“I can see it,” Layla said in her easy way. “You left them for dead?”
“I never heard they made it or passed.”
She reached across the table to lay her hand on his.
“But if you don’t do the Crowes they’ll tell on us.” She said, “Starting a new practice things always happen you didn’t plan on.” She said, “Once the Crowes are caught they’ll give us up. You know that.”
“I suppose,” Cuba said. “Only I never walked up to a man I’ve done business with and shot him. Or got into any kind of gig I ain’t positive it’s gonna pay off.”
“It’s like learning a new procedure,” Layla said. “Once you have it down . . . Our first week we scored both times, no surprises, four kidneys at ten each. I’m glad I found a good body broker. We can deal with some at the hospital, but you have to get the right ones when you’re freelancing. If we do just one a week for a year, extract both kidneys, you know what we make? A million bucks. While Dr. Blow Job’s working his ass off five days a week.”
“Your idea of usin masks,” Cuba said, “made it a scene. The guy in the motel room opens the door, tired, just come off the road. Sees these faces lookin at him—”
“They had to be the right ones,” Layla said.
“Man can’t believe what’s goin on. Starts to grin as I’m shakin his hand. You jab the needle in the man and I catch him as he goes down.”
“We started laughing,” Layla said, “I think with relief. Remember?”
“It was funny,” Cuba said. “We laughin in our rubber masks cause it was funny. I always felt, you don’t have a good time doin crime, you may as well find a job.”
Layla grinning at him till she said, “If I had any idea Angel knew the brothers—”
“I told you he did. You thinkin we sell ’em back the same day for a hundred grand, your mind busy. Hmmmm, maybe this is how we do Mr. Harry. The man still botherin your mind.”
“You’re right,” Layla said, “I was looking ahead. We know Harry can pay whatever we ask. Like a half mil for the pair?”
“Sounds about right,” Cuba said.
“But how do we collect,” Layla said, “without exposing ourselves?”
“I was thinking,” Cuba said, “we could take the Crowe brothers’ kidneys.”
He waited.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Layla said. “The boys have to be good for something.”
“Take out the kidneys,” Cuba said, “and forget about callin a hospital.”
“You’re off the hook,” Layla said. “Letting a person die isn’t the same as killing him. Or is it?”
“A course not,” Cuba said, “they two different things.”
“It’s okay with me,” Layla said, “either way.”
Raylan had to wait while Art was on the phone talking—Raylan believed—to Lexington, Art showing respect to whoever it was. “Yes, sir, we’re on that one. I was just now discussin the situation with Raylan . . . Raylan Givens . . . No sir, he’s doin his job. Okay, I’ll tell him.” Art hung up the phone and looked at Raylan across the desk.
“What’re you doing?”
“Lookin for Crowes. What’d they want to know?”
“If you’d shot anybody this week.” Art picked up a photo from his desk, a color print, and handed it across to Raylan.
“We have a detainer on Bob Valdez, works security for Pervis Crowe. Though Bob actually works for the Mexican Mafia.”
“What they call themselves. I heard Pervis calls ’em the Taco Mafia,” Raylan said. “Tell me why we let ’em grow weed here in the U.S.”
“I don’t know,” Art said. “Cause they’re good at it?”
He watched Raylan study the color shot of a man named McCready, a laid-off miner.
“He was growing a patch of weed out back of the house. Bob Valdez shot McCready through the leg—you see him pressing the towel to his thigh—and the other guy snapped a varmint trap to his bare foot. Ed took it off, but you can see where it cut him.”
“Who shot the pictures?”
“His little girl Loretta, fourteen. She’s been keeping house and going to school since her mama passed, Loretta ten at that time.” He handed Raylan a few more photos. “That’s Ed while they’re waitin for the doctor. See his foot? The doctor never made it, got tied up deliverin a baby. Loretta doesn’t have a license but can drive. So she took her dad to town.”
