“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.
On the surface, he seemed not unlike the standard issue biker. Medium-length dark hair that looked like it could use washing, a thick mustache perched in the middle of a heavy-jowled face with a couple days’ beard growth adorning it, black T-shirt with the arms cut off, blue jeans with a chain running from the belt to somewhere in his back pocket, and scuffed black boots. Still, there was something…
Griffen suddenly realized that the man was not interacting with anyone. Usually, when one of the bikers came in, he would nod to the bartender and greet any other bikers in the place, even if just with a wave.
This man was just walking along, glancing neither right nor left, with his eyes fixed on something on the back wall. Without looking back, Griffen knew there was nothing on the wall the man was staring at. It was simply that unfocused gaze of someone who was totally out of it…or who was watching everything without looking directly at any specific point.
Griffen glanced over at Padre. The bartender was standing blank faced, showing no reaction to the man, not even a glance.
Then he noticed that the group of three bikers at the front of the bar were putting money on the counter and gathering up their beers with a quiet, forced casualness.
At this point, the pieces began to add up, and Griffen was not even a little surprised when the man slid into the booth with him, still not looking at anything.
“Is there something I can help you with, officer?” Griffen said, pushing his plate to one side.
The eyes finally focused and the man gave him a long stare. Griffen stared back. At last, the man gave a small nod as if something had been confirmed to him.
“Detective Harrison,” he said. “Vice.”
Griffen had not had that much experience dealing with the police. If anything, he avoided them like the plague. While he generally respected them for doing a job he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, it always made him a bit uneasy to be around anyone who held automatic authority over him.
Perhaps if he hadn’t just been watching a movie involving Allied POWs outwitting their German captors, he would have reacted differently. As it was, he felt an overwhelming impulse to give this man a hard time.
“I repeat: Is there something I can help you with?”
“You’re Griffen McCandles,” the detective said, ignoring the question. “Word is that you’re taking over for Mose.”
“Mose who?” Griffen said, deadpan.
Harrison stared at him for a moment, then heaved a big sigh.
“Look, kid,” he said. “I ain’t wired or trying to trick you. Don’t worry, and don’t try to be cute. Just to keep things straight, let me fill in a few pieces for you.”
He leaned back in his seat.
“Mose’s games…the operation you’re slated to take over…it’s protected. Not a grift or payoff, at least not much. I figure some palms are greased somewhere, but mostly he’s protected ’cause a lot of the powers that be who run this city also sit in on his games. The word is that we’re supposed to leave them be, just in case some politicos get caught in a raid. We couldn’t spring them without letting everyone else go and that shit would be too embarrassing to tolerate. For them, and for me…us. What I’m tryin’ to say is, I’m not tryin’ to trip you up or trick you into self-incrimination.”
“Okay,” Griffen said. “But I still don’t know what you’re talking to me for.”
Harrison’s eyes closed slowly, and when they opened again they were flat and expressionless.
“I just thought it would be nice if we met face-to-face,” he said. “Clear the air, so to speak. Also, if you struck me as solid, I thought I’d ask a favor of you.”
Griffen shrugged.
“I suppose…if it’s within reason.”
The detective leaned forward and gave a humorless grin.
“You’re new in town, Griffen. Still getting used to the way we do things down here. All I’d ask is that you don’t make it too hard for us to turn a blind eye to your doings.”
“Like how, specifically?”
“Oh, nothing much. Don’t be too loud and open with illegal games that should be secret. Keep a lid on things much as anyone can around here. And if you should happen to end up with a body at one of your games, could you drag it outside or maybe even break up the game before you call the cops? That way we don’t have to ignore what’s going on around it. It’s a little thing, but we’d appreciate it.”