Robert Asprin's Dragons Run

by Nye, Jody Lynn

  It was Griffen’s turn to feel as if he had been sandbagged.

  Fox Lisa gave him a hug back. “See? Rattlesnake.”

  “Yes,” Griffen said weakly. “It hurts a lot more when it’s aimed at you, isn’t it?”

  “No lie.”

  Penny wasn’t finished inflicting her verbal abuse. “It isn’t as though I could count on YOU for anything better! This campaign can’t run on promises! You have not sent the money you promised! What happened to all those deep pockets you said you had access to?”

  “Meltdowns do not inspire confidence in contributors!”

  “It wasn’t a meltdown! I lost focus. I couldn’t get it back. You try delivering a coherent speech under those lights! See if you do any better.”

  “But that would be an everyday event for you if you are elected,” Malcolm said. “You could be giving briefings on complex matters every day.”

  “Oh, so now it’s if? Not when?”

  “If your election were a foregone conclusion, you would not need me or my backers.”

  “Well, I need them now! This campaign is broke! I have a thousand expenses coming due, and we can’t pay them. What would I do if that little piece of news got out?”

  Griffen met the eyes of the man near the door. Neil nodded very slightly. He looked embarrassed. Griffen was astonished. Penny seemed to be raking in money from everyone she encountered. How could they have run through all those contributions—voluntary or otherwise—in such a short time?

  “This mutual scathing is of no use to either of us, or our many concerns,” Malcolm said.

  “No! It isn’t.”

  “In that case,” Malcolm said, “allow me to propose the following . . .”

  His voice dropped to a murmur. After a couple of angry exclamations, Penny quieted down in response.

  “Oh, yes, honey,” Horsie exclaimed. “This is good sense! Listen to the man!”

  The level of conversation behind the door sank still further. The entire room of volunteers craned in wide-eyed curiosity. By the exchanged glances of puzzlement, no one could hear a thing. Even Griffen, whose dragon hearing was incredibly sensitive, picked up only who was speaking but not what they were saying. It went on so long he felt like breaking in, despite Winston’s forbidding presence.

  After what seemed like hours, the door opened. Winston sprang out of the way. Malcolm leaned out through a narrow crack. He scanned the room, spotted his nephew, and beckoned.

  “Griffen, will you come in here, please?”

  Griffen glanced beside him. Malcolm nodded.

  “Yes. Ms. Fox Lisa, won’t you come, too?”

  Winston stood by reluctantly as Malcolm shut the door behind Griffen and Fox Lisa. Inside, Horsie sat in a chair with her head thrown back, looking exhausted. She clutched a tumbler with two fingers of liquor in it. Penny paced back and forth like a big cat. Her cheeks were flushed. Malcolm looked completely at ease, tidy, businesslike. He directed the newcomers to a pair of vacant chairs, then sat behind Penny’s desk. She didn’t protest. The walls bore a few new dents. On the floor, a vase lay shattered, its flowers scattered. Inscribed plaques presented to Penny for various distinctions had been torn off the walls and rested askew on tabletops and windowsills. No one drew attention to the debris. Malcolm interlaced his fingers and rested his elbows on the desk.

  “We have had a small discussion regarding tactics and strategy for the coming campaign. Representative Dunbar and I have reached an understanding. Representative?”

  Penny held her back very straight but nodded sharp agreement.

  “It would seem that there are some matters that need rectifying. First, Ms. Dunbar has some things to say.”

  She came over and took Griffen’s hands in both of hers.

  “Griffen, I am very sorry if anything I have done has caused you any trouble at all. You have been a genuine pillar of strength for me. You’ve been just so good to come out whenever I’ve needed you. I hope you understand that anything out of turn that I might have said is because I have been under so much pressure. I need to handle it better. Thank you for your patience and good sense.”

  Griffen raised his eyebrows. Whatever had been said behind the closed door had knocked a little humility into her. She squeezed his hands before releasing them and turned to Fox Lisa.

