Dragons Wild

“Oh, that.” Valerie tried for dismissive, but could feel a flush creeping up her neck. She covered it well. “Perform for little girls a lot do you?”

“Ah, well, I used to give out candy, but for some reason the words ‘want some candy, little girl’ set off all kinds of people these days.”

She smiled at him, and gave him points for picking up her tone, and rolling with it.

“Well, if you want a laugh from me, I don’t think another fake rose will do it.”

“Ah, but for the lady, the real thing is a must.”

And just like that he was holding a red rose, stem trimmed off but petals bright and fresh. He held it out for her, not letting his eyes break contact.

“What do you do, stuff them up your sleeves before you go out just in case you need a handy pick-up bit?”

“I think I’ve got pearls up my other sleeve if you’d rather,” he said.

At that she did laugh. She couldn’t help it.

“You try giving me pearls in the first fifteen minutes of a relationship, and I’m going to start looking for your sexual predator file.”

“Then the relationship is already started? Oh, goody.”

“You don’t go half fast do you? And no one says goody,” Valerie said.

“I thought joy and rapture might be pushing things a bit,” he said.

Valerie was used to strong come-ons, and dealing with them, but more and more she was becoming interested. Seeming to pick up on it, he straightened and tossed the rose over his shoulder.

“Not pearls or roses then. Di

“You haven’t even asked my name, or offered yours.”

“Which line would you prefer? A rose by any other name, or something along the lines of Dulcinea. As for mine, I’m Nathaniel.”

“Nathaniel what?”

“Oh, Mother won’t tell us, just in case we should ever try to track down Father.”

“Ha! Oh, you won’t get to evade that easily for long Nathaniel.”

“Quite right, but you must come to di

He pulled a business card out of his left pocket and flipped it onto the table casually. He had yet to close the final distance, and he still didn’t. Instead he turned and walked back toward the Square, without a backward glance.

Valerie thought for a moment and pocketed the card.

Thirty-seven

It was early August, and the New Orleans summer had descended with all its sticky, humid splendor. The ever-present construction crews started working early in the morning…very early in the morning…so they could knock off and be off the roofs and out of the sun before the temperature hit its peak around two in the afternoon. All the shops, restaurants, and bars were ru

If at all possible, one avoided going outside until after the sun set. Unfortunately, it didn’t make that much difference. The semiregular afternoon cloudbursts didn’t cool things off the way they would up north. They simply added more moisture so that when one did go out, it had the same feel as stepping into a sauna.

It was early evening, and Griffen was at Mose’s place getting a crash course on sports betting. During a break, as he was staring out the window, he realized something he had only noted in passing before.

The difference between the temperature inside the house and outside was so extreme that moisture was forming on the outside of the windows. This was, of course, the exact opposite of what he had experienced up north.

He pointed this out to Mose.

“You know, I had a buddy up north who wore glasses. In the winter, every time he came inside out of the cold, he’d be flying blind for about five minutes because his glasses would fog up. Here, it works in reverse. He’d step outside leaving a bar and his glasses would fog…except instead of being inside where it’s warm and safe, he’d be stepping out onto the mean streets of the Quarter in the wee hours of the morning. Not the best time to be flying blind for five minutes.”

He laughed wryly and shook his head.

“I don’t understand how people live like this,” he said. “I mean, I’m doing it myself, but I don’t understand it.”

“After a while, you get used to it.” Mose sighed.

“Uh-huh,” Griffen said. “They used to tell the freshmen at the University of Michigan the same thing during orientation…‘You get used to the cold after a while.’ The problem was, they never really did.”

“That’s fu

“That’s easy,” Griffen said. “It’s not like we sit out on our front lawns in it. We do the portable environment thing. We go from our heated homes to our heated cars to a heated office or shopping mall.”

“Well, it’s kinda the same thing down here,” Mose said. “We go from our air-conditioned homes to our air-conditioned cars or cabs to an air-conditioned office or bar. See what I mean?”

“Okay. You win. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having an accent.”

Mose laughed.

“Griffen, just because you don’t have the local accent, doesn’t mean you have an accent. Flip through any cha

“Well…but you sound that way, too…most of the time.”

Mose smiled, eyes crinkling a bit more at the edges.

“Tha’ suh, ’s ’cause I practice mighty fine.”

Griffen noticed that the accent didn’t sound like the usual New Orleans accent. No, it sounded older. He decided not to pursue it, for now.

“You win, again.” Griffen laughed. “So let’s get back to my lesson. I’ll tell you, Mose, all this stuff with the sports betting is crossing my eyes.”

“Just be thankful you came down here in June when things were slow,” Mose said. “Not much happening in sports during the summer…except baseball, and not many folks bet on that. In about a month, football season will start and the action gets heavy. Then, when basketball cuts in, you’ll have your hands full. Most of the money comes from football betting, though.”

“So let’s start there,” Griffen said. “How do you set the betting lines? I mean, some of those point spreads get pretty exact. How do you come up with them?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Mose said. “We’ve got experts to do that for us. You’re going to be primarily working the management side.”

“Well, could you give me a rough idea of how it’s done?” Griffen insisted. “Even if I don’t get directly involved, I’d like to have some notion of the process.”

“Well, it used to be harder in the old days,” Mose said. “Today, with the Internet and other electronic communication, it’s a lot easier. There are a couple services we subscribe to that have stringers and informants all across the country. They keep track of everything from the physical and medical condition of key players, not to mention their love life and family relationships, to the condition of the fields, weather forecasts, and the history of the various coaches and their staff members when they’ve gone up against each other before. All that data gets plugged into computers and they spit out what the most likely outcomes will be.”

“They can actually calculate things that close?” Griffen said.

“Sure. Of course, different services have different formulas they use or different things they consider. I mean, there’s one that factors in who the referees will be and their track records for making bad calls. Because of that, the results aren’t always the same. That’s where our experts sit down with the service results along with the latest betting lines from the newspapers and Vegas and come up with the spreads we’ll use.”