Dragons Wild

“Think a minute, lover. How often have you seen me peel off my fanny pack as I walked into a bar and asked them to hold it behind the counter for me?”

Griffen realized it was almost a habitual routine for her.

“I thought you were just doing that because it was like a purse to you and you didn’t want to have to keep watching it all the time.”

“That, too,” Lisa said. “Still, it keeps me within the rules. Any other questions?”

Griffen nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Who was the other guy?”

“Who? The one I ran off?”

“No. I meant the guy on the other side of the street,” Griffen said. “The one that was hanging back until the action started. He called to be certain you had things in hand.”

“Oh. That guy.”

“Uh-huh. You seemed to know each other.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Let me try to make this easier for you,” Griffen said. “Unless I’m mistaken, he was shooting pool on the back table at the Irish pub the afternoon Jerome and I met with Gris-gris. Am I right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Let me take this one step further. Am I being body-guarded? Did Jerome or Mose hire you and the others to cover me?”

“Not really hire, even though I have done that kind of work for pickup money sometimes. It was more like Jerome asked for a favor. He asked me and a few others to try and keep an eye on you while you were getting used to the city.”

She cocked her head and narrowed one eye. Griffen seemed hesitant.

“Don’t even go there, lover. Not if we’re going to stay friends.”

“What?”

“I’m betting your next question was going to be whether or not Jerome asked me to go to bed with you. That’s dangerously close to calling me a working girl. I’ll go ahead and tell you so you won’t have to ask. The subject never came up. All he asked was that I keep an eye on you, and I can do that without sleeping with you. Clear?”

Griffen winced inwardly at her assumption, but didn’t think the truth of what he had thought would be very comforting—a gun against someone who professionally killed dragons didn’t seem a fair match. He really didn’t want to risk his lover, bodyguard or not, against a true killer.

“Crystal clear,” he said.

“Fine. Anything else?”

Griffen thought for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you know about dragons?”

“Dragons?” Lisa said frowning. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He smiled and gathered her arm in his again.

“Just curious,” he said.

Nineteen

Yo Mama’s Bar and Grill was a shotgun-style bar just off Bourbon Street across from Preservation Hall and Pat O’Brien’s. Other than a small upstairs dance floor, there was nothing to distinguish it from any of the dozens of bars in the area except its selection of tequilas and that it served the best hamburgers in the Quarter.

Griffen had discovered it his first week in town and had taken to stopping in two or three times a week. While the local cuisine was interesting and he had made a point of trying the gumbos and jambalayas, he still favored a basic burger or Chinese meal when his stomach demanded something familiar. When he found out that the regular graveyard shift bartender, Padre, shared his love of old movies and trivia, it cemented Yo Mama’s as one of his hangouts of preference.

One of the few difficulties was determining exactly when was a good time to drop in. Too early in the evening, and the place was packed with tourists. Too late, and it was full of service industry people stopping in for a drink and a burger before going home or moving on to another club.

Usually, Griffen tried to stop in somewhere between eleven at night and one in the morning. While never empty, the crowd had usually thinned enough at that point that he could chat with Padre without interrupting the flow of service.

This particular evening, he was seated at one of the booths enjoying a Peanut Butter Burger with a baked potato while idly watching a movie on AMC on one of the televisions that bracketed the bar. Specifically, it was The Great Escape , which he had seen often enough that he could almost recite the dialogue without the closed caption subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

A heavyset biker type came in and began to walk down the bar with a heavy, almost lurching step.

This in itself was not unusual, as this stretch of St. Peter was a favorite gathering point for the bikers, and they would wander in and out of three or four bars with their beers while joking with each other or comparing the relative merits of their bikes. For the most part, they kept to themselves and didn’t hassle anyone, so they were generally treated like any other customer.

Something about this newcomer, however, caught Griffen’s eye. Mildly curious, he watched the man, trying to figure out what made him different.