James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'What's the status on the Caluccis?'

'That's what I'm trying to tell you, Robicheaux. There isn't any. We'll see what happens Monday. But we got an old problem, too. The Caluccis go down, Nate Baxter goes down. He's going to screw up the investigation any way he can.'

I felt my hand squeeze tightly around the receiver. The sunlight through the restaurant window was like a splinter of glass in the eye.

'Cheer up,' he said. 'We're getting there.'

'Purcel's completely off the screen.'

'Cover your own ass for a change. You know how Purcel'll buy it? He'll catch some kind of incurable clap when he's a hundred and fifty. Call me Monday.'

I drove up St. Charles to Hippo's drugstore. He was sitting in the shade on a collapsible metal chair by the entrance, eating a spearmint snowball. Two streetcars were stopped at a sunny spot on the neutral ground, loading and unloading passengers. At first he ignored me and continued to eat the ice out of the paper cone; then he smiled and aimed his index finger and thumb at me like a cocked pistol.

'A weird place to sit, Hippo,' I said.

'Not for me. I love New Orleans. Look up and down this street-the trees, the old homes, the moss in the wind. There's not another street like it in the world.' He reached next to him and popped open a second metal chair. 'Sit down. What can I do for you?'

'You're okay, Hippo.'

'Why not?' His eyes squinted into slits with his smile.

'You know about almost every enterprise on the Gulf Coast, don't you?'

'Business is like spaghetti… pull on one piece, you move the whole plate.'

'Let me try a riddle on you. Mobbed-up guys don't torture cops, do they?'

'Not unless they're planning careers as crab bait.'

'Buchalter's not mobbed-up.'

'That's a breakthrough for you?'

'But what if Buchalter was selling duplicated recordings of historical jazz, or making blues tapes and screwing the musician on the copyright?'

'Dubs are in. Some lowlifes tried to get me to retail them in my drugstores. I don't think there's any big market for historical jazz, though.'

'Stay with me, Hippo. A guy selling dubs would have to piece off the action or be connected, right?'

'If he wants to stay in business.'

'So Buchalter's not part of the local action. Where's the biggest market for old blues and jazz?'

His eyes became thoughtful. 'He's selling it in Europe?'

'I think I've got a shot at him.'

He took another bite out of his cone and sucked his cheeks in.

'You want some backup? From guys with no last names?' he asked.

'Buchalter probably has a recording studio of some kind over on the Mississippi coast. I can go over there and spend several days looking through phone books and knocking on doors.'

He nodded without replying.

'Or I can get some help from a friend who has a lot of connections on the coast.'

'I provide information, then me and my friends get lost, that's what you're saying?'

'So far we don't have open season on people we don't like, Hippo.'

He crumpled up the paper cone in his hand, walked to a trash receptacle, and dropped it in.

'We'll use the phone at my place,' he said.

It didn't take long. He made four phone calls, then a half hour later a fax came through his machine with a list of addresses on it. He handed it to me, his sleek, football-shaped head framed by the corkboard filled with death camp photos behind him.

'There're seven of them, strung out between Bay St. Louis and Pascagoula,' he said. 'It looks like you get to knock on lots of doors, anyway.'

I folded the fax and put it in my coat pocket.

'Did you hear about Tommy Bobalouba?' I said.

'He knew he had cancer two years ago. He shouldn't have fooled around with it.'

'That's kind of rough, Hippo.'

'I'm supposed to weep over mortality? Do you know what's going on in that mick's head? I win, he loses. But he wants me to know I win only because he got reamed by the Big C.'

'I saw him just a little while ago. He said you're not a bad guy. He wanted you to know he said that.'

He snipped off the tip of a cigar with a small, sharp tool, and didn't raise his eyes. He kept sucking his lips as though he had just eaten a slice of raw lemon rind.

It was three o'clock when I stopped at Bay St. Louis. The bay was flat and calm, the long pier off old ninety dotted with fishermen casting two-handed rods and weighted throw nets into the glaze of sunlight on the surface; but in the south the sky was stained a chemical green along the horizon, the clouds low and humped, like torn black cotton.

The first address was a half block from the beach. The owners were elderly people who had moved recently from Omaha and had opened a specialty store that featured Christian books and records. They had bought the building two years ago from a man who had operated a recording studio at that address, but he had gone into bankruptcy and had since died.

I had a telephone number for the next address, which was in Pass Christian. I called before getting back on the highway; a recorded voice told me the number was no longer in service.

Thanks, Hippo.

I called his house to ask about the source of his information. His wife said he had left and she didn't know when he would be back. Did she know where he was?

'Why do you want to know?' she asked.

'It's a police matter, Mrs. Bimstine.'

'Do you get paid for solving your own problems? Or do you hire consultants?'

'Did I do something to offend you?'

She paused before she spoke again. 'Somebody called from the hospital. Tommy Lonighan's in the emergency room. He wanted to see Hippo.'

'The emergency room? I saw Lonighan just a few hours ago.'

'Before or after he was shot?'

She hung up.

It was starting to rain when I drove into Gulfport to check the next address. The sky was gray now, and the beach was almost empty. The tide was out, and the water was green and calm and dented with the rain, but in the distance you could see a rim of cobalt along the horizon and, in the swells, the triangular, leathery backs of stingrays that had been kicked in by a storm.

I was running out of time. It was almost five o'clock, and many of the stores were closing for the weekend. At an outdoor pay phone on the beach, I called the 800 number for Federal Express and asked for the location of the largest Fed Ex station in the area.

There was only one, and it was in Gulfport. The clerk at the station was young and nervous and kept telling me that I should talk to his supervisor, who would be back soon…

'It's an easy question. Which of your customers sends the greatest volume of express packages overseas?' I said.

'I don't feel comfortable with this, Officer. I'm sorry,' he said, a pained light in his eyes.

'I respect your integrity. But would you feel comfortable if somebody dies because we have to wait on your supervisor?'

He went into the back and returned with a flat, cardboard envelope in his hand. He set it on the counter.

'The guy owns a music business in Biloxi,' he said. 'He sends a lot of stuff to Germany and France.'

'You know this guy?'

'No, sir.' His jawbone flexed against his skin.

'But you know something about him?'

He cleared his throat slightly. 'One of the black drivers said he'd quit before he'd go back to the guy's store.'

The sender's name on the envelope was William K. Guilbeaux.

Before driving into Biloxi, I called Hippo's house again. This time he answered. There was static on the line, and the rain was blowing in sheets against the windows of the phone booth.

'I can't understand you,' I said.

'I'm saying he had a priest with him. You're a Catholic, I thought you'd appreciate that.'

'Tommy's-'

'He had a priest there, maybe he'll get in a side door up in heaven. The spaghetti head didn't have that kind of luck, though.'