Dragons deal gm-3

by Robert Asprin

  "Anyone hurt?" Callum Fenway asked, his forehead wrinkled with concern. "Anything the rest of us can do, Griffen? We'd do anything you need."

  Murmurs of agreement swept through the room. Griffen was grateful and ashamed.

  "I don't think so. It's, uh, business. I should be back pretty soon, after I straighten everything out. I want everyone to stay and have a good time." He looked around desperately. The faces at his table looked up at him. He needed a substitute host to carry on with the dinner.

  "I'll take over if you wish," Mai said.

  "Or me," Val said, though she didn't really look ready to step in.

  Val wasn't an organizer, and she could be shy in public. Mai could be charming, but mostly in one-on-one situations. She wasn't good at putting others at ease. Fox Lisa had that gift, but the snobbish crowd had sensed her low dragon blood and wouldn't treat her with the respect she deserved. He turned to Etienne.

  "Not me, Mr. Griffen," the captain said, raising his hands. "Not my place."

  In desperation, he turned to Melinda. The senior female regarded him suspiciously. "I have an emergency. You are the queen of this krewe. I need you to act as hostess while I am away."

  Val gawked at him. "Griffen, you are not serious. Her?"

  "You don't actually trust her," Mai demanded.

  "I can't stay," Griffen said, seriously. "She's got the rank and the blood, and the experience if something . . . goes wrong. It's appropriate. Will you do it?"

  "I certainly will," Melinda said, not looking as smug as he thought she would. "I have to say I am surprised but gratified that you can pick the best person for the job whatever your misgivings. I accept. I'll take care of your guests. Go ahead. Everything will be fine."

  Griffen met her eyes. "Protect my sister."

  "I don't need her help!" Val shrieked. Melinda pressed her lips together grimly. She knew the risks; she was one of them. But they had a truce, and he didn't have a lot of time. She nodded.

  "You know I will. Get going."

  Griffen noticed Etienne's eyes glitter behind her.

  "Why didn't you warn me about this?" he demanded.

  Etienne shook his head. "Got nothin' to do with my business, Mr. Griffen. I don't see everyt'ing about everyone. Just what the Fates tell me I need to know. But it'll be okay. Go on."

  Melinda stood up and tapped a water glass for attention. "Ladies and gentlemen, Griffen has to excuse himself for a while. In the meantime, please let me call on Mr. Callum Fenway to say a few words. Callum?" She gestured gracefully toward the lieutenant, who stood up, fingering his collar.

  Griffen called for Doreen on his way out of the building. Whether he liked it or not, he was leaving his party in good hands. He hoped it wouldn't take too long to resolve whatever Harrison was in the middle of.

  He felt glaring eyes bore into his back. He would have to make peace later on, but that had to wait.

  Forty-four

  In the weak light of morning, Griffen limped into his apartment and locked the door behind him, glad to be home. He had no idea where his tuxedo jacket was. His pristine white shirt and silk tie were stained and crumpled.

  When he'd arrived at the Embassy Suites, he heard shouting and banging coming from the double doors at the end of the corridor. Inside, chairs lay on the floor around an upended table. A bottle of gin lay on its side leaking into the carpet. Chips were strewn everywhere. A lone twenty-dollar bill was plastered to the wall. The room was full of people, all yelling and gesturing at one another.

  Wallace, his poker dealer, was up against the wall between two vice cops, bellowing at the officer taking his statement. Three players, two of whom he recognized as high rollers and one who was a stranger, were being interviewed by a black female cop. Kitty, his alternate, sat weeping into a tissue as Harrison took her statement. When he saw Griffen, the detective came up out of his chair and homed in on him.

  From that moment, Griffen would have had to have instant replay video to straighten out everything that he heard, saw, and had happen to him. It seemed that one of the players, a factory-farm owner from Oklahoma, had arrived a little tipsy. He drank gin and tonic steadily through the game. After an admittedly bad beat, for which one of Griffen's regulars apologized, the man had erupted and accused both the player and the dealer, who at the time was Kitty, of colluding to cheat him. Wallace had immediately called Jerome, who arrived to mediate. The man couldn't be mollified or bought off, and had started throwing punches, then furniture. The player got a chair in the face and lost a tooth. The hotel management arrived, followed quickly by the police. As soon as the responding officers saw what was going on, they had summoned Harrison from a night off to handle a case involving his "friend, Griffen McCandles." Griffen understood why he was upset.

