The Heavens Rise (5 page)

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Totally bullshitting.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

But he wasn’t kidding. And he figured from the way Ben had gone quiet, his hands clasped between his bony knees, his gaze straight ahead so that the dashboard lights glowed in his circular-framed glasses, Ben knew he wasn’t kidding but didn’t want to talk about it. The older they all got, the more sarcastic and uncomfortable with touchy-feely moments Ben got. And, Nikki insisted, the less interested in girls he got. But Anthem figured that was just because most of the girls Ben was hot for were the pretty, popular types who weren’t all that interested in a nerdy bookworm who wanted to write for a newspaper someday.
Right,
Nikki would answer,
the ones he knows are out of his league so he doesn’t have to worry about—
And Anthem would change the subject or cut her off because the idea of his best buddy being a bone-smoker felt oddly like some kind of betrayal, and worse, Nikki’s insistence on bringing it up all the time told him she was trying to prepare
him
for the possibility, and not herself.

But none of that mattered now. What mattered was, his passenger’s frosty silence notwithstanding, that everything suddenly felt like a gift to Anthem Landry. They had just entered that spot in the middle of the causeway where it was impossible to see land and, for the first time, he knew complete contentment. Or at least what he thought contentment should feel like; it was such a grown-up word, so superior sounding and so removed from the hormonal mood swings of adolescence.

What Anthem Landry felt that night was the sense that he and the two people closest to him were living in a sacred space between great moments in their lives. And for years afterward, whenever he was in pain or trapped in the dark minutes of another sleepless night, he would exert all the effort he could to return to that lone, blissful hour. To Fred LeBlanc’s voice singing about how the morning mist arises through a crack in the glass after another sleepless night of wishing someone would take him back to New Orleans. To the hot wind ripping through the half-open windows and the briny smell of the moon-rippled lake water. To that eternal, frozen hour, buffed and polished to perfection, a lens focused perfectly on past promise.

For years afterward, the sound of oyster shells cracking under tires ignited a low flame in the pit of his stomach because that was the sound that brought an end to so many things. That sound, and the sight of Elysium’s long curving driveway, empty and deeply shadowed behind the padlocked cast-iron gate. He tried Nikki on her cell but got her voice mail.

That didn’t mean anything, Ben insisted. Coverage on this part of the North Shore was always spotty.

Twenty minutes. That’s how long they lasted, twenty minutes of listening to the ticking sound of the truck’s cooling engine mingling with the moist undertones of the swamp, before Anthem pointed out the strangeness of the situation.

“This is weird,” Anthem said. “They should be here by now.” And Ben started right in with all the assurances, all the elaborate possibilities
as to where they could have stopped along the way and why. Gas stations, grocery stores. Maybe a flat tire or two or three. Never mind that Ben had spoken to Nikki on the phone just as the family was heading out the back door, over an hour before Anthem had left Metairie to pick up Ben at his parent’s house Uptown. Never mind that Mr. Noah was a taskmaster who defined punctuality; if he knew the boys were joining the family tonight, which he most certainly did, he would have had the house open and blazing with light to greet their arrival.

After an hour, and four calls to Nikki’s cell, Ben ran out of explanations.

After an hour and a half and no return call from Nikki, Anthem ran out of patience.

He made a three-point turn in the rutted road and drove back to the highway. There was a gas station next to the turnoff and Ben wanted to see if anyone working there had seen the Delongpre’s Lexus SUV.

Later that night, they’d both learn that if Anthem had kept driving for about another half mile on Highway 22, they just might have noticed the mangled stretch of guardrail through which the Delongpre family had disappeared.

NEW ORLEANS

P
lease God,
Marissa thought.
Not another endless conversation about what did or didn’t happen to the Delongpres.
But as she walked the perimeter of the carpeted ballroom, she realized the other guests that evening were mostly white, well-fed Uptown folk, just like the missing family in question, and that meant Marissa Hopewell would have a better chance that evening of avoiding a conversation about the weather.

