Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery)

by Chris Knopf

  He shot upright.

  "Acquillo. Get me some water."

  I looked around the room.

  "Where?"

  "There's a little 'fridge behind the desk."

  I went and got him a bottle of water.

  "What're you doing in there?" I asked, shoving the bottle through the bars.

  "Fuming. When I'm not dying of dehydration."

  I looked down at the keypad mounted on the front of the cell.

  "How do I get you out?"

  "You don't. They reset the combination. HQ will have to send someone over who can override the electronics. Not happening now."

  "Who's they?" I asked.

  He looked up at me with baleful eyes.

  "Two white guys wearing black ski masks. Only one of them spoke. They got the drop on me. To be honest, I thought they were going to kill me. Instead, they put me in the cell and reprogrammed the keypad like it was something they did every day."

  "How long you been in here?"

  "Two days. I've been trying to sleep to conserve energy, but I was getting very thirsty. They only left me one bottle of water. You can live a long time without food, but not without water."

  I went back to the little refrigerator and took out all the water that was in there, about eight bottles. I shoved them all in his cell.

  "They can at least get some more cops out here," I said.

  "Maybe. You got a cell phone? This is going to be embarrassing."

  I went outside to spare him the audience and looked around. The wind was up another half-notch, and multi-colored leaves were filling the air. No one was on the street, no cars, no people. The old buildings and the too-cute cottages within eyeshot were dark and hunkered down, wary beneath the standing hardwoods that had all grown up since 1938.

  I went back inside.

  "Eight to ten hours," he said. "The weather's got everyone in a panic. As always, this island's just an annoying pimple on the ass of the East End."

  "So now what?"

  "A burger would be a good idea. With a big salad on the side."

  Another dilemma. The closest place to buy food, the only place you could buy food if you didn't count the Swan, was the general store. It was halfway between the barracks and where I'd originally stashed the dinghy, way too exposed a route. I didn't want to endanger Two Trees anymore than I had already, and I couldn't contact the Swan, so that left a single option.

  I called Gwyneth Jones.

  "How're you with conspiracies?" I asked her when she answered the phone.

  "JFK was killed by a lone gunman, crazy as that sounds."

  I asked her if she could go to the general store, buy a bunch of canned goods, and a can opener, plastic dinnerware, paper cups and plates, fresh fruit and bottles of water, plus a toothbrush and toothpaste, liquid soap, a washcloth if they had one, and to secretly bring them to the ferry dock.

  "With another storm on the way, nobody'll think twice about the purchases. When you get here, park behind the ferry office." Which I could see from the barracks. "I'll walk down and meet you."

  "I thought you were long gone."

  "That's what I want everyone to think," I said.

  "That sounds conspiratorial."

  When she got off the phone I conferred with Kinuei about what else he'd need. He told me where to find a big Maglite flashlight, a handheld VHF and a box of batteries. Then the matter of the shotgun came up. I reached in my pack and pulled out the Glock, and two boxes of ammo.

  "Unless you order me to give it up, I'd like to hold on to the shotgun for now," I said.

  "What're you up to, anyway? Level with me and I'll see what my answer is."

  So I did, mostly. I gave him the basics-that I'd managed to locate Axel's approximate whereabouts, gone there and extracted him, just ahead of Hammon and his hired gunsand then Axel and I made our way through a variety of means across the island to where I had secured my dinghy, then on to the sailboat, on which we escaped to New London. Leaving out all the illegalities made for a much sketchier story than I'd have wanted. He noticed.

  "On what basis can you assert that these men were attempting to kidnap the young man rather than simply trying to locate him on behalf of the family?"

  "Axel was hiding. When I found him, the last thing he wanted to do was go back to them."

  "Why?"

  I took a deep breath.

  "I don't know for sure," I said, truthfully. "But clearly there's extortion of some type involved. Oh, and by the way, you think it's a silly coincidence that a pair of highly skilled operatives got you locked up in your own jail? That you're only here because Trooper Poole got beat up?"

