Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery)

by Chris Knopf

  I

  There wasn't much to do after that but listen to the roar outside and try to distract ourselves by reading books pulled from the boat's library, pre-stocked with hardbound classics, and playing the calmest music we could find on Amanda's iPod, which was jacked into the boat's sumptuous audio system. Predictably, the shore power flicked off to the accompaniment of a huge blast of lightning and thunder. There was no immediate effect on us, since everything we needed, including the lights, ran off the battery banks. Even with the battery charger off-line, we had at least twenty-four hours of reserves without firing up the engine.

  I opened the companionway hatch, which was protected from the rain by the canvas dodger overhead, and looked down the docks at the Swan. With the sun still up it was hard to know for sure, but it was likely the whole neighborhood, if not the island, was off the grid.

  Before poking my head outside, I'd turned on the anemometer the gauge that read wind speed. It was mounted on an instrument array at the helm, so I had to climb into the cockpit to read it. A steady thirty-five knots, or roughly forty miles per hour, with gusts to fifty. Enough to be uncomfortable, but not so dangerous there at the dock. I examined all the lines-the ones on the windward side were taut enough to play a bass line, but doubled up as they were, staunchly held us off the pilings.

  I was about to duck back out of the rain when I saw a guy in full rain gear running toward us down the center passageway. He yelled my name.

  "You gotta come with me," said Mr. Two Trees, his dark, rain-streaked face looking through the tunnel formed by the hood of his jacket. "It's Poole."

  "What happened?"

  "You gotta come now. Bring water and blankets. It's bad."

  I went below to break the news to Amanda. She took it as she always did, alarm in her eyes, but her face set in false equanimity. I ignored Eddie's pleas to come along and put my foul weather gear over my wet T-shirt and jeans. I gathered up some blankets and threw several water bottles into the dry bag. I looked at my cell phone, which had lost service. I grabbed my handheld VHF radio and turned on the more powerful version built into the navigation panel.

  "Keep it on sixteen, the universal distress channel. Monitor whatever's going on out there, it might include a message from me."

  Two Trees was waiting for me in the Swan's parking lot in his old Toyota.

  "Since she's a one-man band out here, so to speak, I like to check in whenever there's a storm or other emergency," he said, gunning the engine and tearing out into the slippery street. "The cell service is down and I couldn't reach her on the radio, so I drove over there. Found her on the floor with the shit kicked out of her. Can't talk. Wrote out how to fire up auxiliary power, but somebody's taken the generator. Dropped it in the drink is my guess, since her barracks are right there on the ferry channel. Then she wrote out, 'Get Acquillo at Swan's dock.' Good thing I knew who she meant."

  As we drove I tried to reach the mainland with my handheld, but it didn't have the range.

  "I tried all that," said Two Trees. "We need a beefier radio, like the one in Poole's office. Or at the ferry dock, though we'll have to knock down the door, since the pussies are all in New London."

  I called Amanda on my handheld. When she came on I told her to switch to channel sixty-eight. Then I asked her to try to reach the coast guard.

  "Roger that," she said. "What do I tell them?"

  "Poole's been attacked and needs medical attention. If you get the coasties it'd be nice if they brought along another state cop or two."

  "I'll only call you back if I get through," she said.

  "Got it," I said, signing off. "Any doctors on the island?" I asked Two Trees.

  "Not off-season. In July you could staff a hospital off the golf course and yacht club. And the Swan's bar."

  As described, Poole's barracks was a small, clapboardsided building perched high above the mouth of the ferry channel. I was out of the car before Two Trees had it fully stopped and into the little building. Poole was lying on the floor, on her side with her knees drawn up, her soft ringlets spread out on the carpet as if arranged by a stylist. There were blood marks on the floor around her head, her face an unrecognizable mash of cuts and welts.

  I dropped to the floor and spoke her name. She opened her eyes. I gently took a small pad of paper out of her hand and checked her pulse. I didn't know what I was checking for, but it seemed neither too fast nor too slow. She pointed to the pad, which I gave back to her. In her other hand was a pen. With both hands pressed closely to her abdomen, she was able to write, "Sit up."

  I got one hand under her shoulder, and with the help of Two Trees, pulled her up and turned her so she could lean against the front of her metal desk.

  "Who did it?" I asked.

  "Didn't see," she wrote. "Cold-cocked from behind."

  "How about internal organs?" I asked.

  She nodded and wrote, "Gut kicked."

  "Does the ferry dock have a generator?"

  She shook her head and wrote, "Battery backup for the radio. A day's worth."

  I looked at Two Trees, who also nodded before leaving the building.

  "Just don't bust him for breaking and entering," I said.

  She smiled a tiny smile and shivered. I went back out to the car and retrieved the blankets, draping one over her shoulders. I opened a water bottle and handed it to her. She winced when it touched her swollen lips.

  "Any guess at all?" I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I looked around her office as if some explanation resided there.

  "Gun from holster gone. Others locked up," Poole wrote, then wrote the number for the combination lock on a separate sheet and handed it to me.

