Elmore Leonard: Raylan

“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"›

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 fac thing, 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,” ou missaryRaylan 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.”