Noah, Millie, and Niquette Delongpre had vanished exactly a week ago, leaving behind only pieces of their Lexus SUV along the banks of Bayou Rabineaux. Forget about the five young black men, two of them teenagers, who had been gunned down in cold blood just a few blocks from where Marissa lived with her mother in the Lower Ninth Ward. Apparently, the Delongpres made for better television. Or at least their ironically cheerful family photographs did.

Even so, Marissa had still combed through all the articles on their disappearance. Hell, she’d even started a file on the case to see if it
had the makings of a good column. But for now the details were too sketchy, the concerns a little too Garden District for her taste. And she found herself jumping to the same conclusion as the other women who worked at her paper; the father, one of the top surgeons in his field, had made enough money over the years to stash plenty in bank accounts throughout the world if he’d wanted to. He’d probably staged the whole thing, maybe even offed his wife and daughter so he could run off with his exotic, foreign mistress. That, or the whole thing was just some weird tax evasion stunt that would come to light as soon as the police finished combing through Noah Delongpre’s files.

It never ceased to amaze Marissa how often rich white men ran afoul of the IRS.

As she searched for the table number printed on her place card, she saw that while she wasn’t the only full-figured black lady in the room—five in all, including her, and not counting the servers—she was the lone pantsuit in a sea of tuxedos and off-the-shoulder cocktail dresses. For the most part, the guests looked jovial and carefree, despite the strange disappearance of three of their own. Maybe coming out en masse to support a scrappy little French Quarter theater now in its seventy-fifth year of operation made Uptown’s best and brightest feel spiritually connected. Or maybe the special Sazeracs mentioned on the invite were going right to everyone’s head.

The event’s organizers had dressed up the Plimsoll Club for the occasion, although Marissa was having trouble figuring out the exact theme. Flowing blue drapes imprinted with stars and lightning bolts framed the walls of plate-glass windows, and the view stretched all the way from the Mississippi River Bridge to the Central Business District’s humble cluster of buildings. They were thirty-one stories above the spot where Canal Street met the river, inside the circle of steel girders that sat atop the World Trade Center, an X-shaped skyscraper that was a little too heavy on the concrete for Marissa’s taste. (And a little too sixties and out-of-date to hold such a prominent place in the city’s
skyline, if you asked her. But nobody had. And it wasn’t like some Fortune 500 company had offered to tear it down and build something nicer in its place.)

All of the waiters and strolling performers were dressed in flowing medieval costumes Marissa couldn’t quite put a label to. Were they supposed to be at a circus or a Renaissance festival?
Venetian Carnival,
read the invitation in her hand. Not quite, she thought, but that certainly explained the bejeweled, feathered masks that covered their faces. She wasn’t there to pull a Tom Wolfe on the night’s proceedings, but that didn’t stop her from taking mental notes on everything.

Her boss had slid the invitation into her hand earlier that day because the theater was honoring its first (and only) black executive director, and well, that seemed like something that might fit well in Marissa’s weekly column. The man’s smile was just tense enough to acknowledge the strange place Marissa occupied as the only black columnist at
Kingfisher
. The paper was a household name in New Orleans and a formidable rival to
The Times-Picayune
. But it was staffed largely by do-gooder white kids, and even after three years, most of them reacted to her as if she was an intelligent life form from another planet. Fact was, most white people in New Orleans weren’t equipped to deal with a black woman who didn’t speak in the halting, drawling patois of the housekeepers who had helped raise them. Take away the accent altogether, add a bachelor’s from the University of Chicago and three years at the
Chicago Tribune
and oh, lordy! They practically quaked in their books thinking she was going to demand reparations on the spot.

When she saw the Ferriots seated at her table, each step across the plush carpeting seemed to place an even greater strain on her calves. Marissa had expected to spend the night feeling out of place. But the Ferriots were Garden District, King of Carnival–style rich, the kind of family that made weekly appearances on the society page of
The Times-Picayune
because they just couldn’t stop handing out piles and piles of their own hard-earned money.