  I touched her sleeve and told her I'd be right back. Then I went outside the building and radioed Amanda, bringing her up to date. I told her I had no idea how long it would take to contact the coast guard or when they could have a boat out to the island.

  "Take your time," she said. "We're fine here. Eddie's passed out on his berth and I'm reading The Sun Also Rises. Seems appropriate."

  I signed off with Amanda and went back in the building. Poole had her head back, resting on the front of the desk. I squatted down next to her and she opened her eyes. She handed me her little pad, on which she'd written, "Take my picture. Camera in desk. Evidence."

  I did as she asked, not enjoying the experience. Then I squatted back down and asked her if she felt any worse, and in what way, but she shook her head.

  "But I have felt better," she wrote.

  I sat down next to her and squeezed the hand holding the pen. She smiled another little smile and nodded her head, and there we sat in silence until Two Trees burst into the building with news that the coast guard was only ten minutes away. It was the same patrol boat that had brought over the knuckleheaded CSI, so he knew exactly where to go. At the captain's request, I tuned my handheld to channel seventy and we discussed docking below Poole's barrackshow and where to tie up lines and how to secure the ladder he'd raise to scale the breakwater.

  After the boat arrived, extreme professionalism took over and all I had to do was watch, be impressed and stay out of the way. In a few minutes they had Poole strapped in a rugged rescue stretcher and lowered into the boat. While this was happening, another seaman took statements from me and Two Trees, captured by a video recorder. The only sour note came when I asked about a replacement cop.

  "We put in a request to the New York State authorities," said the captain. "They said it would be a day or two before someone could be assigned."

  "To protect and serve. When they get around to it. You realize whoever did this is still on this island."

  "Noted, sir. We'll try again. The important thing now is to get the police officer to a hospital."

  I didn't argue with that, and watched as the muscular little patrol boat spun around in the ferry channel and threw herself back into the clamorous seas.

  "Take me to the ferry dock," I said to Two T
rees, who drove us down a narrow street between houses built when the country club was still cheap farmland, to a building only slightly larger than the state police barracks. Two Trees led me through the front door, stepping over the glass he'd punched out, and over to the radio room behind the ticket counter. He sat down at the desk and flicked on the radio, which looked like a relic from the Second World War.

  "Here's a list of people to hail in case of an emergency," he said, pointing to a printout taped to the instrument panel. "Who do you want to call?"

  Since we'd already connected with the coast guard, I picked the Suffolk Police Marine Bureau, under whose jurisdiction the waters surrounding Fishers Island theoretically fell. After a dozen tries on channel sixteen, a voice came back.

  "Go to nine."

  When I did, the voice told me that all their boats were pinned to the docks, and to call the coast guard. I asked him if there was a state police barracks nearby I could radio. He said if our signal reached JFK airport, I'd have a shot. Presumably the patrol boat captain had relayed the information to them that one of their troopers was down, but I asked the marine bureau guy to do the same. Any engineer will tell you, redundancy rarely hurts.

  "I'll pass it along, but no guarantees," said the guy.

  "Do what you can. As far as I know this is the only contact we have with the outside world. The power's out, phone and cell service are down, ferries aren't running, and someone's eliminated the only police presence on the island."

  After signing off, I tried to extract the ferry dock's radio from where it was mounted on the antique instrument panel, but the wiring was impossibly entangled and indecipherable. So rather than destroy what we had, I left it there and had Two Trees drive me back to the boat, backtracking on the way to retrieve Trooper Poole's cache of weaponry, which consisted of a Remington police shotgun and a pair of Glock 37's.

  The beat-up Corolla took the further buffeting from the wind in stride as we drove over narrow roads filled with leafy debris. Large branches and whole trees were down everywhere, but we managed to wind our way through. When we got to the Swan I told Two Trees he could stay if he wanted, presumptuously confident of Anika's largesseif not her father's-but he said he had to get home to his wife and dog, one of which he was sure would be glad to see him. I started to thank him for what he'd done, but he cut me off.

  "You do what you do. Call me if you need a hand with anything," he said, then shooed me out of the car.

  The rain had died down a lot, but the wind was still in a fury. I struggled as it caught hold of the Remington and bag of blankets, now laden with the two Glocks and several boxes of ammunition. I could see light through the portholes of the Carpe Mariana at the end of the dock, and made for it.

  "Oh my," said Amanda when I opened up the companionway and handed her the shotgun.

  "It's Poole's. I didn't want to leave it at the barracks. There're also a pair of semi-automatics in with the blankets."

  I gave her as thorough a briefing as I could, filling in what I hadn't had a chance to convey already. Then I went back outside with Eddie, who was smart enough to run to the end of the dock, take care of business in the foliage around the Swan, then run back again. This bought us at least another eight hours. Wild dog heritage aside, he seemed happy to get back below where it was dry, lit and equipped with comfy berths and Big Dog biscuits.

  "I think I solved the communication problem," said Amanda, handing me my first vodka of the day.

  "Oh?"

  "You told me to stay on channel sixteen, which I did, mostly. That got boring, so I checked to see what was happening on all those other channels."

