”

  “Not yet,” Raylan said. “One tried but didn’t make it. What do you do, play football? I’d take you to be an offensive lineman.”

  This guy with shoulders on him said, “I play defense.”

  “What I meant,” Raylan said, “I see you as a lineman becoming offensive to me. Twenty years ago I ever tried out for football here I’d be cut by the third day.” Raylan said, “I’m gonna move the badge down to my belt, not get anymore remarks about it.” Raylan told him, “In case you didn’t know it, I’m one of the good guys. I’ve shot seven men in the line of duty, wanted fugitives, no women or students, and they all died.” Raylan smiled at the defensive lineman. “You gonna have me telling marshal stories next.”