Читать книгу Cemetery Road - Greg Iles - Страница 19

PAUL MATHESON SAT at the long rosewood conference table on the second floor of Claude Buckman’s bank, the Bienville Southern, waiting for more Poker Club members to arrive. This was an informal gathering, one called by Paul himself after the groundbreaking ceremony. Though he wasn’t an official member, it was understood that he would one day take his father’s seat, and the other members were curious about what had prompted him to ask for a meeting.

Claude Buckman sat at the head of the table, Blake Donnelly at his right hand. Senator Sumner sat on Buckman’s left. Next on that side came Wyatt Cash and Arthur Pine. Across the table from Cash sat Paul’s father, and to Max’s right sat Dr. Warren Lacey. Paul figured Beau Holland and Tommy Russo were the only other members likely to attend. The remaining three were older men—older even than Buckman, who was eighty-three—and rarely attended meetings. There’d been some small talk, but Paul had not taken part. Being seated at the far end of the long table made casual conversation stilted.

The conference room was a temple to antebellum Bienville. The grass-cloth walls were lined with nineteenth-century photographs depicting the booming cotton economy of the pre-war years. Horse-drawn wagons hauling white gold wrapped in burlap from outlying Tenisaw County to the river. Steamboats docked at Lower’ville, so loaded with cotton bales that they looked as though they’d capsize in a mild storm. A big black locomotive shuttling onto the rail ferry that once linked the cotton fields of Louisiana to the market on the Mississippi side of the river. A few photos depicted the war years. Yankee officers stood on verandas owned by ancestors of the men around the table, sipping drinks and watching ladies cavort at badminton on the lawns. For some officers from Philadelphia and New York, the occupation of Bienville had been a welcome reunion with old friends from Harvard, Yale, and Penn. It was connections like those, Paul knew, that had helped Bienville to survive the war mostly intact, rather than winding up a charred ruin, like Jackson and Atlanta.

“Here they are,” announced Blake Donnelly, waving at Beau Holland and Tommy Russo, who’d just walked through the door behind Paul. “About time, fellas.”

Russo and Holland took seats beside Dr. Lacey, and before Buckman could bring the meeting to order, Beau Holland said, “What’s this all about? We’ve got the Azure Dragon guys in town, and I’ve got meetings all day.”

“Are everyone’s cell phones powered down?” Buckman asked in his perpetually hoarse voice. He sounded like a man who had smoked all his life and took pride in telling his doctors to go to hell.

There was a shuffle as a few members switched off their phones.

“Paul has a question for us,” Buckman told them.

All eyes settled on Paul Matheson. He wasn’t sure how to go about this, but he figured he knew most of these men well enough not to pussyfoot around.

“I’ll say it plain, gentlemen. Did we have anything to do with what happened to Buck Ferris?”

Everyone averted his eyes. Suddenly Paul seemed to be the least interesting object in the room.

“Well,” he said. “I guess that answers that question.”

“Not at all,” Buckman protested. “So far as I know, Dr. Ferris had an unfortunate accident. A fall, most likely. Regardless of what speculation the Bienville Watchman might be pushing tomorrow.”

“Damn right,” said Beau Holland, the real estate developer. “I’ve heard McEwan is out asking questions, implying foul play. That’s downright irresponsible with the Chinese in town.”

“Irresponsible?” Paul laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “Beau, what planet do you live on?”

Holland’s eyes flashed anger. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to that way.

Arthur Pine, the club’s in-house attorney, spoke up. “You obviously have a point to make, Paul. Why not make it?”

“You can forget about this playing as an accident,” Paul said. “This is a murder case now.”

“There’s no reason to think that,” Buckman countered. “I’ve been assured the autopsy is well under control. Death by misadventure will be the finding. Ferris was digging up above that cave mouth where he had no business being.”

Paul snorted. “You’re assured? Who the hell assured you of that?”

No one offered an answer.

Paul looked around the room in disbelief. “You’re living in a bubble, Claude,” Paul went on. “Like some Hollywood actor. Nobody wants to give you bad news.”

“Which is?” asked the old man.

“Marshall McEwan. Marshall’s not his old man, okay? He’s spent the last twenty-five years in Washington, digging up scandals that shake the Capitol Building. Major Defense Department stuff. He’s supposed to be writing a book about racism while he’s here, but he was investigating Trump’s Russian financial dealings when he came home to take care of his father. Azure Dragon and the paper mill are bush-league for him. Do not kid yourselves. Whatever rocket scientist decided to kill Buck Ferris has got Marshall after his ass now. You’d better get ready for some shit to hit the fan.”

Beau Holland leaned back in his chair, his usual smirk pulling at his mouth. “McEwan’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? Can’t you get him to ease off on the muckraking? At least for a week?”

Paul leaned forward. “Is that a joke? Buck Ferris was almost a father to him. Marshall went all the way to Eagle Scout because of Buck.”

