“Well… Okay. We were watching out for you.”
“Any particular reason?” the target pressed.
“We heard that someone had a contract out on you,” the gunman said. “My brother, TeeBo, said we should keep an eye on you and step in if anything went down.”
“He couldn’t just give me a call and warn me?”
“We weren’t sure if it was true or not,” the youth named Patches said. “Besides, this way, if we did you a favor, he thought maybe you’d think you owed us a favor sometime.”
The whole scene had a vaguely surreal feel for the shooter. Not only had he walked into some kind of a trap—or double trap—it seemed the others had all but forgotten about him as they continued their conversation.
“Well, you tell TeeBo that I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t think I want to owe him a favor over this.” The target was smiling. “Sometime, maybe. But not now and not over this. Put the gun away and give him back his bag.”
“If you say so, Mr. Griffen.”
The gunman’s pistol disappeared, and he nodded to his partner, who tossed the paper bag at the shooter’s feet.
“Um… mind if we stick around for this?” Patches said.
“We won’t do nothin’, but I’d kinda like to see this. I know TeeBo will want to hear about it.”
“Suit yourself.” The target shrugged. “But you’d better move a little farther away. If this guy uses a shotgun, he probably doesn’t shoot that straight.”
The two black youths eased a few steps to the side, and the target turned his attention to the shooter.
“Well?” he said. “Anytime you’re ready.”
The shooter stared at him for a moment, then, moving slowly, he bent over and took the shotgun out of the bag. Without going near the triggers, he broke the weapon open, removed the shells, and threw them away.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass on this one,” he said.
“All this is more than I bargained for, and I’ve got a bad feeling I’m way out of my league here. All I want now is to walk away from the whole thing.”
“That’s acceptable.” The target nodded. “Just go back and tell whoever hired you that if he sends anyone else, I won’t be as generous.”
He turned his back on the shooter.
“C’mon, Patches,” he said. “At least let me buy you two a drink.”
The shooter watched the three young men walk away and decided then and there that this had been his last job.
Nine
As usual, the crowd was light in the late afternoon at the Irish pub. The bartender was idly browsing through the newspaper and didn’t even look up, much less wave, when the man who had been playing the video poker machine finished his beer and wandered out the side door.
In the seemingly random pecking order of the bar-centered social life in the Quarter, the video poker players, sometimes referred to as video crackheads, were pretty much the bottom of the food chain. They rarely if ever interacted with any of the regulars or even the bartenders, except to get another beer or to break a twenty from the latter. Instead, they would sit glued to their chosen machines for hours, staring at the screen as they sipped their drinks and pumped more money in as needed. In a bar that was heavy on conversation and pool, this put them well under the radar. One rarely noticed their coming or going, or even their presence while they were there.
This made the role ideal for the man who had just exited the pub. Unlike most, he worked at being unnoticed. In fact, the last time he had been in town, he made a point of hanging at this specific bar and establishing himself as one of those invisible video poker players. It was the perfect guise in which he could watch and listen yet not be seen. Even now, he doubted the bartender knew or remembered his name.
Of course, being a shape-shifter helped.
Reflecting on that, the man smiled to himself. For all their self-trumpeted powers of size changing and shape-shifting, the big bad dragons barely scratched the surface of the possibilities of those skills. Young McCandles might be excused because he was still new to the game, but the older, more experienced dragons didn’t have that alibi. Their prolonged ignorance was yet another example of dragon arrogance. If you had enough power, why bother learning finesse?
Sure, big flashy changes were impressive, like shifting your form into an animal, especially a mythical one. But the same skills could be used to perform smaller, less noticeable changes that were much more useful in one’s workaday life.
Changing one’s hair color or length or the color or shade of one’s complexion was easy, but effective. So was adding or subtracting twenty years to one’s age. Changing gender was a bit more challenging, especially since it usually meant changing one’s garments as well, but it could be done.
One of the man’s favorite changes was one he was using with his current disguise. Making one leg slightly longer than the other changed his walk and the whole way he moved and held his body. In this disguise, planted in front of a video poker machine, the man had been in the pub at the same time as young McCandles and not been recognized, even though the youth had every reason to remember him. Even the much-lauded dragon powers of observation were useless unless one chose to apply them.
The man’s thoughts were interrupted when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, he winced. He had been expecting this call sooner or later, but still dreaded it.
Looking quickly up and down the street to be sure there was no one within hearing, he leaned against a wall in the shade and opened the phone.
“Talk to me,” he said in his traditional greeting.
“George!” came an agitated female voice. “Where the hell are you?”
“Hello to you, too, Debbie,” he said, making a face at his reflection in a window. “I’m fine, thank you. How about yourself?”
In actuality, his name wasn’t really George. Though he was known by that title to those who employed him, his closely guarded secret was that he was only one of a team. The entire team was referred to as “the George” because of its purpose… to hunt dragons for pay. As one of the team’s main field agents, however, he found that even the team was referring to him more and more as “George.” That was one of the annoyances of working with a team. He was about to have to deal with another one of those downsides.
“Cut the crap, George,” came the voice of his distant teammate. “We haven’t heard from you for over a week. What are you doing?”
“I’m taking a little self-prescribed vacation,” George said. “I figure with the bonuses we got from my last job, I could afford some time off.”
There was a pause at the other end of the conversation.
“I suppose that’s right,” Debbie said with grudging acceptance. “You could have called in and told us, at least.”
“Yeah, sure.” George laughed. “And get told there was a new hot assignment that was too good to pass on. No, thanks. I’ll do it my way. If that’s not acceptable, you can always fire me.”
“Very funny,” his teammate said. “Okay. You’re on vacation. Where are you, anyway?”
Now it was George’s turn to hesitate.
“George,” came the voice, stern now. “Please tell me you’re not back in New Orleans.”
George searched for an adequate answer, but none came to mind.
“Goddamn it, George!” his teammate exploded. “You can’t—”
“Listen, Debbie,” George interrupted. “I only…”
“No,
“I should,” he snarled. “I wrote most of them.”
