Elmore Leonard - Raylan

Rita closed the door after him and locked it, hurried over to Mister, got her face down close to his and heard him breathe. She knew it. You don’t kill this dog with one shot. Rita said to him, “Honey, don’t move. I’m on get you to the hospital.”

K nox County Hospital called the state police and they got on Pervis’s case, called the marshals service to let Raylan know the two guys he had them looking for were homicide victims. Raylan visited the scene, saw Coover and Dickie dead on the couch and the bloodstained carpet where Pervis had been lying. The hospital said a black girl dropped off Pervis and must have left. They didn’t know her name and Pervis refused to identify the girl or the one shot him.

He did tell Raylan, sitting at his bedside, “He left me for dead. Shot me with a round that splintered a rib and messed me up inside.” Pervis raised the arm in a cast. “I broke it fallin down the stairs.”

“While you’re laid up,” Raylan said, “why don’t we see what I can do? It was Cuba Franks, wasn’t it, the shooter? Through using your boys for his felonies? Shot you, you happen to be there. But was Rita brought you here, wasn’t it? Why’d she take off?”

Pervis said, “Why you grillin me when you think you know everything?”

Raylan said, “Remember I told you they’re taking kidneys from people while they’re alive?”

Pervis kept his mouth shut.

“You’re a hard-ass old man,” Raylan said, “but I can respect how you feel. What I don’t want is you goin to prison for taking out Cuba.”

Pervis said, “It’s time I did somethin for my boys.”

H e shot the brothers,” Raylan told Art Mullen-the two standing in Art’s office-“while they’re suckin on a bong. Coover’s turn, he’s popped and the glass shatters, got his shirt wet.”

“You noticed that,” Art said.

“His blood turned it pinkish. What’s that remind you of?”

“Angel’s bath,” Art said. “Three kidney jobs in the last few weeks.”

“But only Angel’s offered for sale. I told him, ‘Pray to St. Christopher you get ’em back’ and he came through.”

Art said, “What you’re saying, St. Christopher got Dickie and Coover whacked so Angel wouldn’t have to pay for his kidneys.”

“More or less.”

Art said, “We’re lookin for Cuba Franks, what he’s been doing since his convictions. A year ago he chauffeured for a rich guy owns horses. Cuba Franks, says he’s from Nigeria. Had the job for nine months and quit.”

“Wasn’t making enough?”

“Got tired of putting on his African accent. That’s what Mrs. Burgoyne told us. Harry Burgoyne said, ‘That’s what they do, they walk out on you. Only one African American I’d give high marks to and that’s Old Tom. He died on me.’ ”

“I know why Cuba quit,” Raylan said.

“Our office up there’s still lookin for him. Nine months, he must know his way around.”

“Has friends there,” Raylan said. “You don’t suppose-”

Art said, “Do I suppose he has a friend, a doctor at the transplant center, a woman?”

“Do you?” Raylan said.

L ayla’s voice said, “Where are you?”

“I’m about to leave the hills for the four-lane,” Cuba said. “The Crowe brothers left for heaven this afternoon, less they got rules against weedheads. I had to do the old man, since he was in the house.”

“You told me he has a cute maid.”

“Only what I heard. I was never up to the house before.”

“Was she cute?”

“ cmesfonShe was too young for that old man.”

“She was cute, huh?”

“I let her go.”

Now silence on the phone.

Cuba said, “She don’t know me and I don’t know her, how we left it.”

“You realize,” Layla said, “if I’d been with you and we could’ve worked it? We’d have six more kidneys in one swoop. Eight,” Layla said, “we throw in Rita. What do you think? Eighty grand.”

The Lexington office gave Raylan a partner whether he wanted one or not.

Bill Nichols, fifty-five, half his life a marshal; slim, about five-ten, hair cut short around a tan bald crown. He told Raylan:

“Fourteen I knew everything, shaved my head to become a hundred-and-thirty-pound white supremacist. Before I got any swastika tats, I got tired of getting beat up by these grown neo-Nazis dumber’n stones. I said fuck this and reversed my field, entered a seminary to become a brother, not a priest, a brother. Play softball, or walk around with my hands in the sleeves of the habit thinking of girls. I quit, went to UK, joined the marshals and married my wife, Julie, twenty-seven years now. We have three boys wanderin the earth, good guys, smart, three-point-fives or better. Max teaches English at a school in France. Alex designs book covers for Italian publishers and French, and Tim’s writing his second novel in New York. The first one sold four thousand. I asked him what it’s about, the one he’s writing. He said the subtext is the exposure of artistic pretension. And my little girl, Kate, senior in high school, wants to be a marshal.”

“I’m gonna have to get busy,” Raylan said.

“How long you been married?”

“I’m divorced,” Raylan said. “You ever look for the Nazi lovers beat you up?”

“Two of ’em are gone, overdosed. The third guy,” Nichols said, “by the time I found him was a crackhead, his tats hard to read. I stood him against a brick wall, put on leather gloves while I’m lookin him in the eye. I hit him one-two, both sides of his jaw. He went down and I stood lookin at him.”

Raylan said, “He remember you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Something you had to do before you got too old,” Raylan said. “It’s a shame he wasn’t a wanted felon.”

“So I could shoot him he resisted.”

“I meant you’d have a reason to hunt him down.”

Nichols said, “You’ve shot and killed a man?”

“Yes, I have,” Raylan said.

“An armed fugitive?”

“More than one,” Raylan said.

“It doesn’t matter how many, does it?”

“Not a bit,” Raylan said. “Once or twice I might’ve been lucky.”

“You get to where you have to pull-”

“Knowing you better shoot to kill,” Raylan said.

Nichols gave Raylan a nod.

They knew each other.

They were in Nichols’s Crown Vic leaving a two-story frame house on Chestnut-the address on one of Cuba’s drivers licenses-that turned out to be a boardinghouse. Cuba Franks? Been more than a year anyone had seen him around.

The last address for him was out on Athens-Walnut Hill Road. Nichols knew it as Burgoyne Farms.

“Hasn’t changed his address,” Nichols said, “since he left. I have a brother, all he does is build fences for horse farms. Thirty-five thousand thoroughbreds born in the U.S. every year. Twenty make it to the Derby. One race you can’t buy.”

Raylan said, “You didn’t talk to Burgoyne, did you?”

“Couple of young marshals did,” Nichols said. “Mr. Burgoyne told them Cuba Franks walked out on him. He said, ‘It’s what they do, get tired of workin and walk out.’ He means African Americans,” Nichols said. “I’m finally getting use to saying it.”

“Burgoyne’s wife,” Raylan said, “thought Cuba got tired of putting on an African accent?”

Nichols said, “She thought it was funny. You get the k. Ys" feeling she knew Cuba better’n her old man did.”

“Cuba’s our lead,” Raylan said. “We get hold of him, he’ll give up the woman doctor.”

They were moving east on New Circle, coming up on Richmond Road, where they’d turn south. Nichols glanced at Raylan.

“You saw the list of doctors? Thirteen workin on transplants?”