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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.'