  He frowned at that, for obvious reasons.

  I'd been checking for Gwyneth every few minutes, and was happy to see her pull into the parking lot right at that moment. I told Kinuei not to go anywhere until I got back.

  "Don't enjoy this too much," he said.

  I jogged down the hill to the parking lot and knocked on the window of her old Citroen. She rolled down the window through which she handed two heavy bags of provisions.

  "Here's the receipt," she said.

  I doubled the amount she'd paid out, folding the bills in such a way that it wouldn't be apparent until she paid closer attention. I didn't know whether she'd accept the commission or not, but I didn't want to spend the time debating it.

  "Are you going to become the Robin Hood of Fishers Island?" she asked. "Robbing from the Ober-rich and giving to the merely well-off?"

  I told her she might not be that far off.

  "Good," she said. "Make sure I'm on the receiving end."

  I waited for her to scoot away in the improbable little car, then hiked back up the hill to the barracks. I transferred the goods through a little door meant for the purpose. He opened two of the larger cans and dumped the contents on a paper plate. I let him eat until he was ready to talk again.

  "So why'd you come back here?" he asked through a mouthful of cold beef stew.

  "They're still out there searching for me and Axel. I think they'll assume we're still on the island, especially as the weather gets worse. When they discover he's gone, it'll be bad for the remaining Feys. But I have some time. If my hypothesis is correct."

  "You have a hypothesis? What is this, physics lab?"

  "Sort of," I said.

  "Are you going to tell me?"

  I shook my head.

  "It's just a guess. I need to play it out."

  "Then give me the shotgun," he said, putting his hand through the little door. "For my sake and yours."

  There wasn't much to do at that point but comply. And part of me took his words to heart. There's a reason why I hate guns. They've been known to go off in ways that no one would have predicted, or preferred.

  I stuck it through the hole along with several boxes of shells.

  "You can keep the towel," I said. "Help with cleanup."

  He didn't know about the security guard's S&W .38, and didn't need to. I wasn't keen on completely disarming, dislike of guns or not.

  I asked him if there was anything else I could give him before I left. He shrugged.

  "My self-respect? Probably not."

  "Don't be too tough on yourself," I said. "Those two are world-class hard cases."

  "And you can handle them? What do you have that they don't?"

  "A sense of humor?"

  By now it was midafternoon, but still several hours before nightfall. I retraced the path to the abandoned military installation where Two Trees had picked me up the day before. This being the most densely built-up part of the island, I could travel most of the way down narrow alleys and through parking lots and backyards, providing a sense of security that was entirely false, but even that I was glad for. I made it all the way to the brick building without seeing another human being, though I had no idea if any had seen me. I walked around to the bluff above the water and sat down.

  The seas were now in full ferocity. From that height,
you could see the general wave pattern blown along by the increasing northeasterly. But I knew from experience that below the peaks and troughs a contest was underway between the surface movement and the mighty advance of the shifting currents, millions of gallons of seawater disgorging from the Sound, or flowing back in from the Atlantic Ocean. The result would be a species of turbulence that most would find difficult not to attribute to purposeful malevolence.

  Visibility was barely two miles out, but no boats were to be seen. The island was once again a lawless, encapsulated place, as unreachable as one of the moons of Jupiter.

  I lay down on the mist-dampened grass and closed my eyes. In addition to all the straining effort, battering and fearful blows to my nervous system aside, I'd lost a whole night's sleep. As I pondered all this, my limbs succumbed to an internally administered narcotic, and mid-thought, I was knocked out.

  I woke in utter blackness, blacker than the images that paraded behind my closed eyes. The wind was now a steady presence, a pulsating whoosh heard mostly in the tall trees above and behind me. No stars, no moon, no lights from the cluster of buildings around the ferry dock. Power out again. I checked my cell phone. No service. Deaf, dumb and blind.

