Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [49]
“My brother killed,” Hazen said, “ain’t something I can put out of my mind.”
“I understand,” Raylan said. “But getting Boyd’s my job, not yours.”
“You ever forget it,” Hazen said, “call me. I’ll come remind you.”
Another time they’d be good friends. Raylan offered his hand to Hazen, already walking away.
Carol came out of the car, Casper following. She said to Raylan, “That was Otis’s brother, wasn’t it? I thought he’d left. What’s he looking for, revenge? Boyd gets the chair or what’s his name will shoot him. Hazen?”
Casper said, “Or shoot the two of you, you were both there.”
She gave him a look.
Casper said, “The intended victims.”
“Why is everyone picking on me?” she said in a normal tone. “We go inside, I’ll do five minutes of warm-up, get some of the crowd on my side, and the bleeding hearts will take their shots. Why do I want to turn mountains into dunes? ‘Lifeless dunes,’ I was told one time. I’ve forgot their line. But what we do is lay waste to beauty, to grandeur, to God’s idea of a pretty nice place . . . that’s full of coal.”
Raylan listening, watched her light a cigarette.
Casper said, “You then put a curious look on your face.”
“It isn’t curious, it’s a look of curiosity. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it God put all that coal under the grandeur?”
“It stops them in their tracks,” Casper said.
“I say, ‘Heck, if God put it there . . .’ Or I might say, ‘Hell, is God tryin to hide it on us?’ I smile. ‘Playin a game on us?’ I tell them, ‘But gettin it out gives you men jobs and heats your homes,’ and I go through all the coal rewards.”
She turned to Raylan.
“I’m warmed up. How are you doing? Wait. ‘Har you doin, big boy?’ I start thinkin that way and it comes out of my background naturally.” She said to Raylan, “You don’t comment? My security, Marshal One-Liner?”
“I haven’t thought of anything,” Raylan said, “worth saying.”
“You just did it again. You make one-line declarations. You sort of mope around, so to speak, while your mind is flicking lines at you.”
Raylan said, “Wait’ll I tell Art.”
Carol said, “See?” She said, “When I finish my chore we’ll go back to the house—where you picked me up and told me how smart you are, but it didn’t work, did it?”
Raylan said, “When I take you back to Woodland Hills, my time’s up, isn’t it?”
Carol said, “I’ll let you decide.”
Chapter Twenty-one
She talked all the way back to Woodland Hills.
“The woman asks, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you like beauty?’ Like I’m color-blind, void of any appreciation of nature. I was tempted to go with the usual, the more heavy-handed. ‘You’d rather look at the view than your husband having a job?’ But I tried something else, agreeing with her. ‘Of course I’d rather have the view. I watch the work going on, your husbands operating those giant machines, and all I can wonder is, How long will it take us to restore that grandeur, home for all of our animal friends.’ I don’t know why I said that, it just came out. So I added, ‘And some like skunks who aren’t especially our friends.’ ”
In the limo going back to Carol’s place, Raylan said, “You could hold your nose as you’re saying it.”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Get a laugh,” Raylan said, “from the ones who don’t know you’re putting them on.”
Neither spoke again—Boyd watching then in the rearview—until they pulled up the drive to the Colonial and Carol said to Raylan, “I want you to come in with me.”
Boyd wasn’t told anything. He sat there.
She took him into a paneled study with pictures of horses and furniture covered in Black Watch plaid, the room done, Raylan believed, by someone other than Casper. He said, “Casper loans out his house to the company, doesn’t worry about guests looting the place? Ones he doesn’t even know?”
“You think I’m a looter?” Carol said.
She was at the tea table bar pouring, Raylan believed, cognac. He wasn