  “Sweetie, I haven’t been as nice to you as you deserve. I appreciate your being so protective and sticking by me all this time. You have been a real shining light to this campaign, and don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Fox Lisa was touched.

  “Oh, Penny, thank you! You know I’d do anything I can to help you. I believe in you.”

  “That’s so kind of you,” Penny said. “Now, there’s no need to stay with me overnight anymore. I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

  “But what about the attacks?”

  “There have been no attacks,” Malcolm said.

  “What?” Griffen demanded. “What about the garbage truck?”

  He glared at Penny. She smiled at him sweetly.

  “Well, honey, I just have to confess. It was me.”

  “You did that?”

  Penny looked a little sheepish, but she continued to meet his eyes.

  “Well, yes. I, uh, convinced the driver to be there at that time, driving the truck he takes out every day.”

  “That dance you did? Like during the debate?”

  “Yes. It’s a voodoo thing. You wouldn’t understand. He had to obey my bidding. He did it a little too well, though. He wasn’t supposed to hit us. I don’t know how he fell out of the cab. But I did make sure he was all right. He got Workman’s Compensation for the accident.”

  Griffen felt his temper rise.

  “You could have killed Fox Lisa!”

  Penny waved a hand. “She was fine. I knew how good she was behind the wheel. We did an off-road run for charity last year, and she flattened the competition.”

  Fox Lisa looked embarrassed but proud. “That’s true. We came in a flat sixteen seconds before the competition. We drove Penny’s Jeep. About three-quarters of the way through the race, we jumped through a hedge that no one else would try.”

  Griffen raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It cut a hundred yards off the course.”

  Malcolm cleared his throat sharply.

  “To return to the matter at hand . . . ? The accident was not part of the attacks that concern you.”

  “No,” Penny acknowledged.

  “That zombie at the debate?” Griffen asked. “Have you seen him before?”

  “There’ve been several others, not just him,” Penny said. “I’m terrified of dead people!”

  “But they are just people,” Griffen said. “Only . . . not alive . . . exactly. I’ve seen you on television at murder scenes, sometimes looking right at the corpse. What’s different about these, uh, people?”

  “I’m afraid that someone’s cursing me. I know those zombies will get me soon. When I dance, I stand in two worlds at once. I’m vulnerable.” She swallowed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Griffen thought of the nights sitting up with Gris-gris and feeling surrounded by an invisible underworld.

  “Maybe I would.”

  “No wonder you were freaked-out!” Fox Lisa said, her large eyes sympathetic.

  “That is something that will have to be handled with a meeting,” Malcolm said. “Since the gentleman who set those up failed to respond to you, Griffen, in spite of your local connections, then I believe it falls to me to make arrangements. In the meanwhile, we have devised a manner to raise both awareness and capital for the campaign.”

  “What?” Fox Lisa asked eagerly.

  Malcolm turned to Griffen.

 
“Relying on the greatest talents around us, I believe that the most money can be obtained through organizing a poker tournament.”

  “Wait a minute!” Griffen protested.

  “That’s a terrific idea!” Fox Lisa said.

  “Oh, no,” Griffen said, backing away with his hands up. He had a sudden vision of a roomful of angry card players all clamoring for his attention, money, or blood. “Not a chance. I’m having trouble making ends meet with my own business. Sorry. I have already had regular customers refuse to play with me because I’m tainted by my involvement with Penny even though I’m not working for her. I’m done organizing things for other people. I have responsibilities. I need to make a living, and I have employees who rely on me for a paycheck.”

  “We can’t argue with that,” Malcolm said, stroking his chin. “That was our agreement.”

  Penny grasped his arm.

  “No! I need you, Griffen.”

  “Sorry,” Griffen said. “No poker tournament. Talk to the casinos if you want to do something like that.”

  “No,” Malcolm said. “They will demand too large a portion of the proceeds.”

