Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery)

by Chris Knopf

  "Permission to come aboard," I called. Amanda climbed part way down the swim ladder to help me hoist Eddie up and over the transom. While there was still a dim glow of light along the horizon, I dropped the line off the mooring and motored slowly over to the docks at the Black Swan. Amanda sat with Eddie on the bow and swept the water with a flashlight in search of lethal hazards. The wind was still strong, but the water mostly chop-free behind the breakwater that defined the Inner Harbor. In a few minutes we were backing into the slip, and Amanda was on the dock tying off a stern line.

  After the other lines were secured, Amanda went below to work on dinner. I sat in the cockpit with another drink and got a chance to look around the neighborhood. The lights were on in the Black Swan's restaurant, which looked out over the docks, and I could see three people sitting at a table having a meal. It was Fey, his daughter and another guy, young, who I assumed to be the aforementioned brother. Feeling like a voyeur, I was about to turn away when I saw the older man raise his hand as if to cuff the boy on the head. Anika leaned half out of her chair and wrapped her arms around the boy's shoulders, shouting something at her father, something I could almost hear through the glass. Fey made a brusque gesture with the raised hand, then went back to his meal. Anika cradled the boy against her chest and kissed the top of his head, then also went back to her meal, though with a deep scowl on her face.

  I pulled my eyes away and looked across the channel at the Harbor Yacht Club next door. Their slips were also empty of boats, though unlike the Swan's, the docks were a type that floated up and down with the tide, now low. The tall piers that secured the docks from lateral movement stood like an orderly grove of truncated trees. On top of the pier closest to our slip, clearly visible across the narrow channel, sat a cat, lit by the club's security lights and thus unidentifiable by color, though starkly outlined, like a woodcut.

  "Eloise?" I called, and as she turned her head toward me I added, "Better get home." She just sat there and stared across the water, as if urging me to apprehend a greater truth. But then Eddie barked, and Amanda called to me to come below, and the opportunity was lost.

  I

  The first hour of the next morning was spent profitably lounging around the cockpit, drinking coffee, listening to Puccini and watching the dim glow on the eastern horizon turn into the hard light of the October sun. The wind had shifted to a dead northerly, showing little of its recent fury. I'd believed it when Burton said this was all poised to change, but refused to let that spoil the moment. I checked the local NOAA marine forecast to get more information, though their credibility hadn't emerged untarnished from the day before.

  Amanda wore a blue down vest over a long, white cotton robe-like the kind religious pilgrims wear on the way to Mecca-and a baseball cap. On her feet were a pair of fleecelined sea boots. There's something about a sailboat that even the most sartorially adept find irresistibly corrupting.

  I'd met Amanda when she worked for the bank her husband ran in Southampton on Long Island. She was my personal banker, even though I had very little money to bank. The only reason I had a personal banker was because I wanted to talk to Amanda, who at the time also had little money beyond her paycheck. Her principal financial resource was her husband. His name was Roy, and he wasn't rich, but was sure trying to be. These efforts led to some complicated illegalities, with the ultimate outcome being not so great for Roy, now a resident of Sanger Medium Security Penitentiary in Upstate New York. Amanda, along the way, discovered she was an heiress, in addition to being the wife of a ruined banker, whom she eagerly divorced. While nowhere near as well off as Burton Lewis, she was still set for life, if she sensibly handled the money.

  Her choices thus far had been fairly sensible, if you overlook getting involved with me.

  "For breakfast we've got sauteed mushrooms and leftover shrimp ziti," I told her.

  "What happened to the bacon and eggs?"

  "They were to be purchased in Stonington, Connecticut, where we'd be now if the wind hadn't brought us here."

  "Tell me this place has a grocery store," said Amanda.

  "Surprisingly, yes. And it's within easy walking distance.

  Let Puccini get through the last act and we'll send out a foraging team."

  It took longer than that to get underway, but neither of us felt overly ambitious, the likely residue of the day before. We finally did, with Eddie on a long retractable leash, much to his disgust. I felt he shouldn't be totally free on foreign soil. Mostly in deference to the foreigners, not yet acquainted with his distinctive charms.

