Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [10]
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?”
Coover 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 & 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.
They 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 watching 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.
Now Coover was coming out, bright-metal revolver in one hand, at his leg, a dead rat in the other, Coover holding it up by the tail.
“All the shootin,” Dickie said, “that’s what you got?”
Coover’s gaze went to Raylan, giving the marshal his mean look. He said, “Another one of the fuckers is still in the kitchen. You like to try for