Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [19]
Inside, the plywood walls painted a flat white, Pervis had his hydroponic gardens, tended with care to maintain air temperature, ventilation, the feeding of nutrients to the water, and a 400-watt lighting system on twenty-four hours a day during germination, and reduced to twelve hours on and twelve off during the growing period. Once harvested, each of Pervis’s hundred or so plants would yield an ounce of top-grade marijuana. It gave Pervis a cash crop every three to four months that grossed about fifty thousand dollars.
Raylan wondered if smoking it made you laugh at dumb things you’d think were funny.
Bob might have molested Loretta or he might not have. But he did shoot McCready in his bedroom slippers in front of his daughter, who took pictures with her cell phone Raylan could show Bob, if he needed to. Not down there with the help having their dinner, but off by those cowsheds. He was told Pervis put up signs that said AUTHORIZED BY STATE LAW. KEEP OUT. The way Pervis got around being robbed or arrested. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED OR SHOT.
He’d drive down to the yard in the Audi . . . But did he want to confront Bob at the table? Give him a chance to show off, all the help watching him? Raylan could hear Bob: “Wha you talking about? I shot some old man was scaring me?” Bob playing to the crowd.
What Raylan did, he drove down to the yard following switchbacks until he came out in the open, angled toward the barn and the picnic tables—all the pickers watching him—raised his hand to Bob Valdez and kept going, drove around the barn and out to the pasture, the clean white cowsheds standing in the sun.
They came out for him in a pickup, Bob driving, and pulled up near the Audi.
Raylan stood a distance from the car, the pasture behind him, about sixty feet from the two getting out of the pickup, approaching now, Bob Valdez with his .44 slung low; the other one, another Mexican in a straw hat, carrying a twelve-gauge under his arm like he was out here to shoot birds, relaxed, a step behind Bob. He looked tired. Or he was stoned.
Forty or so feet now Bob stopped and grinned at Raylan.
“I didn’t do it. Whatever it is you thinking.”
Raylan said, “I got snapshots of you shootin Ed McCready.” Raylan’s stare went to the other one. “I got you snappin the coon trap on Ed’s foot, Loretta takin the pictures with her phone. You ever hear of that? I got enough to put you in handcuffs and take you in.”
Bob said, “Yes . . . ? Tell me what you saying.”
“I’m busy. I got something else I have to do.”
“Oh,” Bob said, “more important than me, uh?”
“All I want to tell you,” Raylan said, “replant Ed’s patch, give him five hundred for the gunshot to his leg, his injured foot, so he won’t have to sell Loretta to white slavers. I’m telling you to keep your hands off her. You do all that, we’re square. You don’t, I’ll bust you for shootin him.”
“You kidding me?” Bob said. He sounded a little surprised. “They two of us here. You got a gun on you somewhere?”
“Look,” Raylan said, “I take it out I’ll shoot you through the heart before you clear your weapon. Your partner, I’ll wait for him to wake up. What’d you bring him for?” He saw Bob glance at the other guy. “He’s stoned,” Raylan said. “Tell me you’ll pay Ed so I can get back to work. I’m after a woman steals kidneys and sells ’em.”
Bob said, “Yeah? I heard of that, selling parts of the body. What’s a kidney bring?”
“About ten grand,” Raylan said, “the going rate.”
“I couldn’ do it,” Bob said, shaking his head and setting his straw again. “Man, cutting in to some guy’s body.”
“I couldn’t either,” Raylan said. “What kind of person would it take?