Deep Dive Read online

  ALSO BY CHRIS KNOPF

  SAM ACQUILLO HAMPTONS MYSTERIES

  The Last Refuge

  Two Time

  Head Wounds

  Hard Stop

  Black Swan

  Cop Job

  Back Lash

  Tango Down

  JACKIE SWAITKOWSKI HAMPTONS MYSTERIES

  Short Squeeze

  Bad Bird

  Ice Cap

  ARTHUR CATHCART

  Dead Anyway

  Cries of the Lost

  A Billion Ways To Die

  STAND-ALONE THRILLER

  Elysiana

  You’re Dead

  CHRIS KNOPF

  DEEP

  DIVE

  THE PERMANENT PRESS

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  Copyright © 2019 by Chris Knopf

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

  The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.

  For information, address:

  The Permanent Press

  4170 Noyac Road

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  www.thepermanentpress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Knopf, Chris, author.

  Deep dive / Chris Knopf.

  Sag Harbor, NY: Permanent Press, [2019]

  ISBN: 978-1-57962-571-9

  eISBN: 978-1-57962-586-3

  1. Mystery fiction.

  PS3611.N66 D44 2019

  813’.6—dc23 2019013732

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the brave people of Puerto Rico, who sing and dance with

  optimism in defiance of the heartless in Washington.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I know I should call the police immediately, but I wonder if you wouldn’t mind popping over for a moment to discuss before I do.”

  It was my friend Burton Lewis. He rarely called, especially on my cell phone, so it got my attention.

  “What’s up, Burt?”

  He spoke clearly, though with a slight, breathless tremor in his voice.

  “You know Joshua and Rosie Edelstein,” he said. “I’m at their house. It’s a situation.”

  “How bad?”

  I knew the Edelsteins well, since I’d spent the better part of two years building all the cabinets and architectural detail for their custom oceanfront home. It was one of my most successful jobs, since I was working for my preferred general contractor, Frank Entwhistle, and Edelstein himself was an eager, grateful, and free-spending customer, my favorite kind.

  “A houseguest. Appears to be dead. No, scratch that, is definitely dead. Along with the rhododendron he landed on. Right below his bedroom, two stories up.”

  “Did you just find him?” I asked.

  “We did.”

  “Wait fifteen minutes, then call the police,” I said. “Meanwhile, stay away from the scene. Don’t touch anything, don’t move anything, don’t make any other phone calls, just stay in one place. Are there other guests?”

  “Just his boyfriend. Of the moment,” said Burton.

  “Keep him with you, and away from the bedroom.”

  “Should be easy. We’re on the patio and he’s frozen in his chair.”

  “Does Edelstein have a lawyer?” I asked.

  “I’m sure. Probably taxes and real estate.”

  “Call Jackie.”

  “I already have. She’s Up Island, heading here fast.”

  “What the hell, Burt?”

  “What the hell is right. Just please get here as quickly as you can. Three hysterical people are three more than I can usually cope with.”

  BURTON LEWIS was one of my oldest friends. A bona fide rich guy, he’d kept his name off “Richest Rich Guys in the Universe” lists since they started putting them together, a testament to how fervently, and powerfully, he guarded his privacy.

  I jumped in my old Jeep Cherokee and tore off like a mad man toward the Southampton shoreline.

  The Edelsteins had a security gate at the end of their driveway, but that night it stood open. I swung the Jeep onto the white pebble drive and fishtailed up to the giant post-modern house. It was lit up for a party, though only a few overpriced luxury cars filled the half circle in front of the house. Joined awkwardly by Burton’s ancient, faux-wood-paneled Ford Country Squire.

  The cops hadn’t gotten there yet. When Burton appeared, I asked him what was up, and he just said, “Follow me,” as he marched across the yard and around to the back of the house.

  He held a modern LED flashlight that was bright enough to put a spot on the moon. I followed his silhouette.

  He was right about the rhododendron. The houseguest was face up in the middle of the bush, which would have been bad enough if his body hadn’t been twisted more or less the opposite direction. It was a tough old bush, brought in when the Edelsteins installed their instant mature landscaping. It had thick upward limbs, now crushed, with one of them protruding from the houseguest’s thigh.

  There was some blood as a result, which told me the guy was alive for a few moments after he hit the ground.

  “I have to show you something.”

  He knelt on the ground and waved me to squat down next to him. He screwed the front of the flashlight to refocus it from a wide, diffused beam to a narrow spotlight. He cast the light on the right hand of the houseguest, which lay just clear of the rhododendron’s shattered branches.

  “Do you see that?” he asked.

  I squinted at the brightly lit hand and said I wasn’t sure. He took me by the shoulder and pulled me in closer to the body.

  “Look,” he said.

  I saw something that looked like a shiny metal thing twisted around the dead guy’s fingers.

  “Okay, so what is it?” I asked.

  He took a moment to answer, as if hoping I’d guess on my own. I looked at his face, partially lit-up by the reflection from the searing flashlight. His expression looked unfamiliar, one I hadn’t seen in all the years I’d known him.

  “Hate to say it, Sam, but it’s my watch.”

  I’D QUIT smoking a few years before and tried not to think about how much a cigarette would help, sitting on the ground and waiting for the cops to arrive.

  “What’s the guy’s name?” I asked him.