  I picked an indirect route so I could tour Amanda around some of the neighborhoods and tiny commercial clusters on Fishers' west end. I thought she'd like to see the buildings. Since much of her inheritance was in real estate, she'd become a developer, the hands-on type that ran the crews and battled suppliers and building inspectors. We helped each other out occasionally, but kept our construction careers separate, and thus our relationship slightly less complicated.

  In keeping with the insular nature of the place, there was little to mark its place in time. The houses were mostly weatherbeaten, but well cared-for and comfortably settled within an abundance of domesticated and feral landscaping. I reckoned by the well-worn Saabs, Ford pickups, Chevy vans, Volvos and early-model Subarus, that the twenty-first century might have become established on the mainland without much notice here.

  I knew a few modern architectural extravagances dotted the west end, mostly on the water, but not much of that had infected the core.

  Meanwhile, Eddie's interest was fully engaged by the fresh smells and novel organic matter, some of which he sampled and occasionally spat back out. My part in this was to give him enough slack on the leash to enjoy the splendor without getting pulled off my feet by sudden, capricious changes in direction.

  The grocery store, in a low-slung, wooden-floored building, also sold beer, wine and liquor, and other necessities, like bait, line and nets, and yachting caps with the Harbor Club insignia. The woman at the checkout line looked at us carefully, but likely assumed if we'd made it all the way to her store, we probably had some business being on the island, questionable though it might be. We stocked up on as many provisions as we could carry in a pair of backpacks and were about to head down the short route when I noticed the pockmarked guy sitting in a pickup truck parked at the curb.

  I cinched up on Eddie's leash and gently guided Amanda out to the road. She was trying to say something to me, but I was concentrating on the pickup and didn't notice until she stopped talking. I asked her to repeat herself, which she did, though I missed that, too, when I looked back and saw the pickup back out of its spot and roll slowly down the road behind us.

  "You're distracted," she said.

  "I am," I said, as I informed her of the pockmarked guy who greeted me at the docks, now following us in a pickup. "Don't look," I added.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake."

  We walked in silence for several minutes with the truck a nearly silent escort twenty or so paces behind. Then I heard the engine's rpms rev up and watched the truck slide around us and disappear around the curve ahead.

  "Asshole," said Amanda.

  "I seem to attract them," I said.

  "You do," she said, in a tone both sympathetic and matter-of-fact, which I didn't exactly know how to interpret. "Should we call the cops?"

  "Cop. There's only one. A New York State trooper. They rotate them in and out on six-month assignments. At least that's what I'm told. I've never seen him."

  "Or her."

  "Or her."

  we reached the Black Swan, Anika was out on the lawn, snipping with a pair of pruning shears at the hedge growing disobediently above a narrow flower garden filled with late season blooms. Like the day before, she was oddly dressed for the pursuit at hand, as young people are wont to do, something I'd learned from my daughter.

  I introduced her to Amanda, who complimented Anika on her leather choke collar. I'd lived among wom
en long enough to know this was a peace ritual, an expressed hope for boundaries to be respected and good will shared among all. Anika responded with a demure glance toward the ground, a fondling of the observed object, and a suggestion that it would look far better on Amanda, given her long, slender neck. I wondered if I should now piss on the grass at Amanda's feet, anthropologically speaking.

  Instead I asked, "Did Eloise ever show up?"

  "She did," said Anika. "Thank you for asking. She slept on my face all night, something she does when she's upset. Don't know why. Maybe the smell of your dog."

  "Do you know a guy who hangs around the docks, a little younger than me, with a bad case of ancient acne?" I asked her.

  "Track?"

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Anderson Track. Runs the gas station and fuel dock."

  "He tried to chase me away. I wondered what his problem was."

  She looked down and shook her head.

