“Here you go, Nick.” Nadine shoves a sweating gin and tonic into my hand. “Look at that sky, would you?” She spins in place, taking in everything around her. “You can see to Texas from up here. Look at the river!”
Six hundred yards to the west, the Mississippi shines like a black mirror, reflecting the lights of the old bridge stretching to Louisiana. As I gaze north to south, I realize that the hotel is further from being finished than I’d thought. The party’s hosts have done what they could to mask it, but there’s a big yellow forklift parked by the wall of the old penthouse apartment, and behind the bar table at the southwest corner, the balustrades don’t actually meet. A sawhorse blocks the three-foot gap, and yellow warning tape has been stretched across it to remind the bartenders not to take two steps backward and fall to their deaths.
“Oh, my God!” cries Nadine. “Look at the swimming pool! People are dancing in it.”
Through the sea of revelers I see the heads and torsos of dancers in the shallow end of a newly built swimming pool.
“The original hotel didn’t have a pool,” I tell her. “I know that much.”
“Beau Holland wanted to copy the Monteleone in New Orleans,” she replies. “It must have cost them a mint to put that thing up here.”
While Nadine continues her visual survey, I look more closely at the crowd. Most members of the Bienville Poker Club seem to be here, even Claude Buckman, the powerful banker who serves as the éminence grise of the group. Blake Donnelly is here, too, the $200 million oilman. In the solar system of this party, Poker Club members function as large planets, while various satellites orbit around them. Beau Holland appears to be surrounded by male acolytes, while Max Matheson entertains a mixed group in their forties and fifties, probably with one of his off-color stories. Max’s wife, Sally, stands at a small cocktail table with Blake Donnelly’s second wife. Blake’s trophy wife is a quarter century younger than Sally, but Sally is still the beauty of that pair.
Paul stands in line at a second bar table with Wyatt Cash. As I watch them, Tommy Russo walks up and slaps Cash on the shoulder. Along with Beau Holland, Cash and Russo represent the younger money in the Poker Club. I can’t look at Russo now without thinking of wood chippers. Beyond those men, I see Jet and a group of younger women drinking champagne near a makeshift stage that holds a very lonely-looking grand piano. The star of this party has yet to arrive.
“I wonder how they got that grand piano up here,” I muse. “That’s a big one.”
“You won’t believe it,” Nadine says. “They couldn’t fit it into the service elevator, so Paul Matheson hitched it underneath a lumber company helicopter and airlifted it up here this afternoon. That would have made a hell of a picture for the newspaper.”
“That sounds just like Paul,” I say, laughing.
“Look!” Nadine points at the stage. “Is that Jerry Lee Lewis?”
A stooped man with dyed-black hair is climbing onto the risers that hold the grand piano. He’s old enough to be Lewis, but he’s not.
“No, I remember that guy. That’s Webb Westerly, who owns the music store across the river. He’s a damn good piano player in his own right. I guess he’s going to keep the crowd warm till the Killer gets here.”
Nadine grabs my arm and pulls me across the rooftop. Ahead I see some of the wealthier guests at the party.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Charity Buckman just motioned me over. She’s a great customer, and she was part of my mother’s book club.”
This is my chance to question a few members of the Poker Club. Sure enough, as we near Claude Buckman and his wife, Blake Donnelly and Beau Holland move in the same direction. Max and Paul Matheson aren’t far behind them.
These guys want to question me, I realize. They want to know what we’re going to print about Buck’s death tomorrow.
“Nadine Sullivan!” gushes Charity Buckman, a woman of eighty who’s had a couple hundred grands’ worth of plastic surgery. “You look just darling. I wish Margaret could have seen this party. She would have loved it.”
“She would have,” Nadine agrees.
“Your escort’s mighty handsome,” Charity adds with a wink.
“McEwan,” croaks Claude Buckman, offering his hand.
I reach out and gently grasp fragile bones wrapped in skin like parchment.
“Goose!” cries Paul, clapping me on the shoulder. “How you like the party, man?”
“I’ll like it fine if I get to hear Jerry Lee Lewis.”
“Damn right. We only got him because Blake knows him from the Blue Cat Club down in Natchez. Way back in the day.”
“And Lafitte’s Den, right here,” adds Donnelly himself. The oilman is actually wearing a tall gray Stetson. “Jerry Lee used to tear up those little honky-tonks when he was just a boy.”
Before Donnelly can wax poetic about the birth of rock and roll, Beau Holland slides between Paul and Donnelly and fixes me with a basilisk stare. “What’s your take on that accident on the river this morning?” he asks. “That archaeologist who drowned.”
“Wasn’t that awful?” Donnelly says with what sounds like genuine regret. “Buck was a good fella. Picked me up out on Highway 61 once, when my old Dodge quit on me.”
“That was Buck,” agrees Max Matheson, stepping up to Claude Buckman’s left. “He’d give you the shirt off his back. Damn shame.”
Beau Holland has no interest in this informal eulogy. His stare has not wavered, and he looks like his blood pressure is in the lethal zone. “Is there going to be a story about it in the paper tomorrow?”
“I imagine so,” I say with a shrug. “That’s really up to my editor. I’m only the publisher.”
“Oh, bullshit. You’re just like your old man. You decide what goes into that rag.”
“Now, Beau,” Donnelly says in a tone of mild reproof. “You’re not being very neighborly.”
“What do you expect? McEwan here isn’t very neighborly to his hometown.”
I would have thought Beau Holland would be reluctant to backtalk Blake Donnelly, but anger seems to have gotten the better of him.
“Shut up and get yourself another drink, Beau,” Paul advises.
Holland gives Paul a scorching glare. As they stare at each other, I realize that more Poker Club members have moved up to the periphery of our circle. Wyatt Cash, Tommy Russo, and Arthur Pine, the unctuous attorney. Behind Pine, I see Senator Avery Sumner.
“Some people are saying Buck Ferris didn’t drown,” Holland goes on. “That he was killed before he went into the river.”
“Who’s saying that?” Russo asks over the head of Donnelly’s wife.
“Just people,” Holland says sullenly.
“Is that so?” Buckman asks.
Holland nods, his face red with whiskey or fury. “And a fake-news story about a murder is the last thing this town needs this week. The Chinese don’t need to see that! Let’s talk straight. McEwan wasn’t even invited to this party. But since he’s here, I want him to tell us what he’s printing tomorrow.”
“As it turns out,” I say in a conversational tone, “Buck’s skull was crushed by a brick. And it’s looking more and more like he wasn’t killed where his truck was found.”
The men’s faces go pale at this news, but Beau Holland turns scarlet. “Will the word ‘homicide’ appear in the Watchman tomorrow? That’s all I want to know.”
“Well, a black kid was shot with an AR-15.”
“Nobody gives a damn about that. You know what I mean.”
The men around Holland look distinctly uncomfortable, but I’m not sure about the reason. “Why don’t you spend fifty cents on a paper after you come to in the morning?” I suggest.
Holland lunges at me, but Max Matheson plants a splayed hand on his chest and stops him cold. “Marshall’s always invited,” Max says evenly. “He’s family. Get yourself another drink, Beau.”