  Harrison refused to let him talk to the complaining player. The man had been taken to district headquarters, to give a statement and press charges if he so chose. So had Jerome. Griffen couldn't raise him on his cell phone. The next thing he knew, he was up against the wall being handcuffed.

  "I can't ignore it," Harrison growled. "Running an illegal poker game in my town! Softening me up with your phony overtures, you are so slick you can slide under a closed door. You're responsible. You'll be named in the indictment."

  Griffen rode to the station jammed against the rear door of a patrol car with Wallace and the poker player whose tooth had been knocked out. The latter was taken out for a while to get medical attention, but Griffen and Wallace had been shoved into the drunk tank, the only holding cell with any room. Mardi Gras was a busy time for law enforcement. Griffen got the rundown from Wallace and the other players on what had happened during the game up to the chair-throwing incident. It fit into the pattern. The customer from Oklahoma, whom no one else had met before, accused them of cheating, and said he wanted all his money back plus damages and pain and suffering. He got more and more aggressive, until he had started swinging furniture. It helped clarify the situation in Griffen's mind, but he needed to talk to Jerome.

  He tried Jerome's number dozens of times, but got shunted to voice mail each time. Either his second-in-command had gotten badly hurt in the fight, which seemed unlikely, or the cops were interviewing him and wouldn't let him call out for Griffen or a lawyer. He wondered when his turn was coming.

  In the meanwhile, he made several more calls, to Val, Fox Lisa, and Mai. Unfortunately, anyone else he could think of who might have the wherewithal to loan him bail was at the party he had left, and had his or her phone turned off. They had been smart enough to shut them down during the party. He wished he had been.

  No. Harrison knew where he was holding the king's party. He would just have had the maitre d' summon him to the phone. This was going to happen no matter what.

  His phone rang. He grabbed for it. "Mai?"

  "No, Grifter, it's Marcel. Man, I wanna apologize. I heard what happened! The guy seemed cool. I didn't know he was crazy."

  Sitting against a wall between a drunk who had vomited all over his own clothes and a furious man who had been picked up for refusing to pay a hooker, Griffen did his best not to sound angry at the spotter. After all, Marcel really was trying, and his instincts about people were usually good.

  "It wasn't your fault," he tried to assure him. But Marcel felt guilty. Griffen tried not to be resentful, as the hours went by. He had no money left to pay his own bail, let alone that of the players and dealers. The stink in the cell was unbelievable. Even if they had offered them food, Griffen wasn't sure he could have kept it down. The only good news was that he overheard one cop say that Harrison may have solved Jesse Lee's murder.

  He called everyone he knew to ask for help. All of the messages went to voice mail. By an hour before dawn, he started getting calls back, but they weren't the kind he was hoping for. "I don't know if I ever want to speak to you again!" Val snarled. "Oh, she queened it over us all right! That bossy bitch! And she kept putting her arm over my shoulder. You can just sit and rot for a while. Wh
at is the matter with you?"

  She had hung up. Fox Lisa was next. Her usual cool had been burned away.

  "They made fun of my tattoos! They treated me like a toy. I had to slap one of them, and he laughed at me! What kind of people are these? They were perfectly nice at the ball, but you turn your back, and they act like they are all that and a bag of chips! I didn't walk out because there is no way I would cede the ground to them, but you are in big trouble, Griffen. Bail? I am not going to waste my time. I am going home to take a long bath."

  Mai was short and to the point. "You trust her, and you won't trust me. Your priorities are screwed up, Griffen."

  But about dawn the jailer came to the cell door and leaned in.

  "Griffen McCandles!"

  He figured it was Jerome, or perhaps Val had relented. Instead, waiting for him on the other side of the solid steel door was Melinda. Griffen stopped before he crossed the threshold. The jailer nudged him from behind until he moved.

