Both fools getting the name wrong. Cuba didn’t correct them. He said, “She wants this next one straight, no reefer business, no people we know givin us the kidneys.” Cuba said, “Listen to me now.” Meaning it. “These next gigs gonna be different. We leave the man in th›
Dickie said, “Leela must be sellin to the broker cheaper’n she could make sellin to the sick person.”
Like he just thought of it. Cuba said to Dickhead, “You use the broker so you don’t expose yourself sellin to the market. See, but you can do one a night, you want.”
Coover said, “She ever talk about doin a woman? Get her in the tub nekked. One with big ninnies.”
“You see ’em floatin in the ice water,” Dickie said, “the nips stickin straight up.”
Cuba said, “I told her about the marshals stopping by. Comin back tomorrow with warrants.”
Dickie said, “We go and hide?”
“She say lay low for a while.”
“ Lay low — ” Dickie said. “Her name’s not Leela, it’s Laylo, ain’t it? Same as the song.”
Cuba went out to the hardpack yard and phoned her on his cell, looking up at trees, clouds hanging over the ridgeline.
“How you doin? You close to the next job?”
Her voice said, “I don’t want to use those guys again, they’re more baggage than porters.”
“You want to cut ’em loose?”
“They know who I am.”
“They still don’t have your name right.”
“Why don’t you find a way to dismiss them,” Layla said. “All right?”
Chapter Six
Months ago, before hooking up with the Crowes, Cuba first set eyes on Layla the Dragon Lady.
It was in the Blue Grass Room at Keeneland, the thoroughbred racetrack on the outskirts of Lexington; his boss Mr. Harry Burgoyne telling him, “Go on wait at the bar till I motion you to come out on the floor. out on b
Meaning they’d be doing one of their Boss and Dumb African routines. Cuba watched Mr. Harry walk out to address tables of horse lovers applauding his winning the three-hundred-thousand-dollar Maker’s Mark Mile not an hour ago.
The girl next to Cuba at the bar, Weezie, her dad one of the trainers, finished sucking up her Collins and said, “Doesn’t it piss you off the horse is called Black Boy?”
“They had to call it Black Boy,” Cuba said. “What else you gonna call this stud’s got all the fillies flippin their tails at him.”
The girl went off grinning to tell what he said and Cuba was looking at Layla the Dragon Lady, facing him in her dark glasses and shiny black raincoat a few feet away.
“Excuse me,” Cuba said, “but can you tell me what is the time?” Giving the words that clipped African sound he got from cabdrivers in Atlanta.
He watched her slip off her sunglasses this overcast afternoon in April to show her brown eyes holding on him like bullets. She smiled and her eyes turned soft.
“That was funny, what you said to Weezie.”
Cuba checking her nice nose and mouth, that kind of lower lip on a woman he liked to bite.
“But,” she said, “you forgot your African accent.”
He did, talkin about that fuckin stud Black Boy and trying to sound cool. He could ask how she recognized the accent, but didn’t. Cuba took a moment and said, “East or West Africa?”
Giving it back to this woman wanted to play with him.
She said, “West, Nigeria. I spent an entire year in Lagos with a transplant team. Came back to my home base, UK Medical.”
Cuba said, “I drove Mr. Burgoyne there one time, his kidneys actin up.”
“His kidneys are still working,” Layla said. “It’s his liver needs a rest.”
“Man likes his booze. Has a few he turns into a human being,” Cuba said. “So you’re a nurse, huh?”
She said, “Why not an MD?”
“You wouldn’t be playin with me,” Cuba said.
She told him she was a transplant nurse and Cuba said, “You like foolin with people’s organs?”
“When I can fool with them,” Layla said. “It depends on who’s doing the surgery. I’ve been assisting as long as some of the older guys’ve been switching organs, going on eleven years. I’ve seen enough kidney transplants I can make the switch myself and close up. One of the young guys, all he wants me to do is slap instruments in his hands and go to bed with him.”
She waited.
Cuba said, “You go for the older guys, huh?”
“You’re missing the point. The young guy comes out of the OR thinking he’s God, he’s just saved a patient’s life and expects me to reward him.”
“Yeah…?”
“I tell him I’m worn out. I’ve worked twelve hours, pre- and post-op besides surgery, I’m beat. He can’t believe I’m turning him down. We’ve had coffee a few times, he’s told me to call him Howie if I want. He goes, ‘Come on, I’ve got an empty room lined up. We can make it a quickie or do the other.’ ”
“You meet his desires?”
“Listen, will you? I can do the same surgery as Dr. Blow Job, who makes close to a million a year while I’m paid eighty-seven five. Does that mean I should go down on him?”
Cuba had to pay attention, quit thinking about biting her lip. She sounded pissed off, so he didn’t think she gave the doctor with the hard-on what he wanted. Now she switched to Cuba, asking him what he did in his previous life, before he became Mr. Harry’s boy. He told her he drove, raced dirt track, ran moonshine, dealt some reefer.
She said, “How much prison time have you done?”
He saw it coming and told her, “It took some years from me.” He said, “You want my sheet? I’ll see I can get you one. Cars, what I did time for, expensive ones.” Pretty sure he was telling this Dragon Lady what she wanted to hear.
It was that chick in the funnies she reminded him of, the Dragon Lady, used to be in Terry and the Pirates. Terry the ofay kid with the hair never got mussed. If he wasn’t fucking the Dragon Lady Cuba believed he must go the other way.
Layla seemed calm now, staring at him with those brown bullets she could turn soft as he looked on.
Layla said, “Cuba?” n La Ks (nt›Yeah…?”
“I’m tired of hospitals. Tell me what you’re tired of.”
Cuba saw Mr. Harry waving at him and said, “You gonna see it in a minute.”
T ime for the routine: Mr. Harry waving Cuba out to the tables of horse lovers, Mr. Harry holding a drink now. Good, ready to show his friends his idea of a regular guy. He watched Cuba coming around to the front of the room and Mr. Harry began to frown. This was part of the act, seeing Cuba in his black suit and black shirt, a bright lavender necktie popping out of the dark look.
Mr. Harry: “Who said you could wear my colors with your chauffeur’s uniform?”
Cuba telling himself to sound Ah-frican. A real African ever showed up at one of these he was fucked.
Cuba: “Was your missus, Boss.” He waited a couple of beats before saying, “It is your missus dresses me.”
This got a burst of laughs from the horse lovers.
Mr. Harry: “ Mrs. Harry told you to wear my racing colors?”
Cuba: “Because when we out, you always have me racing to get you to a men’s room, so I wear your colors.”
Mr. Harry: “When did I tell you to do that?”
Cuba: “You never have, Boss, but I believe is what you thinking.”
