Dragons Wild

by Robert Asprin

  Some of the artists and the performers Valerie had grown used to seeing. Others seemed to alternate, or just appear randomly. Calliope music filtered over from the river, and blended oddly but somehow appropriately with a bagpipe player on the corner of the Square. A man on stilts was juggling and pacing, while a woman with six small poodles circled the Square again and again. Valerie wasn’t quite sure whether the woman was a local, or a tourist, but she couldn’t help noticing her hairdo matched that of her dogs.

  What distracted Valerie from her meal and the events around her were a small notebook and a folded newspaper. It was a local publication, distributed free in bars and coffeehouses, and it was currently folded to the jobs section. She had decided to take herself out of her worries.

  If Griffen wanted to keep her in the dark, she would find something else to occupy her time. The notebook held numbers of want ads Valerie had noticed throughout the Quarter, as well as a few she had been passed by locals. She mulled over the list, unsure of what, if anything, she planned to do about it, and sipped the last of her hot chocolate.

  The waiter was just clearing away her plate when new movement caught her eye. A man came around the far corner of the Square. It wasn’t his mere appearance that caught her eye, though he moved with a certain amount of casual grace that she found herself admiring.

  The real attention getter was the horde of small girls scurrying around him. Over a dozen girls, all dressed in navy blue skirts and starched white blouses, the oldest of whom couldn’t have been more than ten. They clamored and giggled around him, a sea of smiling faces, tugging at his pant legs and otherwise scrabbling for his attention. Pant legs that Valerie noticed were extremely well tailored, as was his dark red shirt with a rubylike sheen.

  Behind the group, dressed in full nun habit, was the obvious watcher of the little horde. She stood back and shook her head, face holding a look of barely concealed amusement.

  The man turned and threw his hands up, making a fierce face and bellowing. All with the predictable results of sending the giggling girls scattering all around him, not in the least bit afraid. One of the braver ones tugged on his pant leg again, and Valerie leaned forward a bit watching his reaction.

  He rolled his head and presumably his eyes to the sky, flung his hands out to the side, and made a magician’s pass with them. Suddenly in one hand, he held a bamboo rose of the type that get made and sold on the street all over the Quarter. The girl shrieked and clapped her hands, and he bent low and handed it to her, blowing kisses into the air by her cheeks. She turned, clutching her prize, and fled, the rest of the pack chasing after her.

  The nun gave him a glare, shaking her finger and not really meaning either, and strode off to try and return some order to the group. Valerie couldn’t help but to give off a full, throaty laugh.

  At the sound, even though he was across the street, his back stiffened and he turned on his heel, eyes searching. There was no way for Valerie to hide that she was watching, but she didn’t bother. Something about the way he moved, and now he moved toward her like a man with a purpose, captivated her eye. She noticed the well-muscled build of his shoulders, and the well-styled line of his hair, and the way people moved out of the way for him. He strode across the street, apparently ignoring the passing cars, and stopped a few steps from the rail separating the café from the street.

  “Do it again,” he said in a voice that was soft but compelling, even through the early morning hustle and bustle.

  “Do what, precisely?” Valerie said a little cooly.

  “Precisely? That wonderful, rich laugh that cuts through the world and was worth more applause then a hundred little girls.”

  “Oh, that.” Valerie tried for dismissive, but could feel a flush creeping up her neck. She covered it well. “Perform for little girls a lot do you?”

  “Ah, well, I used to give out candy, but for some reason the words ‘want some candy, little girl’ set off all kinds of people these days.”

  She smiled at him, and gave him points for picking up her tone, and rolling with it.

  “Well, if you want a laugh from me, I don’t think another fake rose will do it.”

  “Ah, but for the lady, the real thing is a must.”

  And just like that he was holding a red rose, stem trimmed off but petals bright and fresh. He held it out for her, not letting his eyes break contact.

  “What do you do, stuff them up your sleeves before you go out just in case you need a handy pick-up bit?”

  “I think I’ve got pearls up my other sleeve if you’d rather,” he said.

  At that she did laugh. She couldn’t help it.

  “You try giving me pearls in the first fifteen minutes of a relationship, and I’m going to start looking for your sexual predator file.”

  “Then the relationship is already started? Oh, goody.”

  “You don’t go half fast do you? And no one says goody,” Valerie said.

  “I thought joy and rapture might be pushing things a bit,” he said.

  Valerie was used to strong come-ons, and dealing with them, but more and more she was becoming interested. Seeming to pick up on it, he straightened and tossed the rose over his shoulder.

  “Not pearls or roses then. Dinner perhaps? Name the place and time and I shall be there.”

  “You haven’t even asked my name, or offered yours.”

  “Which line would you prefer? A rose by any other name, or something along the lines of Dulcinea. As for mine, I’m Nathaniel.”

  “Nathaniel what?”

  “Oh, Mother won’t tell us, just in case we should ever try to track down Father.”

  “Ha! Oh, you won’t get to evade that easily for long Nathaniel.”

