"We got troubles," Jerome murmured, as soon as Griffen was close enough to hear.
"Who is it?"
"Jesse Lee."
Griffen winced. "He was a good guy."
"One of our best. I had a lot of hopes for him."
"What happened?"
Jerome tilted his head toward the door. "You'd better come and see."
Griffen had never been inside a morgue. All the television shows had one thing right, though: The smell hit him before anything else. It wasn't decay that made his eyes water, it was antiseptic cleaning fluid. They must have used it by the gallon, undiluted. The industrial beige of the walls went well with the stink. He never believed in restless spirits before he had come to New Orleans and met a deceased voodoo priestess, but no self-respecting ghost would hang out here. All kinds of people, well dressed in suits and dresses or jeans and hoodies, huddling together for support, wept loudly into tissues. The staff behind the desk paid little attention to them. They had to deal with the details of death every day. Griffen didn't think he could ever get used to it. He didn't want to sit down. He had a feeling of deja vu from watching movies all night about animated corpses. If Jesse was really dead, Griffen hoped he wouldn't manifest on him unless he had information on what caused his death.
A familiar face leaned out the door next to the counter. Detective Harrison glared at Griffen.
"What took you so long?" he demanded. "Come on back."
The heavyset detective strode ahead of them on slightly bowed legs that always reminded Griffen of the gait of a longtime biker. His dark hair was thin on the crown of his head, and sweat beaded the thick flesh between his hair and the collar of his shirt. The usual leather jacket must be hanging up somewhere. It was much cooler in this office building than in most of New Orleans, but Griffen put that down to necessity. Harrison indicated a door on the left side and ushered them in.
The gray-painted room was not the kind of viewing chamber set aside for sensitive relatives to identify a loved one under genteel circumstances, with a curtain and a window. This laboratory had steel tables with hanging sprayers and scales, plus plenty of other devices and machines that Griffen did not want to know about.
Harrison brought them to a wall full of square steel doors. He nodded to a young black male technician wearing green scrubs and cloth baggies over his shoes and hair. The technician, whose name was Shore, according to the name badge attached to his tunic, nodded and pulled open a door. From inside the cubicle, he slid out a gurney. A narrow form covered by a white sheet lay upon it. He threw back the white sheet and withdrew to the side of the room out of earshot, but Griffen saw his keen gaze still on them. He looked down. The corpse's face was dark purple, and the eyes seemed to bulge unnaturally under the lids, which were closed, Griffen was grateful to observe. It was almost redundant to note the deep red line on the neck that indicated that Jesse had been strangled.
"Name?" Harrison asked. Griffen took a deep breath, as if to reassure himself that he could still take one.
"Jesse Lee. He was one of my poker dealers. Nice guy. Single. Decent and honest."
"I knew this guy was one of yours," Harrison said. "You are sure some lucky that I was on duty this morning when the call came in from a house on St. Ann's."
"You met him before?" Griffen asked.
"No," Harrison said. "But I could guess." He lifted the corpse's left hand. It looked completely normal except for the forefinger. It was covered in pale gold scales that almost blended with the rest of the skin, but the nail curved up in an arc and came to a fearsome point. "I could try and convince the medical examiner that he had some kind of exotic skin condition, but the claw's past my ability to lie with a straight face. Also, the corpse is resisting being autopsied. They can't get a knife into him. That's what made me figure he was one of yours. The ME is trying to call it scleroderma or some other natural thing, but I don't have to have it written on the wall by a fiery hand to figure out the real reason."
Jerome tilted his head. "That why Mr. Shore over there is so interested?"
"Well, you don't have to be a genius to figure it out," Harrison said, with a scowl. "You could say it attracted attention. But the claw is the real standout. Anyone can see it."
Griffen stared at the hand. What made it possible for ordinary humans to exist side by side with his people was the fact that, as Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black, they do not know it. Part of his mind raced, trying to find a good reason for an ordinary card dealer to have a finger like a reptile's. The other part was yelling inside his head that someone had managed to kill a dragon, and if he was unsafe, what could happen to the rest of them?
