Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [4]
“I sold ninety-proof whiskey clear as spring water, not a speck of charcoal in her. I sold it from a Ford looked like it was stock I used as my store. Never stopped runnin these hills and acquired ‘Speed’ as my handle. You understand this was fifty years ago. I raced quarter-mile dirt and worked up to try NASCAR. Came up against Junior Johnson and saw my future get put on the trailer.”
“You sell groceries now,” Raylan said, “and your boys run your other business.”
Pervis said, “Finally gettin to it, aren’t we?”
“I’m not Drug Enforcement,” Raylan said. “Long as they got nothin on you I don’t either. But I’m told you got fields of marijuana, a good thousand acres, from here to West Virginia.”
“What’s good about it?” Pervis said. “You plant a third for the law, a third for the thieves and what’s left you sell to dealers, the ones makin the profit. I’m confidin this to you so we don’t waste time lyin to each other. I didn’t know your daddy, but I’ll swear by your granddaddy. Six years I came over to Harlan and sold all the liquor he cooked and we did better’n fair.”
Raylan said, “I’m told he was a preacher.”
“Cooked all week and preached Sunday,” Pervis said. “Boy, you don’t know your own people.”
“I knew your boy Coover back in my school days till he quit to roam the earth, do whatever he wanted. And Richard . . . ?”
“Been goin by Dickie since he was a tad.”
“What I have is a situation here,” Raylan said. “I’m told your boys took payment for weed they never delivered.”
“You with Better Business,” Pervis said, “check on customer complaints? I might’ve heard about this. The DEA fella comes down here in his dress shoes and pays for product before he’s given any. Anxious, in a hurry to get her done. Like cuttin a fart he believes is gas and messes hisself. I’m to take your word my tads cheated this man?”
Raylan said with a straight face, “I know you love your tads. Now and then you notice them growin up to what they are today. But you heard it wrong. It wasn’t a federal agent makin the deal, it was a wanted felon. I went to that motel room with an arrest warrant on me.”
Raylan gave Pervis time to step in and say something, but he didn’t.
“I found Angel Arenas in the room,” Raylan said, “without his kidneys.”
Raylan waited again, Pervis staring at him.
“Bare-naked in an ice bath.”
Pervis said, “This boy’s missin his kidneys?”
“They offered ’em back later on, while he’s in the hospital, for a hundred thousand.”
Raylan waited again before saying, “But he won’t have to pay for ’em.”
Pervis didn’t ask why, didn’t say a word.
Raylan told him, “We’re on the case now, the marshals. Gonna stop this new business startin up.”
“You’re tellin me to my face,” Pervis said, “my boys cut this man open and took his kidneys?”
“I think they had somebody along knew how. Whoever he is,” Raylan said, “I’m gonna find him.”
This time Pervis brought a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, got one lighted and blew a stream of smoke like he was cooling himself off. He said, “Well, I know it wasn’t my boys. Who was it told you?”
“The man waitin to get his kidneys back,” Raylan said.
“He name my boys?”
“After a while he did.”
“He lied,” Pervis said, “account of the broke deal. My boys farm reefer, they don’t cut into a man’s body for his parts. Even if they knew how.”
“They shoot a buck,” Raylan said, “they know how to dress him out.”
He was on the edge with this old man, one time bootlegger, dirt-track driver, the man pinching his cigarette between his fingers staring at Raylan. Raylan said to him, “Mr. Crowe, I respect how you feel, but I’m gonna have a talk with your boys, in your presence if you want. Have ’em come by the next day or so, or I’ll hunt ’em down.”
“I always felt,” Pervis said, “we’re a good twenty years behind the times livin here, what we get by on. But it’s how I like it. Now you tell me we’re catchin up, gettin into this new business, sellin parts of the human body.”
“You brought yourself up-to-date,” Raylan said,