  “How about pool?” Fox Lisa piped up. “Penny’s really good. She could do an exhibition.”

  “No one would pay to see that,” Griffen said. “No offense, Penny. Pool fans won’t come to see a politician shoot pool. They’d want to see professionals. You could set that up a lot more easily. The pool halls would love the bump in business.”

  “Do you know who they would pay to see?” Malcolm asked. Griffen thought for a moment.

  “Yes, there’s Eddie Brown. I saw him in an exhibition last year. He’s the best—if we can get him to come. And there are a few other players I’ve seen.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Horsie said.

  Malcolm rose to his feet and dusted his hands together.

  “Pool, then. Griffen, you will make all the arrangements. Er, Horsie, the advertising and promotion are up to you.”

  “No problem,” the campaign manager said with a cheerful grin. “We’ll plaster the state with it. We could get hundreds of entrants.”

  “Then that’s settled.”

  “No!” Griffen protested. Malcolm frowned at him.

  “But, Griffen, you know those who would be the biggest draw, don’t you? And you know the ins and outs of the games and who has a facility that might donate its time for our event in exchange for favorable publicity? I think it is a splendid solution.”

  “So do I. Thank you, Griffen,” Penny said. She kissed him on the cheek. “I am so sorry to have caused you all that bother.”

  She strode to the door and flung it open.

  “Well, what are all of you staring at?” she asked the staff in the outer office. “Hit those phones! And could someone come in here and sweep up? We had a little mess.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” The volunteers sprang to work. Fox Lisa bent to gather up the spilled flowers. Malcolm took his cell phone from his pocket and began to dial a number.

  Griffen found himself standing alone in the middle of the room. He stared at his uncle.

  “How is it when you have an idea, I end up doing all the work?”

  Malcolm put his hand over the microphone.

  “Delegation, Griffen. Someday you will understand what that really means. Ah, yes, Miss Callaway, good morning!”

  Forty

  Griffen left the third pool hall with a handful of papers, including menus, the history of the hall, and a sample contract for holding an event. The owners, two men in their sixties, Griffen was grateful to discover, were indifferent to politics.

  “If your money’s green, you can vote for Martians,” the older one said.

  “How about dragons?” Griffen had asked. They laughed, but he felt as if he had gotten in the last word.

  The fee to rent the hall for an evening was lower than the other two halls he had visited but still higher than Penny’s depleted campaign purse could easily afford. He wasn’t at all surprised to discover, with a major election coming on and candidates for almost every office looking for an angle, that no one would offer a break on their facilities. The same went for the professionals. Jamie Dewar, a pro Griffen had seen and admired, said he would be happy to appear, for a three-thousand-dollar fee plus expenses. They might have to fall back on Penny making trick shots and three-bank caroms for the cameras.

  Griffen still had to come up with prizes, too. Malcolm’s instructions had been clear: They must speak to the character of the state, they must not cost the campaign money if possible, and they must be “presentable.” Griffen cringed at that adjective, but he understood. He couldn’t ask for sponsorship from any of the gambling associations or titty bars along Bourbon though they had the money and would have loved the publicity.

  He strode back toward the Quarter. In spite of feeling railroaded, he enjoyed walking around the city, getting to know people. New Orleans had several districts, each with its own personality. The quiet, residential streets in between the economic centers, with their wrought-iron balconies dripping with flowering creepers elicited comparisons with the Mediterranean cities from which the city’s European founders had come. People gave him a smile or a wave as he went by, and he returned the salutes. He couldn’t imagine that happening up North, where making eye contact with strangers made them worry what it was you wanted from them.

  The election was inescapable, no matter where he walked. On the tiny lawns in front of the wooden houses, clusters of campaign signs sprouted. Griffen didn’t have to look far to see DUNBAR FOR GOVERNOR banners, but those were outnumbered heavily by the front-runners, Jindal and Blanco, and, surprisingly, by the candidate who had been neck and neck with her in the polls, Congressman Benson.

