Raylan (4 page)

Chapter Four

C
oover and Dickie Crowe were still boys in their forties. When they weren’t driving around looking for poon, they hung out at Dickie’s house the other side of the mountain watching porn. Coover’s house was a mess and smelled. Dickie’s was busy inside with his Elvis Presley memorabilia:

Fifty-seven photographs of Elvis in the front room, posters in the hall and kitchen. There were Elvis bobble heads; a bong looking like Elvis; a jar of dirt from the garden at Graceland; a photo of a cloud formation that looked like Elvis that Dickie paid a hundred dollars for; and a pair of towels Elvis used to wipe his face while performing, now doilies on the backrests of Dickie’s La-Z-Boys.

Coover said, “I thought you was getting rid of all this Elvis shit, tired of lookin at it.”

“When I get around to it,” Dickie said.

“Give it to the nigger, he can sell it.”

“I
said,
when I get around to it.”

Dickie had dismal hair he combed back and teased into a wave he sprayed to hold rigid. He wore starched white shirts with Hollywood collars that touched his earlobes, bought a dozen in Las Vegas for a bill apiece.

Coover had hair growing wild he never combed. Girls told him, Jesus, it didn’t hurt to take a bath once in a while, clean his house, least use some soap powder on that pile of dishes. They told him he was gonna have rats nesting in his kitchen. Coover said, “They’s already some moved in.” He wore Ed Hardy T-shirts or the “Death and Glory” track jacket that had a skull and dagger on it.

Y
ou’d never tell they were brothers. Dickie was picky and liked to scowl, his bony face sticking out of his Hollywood collars. Coover, stoned most days, did whatever he felt like. Dickie would say, “I’m telling you for the last time, clean yourself up, or I’ll shoot you in the ass while you’re sleepin.” Coover’d say, “Where you gettin the balls to do it?” They spoke like that to each other all the time.

Dickie said, “You talk to Pap?”

“He started on me about kidneys,” Coover said. “I’m like, ‘What’re you sayin I done? You gone crazy?’ ”

“I give him a hurt look,” Dickie said. “Ask him, ‘You believe me and Coove’d do somethin like that?’ ”

“I ast was he drinkin again.”

“He don’t want to hear we cut into a body,” Dickie said, “but he don’t see nothin wrong with sellin the kidneys. He said, ‘You realize they’s hundreds of people need kidneys?’ And did I know they’d pay to get ’em? Pap said thousands of dollars. You know what he’s tellin us, don’t you?”

“Sayin he don’t mind us bein in the kidney business,” Coover said, “long as he gets his money.”

Dickie still had a grin on his face.

“You can’t help but love old Pap, can you?”

C
oover had let Cuba Franks take his car to deliver ten grand to Pervis, their old man’s cut of what they’d scored off Angel. It meant Dickie had to drive over to Coover’s this morning, sit in the smelly house and talk about what they were into now, like this kidney business. Dickie wasn’t sure he liked it.

Coover came in the front room from the kitchen to tell him, “God damn rats are lickin the dirty dishes again.” He pulled out the top drawer of an old chiffarobe.

“What’re you lookin for?”

“My Smith, goddamn it.”

“I been wantin to ask you,” Dickie said, “did it bother you any puttin Angel in the bathtub?”

“Did it
bother
me?”

“All the blood.”

“It wasn’t ourn, was it?” Coover brought a chromed Smith & Wesson .44 out of the top drawer. He said, “I had to close him up and I did. I don’t want to hear no more about it.”

“We didn’t do one thing fast enough,” Dickie said. “Even strippin him.”

“What’d I say? ‘You want him nekked, whyn’t you bring shears?’ But you know what I’m thinkin,” Coover said. “We watch a few more times, shit, we’ll know how to snip out a kidney. Me and you’ll split the hunnert thou.”

“What if the guy dies on us?” Dickie said.

“The first time, yeah, we might cut somethin we shouldn’t of, but we still got the kidneys. Keep the fucker alive and sell him back his own set, that’s the ticket.”

“I’d just as soon,” Dickie said, “not be in so big a goddamn hurry.”

“Look at it like learnin a trade,” Coover said, spinning the cylinder of his revolver to check the loads.

Dickie stepped to the door and opened it to let some air come in the house. He looked out and said, “Cuba’s back,” watching the Cadillac turn into the yard trailing dust. “Hey, and another car’s comin behind.”

Coover was going in the kitchen with his Smith, not looking around.

T
hey were out of the trees now, driving into the yard, Raylan creeping behind the Cadillac, and the sound of gunfire—two shots fired, that flat, hard sound, and two more—got Raylan to swerve around the Cadillac, Rachel calling out, “Where is he?” Raylan braking, rolling up to the porch.

