Raylan: A Novel (13 page)

Pervis said, “I always tried to be optimistic in life.”

Dewey looked from one to the other.

“But everybody says it’s full of coal. Ain’t it?”

“Everybody prayin for a job,” Rita said. “Hoping for work.” She looked at Pervis. “I don’t think it’s fair, leaving a dead mountain to your only kin.”

“Well,” Pervis said, “I could give him a pound of my top-grade weed, should last him a while.”

Rita was nodding. “Two pounds would be more generous of you. Two pounds of Daddy’s Own. Dewey could smoke it or sell it, get happy either way.”

“What would be the street value of that,” Dewey said, “I was to sell a pound of it?”

R
aylan said to Art Mullen, “Rita’s telling Dewey, he wants to, he could mark it up to ten grand since it’s Pervis’s top-grade smoke. I thought it sounded high, but Dewey’s eyes lit up and that was it.”

They were in Art Mullen’s office in Harlan, the front of his desk stacked with papers and wanted dodgers. Art said, “A girl twenty-three years old, a senior at Butler University, was arrested in a raid on a poker game.”

Raylan started to grin. “The cops bust in the dorm and find ’em playin for matchsticks?”

“Indianapolis police,” Art said, “walked in on a high-stakes game where this girl lost twenty thousand dollars, smart-ass. Police took the girl in and booked her. She was to spend the night in jail for a court appearance in the morning.”

“Where’d she get the twenty grand?”

Art said, “Oh, I have your attention? She won it bettin Duke against Butler, the NC double-A championship. The girl’s dad, Reno—actually he’s her stepdad—runs a sports book in Indy. He raised his little girl playin poker and bettin on sporting events.”

“Losing all her money,” Raylan said, “and getting thrown into jail, it wasn’t her night, was it? Then had to pay a fine?”

“She skipped,” Art said, “walked out and didn’t show for the hearing.”

“You’re tellin me this for a reason, aren’t you?”

“The girl,” Art said, “an A student at Butler, we’re told is now robbin banks in Kentucky, gettin into our area of influence. Rachel and two other young ladies. Their manner of grinnin at the tellers, leads us to believe they’re stoned. Three girls havin a drug-induced fling at robbin banks. Indy police look at the surveillance tapes and believe Rachel’s one of them.”

“They positive,” Raylan said, “or hoping, cause she skipped out on them?”

“Why don’t you go up there and find out?” Art said. “You’ll be workin out of the Lexington office again. Pick the girl up while you’re not doin anything and get the Indy cops off our backs.”

“What’s her name, Rachel?”

“Rachel Nevada.”

“You’re kiddin.”

“And her stepdad’s Reno Nevada,” Art said, “his actual name. Start with the Indy cops and work your way down to Lexington.”

“I got to see a picture of this Rachel Nevada,” Raylan said.

“Start thinkin of her as Jackie Nevada,” Art said. “It’s what Reno and everybody calls her.”

Chapter Twenty-three

J
ackie Nevada had walked out of the police station knowing her best bet was to get out of town. Borrow a backpack and stuff it with T-shirts and shorts; sleep a few hours, put on jeans and hitch a ride to Shelbyville: start out playing Texas hold ’em at the Indian casino with farmers and truck drivers who’d been up all night to build up her stack. She lost the twenty grand sitting in cigar smoke, the five no-limit gentlemen in their suitcoats watching her, not saying a word. She folded, threw in her ace-five against her better judgment. She would have called if these guys were wearing work clothes. She watched an ace come up on the flop and she would have won with the pair of bullets. It would’ve told her it was possible to take these guys; at least give her the feeling. Say, “Oh, you waiting for me?” and raise on the ace-five. But she’d folded. Telling herself the odds said to fold. Why didn’t she tell herself to fuck off? She let herself be cleaned out and was down to three hundred in her sneakers when the cops came in.

In the morning, Buddy
,
who drove Jackie out to 74, where she’d get out to thumb the thirty miles to Shelbyville, said, “Isn’t that my backpack?”

Jackie told him he’d loaned it to her last night and Buddy said, “I did?”

“I’m starting out with three hundred,” Jackie said. “I’ll make enough today to buy a bus ticket and only stop to play poker, all the way to Tunica, Mississippi, last stop before Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker. What I need to make is the buy-in money, win the tournament, pay off Reno and get back to Butler in time for graduation. How does that sound?”