  My brain and body were clogged with fuzzy cotton, but I perceived the intimations of renewal, a recharging after a deep sleep. I splashed some of my bottled water on my face. I stood up, slipped the ditch bag on my back, shook out my head and moved off into the dense, perfidious night.

  (

  My blue rain jacket had a hood. This served to both cover my face and keep the wind-driven rain, still more sporadic than pervasive, from soaking my head. I put my hands in the pockets of the jacket and did my best to walk a straight line against the teasing gusts of wind.

  What I still didn't have was much of a plan. Actually, I had no plan at all, beyond heading toward the Swan and hoping something would come to me along the way. As a young engineer, I'd rarely move an inch without thoroughly thought out and neatly drawn schematics. I'd labor over these, as much to assure the soundness of my thinking as the beauty of the visual product, the ruled precision of the boxes and arrows, engineering symbols and hand-drawn typography.

  Somewhere along the way I gave that up. Probably about the time I moved into management and no longer had the luxury to linger over a single project, to lovingly handcraft or polish a solution. By then, I knew too much, and needed to do so much in a very condensed amount of time. But I learned that sometimes the perfection of the plan was a trap, a seduction of aesthetics, where an ugly act of brutal intuition would have forced a better outcome.

  The air on Fishers island was all motion, the wind noise joined by the sound of generators, distant and close by, their engines at different rpms, nearly harmonized.

  The trip around the northern end of the island to the hotel followed a generally downward incline, past the general store, now blacked out like most of the houses and minor estates that fronted on the West Harbor. You didn't see the Inner Harbor complex, including the gas station, fuel dock, yacht club and the Black Swan until you turned a sharp corner at the bottom of the hill.

  What I saw first was a flashlight out on the fuel dock. I paused and watched. I assumed it was Track checking the water conditions and securing whatever equipment he had out there. It was dark inside both the gas station and the little shack out on the dock. I walked on by, well protected by the wind noise and murky night.

  The yacht club and the Swan next door were also completely dark, though I knew from experience that the light inside the bar area was invisible from the outside.

  I found the big rhododendron at the base of Featherstone's driveway and crawled underneath. Then I waited, studying the front of the hotel. It was about nine o'clock when I first checked my watch. Two hours later, the Ford SUV lumbered into the parking lot. It parked next to the Town Car and four men got out. If they spoke to each other, I couldn't hear it above the wind. They went inside and I went back to watching.

  I watched until one in the morning, as long as I could take watching utter nothingness, then went across the street and followed the hedge around to the side of the parking lot where the front ends of the three vehicles were lined up. I squatted down and took out my ancient, folding Buck knife and a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. I left the ditch bag on the ground and wriggled under the hedge on my back, and then under the Excursion.

  The first task was relatively easy. I opened the Buck knife and stabbed through the sidewalls of the two front tires, an operation the knife was uniquely suited to perform. The next bit was more of a challenge. Rolling up on my left shoulder, I felt up into the engine compartment with my right hand. The engine was still warm, but not hot to the touch. At first, all I felt was the side of the engine block and some heavy, bolted-down components. Then I came across the oil filter, a formidable test of my hand strength, but eventually moveable. I unscrewed it and dropped it to the ground.

  Then I turned my attention to the front brakes, finding and tracing the line that carried the brake back to the master cylinder, which was mounted up behind the engine near the transmission well. The line that brought the fluid down from the reservoir was made of a strong steel mesh surrounding a flexible synthetic tube. It took both the Buck knife and the wire cutters to get through it, but eventually I succeeded.

  Since the Town Car was also a Ford product, I was able to apply some of the technical learning from the Excursion. This time, however, I left the tire slashing till I was out from under the car, fearing the much lower ground clearance would mean I'd be crushed by the sinking chassis. The lower height was an advantage with the other activities, since I could reach further up into the engine compartment, allowing a richer yield of sensitive wiring.

