Dragons Deal (41 page)

"I hope so," Griffen said, smiling whenever someone caught his eye. He plucked a bacon-wrapped scallop off a passing tray. He planned to enjoy the dinner all he could. He had been living on carry-out food, a thousand miles away from this in quality. Until the games picked up, his access to gourmet food was limited to krewe events for which he had already paid.

"This is just brilliant, Griffen!" Callum Fenway said, holding up the souvenir poster from his plate. Griffen bowed over Lucinda's hand and shook her husband's. "Lucinda here wants to swap hers with Madeline Grade's, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," Griffen said. "Glad you like them."

"I think these are just so clever," Lucinda said.

"Whatever you would like," Griffen said, pleased. "Enjoy the evening." He and Etienne made their way to the table at the center of the room, where Antoinette was holding forth. Griffen's ladies and Gris-gris were already seated, as was Melinda. Val was angry to have her at the same table, but Griffen had pointed out, it would have attracted attention if she were not seated in a place of honor. With a look that told him he would pay for it later, Val subsided. She made sure Gris-gris and Mai were on either side of her.

He signed to the bandleader, who played a fanfare on his trumpet. Griffen took his cards from his pocket.

"My friends, I want to thank you all for coming tonight. The king's party is an opportunity for me to express gratitude to you for the honor of naming me as king of the Krewe of Fafnir for this year. I am a newcomer to New Orleans, but I have never felt so at home anywhere as I do here in this city. To give me a chance to participate in this most famous event is far beyond my wildest dreams. To see New Orleans prepare for Mardi Gras seems as if it's getting dressed up, but what's really happening is that the city's revealing to the rest of the world what it really looks like all the time, only on the inside. The good times roll. We take things easy, big-time. But we work hard at having fun, too, but all the fun leads up to a time when you take your faith seriously. A krewe is set up to hold a parade or a party, but most of them, Fafnir included, do some serious work for charitable institutions. I respect that.

"I want to offer a special welcome to all my fellow kings and queens and potentates and whatever names you've given to the honorees who ride at the front of our parades." Cos waved a languid hand from the table nearest him. Everyone laughed, including Griffen. "We're one of the first things the paradegoer sees, but we're only a minor part of the whole. Behind each of us, literally, are hundreds, if not thousands of people who make Mardi Gras happen. I had no idea how far in advance everything has to be planned or how much detail has to be seen to--and I'm grateful I didn't have to."

The audience chuckled again.

Griffen smiled at them, feeling expansive and relaxed for the first time in ages. The warm glow of the candles cast a golden light on the ladies in their finery and the gentlemen in their tuxedos. He'd seen many of them in sweatpants and T-shirts slinging paint and papier-mache. It was his night to shine, but theirs, too.

"There are too many of you to name individually. I wish I could. First, I want to thank Etienne de la Fee for getting me into this in the first place. Second, I want to curse Etienne de la Fee for getting me into this in the first place." Everyone laughed, especially Etienne, who slapped the table and guffawed. "Credit also goes to the Fenways, the Grades, the Killens, my sister Val . . ."

As he named each, the audience applauded. Griffen just barely heard the noise of a cell phone blaring its irritating beep. Someone hadn't bothered to turn his off when he came into the dining room.

With a shock, he realized it was his. The clapping died away, and everyone laughed again when they heard the insistent peeping.

"You better get that, Mr. Griffen," Etienne shouted.

Griffen knew he had to go with the flow.

"Excuse me," he said. He took the phone out of his breast pocket. The screen said that it was Detective Harrison calling. "Hello, Harrison. I . . ."

The detective's voice bellowed in his ear. "Don't you Harrison me! I'm at one of your goddamned games. It's turned ugly, and I want you here, now!"

Griffen grinned uneasily at the tables of guests. "Detective, I'm in the middle of something. It's going to have to wait a few hours."

"I don't care what you're in the middle of!" A loud crash, followed by shouting, erupted out of the receiver. "Get your ass down here, McCandles! If you aren't down here in ten minutes I'm sending a patrol car. Damm it, you stop that! Hold on to her, Sherer! Move it, McCandles. This is your business and your problem." The connection snapped off.

