Dragons Wild

“Keep seeing you out here,” he said, dropping a five into the open guitar case, “but never had the time to stop. You work hard for your money.”

“Hey! Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.” The guitarist smiled back.

The man had a cell phone in his guitar case, and his hair was noticeably shorter than the norm for the Quarter. Also, even though he was wearing denim pants and jacket, they seemed very stiff and new.

Griffen strolled toward the Square, but glanced back before he had gone half a block. The musician had stopped playing and was talking on his cell phone.

Uh-huh.

There was a moderate crowd of people on the street, a mixture of tourists seeing the sights along with a scattering of locals going about their daytime errands.

Griffen strolled along at a leisurely pace, pausing occasionally to look at the displays in the shop windows, then took advantage of the cover of a knot of tourists to duck into a used bookstore he had never been in before. With a quick glance around, he selected a place where the shelves hid him from the street, but he could see out. Then he selected a book at random, opened it, and waited.

In the next several minutes maybe two dozen people passed the store headed for Jackson Square. Again, they were mostly tourists, but a few stood out. A trio of gutter punks went by with a small puppy on a rope arguing about something with exaggerated gestures. One young woman, a tourist by the look of her, was pausing every four or five steps to snap a picture of something…anything apparently. Lampposts, Dumpsters, storefronts, anything. A delivery man from one of the delis or restaurants came by with a basket on the front of his bike. He was walking the bike instead of riding it, which was a little strange, but Griffen realized he recognized him and turned his attention elsewhere.

A Latino male caught his eye, walking by at a normal pace wearing the uniform black pants and tuxedo shirt of the service industry. A green jacket topped his ensemble. A waiter. From the Court of Two Sisters, by the jacket. What was unusual was that it was the wrong time of day for him to be going to work. Too late for the breakfast and lunch crowd, but too early for the dinner crowd. Still, maybe he had gotten a call to fill in for someone.

Finding nothing he could definitely label unusual, Griffen was about to give up and move along when he spotted the Latino again. The man was returning on the far side of the street, but moving slowly and looking through the windows of la Madeleine, a restaurant Griffen sometimes stopped at for a late lunch. He reached the end of the windows, then turned and stared back toward Jackson Square. Finally, he produced a cell phone, keyed a number, then spoke into it briefly.

Within minutes, another man appeared. This one was wearing a suit complete with a convention badge displayed prominently on the lapel. The only thing that made him vaguely distinguishable was that he wore a wide green tie and was carrying a bright orange shopping bag. Normally, Griffen wouldn’t look at him twice on the street. The man went into a brief huddle with the Latino, then they both walked hurriedly toward the Square and the video stores, splitting so that they were moving some fifteen feet apart.

Bingo!

Griffen smiled and reached for his own cell phone.

By the time he reached Yo Mama’s, Griffen was in a foul mood. After waiting on pins and needles for over six hours for some kind of word as to what, if anything, had happened, this summons to meet with Harrison seemed almost anticlimactic.

The detective was there ahead of him, holding down a booth, and waved him over as soon as he walked through the door. The fact he seemed to be in a good mood did nothing to ease Griffen’s disposition.

“Sit down, Griffen,” the detective said. “You got a steak dinner coming to you courtesy of the NOPD.”

“I didn’t know they served steaks here,” Griffen said.

“They do,” Harrison said. “They’re just not as popular as their hamburgers. Mostly, the hoi polloi prefer to eat cheap.”

“Actually, I’ve already eaten,” Griffen said.

“Well, it’s paid for in advance,” the detective said. “Just tell Padre the next time you’re in the mood for a steak.”

“I’ll remember that,” Griffen said.

Harrison peered at him.

“Are you okay?” he said. “You sound kinda peeved. We don’t buy steaks for people every day, you know. As a matter a fact, that steak dinner bonus was supposed to be for me. I decided to pass it along to you instead.”

“It’s been six hours,” Griffen said. “You could have called.”

The detective leaned back in his seat and scowled.

“Did I miss something here?” he said. “Am I reporting to you now on the chain of command? Jeez, you sound like my wife.”

Even though he was young, Griffen knew enough to be aware that when someone compared you to his wife, it wasn’t a compliment. He decided it was time to lighten up a little.

“I didn’t know you were married,” he said.

“I’m not. Not anymore.” Harrison sighed. “I’d forget to call her, too. She didn’t like it either.”