  Sandwiched as the Town Car was between the SUV and the Mercedes, I was hidden from view as I took care of the Lincoln's tires. Finished with that, I crawled back under the hedge and lay on the grass, catching my breath.

  I had a different concept for the Mercedes.

  Among the tools and spare parts on the Carpe Mariana were stocky cables with alligator clips at either end used to help reconfigure the battery banks in the event of some failure or emergency. I put the one I brought in my teeth and crawled under the Mercedes.

  As with the Fords, I located the starter and the cable that ran from the battery to the solenoid. I cut out a foot long section and used the Buck knife to strip an inch of insulation off the remaining ends. I coiled up the cable and secured the loops with heavy plastic zip ties. I snapped one alligator clip to the line from the battery, then the other to the stub hanging off the starter motor. I unhooked the alligator clips at both ends and squirmed back out from under the car.

  I grabbed the ditch bag, ran across the road and dove back under the rhododendron. I rolled over on my back and listened to my heart thump in my ears. My limbs and the back of my neck ached from the stress of working in tight, pitch black spaces, as soundlessly as I could manage it. Expecting discovery at any moment, my nerves were no better. As my internal systems settled down, I allowed myself a few seconds of satisfaction. One less advantage for the opposing team.

  I rolled back over and studied the Swan. The ridgeline of the building ran perpendicular to the road, so the gable window closest to Anika's bed was to the right if you were looking at the front of the building. This side had a narrow strip of land that provided a heavily landscaped buffer between the hotel and the property next door. A brick path took you back to the dock area, passing the outdoor shower along the way. Myron Sanderfreud's favorite place to hang out.

  I actually considered standing on the path and tossing pebbles up to Anika's window, but as numerous hopeful suitors through the ages have learned, this strategy is likely to yield unwelcome consequences.

  So I just lay there and deliberated on foolish and quixotic enterprises, hoping that as a counter-influence it would produce an entirely undeserved revelation.

  And then I fell asleep.

  I woke to a sho
ut. A sooty grey light filled the air, now fully engaged by a steady wind strong enough to topple the unaware. I was uncomfortably on my side with my head on the ditch bag at a painful angle. I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows.

  Jock was in the parking lot. I could see his head rise above the hedge, then disappear again as he examined the destroyed tires. I heard him yell again, then saw Pierre run out the front door. They spoke to each other, then the two of them looked around the neighborhood, as if the tire slasher was standing nearby, knife in hand.

  I checked my watch. It was 7:00 AM.

  't Hooft came out of the hotel and joined the huddle. Even from a hundred yards away, I could see it was an animated conversation, complete with waving hands and jutting jaw lines.

  Nothing much happened until about 7:15, when Pierre went to retrieve Anderson Track. Track walked around both vehicles, popping up and down to look at the tires, and finally just shaking his head. The body language was clear: he couldn't replace that many tires, not that time of year and certainly not during a major storm.

  The big mercenaries weren't happy about it, and it showed, but to Track's credit, he didn't flinch or falter, but rather had his chest out and his hands on his hips as he shook his head and undoubtedly said things like, "I can't make tires appear out of thin air. You'll have to wait till they start running the ferry again."

  Jock gave him a little shot to the sternum, knocking him back a few steps. 't Hooft took Jock by the jacket and pulled him back. Jock seemed apologetic toward 't Hooft. Track took that opportunity to make a retreat, waving them off as he stalked back to his gas station.

  Soon the hoods on all three vehicles were open and everyone but Del Rey was out in the parking lot. I couldn't know how well they assessed the damage, but it didn't matter. They weren't going anywhere in the SUV or the Town Car, and if they discovered how to fix the problem with the Mercedes, so be it. It was worth the chance.

  Anika stood watching the men mill around the vehicles. She wore a floor-length kimono, and stood with her arms folded over her chest. Occasionally, she'd look away and scan the area, her eyes drifting past where I lay under the bush. I tried to send telepathic messages, the exact content of which I was undecided on, so that's probably why they didn't reach their destination.