Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [7]
Raylan said, “The guy in New Jersey with the crematorium.”
“The funeral director,” Art said. “He finishes the service and calls in his cutters. An hour later they’ve harvested all the guy’s parts worth taking and shoved what’s left in the incinerator.”
“That’s different’n what we’re lookin at,” Raylan said. “Ours sounds more like a mom-and-pop operation. But, man, they can make the dough.”
“Say a doctor loses his license and is sellin dope scrips out the back door,” Art said. “He’s known the Crowes since whoopin cough and the measles.”
“Treated ’em for a dose or two once they reached puberty,” Raylan said. “The boys live in different hollers and trade girls back and forth. DEA says once girls go up there they run home screamin.”
“This doctor drugs Angel,” Art said, “but needs somebody to put him in the tub.”
“And before you know it,” Raylan said, “the Crowes are in the body business. That make sense?”
“Does to me,” Art said. “I meant to tell you, I brought Rachel back to watch over you.”
Raylan was driving an Audi Quattro, loaned to him off the DEA lot in Harlan. He said to Rachel Brooks next to him, “I had this car one time before. I liked it, except the hood rattled at one-forty.”
“On these roads?” Rachel doubtful.
“Zero to sixty in five seconds,” Raylan said, “we ever let her out.”
“Where we goin?”
“Up here to a cemetery, has a view of Pervis’s store. He won’t set up a meeting with his boys, we have to wait till they come visit their old dad.”
They turned off the Stinking Creek road where it forked at Buckeye and drove up a low rise to the cemetery, a field of gravestones marked MILLS and MESSER.
“A few have been here more’n a hundred and fifty years,” Raylan said. “That one right there, John Mills, ‘Gone to the Mansions of Rest.’ What would you like on your stone?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Can I have a few years to think about it?”
“Gobel Messer’s says ‘Meet Me in Heaven.’ Confident by the time he passed over.” Raylan put the car in gear and crept through the cemetery to the far side. He said, “Now look straight ahead. That’s Pervis’s store over there through the trees. I make it sixty yards.”
Rachel got out her binoculars, raised them and said, “I’m inside the store, nobody shopping this morning. Now a man’s in the doorway lighting a cigarette.”
“A Camel,” Raylan said. “That’s Pervis. His boys should be along. Have to give their old dad his cut.”
“Of what?”
“The money they took off Angel.”
“How do we know that?” Rachel still watching the store.
“DEA says Pervis runs the show, he’s Big Daddy. The boys hang out, get stoned and chase girls, till the dad tells ’em what he wants done. He’s got Mexicans run the business in the field. Does it all from that dinky store. He’s the marijuana king of East Kentucky, but DEA can’t put it on him and make it stick.”
Rachel said, “The Crowes’ daddy’s in the body parts business now?”
“No, and won’t believe his boys are,” Raylan said. “Wouldn’t accept what I told him about the kidneys. Kept shaking his head. His boys would never cut into a human body, or stand to watch anybody doing it.”
“You believe him?” Rachel said.
“Yeah, cause he can’t imagine himself doing it. I said, ‘They know how to dress a buck, don’t they? Clean him out?’ Pervis had a gun he’d of shot me. It was a dumb thing to say.”
Rachel was looking off.
“Finally here come somebody. Looks like a brother drivin the Cadillac. Only one in the car.”
She handed Raylan the glasses.
He raised them saying, “DEA has this guy with the boys only a couple weeks. Drives Coover and Dickie around. His name’s Cuba something. It’s in my notes with a mug shot.”
She opened Raylan’s folder and said, “Cuba Franks, forty-five-year-old African American . . . Come on, the man’s in his sixties. Look at the lines, the old scars on his face. Five arrests, two convictions. Slim body, has that offhand strut.” She