Elmore Leonard - Raylan

“I’m near done,” Raylan said, “but want to check on Carol in the morning. I think she’s gonna try to pull something. I’ll call you later.” Raylan said, “I’m sittin wit h Boyd Crowder listenin to every word I say,” and turned off Art before he could start yelling at him. He said to Boyd:

“What time you seeing Pervis tomorrow?”

Boyd said, “Oh, that’s where I’m goin? You know more about my future whereabouts’n I do.”

“What I keep thinking,” Raylan said, “Carol must’ve offered that old man a settlement before you shot him.”

“Which one?” Boyd said, looking at Raylan. “You mean Otis, you’re beatin a dead horse.”

Pervis was sitting in his white socks, his drawers and an undershirt. “A wife-beater,” Rita told him. “I’m not your wife, so you can’t ever get mad and hit me.”

“You’re my precious girl,” Pervis said, “I’m givin my business to, my fields, my leaves of grass, my mountain… and my store, everything.”

“What I always wanted,” Rita said, “run a store and get paid in food stamps. You not puttin me on you say all I’m gettin?”

“You know my heart’s pure,” Pervis said. “You get the works, every last thing I own.”

“You be the first man ever gave me anything from his heart. Usually it’s from lower down.” Rita came over in her pure white shirt hanging over her pure white panties and curled up on Pervis’s lap saying, “You don’t think Dewey’ll give me a hard time?”

“The poor soul’s waitin for me to pass. The way I’m feelin, it may never happen.”

She kissed Pervis’s bare skull and stuck her tongue in his ear. “You want to wait a while for the main event?”

“I thought we’d smoke a little as I build up steam.”

She ran her hand over Pervis’s bare skull.

“You gettin your headouse" wid tan. That’s what’s different about you. You not wearin your rug no more,” running her tongue over his skull. “You look younger without that old thing, you know it? Got some sun on you for a change.” She got up and went in the kitchen still talking. “I know we got salt pork. You want, I’ll fry up a mess of eggs.”

“You bet,” Pervis said. “I’m hungry enough to eat the ass out of a skunk.”

“Honey…?”

“Yeah…?”

“You know you got a coffeepot on the stove has a gun in it?”

“For varmints,” Pervis said.

“It’s a. 38.”

“For big varmints.”

W hat Raylan did the next morning, he watched the house where Carol was staying from a patch of trees in Woodland Hills, kept watch close to two hours before the limo arrived. He saw Boyd get out and ring the bell, Boyd waiting now. The door opened for a moment and closed and Boyd returned to the limo.

A half hour went by before Carol came out in her Levi’s and heels and slipped into the front seat next to Boyd.

Raylan got in the Audi he’d been using and followed the limo through Harlan and out past Baxter.

About a mile up 413 Raylan saw the limo pull off the road and he braked to a crawl and saw Dewey-it was, in his suit too big for him-walking up the road, Raylan thinking the limo was waiting for him. But now a few seconds later a red pickup was coming up on Raylan with M-T MINING on the door as it passed, and pulled in behind the limo. Raylan turned into a service station long out of business. In his rearview there was Dewey running toward him.

Dewey in the passenger window now saying, “Raylan, I wonder could you help me out. I loaned Pervis my Hornet to get home? Only it wasn’t where he said he’d leave it, so I’m thinkin he took the car home… if he didn’t run out of gas and left it somewheres.”

“Get in,” Raylan said. “You know who’s in the pickup?”

“Rifle mounted in the window,” Dewey said. “You start yelling at him about his driving? Better think about it first. They’re company people in the truck. Look-the guy gettin out-goin up to the limo, leans in…”

“Jums (irst. Theyps back,” Raylan said. “Five dollars Carol raised the window on him.”

“That one by the car’s Billy the Kid.”

Raylan said, “He’s fifty years old he’s a day.”

“He musta been Billy the Kid at one time and it stuck. I’m told he’s known to have shot people.”

“That mean nobody’s seen him do it?”

“The ones got shot did,” Dewey said. “I know he’s one of M-T’s intimidators. Goin to talk to Pervis about his mountain. See if he’ll listen to figures. He don’t, he better have a good reason.”

Raylan said, “You know why they’re called intimidators?”

“Means they pack.”

“We called ’em gun thugs,” Raylan said.

He watched Billy get back in the pickup-another guy in there with him-and start up. Raylan got in line and followed the limo and the company truck all the way through Piney Run to Pervis Crowe’s rented house.

R ita saw the limo from the kitchen window, she turned off the fire under the salt pork and went out to the sitting room, still holding the cooking fork.

“Honey, we got company.”

Pervis said, “You gonna stick ’em with that?”

Rita said she’d get his pants and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She brought his Levi’s he called his dungarees-Pervis at a front window now-and helped him put on a shirt.

“Who do we know comes to visit in a stretch?” Rita said, stepping into a pair of denim shorts.

“Must be the company woman, Ms. Conlan,” Pervis said, “come to buy a mountain.”

“How much she gonna offer?”

“She starts, we’ll say, ‘You kiddin?’ We won’t tell her you own the mountain,” Pervis said. “See how high she wants to go.”

They watched a pickup now easing its way up the grade to stop behind the limo.

“Company woman,” Per woing itvis said, “bringin some company people.” He looked at Rita. “You turn off the stove?”

She went out to the kitchen and Pervis watched two men step out of the truck. He recognized Billy the Kid as the skinny guy put on his hat, cocking it over one eye. The other one, standing there in kind of a lazy slump, Pervis believed went by the name of Wayne. He looked hungover.

“They’s another car,” Pervis said, “pullin in behind the company truck.”

Rita came from the kitchen smoothing her white shirttails over her shorts, saying, “How many’s that woman need?”

Pervis waited till he saw a sight for sore eyes step out of the Audi and said, “It’s Raylan, bless his heart.”

Rita said, “Yeah…?” Watching Raylan with keen eyes and heard Pervis say:

“And Dewey. What in the world he bring Dewey for?”

D ewey hurried to catch up to Raylan while counting the people in the yard, Raylan turning to him.

“You gonna go up there and say anything?”

“Ask Pervis where my Hornet’s at.”

“I mean about the mountain.”

“I told you last night she guessed I’m gonna own it, and I let her think it. She makes a deal with the old man before he passes? I get a stretch limousine goes one-fifty full out. I figure ought to sixty-that’s a load to get off from standin still-but she’ll do it’n less’n ten seconds.”

Raylan was looking at the two thugs waiting for him, Carol and Boyd closer to the porch where Pervis stood calm as could be, his girl Rita right there close by.

Dewey said, “The company woman ever wants to offer a deal at a future date, I’ll get some tips from Casper, smartest man I ever met.”

Raylan said, “It’s four to four I count you on my side.”

“Me and you,” Dewey said, “Pervis and his colored girl?”

“That’s our team,” Raylan said. “You don’t have to say nothing you don’t feel like it, all right?”