  "It's what they do here. Sorry. I'll tell him you're our guest. Not that he'd care. We're still looked upon as interlopers. The last owners had nearly defaulted on the place after letting it basically crumble into the ground. But they were locals, so without fault."

  She snapped the shears with a lot of shoulder in it, yielding a large clump of hedge. There were piles of faded summer flowers on the ground, and what was left cleaved to the purple, gold and red of the late season.

  "Your flowers are beautiful," said Amanda. "Interesting colors."

  Anika stood back and shared in the admiration.

  "That's six thirty-two point five," she said, pointing to some clumps of lavender. Then she went along the narrow garden, saying, "Forty-two, seventy-six, more or less, and four ninety-six, a perfect number, by the way."

  "Numbering your plants," said Amanda. "Sounds like something Sam would do."

  "The owner of our boat is going to ship repair parts care of the Swan," I said. "I'm sorry for the intrusion, but if you could accept the shipment and let us know it's here, I'll get it off your hands as soon as I can."

  Anika dropped the shears and rested them on her thigh. She smiled a generous smile.

  "Don't be ridiculous. We don't mind accepting a package."

  Amanda thanked her and pulled at my sleeve, reminding me that we were starving and needed to get back to the boat. I was about to comply when a black Lincoln Town Car pulled into the hotel's parking lot. It'd be as if a horse and buggy or fire-breathing dragon had swept up to the curb, it so captured our attention.

  The driver's door swung open and a tall guy with thin legs and a bulging belly got out. He wore a dark blue suit with a light blue turtleneck and a lot of gold on his fingers. He opened the rear door and a much shorter, thinner man, with a bony jaw, fine light-brown hair and a creased face, stepped out. He buttoned his sport coat, made of soft suede, and used the flat of his hand to press an errant strand of hair back up onto his head. He looked at the facade of the Black Swan curiously, as you would the face of a nearly recollected acquaintance. His gaze drifted from the building to where we were standing with Anika. She let out a kind of sigh, of surprise or weariness, it was hard to tell.

  "What brings you here?" she called to him.

  The thin man's face showed recognition, but little warmth.

  "Your father nearby?" he asked.

  "Maybe. We're closed for the season."

  The man nodded.

  "Get him, would you?"

  Anika turned to us, clouds forming across her once sunny face.

  "You'll have to excuse me," she said, and gripping my arm, gently pushed me toward the path that led to the docks.

  "Got things to do."

  Even I got that message. I escorted Amanda to the path and out to the boat. Halfway there I turned and walked backwards, so I could see the thin man joined by a thin woman, taller than the man, and wearing a long red leather coat. Her sunglasses hid much of her face and her unnaturally blond hair was piled up on top of her head, though none too neatly, as if bedraggled by a long trip. I turned back and wasn't able to look again until we were climbing into the boat, at which point everyone was gone, having disappeared into the hotel.

  "Maybe not so closed after all," said Amanda.

  The next morning I woke up a little before dawn, as I often do. Amanda rarely does, so I left her and as quietly as I could slipped into jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt and made a cup of coffee to bring out to the bow of the boat. Eddie jumped down from one of the salon settees and followed me topsides.

  The sun was just heralding its arrival with a dull glow above the treetops to the east. The security lights from the Harbor Club next door cast their own yellowy glow, though the Swan was totally blacked out, a white clapboard mass, tired but elegant, braced for another day.

  I was nearly through with the coffee when I saw a light flash at the back of the hotel. The wide French doors centered over the rear patio opened and Anika walked out. She wore a heavy, dark-colored bathrobe and slippers. She held what looked like a piece of paper in her mouth to free both hands to shut and secure the doors behind her. I watched her stride down the main dock toward our boat.

  When she got there, she stood up on her toes to look into the cockpit, a difficult task from where she stood. She held what I could now see was an envelope between her fingers in a way that suggested she was about to flick it on to the boat.

  "Good morning," I said from the bow.

  She jumped and grasped her bathrobe at the throat.

  "Whoa! Freak me out."

