“Else you’d be wanted for bustin into drugstores,” Pervis said. “Clean out the painkillers and sell ’em to folks want to stay numb, not have to think.”
“You carry those people?”
“The ones grow reefer in their backyard I keep on the books. They sell a crop and pay their store debt with hunnert-dollar bills.”
“Can I ask why they call you Speed?”
He was stringy and stooped in his seventies, wore a hairpiece that wasn’t bad, though Raylan could tell Pervis set it on his head every morning. Had a neat part that was in it forever. Pervis let his expression sag into deep lines. He had not smiled since Raylan entered the store.
“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, “wholesaling marijuana. Drug Enforcement thinks of your boys as high-tech rednecks drivin around in Cadillacs, talkin to each other on cell phones.”
“You ever get to accuse my boys face-to-face,” Pervis said, bringing out a jar of moonshine from under the counter, a peach floating in the clear whiskey, “this’ll help ease your pain.”
Pervis put on his gray hat with the snap brim he’d been wearing the better part of his life, and went up the log steps two hundred feet to his home: a two-story white frame house he’d have repainted as it showed wear. He went in the bathroom and took a leak, shook the dew off his lily and started going again, goddamn it.
Rita was on the couch in the sitting room watching Days of Our Lives. He got close enough to see she was asleep in her maid’s uniform, her bare legs coming out of the skirt that covered her hips and stopped there.
Rita was a black girl, black as ebony, man oh man, the Queen of Africa Pervis found waiting in line for work. He said to her, “You’re on the dodge, aren’cha? You know how to pick this stuff? Don’t matter. You cook?”
Rita said, “What you have in mind?”
She was his maid and cooked all right, mostly Mex. Pervis paid her a hundred dollars a day every day at supper. A time came, he said, “How much you have in the suitcase? The one in your closet?” He thought about it and said, “Jesus Christ, you must have a hunnert thousand easy.”
“A hundred and five,” Rita said. “But it ain’t in the suitcase.”
“You leavin me?”
“I got to get into something, put the whole thing into weed you let me have cheap cause we in each other’s hearts. Least once a week you feel stirrings in your dick, who is it says time to go beddy-bye?”
Pervis said, “You want to sell weed?” Like he couldn’t believe his ears. “That’s all? You want to be set up? Tell me what you want.”
Feeling better now, relieved. He’d help her out if she’d stay here in the house. They’d talk about it. Right now he had to see Bob Valdez. Sat down by the phone and dialed Bob’s number. He waited a few rings, hung up, waited a minute and dialed the number again.
This time he heard, “Bob Valdez, at your service.”
“Bob,” Pervis said, “you keep your cell on you. Have I told you that before? I believe I have.” He didn’t give Bob a chance to say a word, told him, “Stay put, I’m comin out to see you,” and hung up the phone.
Bob Valdez, the name he was going by at this time, was loaned to Pervis by the Mexican Mafia—what they called themselves—to act as security, watch over the patches and see they got their cut. Pervis would put up with it for the time being. This Bob Valdez had been a gun thug for mine owners during strikes. He had his own patch and drove a four-door Mercedes, a black one. He also had a tricked-out ATV, that little all-terrain number that climbed up the sides of mountains. Bob was a born American, but preferred acting Mexican in his ways. Today Pervis would tell Bob about this marshal bothering him.
They had breakfast in Harlan at the Huddle House, Art noticing the way Raylan bro
ke up a strip of bacon in his grits, a pat of butter melting in it, and added salt, Art asking Raylan if he’d tried the jar Pervis gave him.
“It was good. The peach didn’t mess it up any. I had a couple of pulls and gave it to an old coot on the street. It brought tears to his eyes.”
Art said, “You know marijuana’s now the biggest cash crop in the state?”
“Makes you proud,” Raylan said. “We right on California’s tail, and I guess Maui Wowee’s. It shows we’re resourceful. Seventy thousand coal miners out of work, a bunch of ’em become planters. Last night on TV this news reader with the hair said marijuana was getting out of hand. He said you come across any patches, be sure to report it to the police. You believe it? The only people get worked up over reefer are ones never tried it.”
Art said, “You haven’t seen Pervis’s boys.”
“Not yet.”
“You know he’s called them by now,” Art said. “You can kiss your BMW good-bye, they’ll know it. DEA has a Mercedes they might let you have.”
Raylan liked the way this breakfast was going.