"What can I do to keep mention of this from getting out?" Griffen said.
Harrison snorted. "You can't stop the rumors. The ME's photographers took about a hundred snapshots. Not to mention someone will undoubtedly have taken a cell phone picture of that finger and put it on the Internet already. But we can keep it low-key if you don't make a fuss about the guy's wallet."
"What?"
"When we put this guy on the stretcher, he had about eight hundred dollars among his personal effects, plus some fancy jewelry: a big gold ankh, a jade ring, solid gold cuff links. So, robbery wasn't the motive. The cash is missing. Not a big surprise, considering the wages we public servants get paid, but it would cause embarrassment if it came out, and the powers that be would be more than happy to return the embarrassment to you. If you threaten to kick up a fuss, everything will slow to a molasses crawl, more chance for the facts to come out. Just act normal."
"We can say it's a fad, plastic surgery or something," Jerome suggested. "This isn't the first time someone . . . has died in New Orleans."
Harrison raised an eyebrow. "You, too?"
Jerome's dark skin glowed with a red undertone. "Yes, Detective. Griffen here trusts you, so I'm trusting you."
Griffen held himself steady as Harrison studied him up and down. "You folks talk to ordinary people like me?"
Griffen was abashed. "I've been remiss in not finding the time to sit down with you. That place in Jackson Square on St. Ann. I owe you a dinner. Wednesday night, okay? I've got to be somewhere Tuesday."
Harrison's expression didn't change, but his stance softened a degree. "I don't mind. That won't alter the facts, however. This is still a murder investigation, and it happened in the Quarter, so I am the primary on it. I will solve this crime. I want to know why this man died. If it's because he worked for you, I want to know that."
"We'll cooperate in every way," Griffen promised. Jerome nodded.
"No holding back facts. You think I like keeping your crazy-ass secrets? But murder is my territory. You'll help me this time."
"Yes, Detective." Griffen sighed. "No more evasions. If you can take it, I'll tell you anything you need to know.
Harrison stuck a finger in his chest and thumped. "No. You tell me anything I ask you. I'll decide if it's something I need to know or not."
Dragon skin or not, the poke hurt. Griffen rubbed the spot. "I understand."
Harrison glared at him, then raised his chin. "Plastic surgery, huh?" he asked loudly. "People will do any stupid damned thing to themselves these days." Shore, the technician, looked crestfallen. "Do you know who's next of kin?"
"Can find out, Detective," Griffen said. "Jesse had a girlfriend. It'll be in our records. She might know family."
"Call me, not her," Harrison said. "Got that?"
"We got it, Detective," Jerome said.
"Get out of here," Harrison said. "I'll call you when I need something." Griffen nodded to Jerome, and they headed toward the door. "That Wednesday's fine, by the way."
Griffen felt his mood lift just a little, but he didn't let it show. The technician was still in the room. "Whatever you say, Detective."
Seven
The suite in the Royal Sonesta had an excellent view of the courtyard, a gracious haven when the hustle and noise of Bourbon Street was so close by. Jordan Ma sat
with the other players for the day.
"So, what's your business, Jordan?" asked Luis Serafina, who "dabbled in a little of this and that" in Miami. He was middle-aged, sallow-skinned, small-boned, balding, with sharp-cut nostrils and lips that made him look bad-tempered, when he was anything but. He was expansive, avuncular, and, Jordan could tell, liked it when people got along.
"Textile imports," Jordan said. "Silks for the high-end fashion industry."
"Very nice," Luis said. He poured himself a vodka on the rocks from the selection of bottles on the open bar. A young, light-skinned black man in a tuxedo shirt and bow tie stood behind the bar. Once the game began, the players had been told, Marcel would serve them at the table. Rectangular chafing dishes hung in rows over canned heat contained savory snacks. Jordan scented ginger and scallions. He smiled. Care was given even to the catering of these private games. Luis twisted a strip of lime peel and dropped it into his drink. "How about you, Carroll?"