  “Quite right, but you must come to dinner if you want to try for more.” Nathaniel grinned.

  He pulled a business card out of his left pocket and flipped it onto the table casually. He had yet to close the final distance, and he still didn’t. Instead he turned and walked back toward the Square, without a backward glance.

  Valerie thought for a moment and pocketed the card.

  Thirty-seven

  It was early August, and the New Orleans summer had descended with all its sticky, humid splendor. The ever-present construction crews started working early in the morning…very early in the morning…so they could knock off and be off the roofs and out of the sun before the temperature hit its peak around two in the afternoon. All the shops, restaurants, and bars were running their air conditioners at full blast to provide a lure and a refuge for the tourists who weren’t used to summers in the South. Locals ran their air conditioners full blast to keep from going crazy and killing each other. (Those who couldn’t afford air-conditioning went ahead and went crazy and killed each other.)

  If at all possible, one avoided going outside until after the sun set. Unfortunately, it didn’t make that much difference. The semiregular afternoon cloudbursts didn’t cool things off the way they would up north. They simply added more moisture so that when one did go out, it had the same feel as stepping into a sauna.

  It was early evening, and Griffen was at Mose’s place getting a crash course on sports betting. During a break, as he was staring out the window, he realized something he had only noted in passing before.

  The difference between the temperature inside the house and outside was so extreme that moisture was forming on the outside of the windows. This was, of course, the exact opposite of what he had experienced up north.

  He pointed this out to Mose.

  “You know, I had a buddy up north who wore glasses. In the winter, every time he came inside out of the cold, he’d be flying blind for about five minutes because his glasses would fog up. Here, it works in reverse. He’d step outside leaving a bar and his glasses would fog…except instead of being inside where it’s warm and safe, he’d be stepping out onto the mean streets of the Quarter in the wee hours of the morning. Not the best time to be flying blind for five minutes.”

>   He laughed wryly and shook his head.

  “I don’t understand how people live like this,” he said. “I mean, I’m doing it myself, but I don’t understand it.”

  “After a while, you get used to it.” Mose sighed.

  “Uh-huh,” Griffen said. “They used to tell the freshmen at the University of Michigan the same thing during orientation…‘You get used to the cold after a while.’ The problem was, they never really did.”

  “That’s funny,” Mose said. “That’s what folks down here say about living up north. How can people live like that? So tell me, if you never really get used to it, how did you deal with the cold up there?”

  “That’s easy,” Griffen said. “It’s not like we sit out on our front lawns in it. We do the portable environment thing. We go from our heated homes to our heated cars to a heated office or shopping mall.”

  “Well, it’s kinda the same thing down here,” Mose said. “We go from our air-conditioned homes to our air-conditioned cars or cabs to an air-conditioned office or bar. See what I mean?”

  “Okay. You win. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having an accent.”

  Mose laughed.

  “Griffen, just because you don’t have the local accent, doesn’t mean you have an accent. Flip through any channels on any TV, and ninety percent of the people onscreen will sound like you. Midwestern is accepted American bland and normal.”

  “Well…but you sound that way, too…most of the time.”

  Mose smiled, eyes crinkling a bit more at the edges.

  “Tha’ suh, ’s ’cause I practice mighty fine.”

  Griffen noticed that the accent didn’t sound like the usual New Orleans accent. No, it sounded older. He decided not to pursue it, for now.

  “You win, again.” Griffen laughed. “So let’s get back to my lesson. I’ll tell you, Mose, all this stuff with the sports betting is crossing my eyes.”

  “Just be thankful you came down here in June when things were slow,” Mose said. “Not much happening in sports during the summer…except baseball, and not many folks bet on that. In about a month, football season will start and the action gets heavy. Then, when basketball cuts in, you’ll have your hands full. Most of the money comes from football betting, though.”

  “So let’s start there,” Griffen said. “How do you set the betting lines? I mean, some of those point spreads get pretty exact. How do you come up with them?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mose said. “We’ve got experts to do that for us. You’re going to be primarily working the management side.”

  “Well, could you give me a rough idea of how it’s done?” Griffen insisted. “Even if I don’t get directly involved, I’d like to have some notion of the process.”

  “Well, it used to be harder in the old days,” Mose said. “Today, with the Internet and other electronic communication, it’s a lot easier. There are a couple services we subscribe to that have stringers and informants all across the country. They keep track of everything from the physical and medical condition of key players, not to mention their love life and family relationships, to the condition of the fields, weather forecasts, and the history of the various coaches and their staff members when they’ve gone up against each other before. All that data gets plugged into computers and they spit out what the most likely outcomes will be.”

  “They can actually calculate things that close?” Griffen said.

  “Sure. Of course, different services have different formulas they use or different things they consider. I mean, there’s one that factors in who the referees will be and their track records for making bad calls. Because of that, the results aren’t always the same. That’s where our experts sit down with the service results along with the latest betting lines from the newspapers and Vegas and come up with the spreads we’ll use.”

  “And then you take bets based on those point spreads?” Griffen said.