  "You're free," Melinda said. "You can pay me back sometime when you're solvent again. Your little redhead told me about your financial situation. It happens. Businesses have their up-and-down years."

  Griffen's cheeks burned. "Did the party go all right?"

  "Oh, yes," Melinda had said, with a broad smile. "It was a wonderful party. You can see the photographs. Too bad you weren't there. All the gossip was about you. By the way, thank you for the honor of your trust. I'm sorry your family and mine got off on the wrong foot. Several wrong feet. But, thank you. I won't forget it."

  Griffen hated being indebted to Melinda, but he had had no alternative. His voice was more gruff than he intended, but it had been a long night. "You bailed me out, so we're even. I will pay you back as soon as I can."

  "Come on," she had said, gesturing toward the door but careful not to touch him. "I've got a car waiting."

  There was nowhere else to go but home. Griffen sat on the couch in his satin-striped trousers and formal shirt, his silk tie untied. He had no reason to go out again. He had missed his own party. He had the headache to end all headaches. No one was speaking to him. He decided he was going to stay in his apartment forever.

  His cell phone rang.

  "Griffen? It's Kitty."

  "Hey, Kitty, I didn't see you last night. I'm sorry I couldn't bail you out."

  "It's okay. My mama came down and got me out. Can I talk to you? I'm right outside your building."

  Griffen buzzed her in. Kitty came in. She looked so different in street clothes. When she didn't have to wear the tuxedo shirt and black pants, she favored bright colors. Her scarlet blouse was almost blinding to Griffen's hypersensitive eyes.

  "Can I talk to you, Griffen? I don't know whether I'm crazy."

  "Sure," he said. "Please, sit down. Do you want a drink?"

  "No, thanks." She hesitated for a moment. "Griffen, you know that Jordan Ma who made such a problem at that game back in December?"

  "I sure do," he said. "I wouldn't have let you deal for him, but he hasn't asked to play again. I haven't seen him since."

  "Well, it's not him, but it feels almost like it has been. He had this tell, he liked to run his first finger around in a little circle on his cards. He'd hold them down like this and move his finger?" Kitty demonstrated, putting her hand on the arm of the couch. Griffen watched her. "He did it when he had a good hand. But there've been three different people since then who do the same thing, especially right before they kicked up a fuss. It sure hasn't been the same guy. I mean, I won't ever forget what he looks like! But that guy from Oklahoma last night who caused all the trouble--he did it, too. And there was a woman, too, who got stinking drunk and talked all kinds of shit until everyone else left. She did it. Maybe they belong to the same club or something?"

  Or maybe, Griffen thought, they were the same man--or dragon--shifting shape to be four different people. He had to trap one of them.

  "Kitty, I don't think you're crazy. I think there is some kind of club or society that is trying to shut us down. When you see that again, no matter what, call me. I want to talk to . . . one of them. Can you do that?"

  She set her small jaw resolutely and squeezed Griffen's hand.

  "I sure will, Griffen. No one is gonna screw up our operation like that. It means a lot to us, how you take care of us. I never had such a good job in my life. I will be damned if I will let some out-of-town assholes break us down."

  Griffen smiled. "I don't appreciate my employees enough," he said. "Keep your eyes open, and tell the other dealers to watch out, too."

  "I promise," Kitty said. "Thanks, Griffen."

  Griffen let her out. They would help him catch Jordan Ma and his squad of Eastern dragons--if he ever had another game to run.

  He called Jerome again. At last the phone rang. "They kept me sequestered, Grifter. Took the battery out of my phone. Kept losing the paperwork. Had to stand before the judge . . . Grifter, it was another dragon. I don't know how many there are."

  "It seems there are fewer than we may think." He told Jerome what Kitty had described to him. Jerome clicked his tongue.

  "So we're dealing with shape-shifters. Experienced ones."

  "Yeah. And this was the worst yet. Just when things were picking up, thanks to the town being full for Mardi Gras. We were both too busy to be there. If one of us had been able to drop in, we'd have known we had a dragon on our hands."