“Sounds like sentimental bullshit,” said Holland.

“Yeah? See how sentimental you feel when Marshall shoves a proctoscope up your butt on CNN. He’s got the cell number of every anchor and producer for every major network in D.C. and New York.” Paul looked to the head of the table. “Claude, you want to have the club’s finances broken down on Meet the Press? McEwan can put you there.”

Buckman shifted in his seat.

“If Marshall smells foul play,” Paul said, “he’ll sink his teeth into this case and shake it like a pit bull. He won’t let go. If there’s anything to find, he’ll find it.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Tommy Russo.

“There’s nothing for him to find,” Blake Donnelly asserted. “Hell, I liked Buck a lot. But if he ran up on some bad characters and got himself killed, that’s nothing to do with us. Maybe he walked up on a drug deal out at Lafitte’s Den.”

“He didn’t die at that cave,” Paul said irritably. “Marshall told me that in the tent. Somebody staged things to look that way.” He looked around the table, giving the younger members a searching glance.

“What’s your problem?” Beau snapped. “You got something to say to me?”

Paul smiled, knowing he’d gotten to Holland. “Whoever was dumb enough to kill Buck Ferris put everybody in this room at risk, and every element of the Azure Dragon deal as well.”

“Hey,” Holland said angrily. “It’s not your place to pass judgment on anything a member might do.”

Max Matheson leaned forward and cast his eyes down the table at Holland. “Are you saying you killed Ferris?”

Holland glared at Paul’s father, which was not something people with good sense generally did. But Beau had always been an arrogant son of a bitch.

“I’m saying if anybody in this room did kill Buck Ferris,” Holland replied, “then it’s none of Paul’s business. Until he’s a full voting member, our decisions are above his pay grade.”

Paul turned up his left hand and gestured at Holland, as if to say, You guys see why I’m worried?

Claude Buckman spoke in a tone that brooked no argument. “This group approved no decision to remove Mr. Ferris, however inconvenient his activities had become. And no individual member is empowered to make such a decision alone, except in extreme emergency. Is that understood by all present?”

A few nods signaled general agreement around the table.

Tommy Russo, the only man in the room without a Southern accent, said, “We know Ferris was digging out at the mill site, right?”

“He was,” Wyatt Cash confirmed. “I placed cellular game cameras out there that recorded him.”

“And if he found bones, that could have stopped construction?”

“No question,” said Arthur Pine. “We’d have had to cancel the groundbreaking.”

Russo tilted his head to one side and stuck out his bottom lip, as though gauging the amount of life left in a dog that had been run over. “Hard to see how that guy getting dead is a bad thing.”

Senator Sumner sighed in distaste and looked at his watch.

“A delay like that could have caused the Chinese to pull up stakes and go to Alabama,” Holland pointed out. “We’re not dealing with International Paper or Walmart here. Azure Dragon doesn’t tolerate mistakes. They hit a bump in the road, they find a different road.”

“Somewhere people know how to flatten bumps?” Paul asked.

Russo chuckled.

“Is there anything else?” Donnelly asked. “I’ve got a foursome of investors waiting on me out at Belle Rose.”

“Paul’s point is well-taken,” Buckman said. “If anyone has information about Dr. Ferris’s death that I need to know, I expect you to come to me. And if anyone has any influence over Mr. McEwan or his father, now is the time to use it to get him to soft-pedal this story. Or at least keep it separate from anything to do with the mill. Duncan McEwan always treated us fairly over the years.”

“Duncan’s got nothing to do with editorial content now,” Paul told them. “Don’t kid yourself. Marshall decides what goes in that newspaper.”

“Let’s buy him off then,” Holland suggested. “Justifiable PR expense.”

“Great idea,” Paul said. “How much you thinking? I know of a Russian oligarch who offered Marshall half a million bucks to kill a story.”

“He turned it down?” asked Buckman.

“Yes, sir. Then the oligarch threatened to kill him. Marshall went with the story anyway.”

“So he’s got balls,” Russo said. “That doesn’t sound good for us.”

“I’m thinking about the Watchman,” said Arthur Pine. “I’m surprised that rag hasn’t closed down yet. I think the father’s badly overextended. About eight years ago, he took out a big loan to buy out his brother’s stake in the newspaper.”

“Who’s carrying the paper on that?” asked Buckman.

“Marty Denis at First Farmers. He and Duncan McEwan go way back together.”

“Let’s look into that.”

“Duncan’s also carrying a business loan on a new press he bought about the same time,” Pine informed them. “Nearly two million, I think.”

Buckman’s eyes glinted. “Marty Denis have that loan, too?”

“I’m pretty sure he does.”

The old banker smiled with satisfaction. “Duncan McEwan never learned his way around a balance sheet. Typical English major. Let’s get into it, Arthur, just in case.”