The thickset bald man in the blue silk suit looked as if he were just about to fall asleep. His heavy eyelids drooped low over very light blue eyes. Jordan wondered if he was as shrewd as he looked. "Entertainment lawyer," he said. "I'm stealing a day or two away from my clients. Technically, I'm on call, but no one's suing each other over the weekend so close to Christmas."
The others chuckled. The remaining players were a married couple from Toronto. Marion was tall, bony, and outgoing. Len was stocky, dark, and observant. None of the five had met before. Luis was the old hand, a veteran of many visits to the French Quarter for pleasure and poker. He played at the casino when he was in town, but spent a few evenings per trip at one of the games organized by Griffen McCandles. Jordan listened to the chatter, interjecting a friendly comment now and again while the dealer, a young, dark-skinned woman in her early twenties, also wearing a white tuxedo shirt, set up the table. Jordan had brought with him forty thousand dollars in cash, in neat bundles of fifty hundreds, tucked into a long billfold in his inside breast pocket. The chips being set out were in minimum denominations of fifty dollars, going up to a value of a thousand dollars, as agreed by the players as they had arrived. When all was ready, the dealer signaled them over.
Jordan sat at the end of the table between Luis and Carroll, feeling like the Jabberwock, readying himself to strike. The dealer was at the center of the table on the long side. Her back was to the window, a seat that none of the players would have desired. Jordan sat opposite the married couple from Toronto. As soon as they sat down, they ignored each other and chatted with the players to either side instead. Jordan smiled. They had almost certainly met over a poker table. They would be his designated victims for the night.
One at a time, the dealer traded chips for the stakes pushed toward her by the players. Jordan handed over his money and pulled the stacks of chips toward him to arrange as he liked. The dealer opened a new pack of cards, Bicycle blue diamond backs, removed the jokers, and shuffled it.
"What game, madam and gentlemen?" the dealer asked, flashing a brilliant smile at them.
"Texas hold 'em," Jordan said at once.
"Oh, yeah," Luis said, eagerly. "How about it, folks?"
"Sure," said Len, his face giving away nothing. "We play a little of that up North."
"Very well," the dealer said. She placed the button in front of Len, and play began.
Jordan examined his cards long enough to see that he held queen-seven, suited. Not an easy winning hand, but buildable, depending upon what the flop showed. He used the time, instead, to observe his fellow guests.
Luis was expansive during play, talking about his business, his three children and seven grandchildren, and how much Florida was changing.
"There are shopping malls everywhere," he said. "And the snowbirds, they don't go to the beaches when they come down--they go shopping! It's good for the economy, but why bother to come to Florida and spend your whole day in the air-conditioning? The sun and the sea, baby! That's what's great about Florida."
The chatter, Jordan quickly discovered, was to cover up the number of nervous tells that Luis displayed. If his hand was bad, he darted his eyes back and forth. If it was good, he kept drumming his fingers on the back of his cards. If it was marginal, he played with the edges of the cards. It was a marvel no one had cleaned him out based on reading him alone. But unconscious tics aside, Luis was a careful player. He did not overbet. In fact, he underbet so badly on good hands that Jordan wanted to take his money just to teach him a lesson. But he was not there to teach them to play cards; on the contrary, the better they thought they were, the fewer defenses they had against him.
Carroll had the fewest tells. He kept himself very still except when drinking a sip of white wine or eating a canape. Jordan would not have been able to tell what he held simply by reading his body language. He could glimpse reflections of the hand in the man's corneas, but only occasionally. Carroll kept his eyes slitted. It would take a psychic, not a dragon, to get more information from him.
But the Canadian couple was easy. Len led with his left hand when his hole cards were good.
As he had predicted, Jordan had to fold the queen-seven. His next two hands were also unremarkable. He tossed in a three-two unsuited as soon as it appeared. The pair of sevens he kept until he knew by the avid look on Marion's face that she was holding something solid. She and Luis ended up in a modest series of raises until Luis finally dropped out. Jordan saw that he had been holding a trio of tens against Marion's three twos. He closed his eyes to shut out the pathetic sight. All the more reason, therefore, to continue with his plan.
