Raylan (3 page)

Art said, “Or we get the state cops to lean on ’em till they give up the doctor.”

“I don’t know,” Raylan said, “I’m starting to think it might be the doctor running the show. Calls the Crowes when he needs heavy lifting done.”

P
ervis drove out to the camp in his Ford V8, a blower sticking out of the hood, and watched Bob Valdez approach from the barn. It was home to field hands who’d come to plant and return in ninety days to prune and trim Pervis’s marijuana, the crops in this part of Knox County.

The day Pervis hired him he said, “Bob, you keep what you make off your patch. You catch anybody growing weed on their own without my say, snap a varmint trap to their foot and fire ’em.”

Bob Valdez cocked a willow root straw close on his eyes in the afternoon sun. He wore a .44 revolver holstered on his hip and liked to stand around the yard with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt and make remarks to girls in the crew. He liked that hot-lookin black girl, Pervis’s housemaid, and would stop by there when he knew Pervis was at his store. Rita would tell him, “Mister ain’t here.” Told him every time he pulled up in his ATV making a racket. A few days ago she said, “Bob, you want to fuck me, huh? Mister finds out you come by, he can have your ass deported.”

“Hell you talkin about?” Bob said. “I’m as American as Daniel Boone, born here in Kaintuck.”

“You gonna die here he finds out you messing with his maid.”

“You kiddin me?” Bob said. “Mister’s not once ever tried yellin at me. He knows better.”

“He never raises his voice to anybody,” Rita said, “cause he don’t have to.”

T
his time Pervis came by to tell Bob, “I want you to do something for me.”

“I’m your man,” Bob said.

“A U.S. marshal come to see me name of Raylan Givens. You know which one I mean?”

“I’m pretty sure. Yeah, he was pointed out, wears a good-lookin hat.”

“I want you to keep him away from my boys.”

Bob said, “Oh?” He said, “Is this guy a pervert?” Bob tryin hard to look serious. He said, “You want me to become like a babysitter for Coover and Dickie?”

Pervis stared at him.

Pervis said, “In this part of the United States of America, I got enormous pull. Way more’n your Taco Mafia. I got judges doin favors for me and state troopers among my best friends. I call ’em down on you, you’re in jail inside an hour. Bob, you get smart with me again, that’s how we’ll play it.”

Bob said, “Hey, come on,” managing a grin. “I was jus kiddin around with you.”

Pervis said, “Keep this marshal away from my boys or I’ll hire somebody knows how.”

He got in his blown Ford V8 and blew away.

Chapter Three

C
oming out of the Huddle House Art said, “Medical schools use ten thousand cadavers a year. All over the world there’s a need for body parts.”

“Then why’d these guys,” Raylan said, “only take Angel’s kidneys? Turn around and sell ’em back to him the same day. Maybe this is a new way to work it. They don’t have to store the body and wait for buyers.”

“That takes a lot of planning, pickin out the victims,” Art said. “I don’t see these jitterbugs have the patience. Angel’s ready to make a deal, he’ll come up with the money. You come along and tell him he doesn’t have to.”

“What else am I gonna promise him? But what do these dumbbells know about the business of selling kidneys?”

“It’s in the news,” Art said. “The guy in New Jersey sold off parts from a thousand cadavers.”

Raylan said, “I don’t see the Crowes reading the paper less they’re in it.”

“A hundred pounds of marijuana,” Art said, “should gross you three hundred thousand—once you grow and cultivate it and get it to market. A human body with all its parts sold separate, the kidneys, the heart, other organs, the liver, the eyes . . . bone, tendons, the skin sold by the square inch, can get you up to a quarter million.”

Raylan said, “The guy in New Jersey with the crematorium.”

“The funeral director,” Art said. “He finishes the service and calls in his cutters. An hour later they’ve harvested all the guy’s parts worth taking and shoved what’s left in the incinerator.”

“That’s different’n what we’re lookin at,” Raylan said. “Ours sounds more like a mom-and-pop operation. But, man, they can make the dough.”

“Say a doctor loses his license and is sellin dope scrips out the back door,” Art said. “He’s known the Crowes since whoopin cough and the measles.”

“Treated ’em for a dose or two once they reached puberty,” Raylan said. “The boys live in different hollers and trade girls back and forth. DEA says once girls go up there they run home screamin.”

“This doctor drugs Angel,” Art said, “but needs somebody to put him in the tub.”

“And before you know it,” Raylan said, “the Crowes are in the body business. That make sense?”

“Does to me,” Art said. “I meant to tell you, I brought Rachel back to watch over you.”

R
aylan was driving an Audi Quattro, loaned to him off the DEA lot in Harlan. He said to Rachel Brooks next to him, “I had this car one time before. I liked it, except the hood rattled at one-forty.”