  She walked down the dock and stood with her arms folded, the envelope hidden in the bunched-up fabric.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  She moved closer to the boat and leaned out over the water between the dock and the curved section of the hull. She gripped the gunwale to support herself as she tossed the envelope on the deck a few feet from where I sat.

  "It's a dinner invitation," she said. "Tonight."

  "Tonight? Good you got us early," I said.

  She stood back again, and refolded her arms.

  "It was my idea, but I wanted you to think it was my father's."

  "He might not like that."

  She used both hands to rake out her hair, stopping part way to scratch her scalp. The action released the top of her robe, exposing a deep, but gentle V.

  "He won't like it, but it won't show. He's Swiss," she added, as if that explained all.

  "I'm French-Canadian, with just enough Italian to explain the name."

  "Your girlfriend's Italian, too, isn't she."

  "With just enough Anglo-Saxon to qualify as an American mutt, which most of us are, once you dig into it."

  "I'm all Swiss. Born in Zurich."

  "Where's your mom?"

  "Dead."

  "Sorry," I said.

  "Don't be. I was too young to know her. She died having my brother. You'd think by now they'd have licked the deathby-childbirth thing."

  "What's wrong with your brother?"

  I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or simply knocked offbalance. She had a busy face-lots of vivid expressions, bright eyes and a capricious smile, not always used to convey humor.

  "I didn't know you'd met."

  "We didn't. I saw him through the window. Didn't mean to. The shades were up," I pointed to the back of the restaurant. "You were eating dinner with him and your father. Once I realized what I was doing, I went below. Hard not to think of a lighted window as a TV set. Sorry."

  Anika walked down the dock to the boat's gate, the space opened up by unlatching a section of the lifelines, and hoisted herself up onto the deck. She walked to the bow and plopped down across from me, her legs stretched out. Her foot touched the side of mine and gave a subtle stroke. I moved mine away.

  "What's your story?" she said.

  "Nothing interesting."

  "People don't spy on other people, then admit to it, making the spied upon see them as honorable."

  "What's wrong with your brother?" I asked again.

&n
bsp; "What's wrong with you?" she asked back.

  "Chronic inappropriateness."

  Anika leaned back against a bulge in the cabin top that held the forward hatch, then sat up again, trying to get comfortable. I took another sip of my coffee.

  "Want some?" I asked.

  "Maybe. Have we met?"

  "I don't think so," I said.

  "My father's fifty-nine years old."

  "I'm fifty-seven. He wins."

  "Axel, my brother, can run pi out to ten thousand digits from memory. Then he gets bored and gives it up. I ask him why stop there, and he tells me, 'It's not that hard. What's the big deal?"'

  A wayward breeze snuck on to the dock and disturbed the silken black hair that lay scattered over her brow, causing one longer strand to slide over her mouth. She puffed it out of the way.

  "So Axel's the math whiz. What's your specialty?"

  "I'm an artist. A painter. I've got a studio in the attic. My bed's there, too, so I have something to do when I can't sleep. You should visit sometime so I can show you my latest work."

  She slid farther down on the deck and rested her head on the raised lip of the forward hatch. The maneuver caused her robe to ride up past her thigh, a situation she took her time correcting.

  "Who're the people in the Town Car?" I asked.

  "You are the nosiest person I ever met," she said.

  "I'm sure that's true, though I know people who are far nosier than me."

  "Friends of my dad. From his company. His old company. He sold out so he could retire and buy this place. And get off the bus to nowhere. You retired?"

  "No. Fired. Now I do finish carpentry. And boat deliveries, though this is likely my first and last."

  "That coffee is starting to sound really good," she said.

  I went below and made some more. While I was there I checked on Amanda, who was a static lump in the cozy quarter berth we'd chosen as our bedroom. I brushed the back of my hand as delicately as I could across her cheek and pulled the blanket up over an exposed shoulder. She responded with a little cough, more of a snort, then lapsed back into heavy breathing. So I left her alone and brought two mugs of fresh coffee to the bow, with a pocket full of fake sugar, as Anika had requested.