“He had something done to him,” Raylan said. “He’s got like staples closing up what look like wounds. Or was he operated on?”

“Somebody shot him,” Tim said.

“I don’t think so,” Raylan said, staring at the two incisions stapled closed.

Rachel said, “That’s how they did my mother last year, at UK Medical. Made one entry below the ribs and the other under her belly button. I asked her why they did it there ’stead of around through her back.”

Tim said, “You gonna tell us what the operation was?”

“They took out her kidneys,” Rachel said. “Both of ’em, and she got an almost new pair the same day, from a child who’d drowned.”

They wrapped Angel in a blanket, carried him into the bedroom and laid him on the spread, the man shuddering, trying to breathe. His eyes closed he said to Raylan staring at him, “What happen to me?”

“You’re here makin a deal?”

Angel hesitated. “Two guys I know, growers. We have a drink-”

“And you end up in the tub,” Raylan said. “How much you pay them?”

“Is none of your business.”

“They left the weed?”

“What you see,” Angel said.

“There isn’t any here.”

Angel’s eyes came open. “I bought a hundred pounds, twenty-two thousand dollar. I saw it, I tried some.”

“You got taken,” Raylan said. “They put you out and left with the swag and the weed.”

Now his eyes closed and he said, “Man, I’m in pain,” his hands under the blanket feeling his stomach. “What did they take out of me?”

R aylan felt his pulse again. “He’s hangin in, tough little whatever he is, Sorta Rican? I can see these growers rippin him off, but why’d they take his kidneys?”

“It’s like that old story,” Tim said. “Guy wakes up missin a kidney. Has no idea who took it. People bring it up from time to time, but nobody ever proved it happened.”