The Heavens Rise

“I want Crowley first.”

“I’m not talking about a trade, Ben.”

“I’ve got a member of Judge Crowley’s personal staff who says they can get me chains of title on the man’s plane, on all his boats, and all the other shiny little gifts he gets from the oil industry before he makes a decision in their favor.”

“You think he gets those gifts from the oil—”

“I would know for sure, and so would our readers, if you’d let me run with it.”

“He’s off-limits. Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Orders from on high.”

“I see. So our new owner, Peter Lane, told us to leave Crowley alone. Is that it?”

“Hilda Lane is our owner, not her husband. And if you haven’t heard her say it a thousand times, she’s a registered libertarian who claims to have no political agenda with this paper—”

“But her husband and the judge are both members of Metairie Country Club so Crowley’s off-limits.”

“Take a seat before your halo falls off, Ben.”

“Please. Just tell me you didn’t ask the Lanes for permission to—”

“I most certainly did not!” Marissa barked, and for just a second, Ben glimpsed the old, fiery, Marissa, the one who’d been more journalist than bureaucrat, the one who hadn’t had the entire fate of the paper resting on her shoulders and its temperamental, wealthy new owners constantly nipping at her heels. “Crowley’s about to rule on whether or not five miles of natural gas pipeline running through Ascension Parish is going to need to reduce its maximum operating pressure to fit with current standards.”

“And he will rule that the pipeline was built before 1970 and therefore if they have operating information that dates back that far, the law says they can keep pumping as much money as they want through all those poor people.”

“I understand that. But the plaintiffs have good lawyers arguing that if the information from before 1970 is incomplete, then Hodell Gas will have to reduce the pipeline’s pressure—”

“And Crowley will rule in favor of Hodell Gas, Marissa. He’s got a history.”

“I’m aware that it’s a distinct possibility. But I can’t offer you a trade on this, Ben. Not right now. We’re still . . . Everything’s still transitional around here, all right? Let the Lanes get comfortable. Let me get comfortable, and then you can go back to taking all kinds of risks. But right now, this is the best I can do.”

He bit his lip because it seemed less risky than biting his tongue. The office’s expansive window offered a view of the beautifully restored brick buildings outside. When he’d started work with the paper as a lowly summer intern, they’d been crammed into a decrepit office building in the Central Business District, on one of the last remaining floors that hadn’t yet been turned into a valet lot for the hotels on Canal Street. Now they were in a shiny new office building in the Warehouse District with a high-end spa on the first floor and a chrome water feature in the lobby that hadn’t broken once since they’d moved in. But all of it—the three new full-time copy editors, Marissa’s mahogany desk, even the professionally framed blow-up of her book cover hanging on the wall next to him, were gifts from Peter and Hilda Lane. For that matter, so was Marissa’s promotion to editor in chief, and a lot of the holdovers liked to grouse that the Lanes had vaulted Marissa over folks with more editorial experience because they were smitten by the rave review her book had received in The New York Times.

“Any idea why the Lanes put the pilots in their sights all of a sudden?” he asked.

“Peter Lane’s father, probably. Rivalry between the oil companies and the pilots predates this building.”

“That’s all?”

Marissa took a deep breath and rested her hands against the edge of her shiny new desk. Ben thought she was going to ask him to leave. Instead, she said, “Hilda Lane’s nephew’s had an application in front of NOBRA for six months. No one’s even looked at it. They think it’s ’cause he doesn’t have an in.”

“Or they know his uncle was one of the most powerful men in Louisiana oil.”

“If you take the story you can control it, Ben. Within limits, of course.”

“You mean keep Anthem out of it.”

“It’s a valid concern, considering his DUI last year. And that he wasn’t pulled from the pilot’s rotation even once because of it. If I toss this to Leo Pigeon and he turns that up, it’ll be his to roll with.”

“Not if I get to Leo first.”

“That’s between you and Leo.”

“All right. Well, I appreciate the offer, but—”

“Ben. Come on, now—”

“Don’t give me another ultimatum. Please. I’ve honored the last one for eight years now—”

“Ben—”

“—I never bothered his family. I never followed him to Atlanta after Katrina. Christ, I haven’t so much as typed his name into a goddamn search engine, ’cause I’m afraid you’re gonna fire me if I do. Marshall Ferriot could be dead for all I know and—”

“Ben!”

His face felt so hot he suddenly wouldn’t have been surprised if his cheeks had started to blister. Even though it was a good five minutes after Marissa had first ordered him to sit down, he forced himself into an empty chair.

His outburst had embarrassed him on a variety of levels, not the least of which was the fact that both he and Marissa knew full well why her ultimatum had been so easy for Ben to follow. Deep down, Ben knew that if he ever turned up significant evidence that Marshall had contributed to the disappearance of the Delongpres, Anthem would find out about it and murder the bastard in his hospital bed—that fact hadn’t changed in eight years. Not a fact, Ben corrected himself. A fear. Your fear. And he also couldn’t deny that once the initial burst of adolescent resourcefulness and outrage had subsided, once Katrina ripped the foundations out from under just about everything he held dear, Marshall’s long, uninterrupted sleep and the destruction of Heidi Ferriot’s life as she became his embittered, shut-in nursemaid seemed to Ben like adequate consolation prizes for having to leave the whole truth resting somewhere in the shadows off Highway 22. Especially if the cost of going deeper into those woods was losing Anthem Landry to his own rage.

“I scared you that bad, huh?” Marissa asked.

“I’m sorry . . . I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

“It’s fine. I just wish I had that kind of power over the Lanes, I guess.” After a long silence, Marissa said, “Last time I checked, Marshall was in a long-term care facility in Atlanta. His mother died last year, and his condition was unchanged, so he probably won’t live much longer either.”

“Just for the record . . . I didn’t ask. That’s not what that was about.”

“I know you didn’t. But, Ben . . . please. The Lanes were the only offer we had. You didn’t want to work for a blog for free, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“All right, then. Go see what else you can drum up. I’m sure you’ll find something. You always do.”

She gestured for him to leave, but once he reached the door, she called out to him.

“Are you in love with him?” she asked.

“Anthem? You serious?”

She nodded.

“Nine times out of ten, I look at him, I don’t see him. I see her.”

Marissa nodded again as if she were considering his answer, but she’d averted her eyes. He would have preferred if she’d ask him something this personal outside the office, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have the right, not after what they’d been through together: Nikki’s disappearance, her own mother’s death, Katrina.

“If I lose him . . . Nikki’s gone forever. That’s how it feels, at least. I don’t know. What do you think? Does that sound like love?”