“He wasn’t shooting at us,” Raylan said.

Cuba Franks brought the Cadillac alongside and got out saying the same thing. “Coover’s cleanin his house is all, with his six-gun.”

Raylan was on the porch now, Rachel out of the car watching his back. She saw Cuba Franks step up on the porch with his cool stride but anxious now, she could tell. Her eyes were on Raylan and saw Dickie come out on the porch in his Hollywood shirt, Dickie looking like his pictures. She heard him say to Raylan:

“I’d swear you were drivin a Beamer.”

Rachel saw the way his long fingers lay against his thighs, then moved into the slit pockets of his Levi’s.

Now Coover was coming out, bright-metal revolver in one hand, at his leg, a dead rat in the other, Coover holding it up by the tail.

“All the shootin,” Dickie said, “that’s what you got?”

Coover’s gaze went to Raylan, giving the marshal his mean look. He said, “Another one of the fuckers is still in the kitchen. You like to try for it?”

“I shot rats when I was a kid,” Raylan said. “Chase ’em out of the shithouses.” He said to Coover, “All you have to do is go out’n the kitchen, huh?”

Coover squinted at him. “Where I know you?”

“They’re marshals,” Dickie said, “him and the Negress.”

Coover looked toward Cuba. “Set up those lawn chairs—they someplace—we can sit down and talk.” He said to Raylan, “You can ask am I growin reefer and I’ll tell you no. But first I ask you any God damn thing I want. How’s that sound?”

“I only have one question,” Raylan said. “How’d you and your brother get in the kidney business?”

R
achel stood by the Audi watching Raylan, Raylan the show. Watched him facing Coover holding the bright-metal piece at his leg. Watched Coover swing the rat by the tail and let it go and saw it coming at her to land on the hood of the Audi. Rachel didn’t move. Raylan didn’t either, didn’t glance around.

But said, “Coover, you throw a dead rat at my car. What’re you trying to tell me?”

Rachel unsnapped the holster riding on her hip.

Coover said, “Take it any way you want, long as you know I’m serious.”

“You’re telling me you’re a mean son of a bitch,” Raylan said to his face. “You know how many wanted felons have given me that look? I say a thousand I know I’m low. Some turn ugly as I snap on the cuffs; they’re too late. Some others, I swear, even try to draw down on me. All I’m asking, how’d you come to take Angel’s kidneys?”

Dickie looked at Cuba and Raylan said, “I asked him the same thing. He told me talk to you.”

Cuba said, “You see what the man’s doin? I told him I have nothin to do with kidneys ’cept eat ’em.”

Coover was squinting at him now. “I want to know what you told him.”

“Listen to you,” Cuba said. “You ask me that? Get it in your stone head, I have nothin to say to this man.”

Raylan hearing a new Cuba Franks, one he hadn’t met.

He said, “Cuba, I got you on tape telling me talk to the Crowes.”

“
You
the one say you want to talk to ’em. I told you go ahead, I’m not stoppin you.”

“I know you were at the motel,” Raylan said, “but you didn’t show yourself to Angel, like these mutts. All I want is the doctor’s name. Coover can get back to shooting rats, you can do what you want, till tomorrow.”

“You come in a man’s home,” Dickie said, “don’t even have a warrant and talk like that?”

“I’m making it easy,” Raylan said. “You want, I’ll put you before a grand jury. Give us the doctor or do time.”

Dickie said, “Coove, you hear him? He’s threatenin us.”

“He’s got a piece under his coat,” Coover said.

Dickie said, “You got one in your
hand,
for Christ sake.”

Raylan turned enough to look at Rachel.

“You hear these bozos?”

“I sure do.”

“Coover raises his piece, shoot him.”

“If you’ll move a step either way,” Rachel said.

He did, saying, “I’ll tend to Dickie.”

“Hey, come on,” Dickie said, raising his hands. “I ain’t even packin.”

“Here’s my offer,” Raylan said. “Give me the doctor or I’m back tomorrow with the warrants you want. You and your brother, once the court sees how dumb you are, might draw only forty months. Cuba’s done time but still up to no good. He’s looking at two hundred months on top the forty.”

Cuba said, “You want to tell me what I done?”

Raylan said, “It’ll be on the warrant,” and looked at Coover. “What’s the rat killer want to do? I bet the weed’s telling you things, huh? If you can believe weed.” Raylan turned to look at Dickie again. “So we’ll see y’all tomorrow?”

