- Tod and Buz layover to work in New Orleans and make the acquaintance of a young woman who accidentally interferes with a smuggling ring.The young woman's melancholy mother and the danger of an epidemic add to the difficulties.
- In New Orleans, Louisiana, Tod is looking for short term work while Buz works on getting him a union card to do dock work. In the search for that short term job, Tod meets a young non-confident woman named Carrie Purcell, who helps him find that job. Purely as a measure to say thank you, Tod invites her to join him and Buz for a dinner out on the town, which is outside of her normal day-to-day life. Tod and Buz are unaware of Carrie's sad home life with her shrewish mother, Mary Purcell, which affects what Carrie can do and how she views herself. Mary does not approve of Carrie going out with Tod and Buz, despite she knowing nothing of the two or the circumstance. As Tod and Buz's encounter with Carrie continues, their life will be affected by two associated situations. The first is that Carrie comes into a cache of money, for which those who believe it rightly belongs to them will kill. The second is that there is a potentially deadly strain of tropical bird flu moving through the area, public health officials who have to find its source before it spreads.—Huggo
- "The Swan Bed" opens with , all on a houseboat in New Orleans.
A subplot is an outbreak of psitticosis. A widow is questioned at her husband's funeral by the apologetic public health doctor, "Can you think of anyplace that your husband might have come into contact with a bird, a parakeet?..."
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