Buddy in his hungover state said, “Hey, why not.”

He didn’t have enough gas to drive to the casino and back. Jackie told him not to worry about it, kissed Buddy on the mouth holding her breath, said, “See you,” and walked out to the highway, Buddy watching her, the backpack hanging from one shoulder. She hadn’t even raised her thumb and cars were slowing down for a look. Buddy thinking, Two minutes she’ll have a ride.

He watched a car pull over and creep past Jackie for a close look and Buddy realized, holy shit, the car must be fifty years old but so what. It was a Rolls-Royce Phantom repainted its original green body color and looked brand-new.

He watched a black guy in a chauffeur’s outfit get out and open the rear door, taking her backpack. Buddy watched her wave to him and get in the Rolls.

T
he chauffeur, still holding the door open, was saying to Jackie, “The gentleman offering you a ride is Mr. Harry Burgoyne of Lexington and Burgoyne Horse Farms.”

Harry, watching her duck into the Rolls, said, “Don’t tell me you’re runnin away from home. We cross a state line I could end up in jail.” He said, “No, you’re a student, huh? Don’t say Butler. I had to give Butler five points the other day so I could bet on Duke and lose ten big ones.”

“I’m Jackie Nevada, and yeah, I go to Butler. I bet Duke even,” Jackie said, “and won twenty grand.”

Harry had a grin on his face now behind his sunglasses and plaid sport coat. “You’re kiddin me. Takin bets at school?”

“Mostly,” Jackie said. She was sitting with Harry now, heads turned to each other, the Rolls cruising along the highway. “By the time we played Duke everyone’s so high on Butler, they bet the game even. I did give Butler a point to some of my dad’s customers. Duke won by two, so I still beat everybody.” Jackie said, “Actually Reno Nevada’s my stepdad.”

Harry said, “Why they call him Reno?”

“It’s his name. He wanted to call me Sierra before I was born. Sierra Nevada would’ve been cool, but he named me after my mom instead. She walked out on us before I had a memory of her. They never married and Reno wasn’t even my dad. I did see pictures of Mom posing nude in the backyard Reno left on the dresser one time and I had an intimate look at my mother. I favor her somewhat, but she’s more of a babe than I’d ever be.”

Harry was frowning at her. “You never saw your own mother?”

“Lots of people haven’t seen their moms. Or their dads.”

“What’re you doin now? Where you going?”

“Shelbyville, that casino called Indiana Live? I’ll play poker the rest of the day.”

“I was thinkin of stoppin there,” Harry said. “Yeah, I could watch you go through your twenty grand.” Harry grinning, to show Jackie he might be kidding.

She said, “If I still had it I’d clean out the fish in an hour or so. Only last night at Elaine’s I wasted it, lost it betting on ace-king, went all in before the flop and got beat by a pair of sevens. Reno thought I’d lose a few hundred and leave, get a little exposure to a big game. But I had all the money I won on Duke, till the cigar smokers took it away from me.”

“Honey, you’re out of your league the minute you walk in Elaine’s. I can’t believe she let you play.”

“She looked at me,” Jackie said, “I think she saw herself, well, at a much earlier age. The guys were okay. They smoked and talked about buying horses and running them at Keeneland.”

“Hell, that’s Lexington,” Harry said. “I won the Maker’s Mark with a horse name of Black Boy and my colored chauffeur quit on me. Got in some funny business with a nurse stealing kidneys and was shot dead. I bet I know the fellas you played with. What were their names?”

“The only one I remember was Lou. He said, ‘I’m Lou, sweetheart.’ But they didn’t talk much while we were playing.”

Harry said, “The driver I had that got shot was called Cuba but said he was from Africa. I thought he was a hardworkin boy till he quit on me and I hired Avery.”

Jackie saw Avery watching them in his mirror and met his serious eyes for a moment. She said, “I played like a girl who’d memorized what hole cards you’d look at and fold. I’m playing no-limit with five gentlemen smoking cigars, staring at me, and threw away twenty grand, every dollar I had except three hundred in my sneakers.”

“You let ’em psyche you out.”

“It pissed me off and I knew better. Don’t ever play when you’re mad or upset.”

“That’s right, walk away.”

“I wanted to say, ‘Oh, is it my turn?’ Something girlish to throw them off. But I never felt I had it together.”

