Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  A gay Bienville wag once famously said the interior of the Aurora looked as though an archaeologist had discovered a pharaoh’s tomb and set off a bomb in it rather than loot it for a museum. On the day it opened in 1928, the Aurora’s lobby had a twenty-eight-foot ceiling, and its huge brass doors were flanked by enormous marble obelisks. You couldn’t stand in any part of the hotel without seeing a pyramid, a Sphinx, a sarcophagus, scarabs, ankhs, or even canopic jars. The lobby walls were clad in relief panels with Egyptian motifs, and the walls of the upper floors were decorated with hand-painted hieroglyphics.

  The main restaurant was called the Luxor, and its ceiling was supported by columns modeled after those at Karnak. In the late 1930s, the grand Osiris ballroom hosted Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington, and in 1948 the rooftop Nefertiti Lounge heard Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit.” Ten years after that, local rock and roller Jerry Lee Lewis belted out “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” in the same space. And if the rumors are true, tonight the town might get a repeat performance.

  “Have you ever been inside this place?” Nadine asks as we pull into the three-story parking garage adjacent to the eight-story hotel.

  “Oh, yeah. When I was a little boy, I thought the Aurora was the coolest building on the planet. My parents actually had their wedding reception here, up on the roof.”

  “They didn’t want to come tonight?”

  “You think they’d be invited? After all my dad’s caustic editorials about the new fascism?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Dad’s not in any shape to come anyway.”

  “I thought you told me he was doing about the same.”

  Guilt pricks at my conscience. Though Nadine and I have gotten close over the past months, I’ve tended to minimize the physical toll of my father’s illness when I’m with her. I don’t know why. Maybe out of an irrational fear that I’ll inherit the disease from him. “He can still walk, but his body’s board-stiff. If he went into a crowd, he’d fall and break his hip.”

  Nadine takes my hand and squeezes it. “Why do you hold back when we talk about that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty rough.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes nakedly sincere. “I can handle rough. I nursed my mom for two years, right to the end.”

  I nod, finding it hard to speak. “He can’t control his bladder anymore. His bowel problems are a nightmare. He has to sleep in a diaper. It’s killing his pride, and its wearing my mother down fast, even with sitters.”

  She leans her head on my shoulder and clenches my hand. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s hard. And I know you’re a help to your mom.”

  “I don’t know about that. But they did love this place. Dad used to bring us to eat at Luxor restaurant on Sundays, when Adam and I were kids. But they closed the hotel in the late seventies, I think. I never saw the interior after that.”

  “Nineteen seventy-eight,” she informs me as we walk through the low-ceilinged garage to the side entrance of the hotel, which has been strung with white Christmas bulbs. Two couples wearing tuxedos and evening gowns walk about fifty feet ahead of us. I’m only wearing a gray suit, and Nadine, a black sleeveless V-neck cocktail dress.

  “I talked to Lenore at the historical society,” she goes on, swinging a black clutch. “The Aurora was closed two other times: from ’29 to ’33, after the crash, and from 2008 till 2015. In 2015, Beau Holland went in with Tommy Russo and bought it as part of the EB-5 visa program. That’s the scam where rich foreigners can basically buy green cards by investing in U.S. property.”

  “That sounds like Poker Club bullshit, all right.”

  “Since the paper mill deal, they’ve been secretly restoring the whole thing, to reopen it as a hotel. Even Claude Buckman and Blake Donnelly have money in it now. It’s going to be spectacular.”

  “Will we see the renovations tonight?”

  “I don’t think so. Was the Egyptian décor still intact when you used to eat here?”

  “Yeah, but it was run-down. Peeling gold paint everywhere.”

  Beyond the side entrance, we find gleaming brass elevators and carpet that looks like no one has ever walked on it. A huge Eye of Ra motif lies beneath our feet. Heavy plastic sheeting has been stapled to the walls, blocking the hallways leading left and right. The owners obviously don’t want anyone taking a premature peek at their new crown jewel.

  We enter an elevator with two other couples and take a pleasantly swift ride to the roof. The Aurora rooftop once boasted a luxury penthouse apartment and the Nefertiti Lounge, which I’d like to see; but once again, the halls leading away from the elevators are screened with heavy plastic.

  As we walk through the double doors leading to the roof, a bracing breeze hits my face, and we’re instantly sucked into a whirling mass of tuxedos, evening gowns, crystal glasses, and flashing jewelry.

  “We’re underdressed,” I observe, dodging couples dancing to big band music coming from a PA system.

  “Nobody’s going to kick us out,” Nadine says with a smile. “Let’s find the bar.”

