Raylan: A Novel Read Free Page A

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.”
    P ervis 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