  "And?"

  "There's a lovely retired man who lives in a town called Groton in Connecticut where they apparently make submarines, of all things. He's a radio enthusiast with a very powerful setup. He was chatting with a friend on channel seventy-two, and was gracious enough to allow me to break in. I asked him if he wouldn't mind relaying messages for us, and he was delighted. But then he did one better. He has a way to take our signal and transfer it directly into the phone network. It's a new system that they're beta testing and he's apparently one of their betas."

  "This is what happens when you ignore my instructions."

  "It is," she said, lifting the handset off the radio. "Who would you like to call?"

  The process took a while, which included some friendly back and forth between Amanda and Mr. Berman, the retired radio fanatic, then a few failed tries to make the relay to the telephone interface. But finally we had a dial tone, immediately followed by the sound of Mr. Berman dialing Burton Lewis's cell phone number.

  Burton wouldn't usually answer if he didn't recognize the number of the caller, but we caught him in the right mood.

  "Who is RadioLink International?" he asked, answering the phone.

  "It's me. Sam. Long story I'll make as short as I can."

  Which I did while Burton listened to silently.

  "What would you like me to do?" he asked, when I wrapped up.

  "Lean on whoever could lean on the state police to get a cop on a coast guard boat headed for Fishers as soon as possible."

  "I'll do what I can. Do you still want intel on Subversive Technologies?"

  I'd almost forgotten about them.

  "Yeah. What have you got?"

  "I have a report in front of me from one of our analysts. Eighty percent of their revenue flows from the high-volume analytical software N-Spock 4.0, which has a large installed base in industrial, government and academic research labs," he said, reading from the report. "Though dominant, they're feeling intense pressure from competitors who are using more modern platforms to leapfrog over N-Spock's speed and volume limitations. It's the classic software dilemmakeep upgrading your program based on the operating system and hardware you've always used, or scrap the whole thing and jump to the cutting edge. The first option can work if the users are satisfied with the product, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper. On the other hand, investing in a whole new technological approach may be the only way to preserve their base, maintain their brand image and prepare for future competition."

  "So what're they going to do?"

  "They're working on the next version, N-Spock 5.0, which is said to be based on the absolute latest development principles, which take advantage of the most current processors, web-based applications, cloud computing, fourth- and even fifth-generation programming language, which gets frighteningly close to artificial intelligence."

  "They made the investment."

  "They're making it. N-Spock 5.0 is over a year late and the rumor is they're stuck. It's only a rumor, since Subversive has done an excellent job keeping a security lid on the project, but if this version fails to launch they're in huge trouble. They become a legacy application, which will take years to dwindle away, providing continued revenue, but their stock price will tank and private equity will flee, meaning the end of the big money flow, and that's what everyone ultimately cares about. It hasn't helped that Christian Fey, the head of development since the founding of the company, has opted out. It's not much of a stretch to interpret that as jumping off a sinking ship."

  "Wait till they hear the CFO was found hanging in the shower."

  I heard a beep on the line, followed by Mr. Berman.

  "Terribly sorry to interrupt, but I've lost power. There's quite a storm going on out there. I only have an hour of reserve power, and have to do an orderly shut-down of all the systems. You understand."

  Burton and I talked over each other thanking Mr. Berman for the time we had. He replied with a few equally gracious comments, then unceremoniously cut the line.

  Since our entire conversation played on the radio, I didn't have to brief Amanda.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked, in the light, seemingly unconcerned tone she often used when she was the most concerned.

  "I need another drink."

  "The ice won't last forever."

  "We'll run the engine and mak
e more."

  "Do you think Sanderfreud's death has anything to do with Poole's beating?"

  "The word 'death' implies there's a possibility it was an accident or he committed suicide. It was murder."

  "Okay, murder," she said. "Is there a connection?"

  "I don't know."

  "So there could be."

  "Yes," I said.

  "What kind?"

  "We could guess all day, but that's a waste of time. Not enough data to go beyond conjecture."

  Amanda didn't challenge that assertion, having heard once too often about the importance of achieving a critical mass of data points in order to reduce the number of thesis-killing variables. She liked that I'd been a technical trouble-shooter at the company before taking over R&D, but her interest in the particulars of the trouble-shooting process wasn't limitless.

  "So what are you going to do?" she asked.

  "Get more data. After I have this drink."

  (

  The clock read 7:30 PM, but it looked like the middle of the night. I brought a little pocket flashlight to guide my way down the center dock and around the side of the Black Swan to the front door. It was open, so I walked in.

  There was a glow coming from the bar, along with the burble of voices. I announced myself before entering the room.

  "Hey, Sam," said Anika. "What's up?"

  The bar was well-lit by dozens of candles. It looked like the whole crowd was there, sitting around the tall bar tables which were covered in drinks and plates of food. Anika was wearing a little black dress and heels. Del Rey, on the other hand, now wore jeans and an oversized men's sweater. Her hair was in a ponytail, which would have revealed her whole face if she hadn't left a tuft of bangs to hang over her forehead and right eye.