Dragons Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

shirts and black pants, and costumed street performers, all getting ready to give their best try at moving funds from the pockets of visitors into their own. All in all, it reminded Flynn vaguely of Disneyland only without the rides.
    Mostly, he was idly curious if he could spot his hired muscle before they contacted him. In the past, when he had hired rough-off artists, they fell into one of two categories. Either they were well dressed and soft-spoken with dead eyes that looked at you without seeing a person, or obvious muscle flexers, who swaggered with the knowledge that just their appearance was intimidating. For the present job, Flynn was hoping for the cold, calculating type. He had a feeling that swaggering bullyboys wouldn’t get too far with the McCandles lad.
    One of the rolling boom boxes was coming slowly up the street, a dark sedan with the sound system cranked up to the point where it assaulted the pedestrians like a strong wind. A strong, noisy wind. Flynn eyed it with distaste. It was playing rap music. Of course. Not for the first time he found himself wondering why those who liked rap music felt obliged to share it with everyone in a four-block radius, while those whose taste ran to classical music were content to listen to it through the earphones of a Walkman or iPod.
    To his surprise, the mobile noise pollution pulled over to the curb next to him and stopped. The passenger-side window rolled down, exposing the face of a young black man, late teens or early twenties.
    “You Flynn?” The question was half-shouted over the music.
    Flynn realized with dismay that this was the contact he was waiting for. For a moment, he was tempted to deny his identity and walk away. Then, with a mental shrug, he decided to go ahead with it. When in Rome.
    He nodded his agreement.
    “Get in the back and let’s talk.”
    Opening the door to the backseat, Flynn wondered how they were supposed to talk over the racket the sound system was making. To his surprise, the driver, a thin black man even younger than the one who had first addressed him, turned the music off without being asked even before they pulled away from the curb.
    “Hear tell you’re lookin’ to put the hurt on someone,” the passenger-side rider said.
    “There’s someone I want made an example of,” Flynn said, carefully. “Hospitalized or dead. Doesn’t make any difference to me. If things are the same here as other places in the country, hospitalized costs more.”
    That was standard for rough-off work. Just hospitalizing someone meant the musclemen had to know what they were doing. It also left the victim alive to identify them and possibly press charges. In short, it usually cost more to have someone’s arm broken than it did to have them killed.
    “Either way, it’ll cost,” said the passenger.
    “Cash,” added the driver.
    “I know,” Flynn said. “I’ve got the money with me.”
    There was a moment’s silence.
    “ ’Course, we could just stick a gun in your face and take the money,” the passenger said, casually. “Save ourselves a bit of work.”
    Flynn heaved a mental sigh and let his glamour flow out.
    “Just to keep things simple, let’s pretend we’ve all done things like this before,” he said with a smile. “Now I do a lot of work away from my home base. Over the years, I’ve developed a method for finding… shall we say, special help when I’m in a strange town. Back home, part of what I do is to provide certain of my clients with various types of illegal substances. If I need help, what I do is call home to my regular supplier. He in turn contacts one of the handlers in the area I’m in and arranges a meet, which is why we’re talking now.”
    He leaned back in his seat.
    “If anything goes wrong at that meet, both my supplier and his local contact will be upset because they’re getting a piece of the action. The local man is particularly upset because he’s guaranteed the people I’m meeting, and if they