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'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?'
&n
bsp; '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.