Griffen found himself staring at the handset in dead silence. He looked up. "Uh, folks, there's an emergency. I . . . have to leave for a little while."

"Anyone hurt?" Callum Fenway asked, his forehead wrinkled with concern. "Anything the rest of us can do, Griffen? We'd do anything you need."

Murmurs of agreement swept through the room. Griffen was grateful and ashamed.

"I don't think so. It's, uh, business. I should be back pretty soon, after I straighten everything out. I want everyone to stay and have a good time." He looked around desperately. The faces at his table looked up at him. He needed a substitute host to carry on with the dinner.

"I'll take over if you wish," Mai said.

"Or me," Val said, though she didn't really look ready to step in.

Val wasn't an organizer, and she could be shy in public. Mai could be charming, but mostly in one-on-one situations. She wasn't good at putting others at ease. Fox Lisa had that gift, but the snobbish crowd had sensed her low dragon blood and wouldn't treat her with the respect she deserved. He turned to Etienne.

"Not me, Mr. Griffen," the captain said, raising his hands. "Not my place."

In desperation, he turned to Melinda. The senior female regarded him suspiciously. "I have an emergency. You are the queen of this krewe. I need you to act as hostess while I am away."

Val gawked at him. "Griffen, you are not serious.
Her?
"

"You don't actually trust her," Mai demanded.

"I can't stay," Griffen said, seriously. "She's got the rank and the blood, and the experience if something . . . goes wrong. It's appropriate. Will you do it?"

"I certainly will," Melinda said, not looking as smug as he thought she would. "I have to say I am surprised but gratified that you can pick the best person for the job whatever your misgivings. I accept. I'll take care of your guests. Go ahead. Everything will be fine."

Griffen met her eyes. "Protect my sister."

"I don't need her help!" Val shrieked. Melinda pressed her lips together grimly. She knew the risks; she was one of them. But they had a truce, and he didn't have a lot of time. She nodded.

"You know I will. Get going."

Griffen noticed Etienne's eyes glitter behind her.

"Why didn't you warn me about this?" he demanded.

Etienne shook his head. "Got nothin' to do with
my
business, Mr. Griffen. I don't see everyt'ing about everyone. Just what the Fates tell me I need to know. But it'll be okay. Go on."

Melinda stood up and tapped a water glass for attention. "Ladies and gentlemen, Griffen has to excuse himself for a while. In the meantime, please let me call on Mr. Callum Fenway to say a few words. Callum?" She gestured gracefully toward the lieutenant, who stood up, fingering his collar.

Griffen called for Doreen on his way out of the building. Whether he liked it or not, he was leaving his party in good hands. He hoped it wouldn't take too long to resolve whatever Harrison was in the middle of.

He felt glaring eyes bore into his back. He would have to make peace later on, but that had to wait.

In
the weak light of morning, Griffen limped into his apartment and locked the door behind him, glad to be home. He had no idea where his tuxedo jacket was. His pristine white shirt and silk tie were stained and crumpled.

When he'd arrived at the Embassy Suites, he heard shouting and banging coming from the double doors at the end of the corridor. Inside, chairs lay on the floor around an upended table. A bottle of gin lay on its side leaking into the carpet. Chips were strewn everywhere. A lone twenty-dollar bill was plastered to the wall. The room was full of people, all yelling and gesturing at one another.

Wallace, his poker dealer, was up against the wall between two vice cops, bellowing at the officer taking his statement. Three players, two of whom he recognized as high rollers and one who was a stranger, were being interviewed by a black female cop. Kitty, his alternate, sat weeping into a tissue as Harrison took her statement. When he saw Griffen, the detective came up out of his chair and homed in on him.

From that moment, Griffen would have had to have instant replay video to straighten out everything that he heard, saw, and had happen to him. It seemed that one of the players, a factory-farm owner from Oklahoma, had arrived a little tipsy. He drank gin and tonic steadily through the game. After an admittedly bad beat, for which one of Griffen's regulars apologized, the man had erupted and accused both the player and the dealer, who at the time was Kitty, of colluding to cheat him. Wallace had immediately called Jerome, who arrived to mediate. The man couldn't be mollified or bought off, and had started throwing punches, then furniture. The player got a chair in the face and lost a tooth. The hotel management arrived, followed quickly by the police. As soon as the responding officers saw what was going on, they had summoned Harrison from a night off to handle a case involving his "friend, Griffen McCandles." Griffen understood why he was upset.