“Right.”

These guys, Paul thought bitterly. If they want to destroy somebody, they find a way to do it without even un-assing their chairs. An honest man doesn’t stand a chance. And Duncan McEwan, for all his faults, is an honest man.

“Long as we’re in here,” Beau Holland said, “what’s your wife up to lately, Paul? She still trying to put any of us in jail? Because I heard she drove to Jackson today to take a deposition in a bid-rigging case.”

Paul gave Holland a dark look. Had they been alone, Beau would never have dared speak to him that way.

“I asked you a question,” Holland pressed.

“He gave you the answer you deserved,” Max said, his eyes glinting with an odd light that had moved many a man back a step. “We don’t discuss wives and children in this room.”

“Maybe not,” Holland said. “But your daughter-in-law makes herself impossible to ignore, Max. And a lot of people around this table agree with me.”

There was some awkward shifting in the chairs, but nobody spoke in support of Holland. Paul was grateful for his father’s defense.

“I hear she works with McEwan on stories,” Beau went on. “Feeds his reporters information. And some of that stuff splashes on us.”

“Then get yourself a fucking raincoat,” Max said. “Bid-rigging sounds like your area. You feeling the heat, Beau?”

Holland’s eyes smoldered, but Buckman spoke up before he could shoot back at Max. “Max is right,” the banker said with an air of finality. “Wives and children are off-limits. Paul, I wonder if you’d mind excusing yourself now. We have a little housekeeping business to take care of before we adjourn.”

There were no groans at this announcement, Paul noticed. Everyone in the room was watching him again, and the air felt brittle with expectation.

“Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

He slid his chair back and got up, then walked to the door, his eyes on a photograph of stooped black figures chopping cotton in a field. I know how you feel, he thought. As he took the elevator down to the first floor and moved through the lobby, he came to a certainty about one thing: Somebody in that room killed Buck Ferris.

The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether they’d done it on orders from the club. He thought about waiting for his father to come down, but then the others would see that he’d waited. If Max wanted to tell him anything, he would call.

Three minutes later, Paul’s cell phone rang as he pulled his F-250 into his spot down at the wood treatment plant.

“Hey, Pop,” he said. “How about Beau Holland, huh?”

“I’m gonna hammer a punji stick up his ass one day.”

“Beau might just like that.”

Max laughed heartily. “You know he would.”

A flatbed truck pulled through the gate stacked with bundles of green pressure-treated fence posts.

“What do you think about the Buck Ferris thing?”

“I think Holland killed him. Unless it was Russo. He’s got the history for it.”

“Did the club order that hit?” Paul asked tentatively.

“No. But I don’t think anybody’s upset about it. Buck was a real threat to the mill. You know that.”

“Problem is, killing him didn’t remove the threat. It magnified it. You guys better walk on eggshells for a while.”

“You mean ‘we,’ don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. But I’m not a real member. And I don’t stand to make half as much off the ancillary deals as those assholes do.”

“You’ll be making plenty. And I’ll be making more. You need to keep that in mind if your buddy Goose makes himself a problem.”

Paul said nothing.

“You also need to make sure he doesn’t get too tight with Jet. The two of them together make a bad combination.”

Paul felt his face color. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Just make sure your wife doesn’t insert herself where she doesn’t belong. And vice versa.”

Max’s syntax was too tortured to try to unravel, but Paul got the point. “I’m losing you, Pop. You going by the field tonight?”

“Yeah. I know we have that party, but Kevin’s pitching good. I’ll make it to the Aurora in plenty of time to see the Killer.”

Paul got out and walked into his office, the conflicting odors of creosote and chromated copper arsenate following him through the door. As he nodded to the receptionist, he remembered seeing Marshall talking to Jet in the refreshment line down at the industrial park. When she’d lowered her sunglasses to look at Marshall, Paul had seen one thing with painful clarity: she was glowing. Given the complicated history they shared, it would be naïve to expect Jet and Marshall to avoid each other under the present circumstances. But it had been a long time since Jet had glowed like that when she looked at Paul. Years …

He thought about the last time he’d slept with her. Nearly a month ago now. He’d felt good going into it, and he’d taken a 50 mg Viagra to be sure he could finish her properly. But while Jet hadn’t put him off, she’d submitted to the act as though it were any other habitual duty. Again he saw her face tilt up to Marshall’s. Thirty years had fallen away from her in that moment. Hell, she even walked different when Marshall was around. A stab of pain hit Paul in the back of his neck, near the base of his skull. He reached into his top drawer and twisted the cap off a prescription bottle, then ground an Oxy between his back teeth before swallowing the fragments. I should’ve asked Dr. Lacey for another ’scrip at that meeting, he thought, shaking the bottle.

“Goddamn IEDs,” he muttered. “Sometimes I wonder if you haji bastards got me after all.”