Raylan

Chapter Eleven

Raylan came off the elevator and crossed the hall to a waiting area, vinyl furniture and magazines, Nichols in there reading People. He closed the magazine and picked up a file folder next to him on the couch.

“You have lunch?”

“Ham and lima beans,” Raylan said, settling into the couch.

“The days we’re lookin at,” Nichols said, “two of the nurses from this floor were away on leave, deaths in their family. Gladys, thirty-five years a transplant nurse, now a coordinator, came back and put her dad’s death notice in the nurses’ room. The other one’s Layla.” Nichols brought a black-and-white head shot from the folder and handed it to Raylan.

“Thin face,” Raylan said, meaning she didn’t appear to be fat.

“Five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds,” Nichols said. “She’s thirty-seven.”

“She’s got great eyes,” Raylan said, “they hold on to you. Who died in her family?”

“Nobody. Layla took a two-week leave to nurse her old mom back from death’s door, coughing her lungs out, but didn’t die, she’s recovering, quit smoking.”

“Where’s the mom live?”

“New Orleans.”

“You check it out?”

“Soon as I finish reading about Harrison and Calista gettin married after eight years keeping house. Then catch up on why Jake Pavelka says Vienna cheated on him, whoever they are.”

“Layla,” Raylan said, “you notice her eyes. She makes you keep lookin at them.” Raylan squinted at the woman in the photo not quite smiling at him. He said, “I’d like to know what she’s thinking.”

Nichols turned his head to look at the photo. “She’s starin at the photographer thinking, You take one more I’m gonna get up and kick you in the nuts.”

“I don’t see her impatient,” Raylan said.

“No, she’s thinking it in a nice way.” Nichols looked at his watch. “She ought to be out of surgery by now. She’s helping Dr. Howard Goldman transplant a kidney. Like Layla doesn’t know how.”

Raylan said, “She’s our girl, huh?”

“I don’t see anyone else,” Nichols said.

They both got up from the couch: Raylan to stand in the opening to the hall, looking at the far end where they’d come out of surgery, Nichols to go check on Layla’s mom.

R aylan watched them come out, both in white lab coats, Layla holding the door for Dr. Goldman, the young doctor doing most of the talking, Layla using her hands to gesture, shaking her head, talking her way out of what he wanted to do. Like get laid. Raylan had stopped him earlier in the day to ask about nurses. Stopped him and committed his name to memory. Howard Goldman, that was it. The doctor had no time for him, waved his hand in front of his face and kept going. Now, down the hall, he was opening his hands to Layla, the hands he had used to restore someone’s life and it had given him a hard-on.

They were coming this way again.

Raylan walked up to Dr. Goldman-didn’t look at Layla-and said, “Excuse me, Doctor, but my sister’s suppose to be here, seein about having a kidney transplant?”

Layla said, “What’s her name?”

“Raejeanne Givens,” Raylan said, his younger sister’s name. “I don’t know why I don’t see any family. I came straight from the airport.”

Layla said, “Let’s check on Raejeanne,” laying her hand on Raylan’s arm and giving the doctor what Raylan saw as a kiss-off look with a shrug. Dr. Goldman walked past him without a word and on down the hall.

“I’ve been here an hour,” Raylan said, “trying to get information. You just come out of surgery, huh?” He held out his hand. “I’m Raylan Givens, deputy United States marshal. I’m sorry if I intruded on you and the doctor. I’m concerned about my sister.”

She said, “Hi, I’m Layla. The doctor just finished a kidney transplant and you say Raejeanne needs one? That’s funny, cause we don’t have a Raejeanne scheduled for anything, not even an exam.” Layla raising her eyebrows with kind of a smile.

“It doesn’t matter,” Raylan said. “You didn’t look happy talking to Howard. I thought I may as well step in, see if I could free you. You seemed to pick up on it.”

She said, “You want to question me about something?”

“What I’m looking for,” Raylan said, “is a doctor takes out kidneys in motel rooms and sells them on the body-parts market.”

She was smiling now. “You’re crazy.”

“A doctor here can’t have a gambling problem? Goes broke out at Keeneland and gets in debt to a shylock?”

“They bet playing golf,” Layla said.

“I understand,” Raylan said, “to take out a kidney, you make your incision in the front.”

“How do you know that?”

