Robert Asprin - Dragons Wild

“Yes’m.”

“All right. Get moving and don’t let us see you again tonight.”

The man turned and sprinted away down the street.

“That was a good call,” Lisa said as she returned her automatic to the pocket in the back of the fanny pack she was wearing. “Most people wouldn’t have spotted…What?”

Griffen continued staring at her.

She cocked her head and frowned.

“Is something wrong, lover?”

“You’re carrying a gun,” he said.

“Yeah. So? Sometimes it comes in handy…like tonight.”

“It’s just…I’ve never known anyone who carried a gun before.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting you’re from up north.” She flashed him a quick grin. “Well, you’re in the South now, and a lot of people carry. It’s even worse over in Texas.”

“Isn’t that illegal or something?” Griffen managed at last.

Again the grin.

“So’s gambling, but we do it anyway. No. Seriously. It’s not that hard to get a concealed weapons permit here in New Orleans. Especially if you live in the Quarter and have to go out at night. Of course, being a girl helps. Anyway, all you have to do is take a class and get certified so they know you won’t shoot anyone including yourself accidentally. Other than that, the only big rule is that you can’t carry in a bar.”

“But you…”

“Think a minute, lover. How often have you seen me peel off my fanny pack as I walked into a bar and asked them to hold it behind the counter for me?”

Griffen realized it was almost a habitual routine for her.

“I thought you were just doing that because it was like a purse to you and you didn’t want to have to keep watching it all the time.”

“That, too,” Lisa said. “Still, it keeps me within the rules. Any other questions?”

Griffen nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Who was the other guy?”

“Who? The one I ran off?”

“No. I meant the guy on the other side of the street,” Griffen said. “The one that was hanging back until the action started. He called to be certain you had things in hand.”

“Oh. That guy.”

“Uh-huh. You seemed to know each other.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Let me try to make this easier for you,” Griffen said. “Unless I’m mistaken, he was shooting pool on the back table at the Irish pub the afternoon Jerome and I met with Gris-gris. Am I right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Let me take this one step further. Am I being body-guarded? Did Jerome or Mose hire you and the others to cover me?”

“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.

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.