Raylan: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

about what they were into now, like this kidney business. Dickie wasn’t sure he liked it.
    Coover came in the front room from the kitchen to tell him, “God damn rats are lickin the dirty dishes again.” He pulled out the top drawer of an old chiffarobe.
    “What’re you lookin for?”
    “My Smith, goddamn it.”
    “I been wantin to ask you,” Dickie said, “did it bother you any puttin Angel in the bathtub?”
    “Did it bother me?”
    “All the blood.”
    “It wasn’t ourn, was it?” Coover brought a chromed Smith & Wesson .44 out of the top drawer. He said, “I had to close him up and I did. I don’t want to hear no more about it.”
    “We didn’t do one thing fast enough,” Dickie said. “Even strippin him.”
    “What’d I say? ‘You want him nekked, whyn’t you bring shears?’ But you know what I’m thinkin,” Coover said. “We watch a few more times, shit, we’ll know how to snip out a kidney. Me and you’ll split the hunnert thou.”
    “What if the guy dies on us?” Dickie said.
    “The first time, yeah, we might cut somethin we shouldn’t of, but we still got the kidneys. Keep the fucker alive and sell him back his own set, that’s the ticket.”
    “I’d just as soon,” Dickie said, “not be in so big a goddamn hurry.”
    “Look at it like learnin a trade,” Coover said, spinning the cylinder of his revolver to check the loads.
    Dickie stepped to the door and opened it to let some air come in the house. He looked out and said, “Cuba’s back,” watching the Cadillac turn into the yard trailing dust. “Hey, and another car’s comin behind.”
    Coover was going in the kitchen with his Smith, not looking around.
    T hey were out of the trees now, driving into the yard, Raylan creeping behind the Cadillac, and the sound of gunfire—two shots fired, that flat, hard sound, and two more—got Raylan to swerve around the Cadillac, Rachel calling out, “Where is he?” Raylan braking, rolling up to the porch.
    “He wasn’t shooting at us,” Raylan said.
    Cuba Franks brought the Cadillac alongside and got out saying the same thing. “Coover’s cleanin his house is all, with his six-gun.”
    Raylan was on the porch now, Rachel out of the car watching his back. She saw Cuba Franks step up on the porch with his cool stride but anxious now, she could tell. Her eyes were on Raylan and saw Dickie come out on the porch in his Hollywood shirt, Dickie looking like his pictures. She heard him say to Raylan:
    “I’d swear you were drivin a Beamer.”
    Rachel saw the way his long fingers lay against his thighs, then moved into the slit pockets of his Levi’s.
    Now Coover was coming out, bright-metal revolver in one hand, at his leg, a dead rat in the other, Coover holding it up by the tail.
    “All the shootin,” Dickie said, “that’s what you got?”
    Coover’s gaze went to Raylan, giving the marshal his mean look. He said, “Another one of the fuckers is still in the kitchen. You like to try for it?”
    “I shot rats when I was a kid,” Raylan said. “Chase ’em out of the shithouses.” He said to Coover, “All you have to do is go out’n the kitchen, huh?”
    Coover squinted at him. “Where I know you?”
    “They’re marshals,” Dickie said, “him and the Negress.”
    Coover looked toward Cuba. “Set up those lawn chairs—they someplace—we can sit down and talk.” He said to Raylan, “You can ask am I growin reefer and I’ll tell you no. But first I ask you any God damn thing I want. How’s that sound?”
    “I only have one question,” Raylan said. “How’d you and your brother get in the kidney business?”
    R achel stood by the Audi watching Raylan, Raylan the show. Watched him facing Coover holding the bright-metal piece at his leg. Watched Coover swing the rat by the tail and let it go and saw it coming at her to land on the hood of the Audi. Rachel didn’t move. Raylan didn’t either, didn’t glance around.
    But said, “Coover, you throw a dead