Only two weeks after a violent gunfight in the alley behind Holliday’s in New Orleans’ French Quarter, slacker jazz cornetist and knight errant Pat Gallegher finds himself saddled with two missing person cases. A man to whom he owes an unpayable debt has disappeared after exacting a promise that Gallegher would find him. Gallegher’s girlfriend, Merlie Comineau, has asked him to find the missing father of a young girl who needs a knee operation.

What begins as a routine investigation throws Gallegher and his new musical partner Chick Kasay in the path of Brazilian smugglers, corporate fraud, trading in endangered species, bumbling private investigators, and a oligarchic billionaire who believes everything has a price–including murder.