Prepare to listen to New Orleans jazz band play the blues, only you have words to to go with it It ain't always easy in the Big Easy. The Hotel Ritz, est. 1897, suffices as a kaleidoscope, peering into the darkest spiritual realm of Voodoo. The Ritz is inhabited by an odd assortment of con-artists and Mercy, a precocious twelve-year-old hustler extraordinaire and her clairvoyant Blue and Gold Macaw, Pico.