  "Yeah, and you know why that is?"

  Griffen knew it before he said it. "No, Jer!"

  Jerome was inexorable, and Griffen knew he deserved it. "Yes, Grifter. Your pal Peter. He knew you were gonna be completely occupied this evening, and I bet you told him I would be hanging out with my marching buddies then, too."

  Griffen's heart sank, but he couldn't deny it. "Sounds like you were right all along."

  "There is no satisfaction in 'I told you so,' man. You're the big dragon, and this is your operation. He probably didn't cause any other trouble until now."

  "Well, they have succeeded in taking us down. Harrison said I couldn't run any more games, or he will bust me. I can't take a chance on going to jail. The parade's just a few days away."

  "Uh-uh," Jerome said. "What you need, my friend, is plausible deniability. You don't know a damned thing. In fact, you are not going to hear from me about anything. It will be just like the old days. You know I told you to keep closer to the business? Well, now I want you to back off and not be involved. You have too much to do as Mardi Gras king. Mind that business. We'll get this done. No cop is going to shut us down. You go and have a good time."

  Griffen smiled for the first time in hours.

  Forty-five

  Now Griffen really began to feel like Nathan Detroit. In case the NOPD had managed to put a tap on his phone, he fielded all calls asking to join a game with an apology. He kept Peter Sing at arm's length.

  "I'm sorry. There isn't anything going for the foreseeable future, Peter. All of my people are tied up with . . . Mardi Gras obligations. I hope we can resume normal operations soon."

  "That is a pity," Peter said. "I have really enjoyed our games." The voice on the other end of the line sounded genuinely disappointed. Griffen felt a pang. He really liked the other man, but now that he was convinced of his perfidy, he had to protect himself. "I will come and see you march."

  Harrison kept the heat on him. Vice rousted his known runners in the hotels, but they couldn't be around all the time. Griffen went about his business, hoping Jerome could keep ahead of them. He hoped once Mardi Gras was over, they could build up the operation again, but who knew how long it would be before they could stop the Eastern dragons, if they could stop them?

  Around one in the morning Thursday night at the Irish bar, Griffen's phone rang. He pulled away from his discussion with Bone over the quality of movie remakes.

  "Griffen, it's Kitty. One of them is here, one of the guys from the club. This isn't the one who draws circles, but one of the gang who blinks. I think this guy is gay. He's acting
just like the other gay guy who brought down a game. He makes comments. He scares me."

  Griffen's heart started pounding.

  "Just keep it going exactly as you would with any other group, Kitty," Griffen said. Another exemplary employee. He was going to have to institute some kind of reward system. If he ever got things back to normal, that was. He excused himself and called Jerome on the way over. If Harrison busted him now, it was all over, so this was his best and only chance to take one of them down.

  "Sorry I'm late," he said, dragging another chair up to the table.

  "Grifter!" cheered Jacomo Bernucci, a businessman from Baltimore.

  "Jock, good to see you," Griffen said, shaking his hand. Good. One player he absolutely didn't have to worry about being the mole. The others, though not as familiar as Jock Bernucci, had been in town at least once before during Griffen's tenure as "head dragon." Lacey was the wife of a politician in Grand Cayman. Her family owned part of the power company, the telephone company, and almost all of the main Internet service provider in the islands. Oliver Stanton was blue blood from the East Coast, but in Hollywood he was a well-known character actor with a profile like Burt Lancaster's. Only the fourth was a stranger. He seemed ordinary: tall, blond hair turning white, hairline creeping upward, strong chin and straight brows; from all appearances a niceish guy in his fifties. Kitty shook her head at Griffen's interrogatory glance. So he had not started making a fuss yet but had made some comments. The other players didn't seem as relaxed as they usually were. The newcomer was the cause of the tension.

  Once Griffen arrived, he subsided, but they both recognized another dragon. Griffen pretended not to notice. The other dragon relaxed a little. There were a lot of people with a little dragon blood around. Perhaps Griffen did not understand the significance.

  He put all the money he had in his wallet in front of Kitty, $320, most of it borrowed from Val in the bar. Kitty counted out the chips.