  “Oh, we take some direct bets on single games,” Mose said, “but most of the money comes from the bar cards.”

  “The bar cards,” Griffen repeated. “I’ve seen some of those around, but never really got into them myself. How do they work?”

  “It’s a really sweet system,” Mose said. “Whoever came up with it should get some kind of reward. I’d say they should get a piece of the action, but there would be no way to control it.”

  “What we do is print up a bunch of cards that list all the NFL games and the top fifteen or twenty college games along with the point spreads. We have runners that take them out and drop them off with certain bartenders around town. If someone wants to play, they take one of the cards, circle the teams they think are going to win, put their name or a nickname on it, and give it to the bartender along with their bet. The runners pick up the cards and money and bring them to us before the games are played. After the results are in, they take the money for the winners and drop it off at the bars for the players to collect.”

  He paused to laugh and shake his head.

  “The thing is, most people kill themselves getting greedy. You see, on the back of the card are the payoff odds. The more games you pick and the more you bet, the more you stand to win. Folks would usually be okay…break even or come out a little ahead…if they stuck with picking just three games. Instead, they get sucked into picking five or seven games because the payback is bigger. Of course, to win all their picks have to be winners…and the more games they pick, the worse the odds are that the games will all go the way they think. Folks like us who run gambling operations just love the players who go with long shots and try to buck the odds.”

  While Mose was speaking, Griffen got up, unasked, to freshen their drinks. Returning from the kitchen, he set his mentor’s drink in front of him, then resumed his seat.

  “So, when you say I’ll be working the management side,” he said, “what exactly does that entail?”

  “Well, first of all, you’ll have final say on who we take on as runners,” Mose said. “That can be harder than it sounds. The people we want representing us have to be dependable, presentable, and able to interact with folks from all walks of life and levels of income. People like that aren’t all that easy to find these days.”

  “You forgot to mention ‘honest,’” Griffen said.

  Mose sighed.

  “Now that’s another part of management,” he said. “Every so often, one of your runners is going to try to steal from you. You’re going to have to sort it out and decide what to do about it.”

  “I’m missing something here.” Griffen frowned. “How can they steal from us with the setup you’ve got going?”

  “The most common way is when they start skimming,” Mose said. “As you can see, most of the people who do the bar cards don’t get any money back because they lose. A runner can figure that out, so he gets the idea to hold a couple cards back along with the money instead of turning them in. If the cards are losers, he gets to pocket those bets free and clear. Of course, if there’s a winner in there, he has to cover the payoff out of his own pocket.”

  “How do you catch something like that?” Griffen said.

  “Just like the players, the skimmers get greedy,” Mose said. “If they settle for a couple cards a week, they can probably get away with it. If they do, they start holding more and more back. That’s when we can spot it. A runner’s take is pretty consistent from week to week with some minor variations for big game weekends. If someone’s turn in starts consistently falling short of what we’ve learned to expect, there’s probably some skimming going on.”

  “Then what do you do?”

  “What you get to do is investigate.” Mose smiled. “You have to check around and find out if there really is some skimming going on, and if there is, if it’s the runner or the bartender or both who are doing it.”

  “And if we find out that someone is skimming?” Griffen said. “What do we do?”

  “Now don’t be thinking Hollywood gangster scenes again,” Mose sa
id. “If it’s the runner, we fire him and put in a replacement. If it’s the bartender, we just take that stop off our list…or recruit another bartender.”

  “That seems fair enough,” Griffen said. “Do we do anything about recovering…”

  Just then, his cell phone started ringing.

  “Excuse me a minute, Mose.”

  He glanced at the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the caller. For a moment he debated letting it go to voice mail, but decided it might give Mose the wrong impression about his diligence.

  “Griffen here,” he said into the instrument.

  “Mr. Griffen? This is Jumbo. You may not remember me.”

  It took a second, but Griffen placed the name and voice. If was the man who had been serving as Gris-gris’s bodyguard when they first met.

  “I remember you, Jumbo. What’s up?”

  “Something’s happened I thought you should know about,” Jumbo said. “I hate to bother you, but…”

  “No problem,” Griffen said. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  He listened for several minutes, his mouth tightening into a grimace.

  “Okay. I think I get the picture,” he said at last. “Are you on a cell phone? I’ll get back to you in a little while and let you know. Thanks for the call.”

  He flipped his phone shut, cutting off the connection. Then he leaned back in his chair and thought for a few moments.

  “Okay, Mose,” he said. “You’ve been saying that we have to take care of our people. Exactly how far does the definition of ‘our people’ extend?”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Well, it seems that Gris-gris has been picked up by the police under some rather strange circumstances,” Griffen said. “Is he considered one of ‘our people’? Should we do anything about it?”

  “You tell me,” Mose said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Gris-gris pulled out of our network under my management, then signed back on directly with you,” Mose said. “Since then, he steered a lot of new independents our way. More important, Jumbo called you, not me. I figure that makes it your call as to whether or not he’s one of ours. He thinks so, and Jumbo thinks so. The only question now is if you think so.”