“On these roads?” Rachel doubtful.

“Zero to sixty in five seconds,” Raylan said, “we ever let her out.”

“Where we goin?”

“Up here to a cemetery, has a view of Pervis’s store. He won’t set up a meeting with his boys, we have to wait till they come visit their old dad.”

They turned off the Stinking Creek road where it forked at Buckeye and drove up a low rise to the cemetery, a field of gravestones marked
MILLS
and
MESSER
.

“A few have been here more’n a hundred and fifty years,” Raylan said. “That one right there, John Mills, ‘Gone to the Mansions of Rest.’ What would you like on your stone?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Can I have a few years to think about it?”

“Gobel Messer’s says ‘Meet Me in Heaven.’ Confident by the time he passed over.” Raylan put the car in gear and crept through the cemetery to the far side. He said, “Now look straight ahead. That’s Pervis’s store over there through the trees. I make it sixty yards.”

Rachel got out her binoculars, raised them and said, “I’m inside the store, nobody shopping this morning. Now a man’s in the doorway lighting a cigarette.”

“A Camel,” Raylan said. “That’s Pervis. His boys should be along. Have to give their old dad his cut.”

“Of what?”

“The money they took off Angel.”

“How do we know that?” Rachel still watching the store.

“DEA says Pervis runs the show, he’s Big Daddy. The boys hang out, get stoned and chase girls, till the dad tells ’em what he wants done. He’s got Mexicans run the business in the field. Does it all from that dinky store. He’s the marijuana king of East Kentucky, but DEA can’t put it on him and make it stick.”

Rachel said, “The Crowes’ daddy’s in the body parts business now?”

“No, and won’t believe his boys are,” Raylan said. “Wouldn’t accept what I told him about the kidneys. Kept shaking his head. His boys would never cut into a human body, or stand to watch anybody doing it.”

“You believe him?” Rachel said.

“Yeah, cause he can’t imagine himself doing it. I said, ‘They know how to dress a buck, don’t they? Clean him out?’ Pervis had a gun he’d of shot me. It was a dumb thing to say.”

Rachel was looking off.

“Finally here come somebody. Looks like a brother drivin the Cadillac. Only one in the car.”

She handed Raylan the glasses.

He raised them saying, “DEA has this guy with the boys only a couple weeks. Drives Coover and Dickie around. His name’s Cuba something. It’s in my notes with a mug shot.”

She opened Raylan’s folder and said, “Cuba Franks, forty-five-year-old African American . . . Come on, the man’s in his sixties. Look at the lines, the old scars on his face. Five arrests, two convictions. Slim body, has that offhand strut.” She was watching Cuba get out and walk to the car’s trunk.

“Check his hair,” Raylan said, handing Rachel the glasses. “You ever see hair that straight on a brother?”

“Not around here,” Rachel said.

“He’s got a bunch of white genes but not enough to pass.”

“Or maybe he did but didn’t care for the life,” Rachel said.

“Lost his sense of rhythm,” Raylan said, “but he’s still cool.”

“Knows he is,” Rachel said, “the do-rag matching the shirt. You notice the crease in the pants? Has to be careful putting ’em on, he don’t cut himself.”

Raylan said, “What you suppose he’s doing for the boys?”

“You mean besides drivin ’em around?”

“Cuba comes along, the next thing, the boys are stealin kidneys.”

Rachel took her time. “You want to know who’s working for who.”

“I don’t want to miss anything,” Raylan said.

He took the glasses again and watched this guy with the strange name lift a case of Budweiser out of the trunk and hold it in the fingers of one hand to hang down against his leg as he closed the trunk lid. Going toward the store he had the case in both hands again, kicked the bottom of the screen door for Pervis to come open it for him.

Raylan lowered the glasses.

“What’s in the beer case?”

“I doubt any Bud,” Rachel said, “the way he was holdin it.”

“I think it’s the old dad’s cut,” Raylan said. “We’ll get out of here and let Cuba run into us down the road.”

I
t’s what they did, drove to where the Buckeye fork came out and waited in the narrow strip of road.

Rachel said, “The Crowes’ve been drivin their own cars since they’re twelve years old. Like to drive fast.”

“Yes, they do,” Raylan said.

“Then why they sitting in the backseat now, telling their chauffeur where to go?”

“Or is he telling them things,” Raylan said, “they never heard of before?”

“About body parts?” Rachel said. “That what you mean?”

“He’s coming,” Raylan said, watching dust rising into the trees, watching the Cadillac coming straight at them until it braked and rolled to a stop about thirty feet from the Audi’s front end.

