Elmore Leonard: Raylan

Raylan said, “Cooba? Open the door and get in the car.”

He did, and Raylan adjusted his mirror.

“What’re you doing with the Crowes?”

“I drive ’em around. I was in the racing business, same as their daddy. Quarter-mile dirt, slide through the turns, man. The Crowes thought they could drive-have a pickup with juice? I scared ’em to death showin what real drivin’s like. Throw it in reverse, hit the gas, pull the hand brake, and spin around.”

“Hey, Cooba?” Raylan said. “Every boy in Harlan County knows how to do a reverse-one-eighty. Taught by their grampas. So why’d the Crowes hire you?”

“I ’magine so they can sit back, take it easy.”

Raylan said, looking at the mirror, “The boys hired you or you hired them? Couple of dumbbells, do the lifting for you.”

“Yeah, I’m the boss,” Cuba said. “I wait in the car someplace they havin a good time, I’m listenin to Loretta Lynn.”

“They call you ‘boy’?” n="eight="

“They do, I’m gone.”

“It’s a good cover,” Raylan said, “working as their chauffeur. They don’t get arrested you don’t either. I bet you let the Crowes think they’re partners in the deal. But you still tell ’em what to do.”

Cuba in the mirror stared, didn’t say a word.

“How much of a cut they get for helping with Angel? Puttin him in the ice water? Once the doctor removed his kidneys.”

Now he was frowning.

“Like you don’t know what I’m talkin about,” Raylan said. “You wouldn’t have to’ve been there. Less you brought the doctor to the motel. That how it worked? I’m thinkin the doctor must’ve hired you. Caught you stealin his car and signed you up. You look around for some dumb white boys and hire the Crowes?”

“You telling me,” Cuba said, “I got somethin goin with takin people’s kidneys and then sellin ’em?”

“I see you as the middleman,” Raylan said, “between the doctor and the Crowes.”

“You want to talk to Coover and Dickie? Ask ’em about stealin kidneys?” Cuba said. “I be anxious to see that.”

Coover and Dickie Crowe were still boys in their forties. When they weren’t driving around looking for poon, they hung out at Dickie’s house the other side of the mountain watching porn. Coover’s house was a mess and smelled. Dickie’s was busy inside with his Elvis Presley memorabilia:

Fifty-seven photographs of Elvis in the front room, posters in the hall and kitchen. There were Elvis bobble heads; a bong looking like Elvis; a jar of dirt from the garden at Graceland; a photo of a cloud formation that looked like Elvis that Dickie paid a hundred dollars for; and a pair of towels Elvis used to wipe his face while performing, now doilies on the backrests of Dickie’s La-Z-Boys.

Coover said, “I thought you was getting rid of all this Elvis shit, tired of lookin at it.”

“When I get around to it,” Dickie said.

“Give it to the nigger, he can sell it.”

“I said, when I get around to it.”

Dickie had dismal hair he combed back and teased into a wave he sprayed to hold rigid. He wore starched white shirts with Hollywood collars that touched his earlobes, bought a dozen in Las Vegas for a bill apiece.

Coover had hair growing wild he never combed. Girls told him, Jesus, it didn’t hurt to take a bath once in a while, clean his house, least use some soap powder on that pile of dishes. They told him he was gonna have rats nesting in his kitchen. Coover said, “They’s already some moved in.” He wore Ed Hardy T-shirts or the “Death and Glory” track jacket that had a skull and dagger on it.

Y ou’d never tell they were brothers. Dickie was picky and liked to scowl, his bony face sticking out of his Hollywood collars. Coover, stoned most days, did whatever he felt like. Dickie would say, “I’m telling you for the last time, clean yourself up, or I’ll shoot you in the ass while you’re sleepin.” Coover’d say, “Where you gettin the balls to do it?” They spoke like that to each other all the time.

Dickie said, “You talk to Pap?”

“He started on me about kidneys,” Coover said. “I’m like, ‘What’re you sayin I done? You gone crazy?’ ”

“I give him a hurt look,” Dickie said. “Ask him, ‘You believe me and Coove’d do somethin like that?’ ”

“I ast was he drinkin again.”

“He don’t want to hear we cut into a body,” Dickie said, “but he don’t see nothin wrong with sellin the kidneys. He said, ‘You realize they’s hundreds of people need kidneys?’ And did I know they’d pay to get ’em? Pap said thousands of dollars. You know what he’s tellin us, don’t you?”

“Sayin he don’t mind us bein in the kidney business,” Coover said, “long as he gets his money.”

Dickie still had a grin on his face.

“You can’t help but love old Pap, can you?”

C oover had let Cuba Franks take his car to deliver ten grand to Pervis, their old man’s cut of what they’d scored off Angel. It meant Dickie had to drive over to Coover’s this morning, sit in the smelly house and talk about what they were into now, like this kidney business. Dickie wasn’t sure he liked it.

Coover came in the front room from the kitchen to tell him, “God damn rats are lickin the dirty dishes again.” He pulled out the top drawer of an old chiffarobe.“What’re you lookin for?”

“My Smith, goddamn it.”

“I been wantin to ask you,” Dickie said, “did it bother you any puttin Angel in the bathtub?”

“Did it bother me?”

“All the blood.”

“It wasn’t ourn, was it?” Coover brought a chromed Smith amp; Wesson. 44 out of the top drawer. He said, “I had to close him up and I did. I don’t want to hear no more about it.”

“We didn’t do one thing fast enough,” Dickie said. “Even strippin him.”

“What’d I say? ‘You want him nekked, whyn’t you bring shears?’ But you know what I’m thinkin,” Coover said. “We watch a few more times, shit, we’ll know how to snip out a kidney. Me and you’ll split the hunnert thou.”

“What if the guy dies on us?” Dickie said.

“The first time, yeah, we might cut somethin we shouldn’t of, but we still got the kidneys. Keep the fucker alive and sell him back his own set, that’s the ticket.”

“I’d just as soon,” Dickie said, “not be in so big a goddamn hurry.”

“Look at it like learnin a trade,” Coover said, spinning the cylinder of his revolver to check the loads.

Dickie stepped to the door and opened it to let some air come in the house. He looked out and said, “Cuba’s back,” watching the Cadillac turn into the yard trailing dust. “Hey, and another car’s comin behind.”

Coover was going in the kitchen with his Smith, not looking around.

T hey were out of the trees now, driving into the yard, Raylan creeping behind the Cadillac, and the sound of gunfire-two shots fired, that flat, hard sound, and two more-got Raylan to swerve around the Cadillac, Rachel calling out, “Where is he?” Raylan braking, rolling up to the porch.

“He wasn’t shooting at us,” Raylan said.

Cuba Franks brought the Cadillac alongside and got out saying the same thing. “Coover’s cleanin his house is all, with his six-gun.”

Raylan was on the porch now, Rachel out of the car wst of the atching his back. She saw Cuba Franks step up on the porch with his cool stride but anxious now, she could tell. Her eyes were on Raylan and saw Dickie come out on the porch in his Hollywood shirt, Dickie looking like his pictures. She heard him say to Raylan:

“I’d swear you were drivin a Beamer.”

Rachel saw the way his long fingers lay against his thighs, then moved into the slit pockets of his Levi’s.