“They scared you.”

“One hand I had an ace-five and bailed out.”

“That’s what you do playing hold ’em,” Harry said. “You get out, you don’t let that lone ace vamp you.”

“Yeah, but the ace turned into a pair with the river card and a king-jack took the pot.”

“That’ll happen,” Harry said.

“But if I stayed I’d of won twelve grand. I’d get the feeling I can take these no-limit guys, get down and play to win. It was one of the very few times I didn’t go with my ace.”

“How many times you win with an ace in the hole?”

“How often are you dealt one?”

“You’re telling me you’re lucky,” Harry said. “But you don’t win at poker bankin on luck.”

“I win because I know the game,” Jackie said. “If I don’t have a feeling about my hole cards I throw them in.”

“You left Elaine’s with three hundred?”

“In my sneakers. I forgot to tell you, the police came by.”

“Elaine was raided?”

“She said it happens every once in a while. Part of doing business.”

“They throw you in jail?”

“I was booked, but walked out when nobody was looking. I still have enough to start at a five-ten table. Work my way up to ten-twenty.”

Harry said, “Honey, you’re a fugitive. They’re gonna be after you.”

“I’ll wear dark glasses,” Jackie said.

They were both quiet now riding in the Rolls.

Maybe for ten seconds before Harry said, “If I didn’t know your plight . . .” paused, and Jackie said:

“One night I was waiting for a bus with a half dozen ad layouts, mounted, trying to hold them together, and I dropped them in the street. A man stopped by as I was gathering them up. He said, ‘I couldn’t help but observe your plight.’ ”

Harry said, “Is that right?”

“That was only the second time I’ve heard anyone use the word.”

Now he was frowning.

“You said, ‘If I didn’t know your plight . . . What? You don’t think the dark glasses would work?”

She could tell she had him interested.

Harry said, “I was thinking, What if I staked you?” Jackie took a moment. “For how much?”

“Whatever you’d need to make a run. Ten grand?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Honey, I raise thoroughbreds, run ’em at tracks all over the country. I don’t have to kid about money. I pay a million bucks for a filly and love her like she’s my own.”

“Till she runs,” Jackie said.

“Well, if she doesn’t win enough times.”

“You fall for another filly.”

She could see him grinning now.

“That’s right, but the amount of affection I show the girl can make her a winner.”

“How would that work with me,” Jackie said, “your being affectionate?”

“Honey, I’m seventy-five years old. We’ll have drinks and I’ll make you laugh and give you a kiss on the cheek. You keep everything you win. I’ll be a happy dog havin you pet me once in a while.”

“What if I’m in a game but low on chips?”

“I see you can win, I’ll help you out.”

“And if I lose my stake . . . ?”

“It comes to that,” Harry said, “I’ll drop you off anywhere you want.”

Jackie leaned over to kiss his old man’s cheek and tell him, “Harry, you just made me the happiest girl in the world.”

I
t took her four hours and ten minutes to win eighteen thousand at two different no-limit tables that afternoon in Shelbyville; Jackie playing against people who hired truck drivers, people who bet on grain futures produced by farmers they didn’t know or care to. Jackie was having a bottle of beer now, Harry Burgoyne a double scotch.

She said, “All they did was try to bluff.”

“And you could tell.”

“They weren’t good at it.”

“Fellas I play with at Keeneland, I think they’re always tryin to bluff me. I know it, so I stay in too long, call their raise, but every time I do, one of ’em beats me.”

“I’d have to watch your game,” Jackie said, “see what you could do.”

“That’s what I been thinking,” Harry said. “Or get these boys to play hold ’em with you. They’re breeders, have almost the money I do. I tell them you’re my niece visitin from college. Loves poker and thinks she’s pretty darn good. I say, ‘You fellas want to play Jackie if I stake her?’ You bet they do. They win they see it as takin my money.”

Harry, sipping his drink, said, “Keeneland, I use to do a skit for the bar crowd with a driver I had, the African colored guy. I’d chide him for the way he’s dressed in my racing colors. He’d say, ‘But, Boss, is your wife dresses me.’ Watchin you play I was thinkin how I could use you in a humorous exchange, a skit we’d make up.”

Jackie said, “You’re kidding, right?”

