Dragons Wild

Twenty-eight

As soon as Griffen rolled into Yo Mama’s, Padre caught his eye and jerked a head toward the back booths. Detective Harrison was already there, nursing a cup of coffee and studiously ignoring the other customers.

Griffen briefly considered reversing his course and easing back out, but it was too late. Harrison had already seen him and beckoned to him with a small motion of his hand.

Heaving a silent, inward sigh, Griffen complied. He really wasn’t feeling up to dealing with the detective tonight, but it seemed he didn’t have much choice.

“Okay, McCandles,” Harrison said without preamble. “I think we’ve gotta plan here. I’ve been talking to a couple a boys down at the precinct, and they’re willing to give a hand. Lucky for you they don’t like the Feds any more than I do.”

“Okay. Lieutenant.” Griffen nodded. “You have my undivided attention.”

The detective glanced around, then slid a slip of paper across the table.

“That’s my own cell phone number,” he explained. “When you spot one of these jokers following you, give me a call with the location and a description. I’ll relay it on to whoever’s closest, and we’ll handle it from there.”

“Wait a minute,” Griffen said. “I have to call you? How am I supposed to spot these guys? They’re professionals. I don’t know anything about tailing people or how to spot someone following me.”

“It’s not all that hard.” Harrison shrugged. “It’s actually pretty hard to tail someone if they’re watching for it. Ask your buddy Padre there for a few pointers. He used to be a private investigator. I’m more worried about what we’re going to do with them once we catch them. I mean, we can always find some reason for bracing them, but unless they declare themselves to be federal agents, it might be tough to tell them from some of our homegrown muggers.”

“I might be able to help you there.” Griffen dug into his pocket and produced his own cell phone. “Remember I told you I talked with Stoner? Well, before he walked up on me, he called me on his cell phone. That means I’ve got his number.”

“Okay. What does that get us?” the detective said.

“Well, I figure these people watching me have to report in somehow, and it’s my guess they’re using cell phones themselves. When you stop them, see if they have Stoner’s number in their directory. Even if they don’t, there should be one central number they all have to report to.”

“That could work,” Harrison said. “Not bad, McCandles. Well, let’s see what we turn up in a week.”

He rose to leave, then hesitated.

“I know I’ve asked this before, Grifter,” he said, “but do you have any idea why this Stoner guy has it in for you? I mean, this whole terrorist thing stinks on ice. What’s his real problem?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Griffen said with a smirk.

“Try me.”

Griffen looked at him levelly for a moment, then shrugged.

“The way it was explained to me,” he said carefully, “Stoner is a dragon. As such he collects power and has done a pretty good job so far. The problem is, he has it in his head that I’m a dragon, too, and am just coming of age. He’s afraid that I may be more powerful than he is, so he’s having me watched and tracked in case I become a threat. I try not to think about what he would or could do if he decided I was dangerous.”

Harrison stared at him.

“This is a joke, right?”

Griffen leaned forward and blew gently on the detective’s now cold cup of coffee. A small column of steam rose from the cup. He looked at it, then back at Harrison.

“I know,” he said. “I have trouble taking it seriously myself.”

“I didn’t know you had been a private eye,” Griffen said.

He was still finding that a little hard to believe. Even though he was getting used to the idea that almost everyone he met in the Quarter had a story behind them, Padre just didn’t seem the private-eye type. He was in his mid to late forties with longish hair pulled back in a ponytail. It had some streaks of gray, as did his mustache and goatee, and combined with his thin, wire-frame glasses, he looked more like a hippie than like anyone vaguely connected with the establishment.

“That was a while back, while I was in Texas,” Padre said, wiping down the bar.

Griffen had gone cruising for a while and was now back when the place was nearly empty. Early evening, Yo Mama’s was usually jammed with people ordering burgers, but if one came by late enough, after the grill was closed, say after three in the morning, the action had usually died down and conversation with Padre was easier.

“I don’t know what you said to Harrison before you took off,” Padre continued, “but it made an impression. He must have stood there looking at his coffee for five minutes before he finally left.”

Griffen ignored the unasked question.

“So, can you give me any tips on how to spot someone who’s tailing me?”

“It depends on who’s doing the tailing,” Padre said. “When I was a PI, it would pretty much be a one-man operation. Usually, they weren’t expecting it, so the main trick would be to keep them from noticing you.”

He paused to gather the dirty ashtrays along the bar.

“There are ways to make small changes in your appearance. You can wear a jacket you can take off, even better if it’s reversible. Sunglasses are good, and so are hats. You can also switch sides of the street every so often, so if they glance back, they aren’t always seeing someone behind them at the same distance.”

He gave a quick bark of laughter.

“Of course, all that doesn’t help much if something happens to bring you to the attention of the subject. I remember once I was tailing a guy through the downtown strip joints during his lunch hour, and a bunch of kids came up to me and asked if I was Weird Al Yankovic. Of course, I told them I wasn’t, but they kept crowding around and asking for my autograph. In no time flat a crowd had formed…including the guy I was following who turned around and came back to see what the commotion was about. Talk about blowing your cover!”

Griffen laughed along with him, enjoying the joke.

“Okay. I can see that,” he said finally. “But what if it’s a larger organization following you. Say, the Feds, for example.”

Padre shot him a narrow-eyed glance, then turned his attention again to washing the ashtrays.

“That’s a rather interesting example,” he said. “But…okay. Outfits like that have a lot of manpower. If you’re playing in that league, they’d be expecting you to be on the lookout, so they’d probably assign a whole team to the job. They’d probably have radio or cell phone hookups and use rotating front and back tails.”

“Whoa. Hold up for a minute,” Griffen said, holding up a restraining hand. “Rotating whats?”

“Front and back tails,” Padre said. “People following you from ahead of you as well as from behind you.”

“How could they do that?” Griffen said. “I mean, how could the ones ahead of you know where you’re going?”

“Easier than you think.” Padre smiled. “Let’s take an example. If they were on you tonight, they’d probably have teams spotted in bars or in one of the fast food places…except most of those are closed right now. Unless I miss my guess, they’d have window seats and be ordering their drinks in go-cups. As soon as you leave here, they all put it in motion, pausing in the door or on the sidewalk, say to light a cigarette. If you turn right toward Bourbon Street, they start moving in that direction and have you bracketed. The same thing if you turn left toward Royal.”

“But how do they know which way I’ll turn when I hit an intersection?”

“They guess, but it will be an educated guess. If they’ve been on you for a while, they already know your main stops and the routes you take to get to them. This time of night, they’ll probably be expecting you to head to your apartment, which means you’ll turn left and head toward Royal, then left again on Royal. Even if the front team guesses wrong and you keep going toward the river, there’s no problem. Either the back team keeps in touch with them and they run parallel for a while, or the back team passes you and the old front team falls in behind as the new back team.”

Griffen sighed and shook his head.

“The way you put it, they’d have me in a box,” he said. “So what could I do to deal with it?”

“That depends on whether you want to shake the tail or spot who’s following you,” Padre said. “If you want to shake them, vary your routine. Go different places or hit the same places at different times of the day or in a different order. Go to a movie and leave partway through it by a side exit. Hop a trolley car and ride it up to the Canal Place shopping center, then ride the elevators and escalators at random.”

“And if I’m trying to spot them?”

Padre favored him with a long look before answering.

“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.