Harrison refused to let him talk to the complaining player. The man had been taken to district headquarters, to give a statement and press charges if he so chose. So had Jerome. Griffen couldn't raise him on his cell phone. The next thing he knew, he was up against the wall being handcuffed.

"I can't ignore it," Harrison growled. "Running an illegal poker game in my town! Softening me up with your phony overtures, you are so slick you can slide under a closed door. You're responsible. You'll be named in the indictment."

Griffen rode to the station jammed against the rear door of a patrol car with Wallace and the poker player whose tooth had been knocked out. The latter was taken out for a while to get medical attention, but Griffen and Wallace had been shoved into the drunk tank, the only holding cell with any room. Mardi Gras was a busy time for law enforcement. Griffen got the rundown from Wallace and the other players on what had happened during the game up to the chair-throwing incident. It fit into the pattern. The customer from Oklahoma, whom no one else had met before, accused them of cheating, and said he wanted all his money back plus damages and pain and suffering. He got more and more aggressive, until he had started swinging furniture. It helped clarify the situation in Griffen's mind, but he needed to talk to Jerome.

He tried Jerome's number dozens of times, but got shunted to voice mail each time. Either his second-in-command had gotten badly hurt in the fight, which seemed unlikely, or the cops were interviewing him and wouldn't let him call out for Griffen or a lawyer. He wondered when his turn was coming.

In the meanwhile, he made several more calls, to Val, Fox Lisa, and Mai. Unfortunately, anyone else he could think of who might have the wherewithal to loan him bail was at the party he had left, and had his or her phone turned off. They had been smart enough to shut them down during the party. He wished he had been.

No. Harrison knew where he was holding the king's party. He would just have had the maitre d' summon him to the phone. This was going to happen no matter what.

His phone rang. He grabbed for it. "Mai?"

"No, Grifter, it's Marcel. Man, I wanna apologize. I heard what happened! The guy seemed cool. I didn't know he was crazy."

Sitting against a wall between a drunk who had vomited all over his own clothes and a furious man who had been picked up for refusing to pay a hooker, Griffen did his best not to sound angry at the spotter. After all, Marcel really was trying, and his instincts about people were usually good.

"It wasn't your fault," he tried to assure him. But Marcel felt guilty. Griffen tried not to be resentful, as the hours went by. He had no money left to pay his own bail, let alone that of the players and dealers. The stink in the cell was unbelievable. Even if they had offered them food, Griffen wasn't sure he could have kept it down. The only good news was that he overheard one cop say that Harrison may have solved Jesse Lee's murder.

He called everyone he knew to ask for help. All of the messages went to voice mail. By an hour before dawn, he started getting calls back, but they weren't the kind he was hoping for. "I don't know if I ever want to speak to you again!" Val snarled. "Oh, she queened it over us all right! That bossy bitch! And she kept putting her arm over my shoulder. You can just sit and rot for a while. What is the
matter
with you?"

She had hung up. Fox Lisa was next. Her usual cool had been burned away.

"They made fun of my tattoos! They treated me like a toy. I had to slap one of them, and he laughed at me! What kind of people are these? They were perfectly nice at the ball, but you turn your back, and they act like they are all that and a bag of chips! I didn't walk out because there is no way I would cede the ground to them, but you are in big trouble, Griffen. Bail? I am not going to waste my time. I am going home to take a long bath."

Mai was short and to the point. "You trust her, and you won't trust me. Your priorities are screwed up, Griffen."

But about dawn the jailer came to the cell door and leaned in.

"Griffen McCandles!"

He figured it was Jerome, or perhaps Val had relented. Instead, waiting for him on the other side of the solid steel door was Melinda. Griffen stopped before he crossed the threshold. The jailer nudged him from behind until he moved.