  Above the glittering crowd, a yellow gibbous moon hangs in a sky filled with stars. The deep forests of Mississippi lie just beyond the lights of the town, and the black farmland of Louisiana stretches for miles across the river, but up here it feels like New York or Chicago in the 1920s.

  “This is like The Great Gatsby,” Nadine marvels, still dodging dancers.

  She’s right. Some of the men are actually wearing white tie. That’s not unheard of in Bienville, but tonight there’s no hint of camp, as there is during Mardi Gras balls. These people have come to celebrate an economic triumph, and they mean to honor the occasion by looking like they deserve the good fortune that has come their way.

  “Don’t forget how Gatsby ended,” I remind her.

  I point through the bodies to a large table that’s been set up against the southern balustrade of the roof. Two older black men in white coats are serving hard liquor and champagne as fast as they can move. As we pick our way through the bodies, I notice a pattern to our progress. The sight of Nadine triggers broad smiles and hugs from the partygoers, but once they see me, the light in their eyes fades, and the smiles either freeze in place or shrink to scowls. In this euphoric gathering, I’m a potential spoiler, the buzzkill of all time. I try to ignore their ill will, and if Nadine notices their silent curses, she hides it well.

  Every few years, one social event ends up bringing out what people call “Old Bienville.” This term refers to the generation that moved and shook this place from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, when the town was rolling in oil money and there were four major industries working at full capacity on the river. Back then Bienville had a vibrant middle class with enough income to travel widely and support downtown retail. Civic organizations were powerful, and the ladies’ clubs filled with educated women who gave all their energy to promoting tourism. The black community lived mostly apart—and at a profound economic and political disadvantage—but there was so much money flowing through the city that it raised all boats. Perhaps most important, both black and white communities were tightly knit by extended families, and divorce was rare.

  Those people are in their seventies and eighties now, but tonight the survivors of that affluent class have left the sanctuaries of their homes on the off chance that they’ll hear one of their contemporaries perform live one last time, before the opportunity vanishes forever. They remember parties from the glory days of the Aurora, when liquor flowed on this rooftop until dawn crept across the city and broke over the river. White elbow gloves and pearls were de rigueur for the ladies then, and every gentleman owned a tux.

  “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.”

  Into this minor melee steps Sally Matheson, one of the most gracious women in Mississippi. Some people say it’s only her charm and elegance that extricated Max from quite a few scrapes over the years. While Beau Holland struggles to get control of his temper, Sally looks at me as though he doesn’t exist.

  “How’s your father doing, Marshall?” Her gentle Southern accent hasn’t changed since she ca
me out as a Bienville debutante five decades ago. “It’s so hard to imagine Duncan being down like he is.”

  “He’s holding his own, Mrs. Matheson.”

  “I’m so glad. I know Blythe will get him back in the pink. Your mother’s a saint, Marshall. All those years you and Paul were growing up, I was so jealous of Blythe. She just had a natural way about her. She could deal with anything. It’s a gift.”

  Arthur Pine shakes his head with feigned empathy. “Tell Duncan I said hello. I miss seeing him on the street.”

  “You mean in Dizzy’s Bar,” says his wife, a bejeweled blond standing two steps behind him.

  “There, too,” Pine says with a sheepish grin.

  To my surprise, Sally reaches out and takes Nadine’s hand, then leans forward and whispers something in her ear. Nadine giggles, surprising me even more. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her giggle. Then Sally leans back and looks me from head to toe, as though taking my measure.

  “Marshall, I’ve known you since Hector was a pup, and I’m telling you now, you’d better grab hold of this girl with both hands. They don’t come any better, east or west of the Mississippi.”

  I’m so taken aback by this advice that I just stare back at her, mute.

  “You two make a lovely couple,” Sally goes on. “Plus, Nadine’s about the only lawyer in this town who’d stand a chance against Jet in a courtroom. And I’m including you, Arthur.”

  As Pine gives an obsequious laugh, I realize Jet is one of the few members of this set who hasn’t drifted over to listen.

  “Oh, Sally,” says Nadine, “Marshall’s just using me as his ticket to see Jerry Lee Lewis. No romance here.”

  Sally shakes her head like a matchmaker of long experience. “You can’t fool me. Go ahead, play charades if you must. But I’ll have the last laugh when I throw rice at your wedding.”

  In the surprised pause that follows this pronouncement, it strikes me how odd it feels to think of this group as a gang of killers. But that may be the reality. The men in this genteel cabal may have met over a card table and condemned Buck to death without a moment’s hesitation.