  A few houses down, Griffen saw why.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  A young black man wearing a vest over a T-shirt stood up to see who had addressed him. He had just yanked a Dunbar sign out of the ground in front of a property near the street corner. Griffen loped toward him. The young man backed away in alarm and took off running.

  Griffen was fast on his feet, but the youth had distance on his side. He disappeared around the corner as Griffen reached the yard from which the sign had been displaced.

  Griffen windmilled to a stop. He saw no point in continuing the chase. What would he do if he caught him, anyhow? Instead, he went to replace the sign in the ground.

  It wasn’t there. Amid a pile of Benson signs, the bracket lay on the grass, but it was empty except for a few charred scraps clinging to it. Griffen frowned. He had not seen the youth pull out a lighter or anything else with which he could have burned it. It seemed that Benson had his share of supernatural assistance. That was going to make the race more interesting.

  He took the remaining Benson signs into a blind spot between two houses. To the utter joy of the fire spark in his midsection, Griffen let his temper build to the boiling point. A gush of fire rushed out of his mouth. The signs in his hands crisped and blackened. With a feeling of satisfaction, he dumped them in the next trash can. No sense in making it easier for the opposition.

  Griffen sauntered around the corner. A screen door slammed beside him. He glanced through it at the small diner. It looked as if it was doing good business. He pulled the door open and found himself a seat at the counter. The stout black woman in the pink waitress uniform behind it came over to smile at him.

  “Coffee, honey?”

  “Yes,” Griffen said. He moved his hands so she could pour the hot, black liquid into the stoneware cup. “What’s good?”

  “Everything, else we wouldn’t serve it.”

  Griffen squinted at the menu, written in chalk on a peeling blackboard above the hatch to the kitchen. “Shrimp po’ boy.”

  “You got it.” She almost did a double take. “Say, didn’t I see you on the television wi
th one of them politicians?”

  Several of the diners glanced up and gave Griffen a suspicious glance.

  “Yes, you did,” Griffen acknowledged, cringing for the inevitable discussion of Penny and her policies.

  “Well, you cain’t do no politickin’ in here,” she said. “You let my customers eat in peace.”

  “Believe me,” Griffen said, gratefully, “that’s all I want.”

  “Well, good. That’s the rules: no hand-shakin’ and no baby-kissin’.”

  Everyone relaxed and went back to their meals. Griffen sighed. The jungle primary was a little more than two months away. He couldn’t wait for it to be over with. It sounded like most of his fellow N’Awlinians had the same feeling.

  • • •

  Griffen took the paperwork from the three pool halls home with him, along with a videotape he had ordered at Tower Records. It had been years since he had seen My Fellow Americans. He put the tape into his machine and threw himself onto the couch with his notebook and his cell phone. Enjoying the antics of Jack Lemmon and James Garner maneuvering to become the next president gave him a break from the real campaign but kept him in the mood for his task.

  He figured that in order to make money, he needed at least eight tables for the contest, with plenty of room for onlookers and the press. The largest hall was up a flight of stairs, tough for disabled patrons, but it had twenty-three pool tables and a great kitchen. In Griffen’s opinion, it was the best prospect, but it also had the highest price tag. No amount of persuasion had moved the owners to knock down their fee. He even brought up Penny’s promise that half the proceeds would go to school programs for kids. They correctly countered with the fact that the event would rob them of a day’s revenue from the entire game room. Not only that, but it was a publicity event for a politician. If she wanted to make a large donation to charity, the owners pointed out, she could write a check. Griffen could hardly argue.

  All three had offered suggestions for prizes. One was a month of free play in the game room, with the equivalent in cash for out-of-towners. Another wanted to spot the winners to a fancy dinner for two at Commander’s Palace. That wasn’t bad, but the second- and third-place prizes were only T-shirts. He’d have to seek out local merchants who were willing to donate better gifts, probably in exchange for getting their names on the posters and in the flyers. Horsie would have to handle that.