“I met Loretta,” Raylan said, “at Pervis’s, she’s havin an RC Cola. She asked if I thought she was bold she inquired what I did for a living. She’s gonna have a hard time with boys, finding one good enough for her.”
“Anyway,” Art said, “get the cops to ask Bob about his shootin McCready and bring him in to make his statement.”
“If Loretta said he shot her dad and has pictures of it . . . Why don’t we arrest him? Get Loretta’s statement, not Bob’s. That girl comes right at you.”
“Handle it,” Art said. “Meanwhile, two young men, both salesmen, woke up in hospitals without their kidneys. One in Lexington, the other Richmond, two days apart and the week before Angel lost his.”
“I remember seein it on the news,” Raylan said, “but didn’t relate it to anything we’re doing—yeah, until we found Angel in the tub. I didn’t know right away he’d lost his kidneys. You’re the one tole me. No, it was Rachel, her mom had transplants. Then I wondered if the Crowes were in on the first ones, the salesmen. Their incisions were closed by a doctor. Angel’s, somebody made a mess with the staples. Right away I think of the Crowes, Coover. Why didn’t the doctor close Angel? He could’ve got tired of putting up with the brothers and walked out.”
Art said, “Where you getting that?”
“It’s what I would’ve done,” Raylan said, “knowin those dumbbells. A doctor working under pressure in a motel room, he’s had enough of the brothers, leaves them to close up. But why’d he hire them to begin with?”
“To heft bodies,” Art said.
“Cuba Frank’s there.”
“One thing we know for sure,” Art said, “it wasn’t the Crowes wearing the rubber masks. Both fellas said a man and a woman.”
“The president and Mrs. Obama out havin fun,” Raylan said. “Making about twenty grand every time they put on their masks.” He said, “Imagine you open the door and there the Obamas calling on you? They come in the motel room talking.” He said to Art, “Who’s playing Michelle?”
Art said, “I guess the doctor brought . . . a nurse?”
“Who did . . . ? Cuba Franks?”
It stopped Art. Now he was shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with me—Michelle Obama’s the doctor.”
“It can’t be anybody else, can it?” Raylan said. “Don’t we have tapes of their statements? What the two guys remember?”
“If you want to believe it,” Art said.
“It sounded good to me,” Raylan said. “Michelle walks up and kisses the guy on the mouth.”
“They both said pretty much the same thing. How she approached, got real close—”
“She lifts her mask from under her chin,” Raylan said, “to free her mouth and presses it into his. The last thing he remembers is getting turned on. As they come apart she hits him with the needle. He dreams of the First Lady tonguing him while she’s taking out his kidneys.”
Art said, “I wonder if she’s black.”
Raylan shook his head. “They both said she was white.”
Art said a couple times he wondered if she might be a doctor. Raylan said he did too, but couldn’t see a woman stealing kidneys in a motel room. Even one pissed off at having her license pulled. “I’m dyin to meet her.”
“Check on Bob Valdez first,” Art said, “it having been handed down from above. Then I want the Crowes brought in while I’m getting the warrants.”
“If you get the right judge.”
“I have ways,” Art said. “ ‘Your Honor, I just hope a law enforcement officer isn’t gunned down in the line of dut
y by some weedhead while waitin for warrants.’ ”
“And you get fined for being a smart-ass.”
Art said, “You can’t locate the Crowes, go see Pervis. This evening, no customers botherin him. You want,” Art said, “threaten to burn his fields he don’t give up his boys.”
Raylan was picking at a callous in the palm of his gun hand listening to Art. Raylan stopped picking. He raised his head to look at his boss with an expression of wonder.
“That’s where they are, at Pervis’s.”
“You threaten ’em,” Art said, “they run home to their daddy.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that,” Raylan said.
“You had,” Art said, “you wouldn’t of run out of gas.”
Chapter Eight
COAL KEEPS THE LIGHTS ON.