Rachel had her Glock in both hands, covering the scene.

Raylan, coming out to the Audi, kept his eyes on her. She let him get in and start the car before she opened the door.

“You tried to give him the idea,” Rachel said, “short of kickin him in the crotch.”

“He wasn’t up to it,” Raylan said. “Stoned, what he’ll tell his brother.”

“But what if he raised his piece?”

“You’d of shot him,” Raylan said.

T
hey drove out of the yard Raylan saying, “They’re gonna run and hide.” He paused. “Or get in touch with the doctor. The Crowes, Coover’s a chronic stoner. Dickie—”

“He don’t want to get his hands dirty,” Rachel said.

“Dickie’s the one to watch,” Raylan said, “he’s a sneak. Cuba . . . he’s makin up his mind right now if he wants to be seen with these boneheads.”

Rachel said, “Art’s gonna want to know what we’re up to.”

“We’ll tell him we’re in pursuit. We’ll call again if we need help.”

“We not gonna try for warrants?”

“I never gave it a thought. We’ll get state troopers on ’em instead. Find out where they go.”

Rachel said, “Raylan . . . You expect they gonna take us to the doctor?”

“You don’t think so?”

“I have serious doubts.”

“They don’t come through,” Raylan said, “I’ll ask St. Christopher to find him for us.”

Chapter Five

T
he Crowes were still on the porch, Cuba inside making a phone call, Dickie telling his brother, “All you had to do—Coover, goddamn it, I’m talkin to you. All you had to do was bend your arm, that’s all, pull the trigger and shoot him through the heart. Same with the Negress. Get Cuba to dig a hole, nobody ever sees ’em again.”

Coover looked up at his brother and said, “What . . . ?”

“You’re smokin Daddy’s Own, aren’t you?” Dickie said. “Like smokin rocket fuel. Stick to Bitty’s, Pap named for Mama when she took sick. Member how he’d call her his Little Bitty? He was good to Mama, wasn’t he?”

“ ’Cept he’d come home from drinkin with lovin on his mind and Mama’d throw kerosene at him, set him afire.” Coover grinning. “Old Pap had to quit drinkin fore he stopped beatin her up. Hasn’t had any since, I know of.”

C
oming out on the porch Cuba said, “Man, that kitchen’s a rat café, find all they can eat. You hear ’em, don’t you?”

“They mostly quiet as mice,” Coover said, and told Cuba, “I’ll give you a hunnert dollars you cook one and eat it.”

“How we did ’em in the ghet-to,” Cuba said to the fool, “was well done, burn off all that hair on his ass. I never cared for rat. You eat a sick one you go to bed with a touch of the bubonic plague.”

“They’re hardly any meat on him,” Coover said. “You can chew his tiny bones. Hell, you can chew him up you take the skin off, it’s the unhealthy part.”

“Get it crispy,” Cuba said, thinking: These hill folk gonna fuck up on the job. He said to the Crowes, “I talk to Miss just now.”

Coover said, “I keep forgettin her name. Lila?”

“Leela,” Dickie said. “Like the song.”

Both fools getting the name wrong. Cuba didn’t correct them. He said, “She wants this next one straight, no reefer business, no people we know givin us the kidneys.” Cuba said, “Listen to me now.” Meaning it. “These next gigs gonna be different. We leave the man in the tub and call a hospital. But see then, we sell the kidneys to a body parts broker and he goes with the best offer he gets, sellin to people in the hospital. The sick person can’t come up with the money the parts broker wants, he crosses the name off.”

Dickie said, “Leela must be sellin to the broker cheaper’n she could make sellin to the sick person.”

Like he just thought of it. Cuba said to Dickhead, “You use the broker so you don’t expose yourself sellin to the market. See, but you can do one a night, you want.”

Coover said, “She ever talk about doin a woman? Get her in the tub nekked. One with big ninnies.”

“You see ’em floatin in the ice water,” Dickie said, “the nips stickin straight up.”

Cuba said, “I told her about the marshals stopping by. Comin back tomorrow with warrants.”

Dickie said, “We go and hide?”

“She say lay low for a while.”

“
Lay low
—” Dickie said. “Her name’s not Leela, it’s Laylo, ain’t it? Same as the song.”

Cuba went out to the hardpack yard and phoned her on his cell, looking up at trees, clouds hanging over the ridgeline.

“How you doin? You close to the next job?”

Her voice said, “I don’t want to use those guys again, they’re more baggage than porters.”

“You want to cut ’em loose?”

“They know who I am.”

“They still don’t have your name right.”

“Why don’t you find a way to dismiss them,” Layla said. “All right?”