“Wants us to walk up there,” Raylan said. “Look us over.”

“I’ve done it,” Rachel said and raised the binoculars. “Now he’s got his cell out making a call.”

“Who you think he’s talking to?”

“The brothers,” Rachel said. “I don’t mean the
brothers,
I mean Coover and Dickie.”

They sat in the car waiting. Finally Cuba got out of the Cadillac and came toward them, taking his time.

“Got the stroll down,” Rachel said.

“Can feel he’s a dude,” Raylan said.

“I might go for some of that,” Rachel said, “he didn’t boost cars.”

“Turn your little recorder on,” Raylan said. “Gonna come up on your side.”

Cuba did, giving Rachel a nice smile as he leaned in, his hands on the windowsill.

“How you doin? Have some car trouble?”

Rachel said, “Mr. Franks, we’d like to ask you a few questions and see your driver’s license.” She held up her star hanging from her neck on a chain.

Cuba saw the badge as he straightened and looked at the sky before coming back to the window.

“What’d I do? You people been all over me since I got my job.”

“We’re marshals service,” Rachel said. “DEA’s the one botherin you.”

“I still haven’t done nothin. I’m workin as a chauffeur.”

Raylan leaned against the steering wheel to look at Cuba. “You got your chauffeur’s license?”

“I’m getting it out,” Cuba said.

“Driving the marijuana boys around?”

“I don’t hear their business,” Cuba said. “I find out they into reefer, I’m gone.”

He handed his license to Rachel.

She looked at it and said, “How you work here and live in Memphis?”

“It’s my home. I get time off, I go see my mama.”

“I’d go to Memphis,” Raylan said, “for the ribs.”

“Now you talkin,” Cuba said. “Best bar-b-que in the world’s at the Germantown rib joint.”

“The Germantown Commissary,” Raylan said. “Corky’s is good.”

“I love Corky’s,” Rachel said. “They serve that pulled pork shoulder. Best anyplace.”

Raylan said to her, “You’re from Memphis?”

“Tupelo, Mississippi,” Rachel said. “Lived across the tracks from Elvis’s house.”

Raylan grinned. “You’d see him?”

“He was gone by the time I was born. I got to cleanin houses and this white lady said I needed to go to college and paid my way, four years at Ole Miss.”

“I believe Ole Miss,” Raylan said, “has the best-looking girls of any college in the country. Even Vanderbilt. Ole Miss, the girl’s an eight-plus, she doesn’t have to pass her SATs.”

“Excuse me,” Cuba said. “Y’all have things to discuss, I may as well be goin.”

Raylan said, “Cuba, why don’t you get in the car so we can talk.”

“It’s
Cooba,
how you say my name. But I haven’t done nothin, I’m clean, done my time.”

Raylan said, “Cooba? Open the door and get in the car.”

He did, and Raylan adjusted his mirror.

“What’re you doing with the Crowes?”

“I drive ’em around. I was in the racing business, same as their daddy. Quarter-mile dirt, slide through the turns, man. The Crowes thought they could drive—have a pickup with juice? I scared ’em to death showin what real drivin’s like. Throw it in reverse, hit the gas, pull the hand brake, and spin around.”

“Hey, Cooba?” Raylan said. “Every boy in Harlan County knows how to do a reverse-one-eighty. Taught by their grampas. So why’d the Crowes hire you?”

“I ’magine so they can sit back, take it easy.”

Raylan said, looking at the mirror, “The boys hired you or you hired them? Couple of dumbbells, do the lifting for you.”

“Yeah, I’m the boss,” Cuba said. “I wait in the car someplace they havin a good time, I’m listenin to Loretta Lynn.”

“They call you ‘boy’?”

“They do, I’m gone.”

“It’s a good cover,” Raylan said, “working as their chauffeur. They don’t get arrested you don’t either. I bet you let the Crowes think they’re partners in the deal. But you still tell ’em what to do.”

Cuba in the mirror stared, didn’t say a word.

“How much of a cut they get for helping with Angel? Puttin him in the ice water? Once the doctor removed his kidneys.”

Now he was frowning.

“Like you don’t know what I’m talkin about,” Raylan said. “You wouldn’t have to’ve been there. Less you brought the doctor to the motel. That how it worked? I’m thinkin the doctor must’ve hired you. Caught you stealin his car and signed you up. You look around for some dumb white boys and hire the Crowes?”

“You telling me,” Cuba said, “I got somethin goin with takin people’s kidneys and then sellin ’em?”

“I see you as the middleman,” Raylan said, “between the doctor and the Crowes.”

“You want to talk to Coover and Dickie? Ask ’em about stealin kidneys?” Cuba said. “I be anxious to see that.”