Bob looked at Rae and said, “All of that should take us, what, an hour? We could meet back here for lunch.”
Lucas said, “I’m serious.”
Bob said, “So am I. This is the kind of shit the FBI has down pat. I’ve got a line straight to the guy we need to talk to. We’ll make a call and see you back here at noon.”
Lucas looked down at his plate, still half full of soggy pancakes,and said, “Tell you what—find a decent restaurant and I’ll pick up the check.”
—
SOTO HAD HADa brainstorm: he wanted to know about the cop who was tracking Poole, because they were running out of leads themselves, but maybe the cop wasn’t. If they couldn’t find Poole, maybe the cop could.
Where would they find the cop? At the Mercedes dealer, of course—the only one around.
Because the cop in the Benz would recognize Kort but might not recognize him, Soto left Kort in a shopping center and walked across a divided highway to the only Mercedes dealer in Nashville and cruised the parking lot as though looking at the cars. He spotted a black Mercedes-Benz SUV parked behind the building and wandered past it. He didn’t have to get too close before he knew he had the right truck: there were no other SUVs that had been shot to pieces with a machine gun.
A thin, balding man in tan slacks and a blue sport coat was examining the truck and making notes on a clipboard. Soto walked past it, checked the license plate and the state. Minnesota? What was up with that? If the guy really was a cop, what was he doing in Tennessee?
His phone chirped and Soto answered and Kort said, “Get out of there. The cop just walked into the front of the store.”
Soto hurried away, cut through a line of cars, and recrossed the street.
“I saw the car, got the tag,” he told Kort. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
—
THEY CALLEDthe College-Sounding Guy. Soto said, “I need a license tag run. From Minnesota. When we get a name, we need to check the name out, see who he is.”
The College-Sounding Guy crunched on something that might have been a Cheeto and said, “Two hundred.”
“Bill us, as usual.”
“Call you back in fifteen minutes,” the College-Sounding Guy said. Soto imagined he was tall, soft, wore glasses, and combed his heavily gelled hair straight back from his forehead. And he had pimples and was surrounded by sacks of Cheetos. How he got wired up with the people in Honduras would remain a mystery.
Kort and Soto sat and waited.
Kort said, “My buttocks...”
“I don’t want to hear any more about your ass,” Soto snarled. “It’smy ass, my ass, my ass, all the time my ass.I know your ass hurts, now shut up.”
“You’re such a motherfucker,” Kort said. “I’d like to get ten minutes with you and my Sawzall.”
Soto looked at her with interest. This was something new: “Really? You really want to cut me up? I’ll tell you what, bitch, you look at me sideways...” A switchblade appeared in one hand and the serrated blade flicked out. “...I cut your fuckin’ nose off.”
“Yeah, I... There’s the cop.”
Lucas walked out of the Mercedes dealership and around to the back where his car was, and out of sight. “Not gonna fix that wreck,” Soto said. He sounded proud of himself.
“He’s outa sight. I gotta get out of this car,” Kort said. The pain wasn’t so bad when she was standing up. She waited outside the car, partially concealed by a bush, and thought about Soto, and what a miserable jackass he was. Here she was, really hurt, because of his failing—his job had been to check the house, and instead he’d let a kid get the drop on them, like the worst fuckin’ amateur in the world.
Jackass.
—
FIVE MINUTESafter Kort got out of the car, Soto’s phone rang, and the College-Sounding Guy said, “What you’ve got there is a federal marshal named Lucas Davenport. New on the federal job, but a longtime cop in Minnesota with a history of killing people. He is not somebody to toy with.”
“Towhatwith?”
“Toy with. Mess with,” the College-Sounding Guy said.