He said, “The one I want is the doctor, and the only way I have of getting to him is through the Crowes, to tell me about him. Was the doctor working for a cut, so to speak? Or’d they grab one off the street. The doctor at the hospital said he was a pro. Used the latest method of extracting kidneys, the right spots in the belly, but didn’t close up after. That was left to whoever used the staples. One of the Crowes? I want to ask ’em about it in a public place, so I don’t get shot or beat up.”
Art said, “Or we get the state cops to lean on ’em till they give up the doctor.”
“I don’t know,” Raylan said, “I’m starting to think it might be the doctor running the show. Calls the Crowes when he needs heavy lifting done.”
Pervis drove out to the camp in his Ford V8, a blower sticking out of the hood, and watched Bob Valdez approach from the barn. It was home to field hands who’d come to plant and return in ninety days to prune and trim Pervis’s marijuana, the crops in this part of Knox County.
The day Pervis hired him he said, “Bob, you keep what you make off your patch. You catch anybody growing weed on their own without my say, snap a varmint trap to their foot and fire ’em.”
Bob Valdez cocked a willow root straw close on his eyes in the afternoon sun. He wore a .44 revolver holstered on his hip and liked to stand around the yard with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt and make remarks to girls in the crew. He liked that hot-lookin black girl, Pervis’s housemaid, and would stop by there when he knew Pervis was at his store. Rita would tell him, “Mister ain’t here.” Told him every time he pulled up in his ATV making a racket. A few days ago she said, “Bob, you want to fuck me, huh? Mister finds out you come by, he can have your ass deported.”
“Hell you talkin about?” Bob said. “I’m as American as Daniel Boone, born here in Kaintuck.”
“You gonna die here he finds out you messing with his maid.”
“You kiddin me?” Bob said. “Mister’s not once ever tried yellin at me. He knows better.”
“He never raises his voice to anybody,” Rita said, “cause he don’t have to.”
This time Pervis came by to tell Bob, “I want you to do something for me.”
“I’m your man,” Bob said.
“A U.S. marshal come to see me name of Raylan Givens. You know which one I mean?”
“I’m pretty sure. Yeah, he was pointed out, wears a good-lookin hat.”
“I want you to keep him away from my boys.”
Bob said, “Oh?” He said, “Is this guy a pervert?” Bob tryin hard to look serious. He said, “You want me to become like a babysitter for Coover and Dickie?”
Pervis stared at him.
Pervis said, “In this part of the United States of America, I got enormous pull. Way more’n your Taco Mafia. I got judges doin favors for me and state troopers among my best friends. I call ’em down on you, you’re in jail inside an hour. Bob, you get smart with me again, that’s how we’ll play it.”
Bob said, “Hey, come on,” managing a grin. “I was jus kiddin around with you.”
Pervis said, “Keep this marshal away from my boys or I’ll hire somebody knows how.”
He got in his blown Ford V8 and blew away.
Chapter Three
Coming out of the Huddle House Art said, “Medical schools use ten thousand cadavers a year. All over the world there’s a need for body parts.”
“Then why’d these guys,” Raylan said, “only take Angel’s kidneys? Turn around and sell ’em back to him the same day. Maybe this is a new way to work it. They don’t have to store the body and wait for buyers.”
“That takes a lot of planning, pickin out the victims,” Art said. “I don’t see these jitterbugs have the patience. Angel’s ready to make a deal, he’ll come up with the money. You come along and tell him he doesn’t have to.”
“What else am I gonna promise him? But what do these dumbbells know about the business of selling kidneys?”
“It’s in the news,” Art said. “The guy in New Jersey sold off parts from a thousand cadavers.”
Raylan said, “I don’t see the Crowes reading the paper less they’re in it.”
“A hundred pounds of marijuana,” Art said, “should gross you three hundred thousand—once you grow and cultivate it and get it to market. A human body with all its parts sold separate, the kidneys, the heart, other organs, the liver, the eyes . . . bone, tendons, the skin sold by the square inch, can get you up to a quarter million.”
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 morn
ing. 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 was watching Cuba get out and walk to the car’s trunk.
“Check his hair,” Raylan said, handing Rachel the glasses. “You ever see hair that straight on a brother?”
“Not around here,” Rachel said.
“He’s got a bunch of white genes but not enough to pass.”
“Or maybe he did but didn’t care for the life,” Rachel said.
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