“Some of the same things apply,” he said. “Vary your routine, but lean toward more isolated places where they can’t hide in a crowd. Take a stroll along the Moonwalk at night when there aren’t many people around. Walk it partway to the aquarium, then turn around and reverse your course. Keep an eye out for people you’ve seen before, or people who suddenly stop when you come back at them. Sometimes grab a cab and go to a bar off your usual prowl pattern. Then grab a window seat and see who pops up that you’ve seen before…particularly if they’re getting out of a car or cab. Oh, and do all those things a bit at a time, so it just looks like a blip in your routine. If you start doing a lot of evasion or backtracking all at once, they’ll know you’re on to them and bring on extra team members to make it harder for you.”
Padre paused to pour Griffen a fresh drink, then leaned his elbows on the bar.
“Of course, there’s another way they could be handling it,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“The easiest way to tail someone is from beside them,” Padre explained. “You could pick up a new friend or two while you’re hanging at the bars. Someone who laughs at your jokes and buys you drinks, then asks to tag along to your next stop. Someone, say, like a good-looking woman who finds you fascinating. Then they don’t have to follow you at all. You’ll be looking for them to hang around with and will probably tell them what your plans are for tomorrow…or the next week. That makes their job real easy and it’s a lot harder to spot.”
Griffen started to protest, but then he thought of Fox Lisa. What Padre was describing was exactly how Jerome had set him up with her originally. If Stoner was keeping an eye on his group, wasn’t there a chance he already had it in-filtrated? How many people was Fox Lisa doing favors for…maybe at the same time?
“One more example, Padre,” he said. “What if, instead of a surveillance team, I had a hit man after me. What would be the story then?”
Padre stared at him hard before answering.
“You do come up with some unpleasant examples,” he said slowly. “Could make a body nervous about hanging out with you. If a hit man was after you, he wouldn’t have to track your every move. Instead, he’d try to identify your usual patterns…what bars you hang out at, where you live, what routes you walk between them. Then, all he has to do is sit and wait and pick his time.”
Suddenly, Griffen’s drink didn’t taste as good as it had originally. He drank it anyway.
The next day, Griffen decided to try out some of the tactics Padre had coached him on. As far as routines went, Tuesdays were when he usually hit both Virgin and Tower to shop for new DVDs, so it would make a good test.
As he emerged from his apartment complex, he paused to look around with new, suspicious eyes.
There was a street entertainer sitting on the far side of the avenue playing a guitar. Griffen had seen him there often, but had usually ignored him as the man really wasn’t that good a musician. This time, just to change his pattern, Griffen crossed the street to speak with him.
“Keep seeing you out here,” he said, dropping a five into the open guitar case, “but never had the time to stop. You work hard for your money.”
“Hey! Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.” The guitarist smiled back.
The man had a cell phone in his guitar case, and his hair was noticeably shorter than the norm for the Quarter. Also, even though he was wearing denim pants and jacket, they seemed very stiff and new.
Griffen strolled toward the Square, but glanced back before he had gone half a block. The musician had stopped playing and was talking on his cell phone.
Uh-huh.
There was a moderate crowd of people on the street, a mixture of tourists seeing the sights along with a scattering of locals going about their daytime errands.
Griffen strolled along at a leisurely pace, pausing occasionally to look at the displays in the shop windows, then took advantage of the cover of a knot of tourists to duck into a used bookstore he had never been in before. With a quick glance around, he selected a place where the shelves hid him from the street, but he could see out. Then he selected a book at random, opened it, and waited.
In the next several minutes maybe two dozen people passed the store headed for Jackson Square. Again, they were mostly tourists, but a few stood out. A trio of gutter punks went by with a small puppy on a rope arguing about something with exaggerated gestures. One young woman, a tourist by the look of her, was pausing every four or five steps to snap a picture of something…anything apparently. Lampposts, Dumpsters, storefronts, anything. A delivery man from one of the delis or restaurants came by with a basket on the front of his bike. He was walking the bike instead of riding it, which was a little strange, but Griffen realized he recognized him and turned his attention elsewhere.
A Latino male caught his eye, walking by at a normal pace wearing the uniform black pants and tuxedo shirt of the service industry. A green jacket topped his ensemble. A waiter. From the Court of Two Sisters, by the jacket. What was unusual was that it was the wrong time of day for him to be going to work. Too late for the breakfast and lunch crowd, but too early for the dinner crowd. Still, maybe he had gotten a call to fill in for someone.
Finding nothing he could definitely label unusual, Griffen was about to give up and move along when he spotted the Latino again. The man was returning on the far side of the street, but moving slowly and looking through the windows of la Madeleine, a restaurant Griffen sometimes stopped at for a late lunch. He reached the end of the windows, then turned and stared back toward Jackson Square. Finally, he produced a cell phone, keyed a number, then spoke into it briefly.
Within minutes, another man appeared. This one was wearing a suit complete with a convention badge displayed prominently on the lapel. The only thing that made him vaguely distinguishable was that he wore a wide green tie and was carrying a bright orange shopping bag. Normally, Griffen wouldn’t look at him twice on the street. The man went into a brief huddle with the Latino, then they both walked hurriedly toward the Square and the video stores, splitting so that they were moving some fifteen feet apart.
Bingo!
Griffen smiled and reached for his own cell phone.
By the time he reached Yo Mama’s, Griffen was in a foul mood. After waiting on pins and needles for over six hours for some kind of word as to what, if anything, had happened, this summons to meet with Harrison seemed almost anticlimactic.
The detective was there ahead of him, holding down a booth, and waved him over as soon as he walked through the door. The fact he seemed to be in a good mood did nothing to ease Griffen’s disposition.
“Sit down, Griffen,” the detective said. “You got a steak dinner coming to you courtesy of the NOPD.”
“I didn’t know they served steaks here,” Griffen said.
“They do,” Harrison said. “They’re just not as popular as their hamburgers. Mostly, the hoi polloi prefer to eat cheap.”
“Actually, I’ve already eaten,” Griffen said.
“Well, it’s paid for in advance,” the detective said. “Just tell Padre the next time you’re in the mood for a steak.”
“I’ll remember that,” Griffen said.
Harrison peered at him.
“Are you okay?” he said. “You sound kinda peeved. We don’t buy steaks for people every day, you know. As a matter a fact, that steak dinner bonus was supposed to be for me. I decided to pass it along to you instead.”
“It’s been six hours,” Griffen said. “You could have called.”
The detective leaned back in his seat and scowled.
“Did I miss something here?” he said. “Am I reporting to you now on the chain of command? Jeez, you sound like my wife.”