Raylan read the signs, the coal company rubbing it in. You want coal to heat your house? You have to accept surface mining and the mess it makes; the film of coal dust on your car sitting in the yard. Raylan followed the signs on barns and billboards, finally turning at one reminding him that JESUS SAVES and a mile later came to Ed McCready’s property.
McCready lay in bed, his head propped up on a pillow so he could see Raylan, his gunshot wound cleansed and cauterized. He yanked aside the flannel cover to show Raylan his thigh bandaged all the way around. “Went in my leg,” Ed said, “turned south and went through the floor of the porch.”
“You’re positive,” Raylan said, “it was Bob Valdez.”
“No, it was some greaser,” Loretta said, “drove up in his little scooter and shot my dad. Course it was Bob, who else?”
“I remember you at the store,” Raylan said, “havin an RC Cola.”
Loretta said, “I remember you too, don’t worry. Bob walks up and shoots my dad with a .44 has a six-inch barrel. Soon as I find the bullet under the porch and give you the trap they put him on . . .” She said, “Daddy, show Raylan your foot.”
“He can see it, it’s right there.”
Swollen and bruised, ugly-looking.
“He shot my dad,” Loretta said, “cause we had a patch growin among the tomatoes. Bob said, ‘You try and grow any more’ ”—Loretta putting on his accent—“ ‘I deep you in a barrel of hot tar and set you afire.’ Threatenin to kill my dad.”
Raylan turned to Ed. “He set the trap on your foot before or after he shot you?”
“After. I’m layin there bleedin,” Ed said. “The other greaser pulls off my slipper. I’m sittin on the porch in my house slippers.”
“Before they showed,” Loretta said, “Bob phoned and said to tell my dad, ‘Valdez is coming.’ You ever hear of anything like that?”
“I might’ve,” Raylan said. “You sure took some award-winning pictures.”
“With my phone,” Loretta said, and pulled it out of her jeans to show Raylan. “I got some other pictures of Bob, he comes by on his scooter. He’d pull out the neck of my T-shirt and look inside. I won’t tell you what he said.”
“Has he ever, you know,” Raylan said, “touched any of your like private parts?”
“The greaser shot my dad,” Loretta said, “and you want to know if he felt me up?”
Raylan said, “Lemme give you some advice, okay?”
“Don’t call ’em greasers?”
“I mean, once you get serious about boys.”
“You kiddin? I already am.”
“All I hope you do,” Raylan said, “is try to be patient with them.”
He watched the camp from high ground, a view through the trees that showed a slice of the hardpack yard and the barn where the Mexican pickers slept in hammocks. Some of them were at the two picnic tables now outside the barn having their noon dinner, Bob Valdez at the end of the table away from the stove. Raylan watched Bob through his glasses: his straw on his eyes, his hand on the rump of a girl serving his beans and rice. Raylan raised the glasses to outbuildings painted white, dressed-up cowsheds off in the pasture.
Inside, the plywood walls painted a flat white, Pervis had his hydroponic gardens, tended with care to maintain air temperature, ventilation, the feeding of nutrients to the water, and a 400-watt lighting system on twenty-four hours a day during germination, and reduced to twelve hours on and twelve off during the growing period. Once harvested, each of Pervis’s hundred or so plants would yield an ounce of top-grade marijuana. It gave Pervis a cash crop every three to four months that grossed about fifty thousand dollars.
Raylan wondered if smoking it made you laugh at dumb things you’d think were funny.
Bob might have molested Loretta or he might not have. But he did shoot McCready in his bedroom slippers in front of his daughter, who took pictures with her cell phone Raylan could show Bob, if he needed to. Not down there with the help having their dinner, but off by those cowsheds. He was told Pervis put up signs that said AUTHORIZED BY STATE LAW. KEEP OUT. The way Pervis got around being robbed or arrested. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED OR SHOT.
He’d drive down to the yard in the Audi . . . But did he want to confront Bob at the table? Give him a chance to show off, all the help watching him? Raylan could hear Bob: “Wha you talking about? I shot some old man was scaring me?” Bob playing to the crowd.
