Raylan by Elmore Leonard Page A

off her feet to go down grabbing at the bedspread. Raylan circled in his cowboy boots, picking up his suitcoat, put it on and took it off to stand in front of her naked. He stood looking down at her surprised expression, her eyes not yet losing focus, turning to glass. Layla said, “I can’t believe you shot me.”
    Raylan said, “I can’t either.”

Chapter Fourteen
     
    Y ou don’t think of your manners and let the woman go first,” Art Mullen said, “not when she’s pointing a gun at you.”
    They were having breakfast at A Touch of Country in downtown Cumberland. Raylan back from Lexington poking at his bowl of grits, burying the pieces of bacon.
    “You keep looking at it,” Art said, “asking yourself were you too quick. The woman jabbed a hypo in you and took your gun. Finally you come to a showdown. She’s aiming at you and you’re still drugged out. You wonder if you might’ve been too quick on the trigger?”
    “She was surprised I shot her,” Raylan said.
    “Why? She thought you were a gentleman? Tell me what else you could’ve done.”
    “I was surprised too,” Raylan said, “I did it.”
    “Cause you never shot a woman before?”
    “I guess.”
    “Why you think you had a choice?” Art said, trying to get Raylan settled in his mind about shooting the transplant nurse, Layla.
    “She was standing by her things on the bed. I could see her okay but I was wobbly. She’d made up her face, put lipstick on, did her eyes . . .”
    Art said, “I don’t see that makes any difference.”
    “She’s gonna take out my kidneys and—I don’t know—wanted to look her best? I woke up naked, in the bathtub.”
    “You crawled out,” Art said, prompting him.
    “I had to move Cuba Franks off me. I still don’t know why she shot Cuba.”
    “She’s trying to hit you, ” Art said. “Police have the rounds she fired from your piece.”
    “See, but once we’re in the bedroom, I don’t remember if she shot at me.”
    “You had Cuba’s piece now, the Sig.”
    “I did. I got him off me and went in the bedroom. I see her holding my Glock. She’s in her kimona.”
    “You remember that,” Art said.
    “I may never forget it,” Raylan said, “the kimona hangin open.”
    “You told the police she had your piece in both hands, holding it up above her head, and asked, you said, in a flirty way, ‘Would you like to pat me down?’ ”
    “She did,” Raylan said, “and I’m thinkin she’s having fun with me.”
    “Till she put the gun on you, your gun,” Art said, “and you shot her right here”—Art touchin the center of his chest—“in the solar plexus.”
    Raylan shook his head. “I didn’t think I was aimin.”
    “You reacted,” Art said, “like they taught you at Glynco. Shoot first, some dink’s ready to put you down.”
    “I’m still not sure what I think of Layla,” Raylan said, “except I wouldn’t call her a dink.”
    Art said, “She look like fun to you?”
    “If I didn’t already know her game. Yeah, I could have hung out with her.”
    “You ever did,” Art said, “I believe I told you, you’d be lying somewhere without your kidneys.”
    “Even knowing who she was,” Raylan said, “I came close to losing ’em. I go to arrest her and end up in a bathtub out cold. I was lucky to wake up, you know it?”
    “But you aren’t surprised,” Art said. “You’re the law, you expect what you say goes. You’re like an old-time marshal, tells some guy he doesn’t like to get out of Dodge by sundown.”
    Raylan was grinning. “You’re talking about that mob guy, the Zip.”
    “You think that situation was funny?”
    “See, I was to tell him, get out of Miami Beach by sundown? It isn’t like saying get out of Dodge. I gave the Zip twenty-four hours,” Raylan said, “to pack up and hit the road. The next day he’s at the Cardozo havin crab cakes, only a few minutes left of his time, so I know he’s armed. It’s what the man does for a living, brought