Stiner looked away again, muttered something unintelligible, then said, “Well, that makes a little more sense, then.”
“How?”
Stiner said, “Sturgill’s mostly a setup man. Or used to be. He made his money spotting jobs. When Marilyn told me about Gar’s drug job, I kinda wondered how he got onto them. Gar’s not real big on spotting. He’s bigger on the actualdoing.”
“Where would I find Sturgill?”
“Don’t know. I’ve heard he’s got a farm down in Alabama. He’s like an actual tractor driver. Gar once told me that Sturgill’s hometown is so small the Laundromat has a clothesline.”
“How did you get in touch with him to get him to come to your party up in Nashville?”
“I’d see him around,” Stiner said. “We all used to hang out on lowerBroadway in Nashville, going to clubs. I ran into him and said, ‘Come on over.’ Marilyn tell you about that?”
“Marilyn told me almost nothing,” Lucas said.
“Then how’d you track me?”
Lucas dug in his jacket pocket, produced his phone, and held it up. “You know why they call them cell phones? ’Cause people who use them wind up in cells.”
“I’ll remember that,” Stiner said. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Tell the FBI exactly where you are... but I’ll wait a while. An hour, maybe. I’m going to give you my cell number. If those hitters, whoever they are, catch up with you, they’ll skin you alive. That’s the honest-to-God truth, John—that’s what they’ll do. The Tennessee cops are keeping an eye on your sister, but they can’t do that forever—it’s possible these people will be going back to her, if we don’t take them out first. So, buy another burner phone, call up who you have to, figure out how you can get in touch with Gar. When you find out, don’t call him. Call me. Gar will never know.”
“What if he callsme, instead?”
“Then call and tell me about it. We can figure out where the call came from,” Lucas said.
Stiner looked away: “I dunno, man.”
“You told me what would happen if you go to jail...”
“Ah, shit. Gimme your number,” Stiner said.
Lucas ripped a page out of his notebook, scribbled his cell phone number on it, and said, “Call me as soon as you get that burner. If I were you, I’d clear out of here. And right quick. I gotta tell the feds that I found you, but... I’ll give you three steps. And, John? Don’t make me find you again.”
“Gimme three steps, like they say in the song.” Stiner looked around the shop, the paint-shedding walls, the flaking acoustic tile on the ceiling, the plastic light fixture, the yellowing business cards and lost-cat notices on the bulletin board.
“Best goddamn job I ever had,” he said. “I was, like, in management.”
10
WHEN LUCASleft Stiner, he called Forte in Washington, arranged to get an airline ticket back to Nashville, and filled him in on Sturgill Darling.
“That’s the guy I need,” Lucas said. “There’s a chance that he’s the one who spotted the Biloxi counting house, and even if he didn’t, there’s still a chance he knows where Poole is hiding. He could be the planner, the spotter. You got the name, and it’s unusual—get me an address.”
Forte said he’d get that going, and added, “I got a call back from Louise on your travel. You’ve got a ticket back to Nashville, but you gotta hurry.”
Lucas’s next call was to the FBI. He told them that he’d spoken to Stiner, but hadn’t had time for an arrest and the processing. “If you really want him, he’s probably still around.”
“We made some calls about him. We don’t want him all that much, but if we get a break, we’ll go over and pick him up,” the AIC said.
Lucas said good riddance to the Jeep at Hertz, checked his bag and the.45 with Southwest—he hadn’t taken the training forLaw Enforcement Officers Flying Armed, so couldn’t carry aboard—and made it to the gate early enough to buy anEsquireBlack Book magazine and a Snickers bar.
Two hours after he left Stiner, he was sweating at the back of the plane, holding tight to the armrests during takeoff. When they survived that, and got up in the air, he managed to relax enough to open the magazine. By the time he finished working through the men’s fashion articles and discovered he’d need a new suite of neckties, they were descending into Nashville, and he was sweating again.
On the ground, he found an e-mail from Washington. They had a rural address for a Sturgill Darling, outside the small town of Elkmont, Alabama, not more than an hour and a half from where he was. The location was right, as Poole’s pals seemed to come from the Greater Nashville area.
He could drive halfway there, bag out in the same motel where he’d been the night before, have a leisurely dinner and a nice breakfast, and still get to Elkmont before ten o’clock.