When Marissa took the empty seat across from her, Heidi Ferriot glanced up from her wineglass as if she’d heard a short, high-pitched sound from somewhere across the room, just sharp enough to have been a nuisance but not loud enough for her to investigate with more than a frown. (A frown intended to make someone else, preferably someone who worked for her, do something about it.) Her black velvet dress had a sloping white collar that made her look like a calla lily stuffed inside a black stocking. Next to her, Donald Ferriot looked their way with a wan smile; he’d been turned around in his chair, studying one of the costumed jugglers weaving expertly in between the tables. The man’s explosion of downy salt-and-pepper curls and oversize bow tie made him look like a mad scientist attending the Bride of Frankenstein’s wedding. (If the Bride of Frankenstein had decided to get married in Monaco.)

And then there was the son. Marissa had trouble remembering his name at first. Maxwell? Meyer? No. Marshall.

That was it. Strange kid. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to look up from the designs he was tracing in the white tablecloth with his dinner fork. (The kid’s slow, repetitive motions reminded Marissa of some Hitchcock film, something with Gregory Peck and ski tracks in the snow.) He was far more handsome than both of his parents, with his high, sculpted cheekbones and his jet-black hair, slicked back like some 1950s matinee idol.

“Careful, folks,” Donald Ferriot said, with a tip of his wineglass at Marissa. “The press is here.”

She was embarrassed by how pleased she was to be recognized, especially by a man of Donald Ferriot’s alleged stature. But she tipped her glass in return. “Just here to cover the awards ceremony. All comments at this table are officially off the record.”

There was a light ripple of laughter from the other guests, but not one of them bothered with an introduction. Heidi Ferriot, on the other hand, gazed at Marissa mirthlessly.

“I know everyone who works on the society page at the
Picayune,
” she finally said. “And I don’t remember you.”

“You wouldn’t. We’ve never met.”

“Yes, that I gathered.”

“Also, I don’t do society columns and I don’t work for the
Picayune
.”

“She writes for
Kingfisher,
” Donald Ferriot said.

“Ah,” Heidi Ferriot said, and the sound was more breath than syllable. “That makes sense,” she whispered.

Because
Kingfisher
is more liberal than the Picayune. And you’re black. And not the kind of café-au-lait, is-she-or-isn’t-she kind of black my kind of white lady is more comfortable with. And oh, by the way, how the hell did your
black ass
end up at my table?

Marissa told herself to cut it out, to stop letting the voices of her own insecurities masquerade as insight. Sometimes being the odd one out meant you had to give other people the chance to show you they weren’t always—

“And what do your people do?” Heidi Ferriot asked.

“I’m sorry. My
people
?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t say
you
people. I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Marissa answered. “My mother’s retired now.”

“And your husband?”

“Haven’t met him yet.”

“And your mother. What did she do before she . . .
retired
?” There was too much emphasis on the last word for Marissa’s liking. It suggested that in Heidi Ferriot’s world, black women didn’t retire, they just went on the dole.

“She was a dance teacher.”

“So at some point, presumably, she was a
dancer
?” Heidi asked.

“When she was younger, yes. She taught children, mostly. Through church groups and the like. She had her own studio for a while but she gave it up when I was a girl.”

“But not on Airline Highway. And not with a
pole,
I presume.”

The brittle silence around her seemed to confirm it:
Yes,
the bowed heads and pinched mouths of the other guests seemed to say.
That bitch just called your mother a whore.

Marissa was not an investigative journalist, but she was a columnist, and columnists lived off of access just like anyone else in the business. And you didn’t get access by shooting off your mouth at fancy parties and taking things too personally. And yes, this may not have been the most significant event of her career, and the end of the night probably wouldn’t deliver the makings of more than a passable column. But still. But still, but still, but
still
 . . .

“Marissa?”

It took her a few seconds to realize it was the kid who’d spoken. And he’d used her first name as if they’d been lifelong friends.