Dragons Wild

“That could work,” Harrison said. “Not bad, McCandles. Well, let’s see what we turn up in a week.”

He rose to leave, then hesitated.

“I know I’ve asked this before, Grifter,” he said, “but do you have any idea why this Stoner guy has it in for you? I mean, this whole terrorist thing stinks on ice. What’s his real problem?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Griffen said with a smirk.

“Try me.”

Griffen looked at him levelly for a moment, then shrugged.

“The way it was explained to me,” he said carefully, “Stoner is a dragon. As such he collects power and has done a pretty good job so far. The problem is, he has it in his head that I’m a dragon, too, and am just coming of age. He’s afraid that I may be more powerful than he is, so he’s having me watched and tracked in case I become a threat. I try not to think about what he would or could do if he decided I was dangerous.”

Harrison stared at him.

“This is a joke, right?”

Griffen leaned forward and blew gently on the detective’s now cold cup of coffee. A small column of steam rose from the cup. He looked at it, then back at Harrison.

“I know,” he said. “I have trouble taking it seriously myself.”

“I didn’t know you had been a private eye,” Griffen said.

He was still finding that a little hard to believe. Even though he was getting used to the idea that almost everyone he met in the Quarter had a story behind them, Padre just didn’t seem the private-eye type. He was in his mid to late forties with longish hair pulled back in a ponytail. It had some streaks of gray, as did his mustache and goatee, and combined with his thin, wire-frame glasses, he looked more like a hippie than like anyone vaguely connected with the establishment.

“That was a while back, while I was in Texas,” Padre said, wiping down the bar.

Griffen had gone cruising for a while and was now back when the place was nearly empty. Early evening, Yo Mama’s was usually jammed with people ordering burgers, but if one came by late enough, after the grill was closed, say after three in the morning, the action had usually died down and conversation with Padre was easier.

“I don’t know what you said to Harrison before you took off,” Padre continued, “but it made an impression. He must have stood there looking at his coffee for five minutes before he finally left.”

Griffen ignored the unasked question.

“So, can you give me any tips on how to spot someone who’s tailing me?”

“It depends on who’s doing the tailing,” Padre said. “When I was a PI, it would pretty much be a one-man operation. Usually, they weren’t expecting it, so the main trick would be to keep them from noticing you.”

He paused to gather the dirty ashtrays along the bar.

“There are ways to make small changes in your appearance. You can wear a jacket you can take off, even better if it’s reversible. Sunglasses are good, and so are hats. You can also switch sides of the street every so often, so if they glance back, they aren’t always seeing someone behind them at the same distance.”

He gave a quick bark of laughter.

“Of course, all that doesn’t help much if something happens to bring you to the attention of the subject. I remember once I was tailing a guy through the downtown strip joints during his lunch hour, and a bunch of kids came up to me and asked if I was Weird Al Yankovic. Of course, I told them I wasn’t, but they kept crowding around and asking for my autograph. In no time flat a crowd had formed…including the guy I was following who turned around and came back to see what the commotion was about. Talk about blowing your cover!”

Griffen laughed along with him, enjoying the joke.

“Okay. I can see that,” he said finally. “But what if it’s a larger organization following you. Say, the Feds, for example.”

Padre shot him a narrow-eyed glance, then turned his attention again to washing the ashtrays.

“That’s a rather interesting example,” he said. “But…okay. Outfits like that have a lot of manpower. If you’re playing in that league, they’d be expecting you to be on the lookout, so they’d probably assign a whole team to the job. They’d probably have radio or cell phone hookups and use rotating front and back tails.”

“Whoa. Hold up for a minute,” Griffen said, holding up a restraining hand. “Rotating whats?”

“Front and back tails,” Padre said. “People following you from ahead of you as well as from behind you.”

“How could they do that?” Griffen said. “I mean, how could the ones ahead of you know where you’re going?”