Chapter Twenty-four

A
former convict named Delroy Lewis ran the show: hired Floy, an eighteen-year-old street kid who stole cars he sold to chop-shops—good-looking expensive ones, Mercedes and BMW Floy’s favorites—picked up mostly from big shopping mall lots using tools took him twenty seconds to jimmy the door, a half minute to start her up. Sometimes he’d settle for a Chrysler or Buick, the big Honda lately, a roomy car that gave the girls space to relax and smoke a doobie on their way to work.

Floy parked on the street and went in the apartment house had a fire escape going this way and the other down the front of the building and pushed a number.

Cassie came on saying, “What kind a car?”

“Gray Beamer. Had it washed for y’all.”

Cassie said, “Be down in five minutes.”

Delroy had told Floy, “They not down in a half hour, leave. I’ll give them a talkin to.”

They finally got done dressing and came out to the car looking like fashion-conscious bag ladies in their outfits they got from Goodwill, hip-huggers under their raincoats, sporty little beach hats, brims turned down, Janie wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap; the three carrying shiny bags from ladies’ stores.

They got in the car, Kim saying to Cassie, “You know you’re wearing your fuck-me heels?”

Cassie said, “They sound cool on marble floors.”

Kim said, “What if we have to run for the car?”

“I could have on sneakers,” Cassie said, “we’re still fucked. You think Floy’s gonna wait for us?”

“I was told,” Floy said to his rearview mirror, “y’all take more than six minutes to come out, I take off. Delroy say to worry about my own young ass.” Floy turned in his seat to look right at the girls. “Nobody say what you doin’s easy but, come on, you walk in cool and walk out your shoppin bags full of green. Delroy told me hisself, you the best chicks robbin banks he ever had. The man loves you.”

Janie said, “That’s why he hits us?”

“You don’t listen to him, what you expect? Hey, but you get home he gives you all the Oxy you want, don’t he? You ladies of leisure aren’t you, between jobs?”

Cassie said, “We get picked up, you know who’s going down with us.”

Floy said, “Hey, all I am’s your driver.”

“Not you,” Cassie said, “Delroy. He never goes near the bank.”

“He tells us what it looks like inside,” Kim said, “and when there aren’t a lot of people.”

Cassie said, “Floy, what’s that worth?”

“A pat on the head,” Floy said, “the man’s tall enough. The man might go fifty bucks. He holds on to his dollar, let’s you do it for weed and pills.”

“And a few hundred,” Kim said, “each time.”

“He let you out to spend it?”

“Once in a while.”

“You his bank-job slaves.”

Janie said, “I go back to strippin I become a blow job slave. This ain’t so bad, we don’t ever get picked up.”

“We miss a job,” Cassie said, “we have to do one alone.”

“You ever did it you weren’t high,” Floy said, “you wouldn’t do it.”

He pulled up a half block from the bank and waited while they toked, put on shades, fixed their hats and cap down on their head good, and got out with their shopping bags.

Floy said, “Give you a full ten minutes to do your business. You cool with it? Be cool, I see y’all a little later.”

They weren’t listening.

He watched them get out and walk down the street to the bank.

T
hey stopped at a glass-top table in the middle of the floor and used the backs of bank forms to write the notes they’d give the tellers. Cassie said, “I like, ‘Give me five grand or I’ll kill you.’ ” She looked at her note and added a word.

Kim said, “How do you spell
withdrawal,
with an
a
or an
e
?”

Janie said, “I ask for all hunnerts, the girl says she has to go get ’em. I say, ‘All right, a hunnert fifties.’ I end up taking what she gives me.”

Cassie said, “Tell her how much you want, for Christ sake.”

Kim said, “Why don’t we write the same thing three times?”

Cassie handed her note to Kim. “Here, write it the same way, all capitals. ‘GIVE ME FIVE GRAND OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,’ with three exclamation marks, so she knows you mean it.”

Kim wrote the notes and they walked over to three different tellers.

In a few minutes Janie came away from the window first with her bag of bills. She felt awful, she had cramps. If they had to do another bank soon she’d stay in bed.

Now Cassie was coming.

“It works, doesn’t it? Where’s Kim?”

She was still at a window.

“Now she’s coming,” Janie said.

The bank chicks walked out and got in the BMW.

F
loy listened to the girls on the way home, back to smoking weed now and talkative, relieved to be out of there.

Cassie saying, “We do that one before?”