What Raylan did, he drove down to the yard following switchbacks until he came out in the open, angled toward the barn and the picnic tables—all the pickers watching him—raised his hand to Bob Valdez and kept going, drove around the barn and out to the pasture, the clean white cowsheds standing in the sun.
They came out for him in a pickup, Bob driving, and pulled up near the Audi.
Raylan stood a distance from the car, the pasture behind him, about sixty feet from the two getting out of the pickup, approaching now, Bob Valdez with his .44 slung low; the other one, another Mexican in a straw hat, carrying a twelve-gauge under his arm like he was out here to shoot birds, relaxed, a step behind Bob. He looked tired. Or he was stoned.
Forty or so feet now Bob stopped and grinned at Raylan.
“I didn’t do it. Whatever it is you thinking.”
Raylan said, “I got snapshots of you shootin Ed McCready.” Raylan’s stare went to the other one. “I got you snappin the coon trap on Ed’s foot, Loretta takin the pictures with her phone. You ever hear of that? I got enough to put you in handcuffs and take you in.”
Bob said, “Yes . . . ? Tell me what you saying.”
“I’m busy. I got something else I have to do.”
“Oh,” Bob said, “more important than me, uh?”
“All I want to tell you,” Raylan said, “replant Ed’s patch, give him five hundred for the gunshot to his leg, his injured foot, so he won’t have to sell Loretta to white slavers. I’m telling you to keep your hands off her. You do all that, we’re square. You don’t, I’ll bust you for shootin him.”
“You kidding me?” Bob said. He sounded a little surprised. “They two of us here. You got a gun on you somewhere?”
“Look,” Raylan said, “I take it out I’ll shoot you through the heart before you clear your weapon. Your partner, I’ll wait for him to wake up. What’d you bring him for?” He saw Bob glance at the other guy. “He’s stoned,” Raylan said. “Tell me you’ll pay Ed so I can get back to work. I’m after a woman steals kidneys and sells ’em.”
Bob said, “Yeah? I heard of that, selling parts of the body. What’s a kidney bring?”
“About ten grand,” Raylan said, “the going rate.”
“I couldn’ do it,” Bob said, shaking his head and setting his straw again. “Man, cutting in to some guy’s body.”
“I couldn’t either,” Raylan said. “What kind of person would it take?”
He watched Bob shrug, maybe thinking he could do it.
Raylan said, “You can’t shoot a man, Bob, and tear up his patch. The man has to make a living.”
Chapter Nine
Cuba was trying to think of a way to get rid of the Crowe brothers without getting their daddy on him. The only tr
ouble, they were staying with him now, moved into his house, Cuba believed, confident their daddy would protect them, keep them from going to prison. If they weren’t his blood Pervis would have fired them years ago. Once Cuba did the two fuckups, the old man ought to thank him for taking a load off his mind. Except Pervis would have to narrow his eyes and swear he’d get the one did it. Cuba thought he might offer the old man consolation after, tell him, “Least they won’t go to prison and get cornholed every day by Negroes.”
Wait.
Or shoot the daddy first? Not have to worry about him?
Climbing the log steps to Pervis’s house Cuba had to stop three times to rest his thighs. He had tried the store hoping Pervis was still there and found the place shut for the day. Cuba had made up his mind to do all three Crowes in whatever order they came along. He hoped Pervis would be first. After the old man it didn’t matter.
Rita, the old man’s housekeeper? Cuba had never seen her but heard she was hot-looking. Do her too? He reached the house and could smell weed as soon as he stepped on the porch.
Dickie and Coover sat next to each other on the couch. It looked strange, the other chairs in the sitting room empty. Now he saw they were sharing a party bong, passing it back and forth: add weed, put a finger over the hole and take a hit. Coover looked up, saw Cuba at the screen door and waved at him to come in.