Elmore Leonard: Raylan

“You probably did.”

“So he oughta be willing to talk to me.”

“He’s at Cumberland Regional,” Art said. “Maybe they’ll let you see him, maybe not. Where’re your partners?”

“There wasn’t anything pressing-I told ’em go on back to Harlan.”

“They took the SUV-how’re you gonna get around?”

“We have Angel’s BMW,” Raylan said, “don’t we?”

A ngel was lying on his back, his eyes closed. Raylan got down close, brushed Angel’s hair out of his face, caught a whiff of hospital breath and said in a whisper, “Your old court buddy from Miml: uddy frami’s here, Raylan Givens.” Angel’s eyes came open. “Was that time you went down for selling khat.”

Now it looked like Angel was trying to grin.

“Did you know,” Raylan said, “I saved your life this morning? Another five minutes in that ice water you’d of froze to death. Thank the Lord I got there when I did.”

“For what, to arrest me?”

“You’re alive, partner, that’s the main thing. Maybe a little pale’s all.”

Pale — he looked like he was dead.

“They hook my arm to a machine,” Angel said, “takes the impurities from my blood and keeps me alive long as I can wait for a kidney. Or I have a relative like a brother wants to give me one.”

“You have a brother?”

“I have someone better.”

Smiling now. He was, and Raylan said, “You know I won’t tell where you’re getting this kidney, you don’t want me to.”

“Everybody in the hospital knows,” Angel said. “They send me a fax. You believe it? The nurse comes in and reads it to me. Tanya, tha’s her name. She’s very fine, with skin you know will be soft you touch it. Tanya, man. I ask her she like to go to Lexington with me when I’m better. You know, I always like a nurse. You don’t have to bullshit them too much.”

“The fax,” Raylan said. “You get to buy your kidneys back for how much?”

“A hundred grand,” Angel said, “tha’s what they offer. You imagine the balls on these redneck guys? They bring a surgeon last night so they can take my fucking kidneys and rip me off twice, counting what they stole from me. They say if I only want one kidney is still a hundred grand.”

Raylan said, “The hospital knows what’s going on?”

“I tole you, everybody knows, the doctors, the nurses, Tanya. They send the fax, then one of them calls the hospital and makes the arrangement. Nobody saw who deliver them.”

“The hospital knows they’re yours?”

“Why can’t you get that in your head?”

“And they go along with it?”

“Or what, let me die? They not paying for the kidneys.”

“When do you have to come up with the money?”

“They say they give me a break, a week or so.”

“You know these boys-tell me who they are.”

“They kill me. No hurry, get around to it.”

“And take your kidneys back,” Raylan said. “I don’t believe I ever heard of this one. You know the hospital called the police.”

“The police already talk to me. I tole them I don’t know these guys. Never saw them before.”

“Or know who’s telling them what to do?” Raylan said.

Angel stared at Raylan. “I don’t follow you.”

“You think your guys came up with this new way to score? They can take whoever they want off the street,” Raylan said, “while this doctor’s scrubbin up for surgery. Why should they be picky, wait for a drug deal to go down?” Raylan paused. He said, “You want, I’ll help you out.”

“For what? You find product in that motel room? Man, I’m the victim of a crime and you want to fucking put me in jail?”

Finally they reached a point, Angel on a gurney on his way to the operating room, Raylan tagging along next to it saying, “Give me a name. I swear on my star you won’t have to pay for either one.”

He watched Angel shake his head saying, “You don’t know these people.”

“I will, you tell me who they are.”

“You have to go in the woods to find them.”

“Buddy, it’s what I do.” They were coming to double doors swinging open. “I call Lexington with the names and they e-mail me their sheets. I might even know these guys.”

“They grow reefer,” Angel said, “from here to West Virginia.”

Right away Raylan said, “They’re Crowes, aren’t they?”

South of Barbourville Raylan turned off the four-lane and cut east to follow blacktops and gravel roads without names or numbers through these worn-out mountains of Knox County, the tops of the grades scalped, strip-mined of coal to leave waste heaps, the creeks down in the hollows tainted with mine acid. Raylan followed Stinking Creek to the fork where Buckeye came in and there it was, up past the cemetery, Crowe’s grocery store, the name displayed in a Coca-Cola sign over the door, CROWE’S GROCERIES amp; FEED.

He let Angel’s BMW roll past the screen door standing open and came to a stop. He’d had the car washed in Somerset and wore a dark suit and tie for this visit, wanting Mr. Crowe to make a judgment about him. In its piece about Stinking Creek, Newsweek called Pervis “Speed” Crowe the top marijuana grower in East Kentucky. Crowe said in the magazine, “Prove it. I run a store for these poor people come up from the hollers with their food stamps. When’s anybody seen me cultivatin herb?”

There he was behind the counter by an old-style scale he used to weigh potatoes, cuts of fatback, the shelves behind him showing sacks of flour and cornmeal. Eggs ten cents apiece reduced to four bits the dozen.

All these stores looked the same to Raylan, the same people coming in to buy necessities, then taking forever to spend ninety-nine cents on an angel food cake, some candy and Kool-Aid for their kids waiting, not saying a word.

A young girl starting to bud sat on cow-feed sacks in her shorts drinking an RC Cola. Raylan had bought Beech-Nut scrap in stores like this when he was a kid, wanting to hurry up and get enough size to become a federal officer, the kind went after armed felons.

The girl on the cow-feed sacks kept looking up at Raylan like she was wondering about him, thinking hard of something to say, until she found a sweet voice to ask him, “Sir, would you think I’m bold to inquire what you do as your job?”

Raylan smiled. “Which one’s the question, what I think or what I do?”

Pervis Crowe, called “Speed” in the magazine, said, “Loretta, don’t you know Drug Enforcement, you see a man wearin a suit of clothes? They come around sniffin the air.”

“You got me wrong,” Raylan said, “I’m marshals service. We go around smelling the flowers, till we get turned on to wanted felons. I understand, Mr. Crowe, you have a couple of boys work illegal trades.”

Pervis said, “You hold warrants on ’em?”

“I did, they’d be gone,” Raylan said. “You wouldn’t see ’em for goin on two hundred and forty months.”

“Where you been?” Pervis said. “I don’t know a judge hands down more’n a few years.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Raylan said. “I wondered if you’re related to the Florida Crowes.”

“From some distance. How they makin it?”

“Doin time or dead,” Raylan said. “I sent one to Starke while I was workin down there. I did wonder, is that Dewey Crowe one of yours? Wears gator teeth and joined that Heil Hitler club? Told me he was from Belle Glade.”

“I mighta heard of the boy,” Pervis said, “but he don’t raise my interest none.”

“Wants you to know he’s bad,” Raylan said, “but doesn’t have it down yet. I’d like to meet your boys.”

“They’re a different stock,” Pervis said. “Wear clean clothes every day and drive Chevrolets.”