Kim saying, “Banks all look alike to me.”

Cassie: “The teller goes, ‘This is my second robbery in the past month.’ Calm about it. I ask her if it was us. No, it was a guy that time. I asked how much he took. She said only a few hundred and split. Ran out the door.”

“Mine looks at the note and freaks,” Kim said. “Kept going on about having a child at home. I told her would she please empty her drawer? It wasn’t her money.”

“I told my girl,” Cassie said, “to keep a couple hundred for yourself. How’s the bank know we didn’t take it? You know what she said? ‘Really . . . ?’ I bet she did too.”

Floy, looking at the rearview, said, “Y’all did all right, huh?” Watching Cassie count the take.

“Not bad,” Cassie said, touching Floy’s shoulder with a couple of hundred in her hand.

Floy took it saying, “Hey, I’ll boost a car for you ladies any time you want. But how come the cops aren’t on to y’all by now? Four banks already, in town or close by.”

“They think we’re working girls,” Kim said, “having fun on our lunch break.”

Floy thought they looked like weird females, walk in the bank out of sunshine in their raincoats. How come nobody seemed to notice them? He said to Janie, “Honey, you all right? You not joinin in.”

“She doesn’t feel much like doing banks,” Cassie said. “She’s got the curse.”

R
aylan believed marshals were more like big-city cops than most kinds of federal agents. It’s why he walked in on the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police knowing he’d feel at home.

They met in a squad room, the detectives getting to know Raylan, asking about the transplant nurse who stole kidneys and tried to kill him. He told them about the mine-company woman who’d had a man shot in cold blood, Raylan saying he was still thinking about her. “I was to work here, her name would be up there on your board, Carol Conlan, not yet crossed out.” He told the detectives down a long table he wished he could stay here through the month, get to see Peyton Manning and the Colts at home. He might forget about this bookmaker he was looking for. “Reno Nevada?”

Buzz Hicks, the senior detective in the room, said, “Now we’re getting to it, aren’t we? You’re lookin for Reno’s little girl, aren’t you? Jackie Nevada.”

Raylan said, “Isn’t Reno her stepdad?”

“That’s right,” Hicks said. “The name on her birth certificate’s Rachel Nevada, but Reno started callin her Jackie when she was a kid.”

One of the detectives down the table said, “Her mom was called Jackie. She got knocked up by some loser passin through and took up with Reno. She has the child and acts like a mother till she got tired of home life and hit the road. Was Reno named her Rachel, after his own mother, but started callin her Jackie before too long. Had a soft spot for the broad walked out on him.”

Hicks said, “Lloyd, how’d you come up with all that?”

“Talkin to her,” Lloyd said, “while we had her in custody.”

“So now,” Hicks said, “she’s raised by Reno, this suspected colored guy passin as Latino and runnin a sports book.”

“They musta got along,” Raylan said.

“Well, they lived in the same house,” Hicks said, “till she went to Butler. Listen to this, and paid her way through college playin poker at night. The only girl livin in a house with seven guys, all students. You know what they called her? ‘Mother.’ She had a poker table, cards and racks of chips. You wanted to play you had to bring your own chair or borrow one. We went over there and talked to ’em. They said you oughta see her shuffle cards.”

“I understand,” Raylan said, “she won twenty grand betting Duke over her school.”

“That’s right, but Reno says he covered her for ten, in case Butler managed to pull off a win. We asked Jackie”—Hicks turning to look down the table—“Lloyd, what’d she tell us?”

“That game,” Lloyd said, “Reno put up
nada
. He was too busy losin on the spread. Jackie said the students laid down twenty and that’s what she picked up.”

“You look into it?” Raylan said.

Hicks said, “What are we, the gaming commission? It was Duke minus seven, the spread
BetUs Sportsbook
was offerin online and Reno took a bath.”

“How’d Jackie take gettin busted?”

“Didn’t make a fuss. I guess thinkin about the hole she was in, broke. This A student who plays poker you might say for a living. I asked the woman runs poker games we busted. Elaine? I said, ‘You musta known those guys’d eat her alive.’ Elaine said, ‘She lost her cool. But you could tell the girl’s a player.’ We set Jackie aside while we’re arm-wrestlin these high-priced lawyers and she walks out.”

“Didn’t show up in court,” Raylan said.