“Talkin to guys. Two of ’em said it was a woman took their kidneys. I thought, Well, maybe the doctor had a woman’s mask on. You put the donated ones in the front too?”

“You put them anywhere you want,” Layla said. “What kind of mask was it?”

“Rubber, slips over your head. I think it was suppose to be Mrs. Obama.”

“Really.”

“Well, the other mask, I’m pretty sure, was the president.”

Layla said, “The other mask…?”

“The one Cuba Franks was wearing.”

Raylan let that hang to see if Layla could handle it.

She took a moment to shake her head and shrug in her white transplant nurse outfit. Layla said, “I wish I could help you,” started to turn away and stopped. She said, “Why can’t the doctor be a woman?”

“I’m told all the MDs here are men.”

“She could be from another hospital.”

“You’re right, except Cuba knows this place. He’s been here once or twice with his boss. You know Cuba Franks?”

“I don’t think so,” Layla said. “I wish I could help you,” and started to walk away.

Raylan let her take a few steps before saying to her, “Layla, you’re not the one stealing kidneys, are you?”

He may as well get that said, thinking it would stop her and she’d turn around. Not Layla. She raised her hand over her head to give Raylan a lazy kind of wave, often seen in movies.

Again in the waiting room, with all its old magazines, he thought of what he’d say to her the next time. He wasn’t sure until Nichols came in saying, “She lied about nursing her mom back to health. The old lady’s been in a home with Alzheimer’s the past three years.”

C uba was staying with Layla in her apartment on Virginia Avenue, the other side of South Limestone from the UK campus and hospitals; Cuba on the pull-out sofa, Layla with the bedroom to herself when they weren’t using it. She liked to come home and have a drink while she took off her whites and sat down to watch the news in a T-shirt and panties. It would turn Cuba on and they’d go in the bedroom so Cuba could satisfy himself; her too most of the time. He knew when a chick was faking, always overdoing it. Layla never said a word and he’d wait for the gasp, the groan, like all the air was being sucked out of her. They’d watch TV then and have some more vodkas while he deep-fried supper.

This evening she came in talking about Raylan Givens and Cuba felt a tug in his gut and thought, Shit, though it didn’t surprise him. The man kept on the job. He said to Layla, “How’d he get on us?”

“You worked for the Burgoynes.”

“You layin it on me? They already lookin at dead Crowes.”

“You had to do it,” Layla said. “But, you let the maid go, Rita.”

“I knew you’d bring her up.”

Layla stepped up to him in her nurse outfit, put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth from tender to hard. Finally easing off she said, “Don’t worry about it. But I think we should hold up on doing Harry. The marshal would’ve talked to him. Probably asked his wife a few questions. You got it on with her, didn’t you?”

“Not too much,” Cuba said. “I been thinking, I go see Mr. Harry and apologize for leavin, this poor, uneducated Negro not knowin shit how to act. But that darky skit depressed me. I tell him I got a new gig we can try.”

“What is it?”

“I make up something-bring te sngiv›ars to his motherfuckin racist eyes laughing. I say I got a tape he can listen to. Bring him here and you pop him with the needle.”

“How does he pay us, say, two hundred and fifty thousand?”

“I’m workin on it.”

Layla said, “We’re not doing Harry just yet. I’ve been thinking, we could be gathering a few more organs. Gregg Allman just had a liver transplant, he can drink again- yeaaah! We’ll extract kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas. Hearts are too tricky. You have to keep it pumping.”

Cuba thinking, Like sellin used auto parts, a transmission, a manifold. She made it sound easy, reminding him that time, “You don’t do the Crowes they’ll tell on us.” Her bein cool about it’s what scared him. Like telling him to close the window so it don’t rain in.

“This might blow your mind,” Layla said, “but I’m thinking the one to do next is the marshal. We wouldn’t even have to lure him. Raylan has more questions for me.”

Cuba’s mind saw Dickie holding a gun while Raylan good as dared him to raise it. He said to Layla, “Where you want to do it, here?”

“I was thinking right in the tub, instead of lugging him around, then add water. I don’t see why we’d need ice.”

“How we get him out of here?”

“In the wee small hours of the morning,” Layla said, not quite singing it, “we drop him out the window, put him in the car… Or we wait till he’s coming to and walk him out to the car.”

“You haven’t figured it out yet,” Cuba said.

“I’m thinking,” Layla said. “We have until I decide to answer the phone.”