The dealer expertly shot him two new cards. He knew by the residual energy on the first that it was the queen of hearts he had held before. Once he had touched the thin pasteboards, he could identify them anywhere in the room. The other card, at which he had to look, was the ace of hearts. Good enough. When it was his turn to bet, he pushed fifteen hundred into the pot. Luis's eyebrows went up. The Miami native launched into another story.
"Did I tell you about my daughter-in-law?" Luis asked. "She bought one of those laptops, but she didn't understand about the CD drive that pops out of the side?"
"Don't tell me she used it for a drinks holder," Marion shouted jovially.
"No, no, not that bad," Luis said. "She put a program CD in it and wondered what happened to the music!"
Jordan chuckled. Luis was going to be nothing for him to worry about. He won the hand.
The group settled down to watch one another and make the most of advantages as they arose. They were all fairly experienced, so no one had to learn as it went along. Texas hold 'em was not Jordan's game of choice, but it had become so popular that it was almost certain that any group would have a majority of aficionados or at least players who had watched one of the televised series. As it was so much newer than five-card or seven-card draw or stud, many of the older players had not completely adjusted their playing style to conceal their feelings about the hands they held. That was changing rapidly. Jordan's usual task for the elders was to monitor human behavior and report its progress according to region.
After ten or twelve hands, the young dealer gathered up the deck of cards and dropped it into a plastic bucket at her side.
"New cards," she said, brightly. She reached into a basket lined with a chintz cloth that contained rows of boxed decks of cards still in their cellophane. She stripped the wrapper off with expert fingers, opened the deck, fanned it, removed the jokers, and shuffled. The crisp sound was satisfying to the ear. "The old ones were getting a little tired, madam and gentlemen."
"I'm the one who's tired," Luis joked. "Can you get a new one of me out, too?"
Len laughed. "Me, too, miss," he said. The dealer smiled at them and sent cards flying around the table.
Jordan understood the necessity of changing decks. An expert card mechanic could mark a deck after a short time, by notching the sides or backs of the cards with a fingernail, or bending the corners slightly. When a cheat could
cause thousands of dollars to be lost in a single hand, it was simpler and cheaper to open another deck and make the cheat start over. He deplored the fact that he was the one who must begin again, but the stakes were high.
With nothing to give away what he held or what he was thinking, Carroll took an early lead. He smiled at the jokes, nodded acknowledgment of Luis's stories, and exchanged brief pleasantries with everyone else, but he was there to play poker. Jordan appreciated his application. In fact, he would have enjoyed the game very much if he had not been there to lose spectacularly.
The second time the young woman collected the cards, Marion let out a noise of protest.
"But that looks so wasteful just to toss them out!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, don't worry, ma'am," the dealer explained. "We used to just throw them out, but now we take the bucket down to the men's shelter about once a week. They separate out the decks again."
"For sale?"
"No, ma'am, they play with them. Gives them something to do. They donate some to the VA hospital and the long-term wards at the hospitals."
"I've never heard of that being done before," Marion said. "That is very generous of you."
"I am impressed," Carroll said, letting a rare expression of pleasure show on his broad face. Jordan's first thought was that going to such an effort was needless, then realized it was a stroke of genius. Why shouldn't someone else benefit from the castoffs of the well-to-do? Also, in the depths of his manipulative soul, he knew it was good for publicity. Griffen McCandles could not help but see his halo polished for a gesture of generosity that really cost him nothing.
"So am I," Jordan agreed.
The third time the cards thumped into the bucket, Luis kicked his chair back. The sun had gone down sometime before, and the lights around the swimming pool in the courtyard had come on.
"I need a break," he said, stretching his arms high over his head. "Anyone else?" He went over to the bar and fished a beer out of the tub of ice beside it.
Dragons Deal Page 6