Dragons Luck

It seemed whoever he was dealing with was versed in police procedure. Probably from the other side. It also occurred to him that he was now in the exact situation he had been planning on catching his target in. A deserted stretch of space with no witnesses.

He followed the instructions and turned slowly. There were two of them, both young and male. Both black. One of them was openly holding a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

“If this is about money,” the shooter said, calmly, “I can—”

“Shut up!” said the pistol holder. “Check the bag.”

His partner picked up the paper bag, hefted it, and looked inside.

“Shotgun,” he said. “Cut-down.”

“Uh-huh,” the pistol man said, not taking his eyes off the shooter. “You working alone or with a partner?”

“Alone,” the shooter said, then immediately wondered if he should have lied.

“Well,” said the pistol man, “it seems we have us a bit of a problem . . . or, at least, you do.”

“What’s going on here? Patches? Is that you?”

The target, no longer headed for the river, was walking up to the group.

“Oh . . . Hi, Mr. Griffen,” said the pistol man, suddenly looking a bit embarrassed.

“Hi yourself, Patches,” the target said mockingly. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Well, I . . . we . . . we spotted this guy following you and thought we’d check him out,” the young gunman said. “He’s got a shotgun in that bag there.”

“I know he was following me,” the target said. “That’s why I was leading him up to the Moonwalk. The question is, what are you doing here? This isn’t your normal neighborhood.”

“Well . . . Okay. We were watching out for you.”

“Any particular reason?” the target pressed.

“We heard that someone had a contract out on you,” the gunman said. “My brother, TeeBo, said we should keep an eye on you and step in if anything went down.”

“He couldn’t just give me a call and warn me?”

“We weren’t sure if it was true or not,” the youth named Patches said. “Besides, this way, if we did you a favor, he thought maybe you’d think you owed us a favor sometime.”

The whole scene had a vaguely surreal feel for the shooter. Not only had he walked into some kind of a trap—or double trap—it seemed the others had all but forgotten about him as they continued their conversation.

“Well, you tell TeeBo that I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t think I want to owe him a favor over this.” The target was smiling. “Sometime, maybe. But not now and not over this. Put the gun away and give him back his bag.”

“If you say so, Mr. Griffen.”

The gunman’s pistol disappeared, and he nodded to his partner, who tossed the paper bag at the shooter’s feet.

“Um . . . mind if we stick around for this?” Patches said.

“We won’t do nothin’, but I’d kinda like to see this. I know TeeBo will want to hear about it.”

“Suit yourself.” The target shrugged. “But you’d better move a little farther away. If this guy uses a shotgun, he probably doesn’t shoot that straight.”

The two black youths eased a few steps to the side, and the target turned his attention to the shooter.

“Well?” he said. “Anytime you’re ready.”

The shooter stared at him for a moment, then, moving slowly, he bent over and took the shotgun out of the bag. Without going near the triggers, he broke the weapon open, removed the shells, and threw them away.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass on this one,” he said.

“All this is more than I bargained for, and I’ve got a bad feeling I’m way out of my league here. All I want now is to walk away from the whole thing.”

“That’s acceptable.” The target nodded. “Just go back and tell whoever hired you that if he sends anyone else, I won’t be as generous.”

He turned his back on the shooter.

“C’mon, Patches,” he said. “At least let me buy you two a drink.”

The shooter watched the three young men walk away and decided then and there that this had been his last job.

Nine

As usual, the crowd was light in the late afternoon at the Irish pub. The bartender was idly browsing through the newspaper and didn’t even look up, much less wave, when the man who had been playing the video poker machine finished his beer and wandered out the side door.

In the seemingly random pecking order of the bar-centered social life in the Quarter, the video poker players, sometimes referred to as video crackheads, were pretty much the bottom of the food chain. They rarely if ever interacted with any of the regulars or even the bartenders, except to get another beer or to break a twenty from the latter. Instead, they would sit glued to their chosen machines for hours, staring at the screen as they sipped their drinks and pumped more money in as needed. In a bar that was heavy on conversation and pool, this put them well under the radar. One rarely noticed their coming or going, or even their presence while they were there.