Angel’s offered for sale. I told him, ‘Pray to St. Christopher you get ’em back’ and he came through.”
Art said, “What you’re saying, St. Christopher got Dickie and Coover whacked so Angel wouldn’t have to pay for his kidneys.”
“More or less.”
Art said, “We’re lookin for Cuba Franks, what he’s been doing since his convictions. A year ago he chauffeured for a rich guy owns horses. Cuba Franks, says he’s from Nigeria. Had the job for nine months and quit.”
“Wasn’t making enough?”
“Got tired of putting on his African accent. That’s what Mrs. Burgoyne told us. Harry Burgoyne said, ‘That’s what they do, they walk out on you. Only one African American I’d give high marks to and that’s Old Tom. He died on me.’ ”
“I know why Cuba quit,” Raylan said.
“Our office up there’s still lookin for him. Nine months, he must know his way around.”
“Has friends there,” Raylan said. “You don’t suppose—”
Art said, “Do I suppose he has a friend, a doctor at the transplant center, a woman?”
“Do you?” Raylan said.
L ayla’s voice said, “Where are you?”
“I’m about to leave the hills for the four-lane,” Cuba said. “The Crowe brothers left for heaven this afternoon, less they got rules against weedheads. I had to do the old man, since he was in the house.”
“You told me he has a cute maid.”
“Only what I heard. I was never up to the house before.”
“Was she cute?”
“She was too young for that old man.”
“She was cute, huh?”
“I let her go.”
Now silence on the phone.
Cuba said, “She don’t know me and I don’t know her, how we left it.”
“You realize,” Layla said, “if I’d been with you and we could’ve worked it? We’d have six more kidneys in one swoop. Eight,” Layla said, “we throw in Rita. What do you think? Eighty grand.”
Chapter Ten
T he Lexington office gave Raylan a partner whether he wanted one or not.
Bill Nichols, fifty-five, half his life a marshal; slim, about five-ten, hair cut short around a tan bald crown. He told Raylan:
“Fourteen I knew everything, shaved my head to become a hundred-and-thirty-pound white supremacist. Before I got any swastika tats, I got tired of getting beat up by these grown neo-Nazis dumber’n stones. I said fuck this and reversed my field, entered a seminary to become a brother, not a priest, a brother. Play softball, or walk around with my hands in the sleeves of the habit thinking of girls. I quit, went to UK, joined the marshals and married my wife, Julie, twenty-seven years now. We have three boys wanderin the earth, good guys, smart, three-point-fives or better. Max teaches English at a school in France. Alex designs book covers for Italian publishers and French, and Tim’s writing his second novel in New York. The first one sold four thousand. I asked him what it’s about, the one he’s writing. He said the subtext is the exposure of artistic pretension. And my little girl, Kate, senior in high school, wants to be a marshal.”
“I’m gonna have to get busy,” Raylan said.
“How long you been married?”
“I’m divorced,” Raylan said. “You ever look for the Nazi lovers beat you up?”
“Two of ’em are gone, overdosed. The third guy,” Nichols said, “by the time I found him was a crackhead, his tats hard to read. I stood him against a brick wall, put on leather gloves while I’m lookin him in the eye. I hit him one-two, both sides of his jaw. He went down and I stood lookin at him.”
Raylan said, “He remember you?”
“I doubt it.”
“Something you had to do before you got too old,” Raylan said. “It’s a shame he wasn’t a wanted felon.”
“So I could shoot him he resisted.”
“I meant you’d have a reason to hunt him down.”
Nichols said, “You’ve shot and killed a man?”
“Yes, I have,” Raylan said.
“An armed fugitive?”
“More than one,” Raylan said.
“It doesn’t matter how many,
Diane Duane
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