“Took off on us,” Hicks said. “Reno swears he hasn’t heard from her. What do you think this girl’s doin now?”

Raylan said, “Well, I hear she’s sticking up banks to get back on her feet. You got tape on her?”

“Jackie and two other girls,” Hicks said. “We have ’em in different banks in Lexington. Now take a look at what she’s doing.” Hicks glanced down the table. One of the detectives—it was Lloyd—slid the stack of surveillance prints to him and Hicks passed them on to Raylan, telling him, “We showed Reno. He said his little girl don’t rob banks. These are some girls lost their way. He said, ‘But they’re mellow, riding some kind of high.’ He said, ‘My little girl don’t do drugs either. She keeps her mind on poker.’ ”

Raylan went through the tapes, seeing the girls with shopping bags at separate tellers.

Hicks said, “Watch ’em come away, the two looking back at the one still at a window. They’re stoned. Had to get fixed to rob the bank.”

“I’ve heard of ones have to get ripped before they go in,” Raylan said. “These girls look like they just cashed their paychecks.”

“What do they get paid in,” Hicks said, “yen? Have to bring store bags to carry it?”

“I guess what I mean,” Raylan said, “we don’t see that many women stickin up banks. I think it’s maybe five or six out of a hundred. Here you’ve got three at once. Which one you think’s Jackie?”

“The one wearing the baseball cap,” Hicks said, “down on her eyes. Some of the other tapes you’ll come to, you see her lookin up.” He stood to watch Raylan go through the prints.

Lloyd said, “Buzz, you recall we had two girls doin banks at the same time?”

“Not around here,” Hicks said.

“Was down toward the state line,” Lloyd said, “seven, eight years ago. They’d hit a bank in some dinky town off sixty-four and cross over to Louisville. A guy with the girls was teachin ’em how to rob banks.”

Hicks said, “How you remember that?”

“It stuck in my mind,” Lloyd said. “I remember a confidential informant fingered them, but they were released for lack of evidence.”

Raylan said, “You remember what happened to the snitch?”

Lloyd was squinting, trying to recall before nodding his head. “A guy blew off his right arm with a shotgun.”

Raylan said, “Delroy Lewis?”

“
That’s
the guy was questioned,” Lloyd said, “about the bank jobs.”

“You mind,” Hicks said, “if we settle on this job here?” and said to Raylan, “That one, where she’s lookin up. All of us but Lloyd said that’s Jackie Nevada or her twin.”

“It could be,” Raylan said. “I stopped by Butler and got a look at her picture. I can’t see the girl in the yearbook playing to a surveillance camera.”

“We like her motive,” Hicks said. “She needs dough.”

Raylan was shaking his head. “These two comin out, mugging right at the camera.”

“Doped up and thinks it’s a hoot. It’s your people in Lexington,” Hicks said, “sent us all the bank photos. They picked out Jackie and asked for our confirmation.”

“The three almost look alike,” Raylan said. “Young, the same size. Three girls having fun.”

Hicks said, “Robbin banks.”

“Your fugitive,” Raylan said, “I can see why you want her to be Jackie. I hope you’re right and I’m dead wrong. But I can’t see three girls wanting to rob banks. I
can
see some guy putting ’em up to it. Gives the girl’s some toot and drops ’em off. I don’t know for sure, but we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“We respect your opinion,” Buzz Hicks said, “but hope you’re wrong this time. We been followin you since you called out that Zip in Miami, Tommy Bucks? You gave him twenty-four hours to get out of town. He drew on you and you put him down.”

“And got demoted to Harlan County, Kentucky.”

“But then shot it out with that transplant nurse.”

“You’re havin fun with me, aren’t you?”

“Well,” Hicks said, “you’re doin a job the way we like to see it done.”

A
ll the way to Reno’s betting office, Raylan thought of the Jackie he saw in the yearbook photo and had copied. She could be a Miss Nevada but would rather play poker.

Raylan came to the barbershop, a few blocks from Lucas Oil Stadium. Went in and walked past three empty chairs to a door that had to be Reno’s office. He knocked twice and said, “Raylan Givens. I called you about twenty minutes ago . . . ?” The door buzzed open and he went in.

R
aylan thought Reno looked Cuban, cell phones and a computer on his desk in lamplight, stacks of betting-sheet printouts and handwritten notes.

Lions and Niners 20 times reverse. Bears a nickel, New England ten.