  “Elton Darby. A colleague of the Edelsteins. I think Rosie was trying to fix us up, the existing boyfriend notwithstanding. You know how much I hate that sort of thing.”

  I did. Burton was the most circumspect man I knew when it came to his love life.

  “How did the watch get there?” I asked.

  “He pulled it off my wrist. Do we have to talk about the exact circumstances right at this moment?”

  That surprised me. Because of course we did. The cops were on the way, and whatever he told them when they got there would have far more significance than anything he’d later say.

  “Yeah, Burt, we do. Sorry.”

  He sighed.

  “I can’t. I need Jackie. It’s too complicated to go into now.”

  Jackie Swaitkowski was a lawyer in a nonprofit firm Burton established to provide free legal service to indigent people on the East End of Long Island. Burton was the farthest thing from indigent, but he knew Jackie was the only one who would know how to navigate the situation. And she was devoted to him, for all they’d done together and all he’d done for her.

  “Things got screwed up, eh?” I said to Burton.

  “Yeah, Sam. They really did.”

  The trees over our heads lit up in a brilliant, fluorescent blue c
olor, oscillating under the windswept leaves. Mechanical voices tore through the peaceful air, the product of bullhorns from the Southampton Village patrol cars swarming the Edelstein estate.

  As we sat there waiting, I had to ask him something in the short time we’d have before the world lapsed into chaos.

  “Did you do anything you shouldn’t have, Burt? I don’t care, I’ll help you all I can, no matter what. Just tell me.”

  The light was dim where we sat on the grass, but I could see him slump down, the elegant man with whom I’d laughed through dozens of Yankees games, who’d retrieved me from suicide’s reach, who’d secured my loved ones from imminent threat, and funded the rescue of countless victims of cruel circumstance.

  “I don’t know, Sam. I honestly don’t know.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Southampton Town Detective Mike Cermanski looked like the kid in your high school class who was too scrawny to win a fight, but too wiry and vicious to lose. I stayed clear of those guys, or more often, made friends, since I was more or less the same way.

  He always wore a dress shirt and tie. Never a sport jacket, or the athletic wear other detectives thought would impress the victims of their crime scene interviews. The spare, classic attire was less intimidating, since it made you feel he was a serious professional, and thus less likely to railroad you into ill-advised comments. Though the overall effect was somewhat compromised by the chunky service pistol holstered on his hip.

  Long Island locution decorated his speech, but so did a respectful politeness, a presumption of innocence you couldn’t help believing, even when your better mind knew you were being played.

  He was officially in the town police department and we were in the village, a separate jurisdiction, only the village didn’t have detectives qualified to investigate suspicious deaths, which I guessed they thought this was. That night he had the riveted attention of two billionaires, one of their wives, the victim’s date, and me. Also one domestic servant, a Latina, who stood there still as a statue. It didn’t seem to faze him a bit.

  “So, everyone here heard the sound of glass breaking before you went around the house and found Mr. Darby apparently dead on the ground,” he said, for at least the third time. “As far as you know, he was alone in the bedroom when the accident happened.”

  The little unhappy group agreed with that, for the third time.

  Cermanski asked about Elton’s circumstances. He was an employee of a nonprofit social welfare organization the Edelsteins had supported for years and had become a type of friend—subordinate, but welcome to their home for certain social occasions. This one featuring Burton Lewis, a potential donor whom Darby might convince the cause was worthy of support.

  “Sorry, Burton,” said Joshua, “but you know how these things work.”

  “Of course,” said Burton. “I’d do the same.”

  “Worldwide Loventeers,” said Rosie, clarifying things for Cermanski. “We’re in twenty countries. Harnessing the power of goodwill for the good of humanity.”

  She used the tip of her middle finger to feel something on the side of her nose. It looked okay to me. So did the rest of Rosie. Though intimations of middle age had begun to haunt her eyes and thin, bloodless lips, she’d thus far resisted the siren call of plastic surgery.

  Joshua shot her a weak, indulgent smile.

  “Philanthropy,” he said to Cermanski, further clarifying. “The Loventeers try to get the rich to give to the poor. Mostly successful. I’m on the board and chair of fund-raising. Elton was a Loventeers’ staffer. Rosie and I make the pitch, Elton fills in the details.”

  Since fund-raising was central to the social ecology of the Hamptons—the rationalization for nonstop galas and conspicuous displays of financial prowess and prominent cheekbones—none of this was news to Mike Cermanski.

  He wrote a few notes in his case book and flipped to the next page.

  “So far as you all know, Mr. Darby was of sound mind,” he said. “Not disturbed in any way, nothing that might have caused him to take his own life.”

  His date that night was Johnnie Mercado, maybe twenty years younger than Elton’s forty-two. Johnnie told Cermanski he’d known Elton for a while and had never seen him show anything but robust health and good cheer. Often intense, but never self-destructive, in his opinion.

  “I liked to cook for him,” said Mercado, in a near whisper. “I’m a chef,” he added to the group, which seemed to come as a surprise.

  The Edelsteins exchanged glances.

  “Elton was always high energy,” said Joshua. “One of those type-As. But good at his job. Donors loved him. Always on stage. But we knew little of his private life. Rosie thought he was sad, right?” he asked his wife.

  She was perturbed by the question. She looked at Burton, who seemed ready to say something, but I caught his eye and shook my head.

  “He could be sad sometimes,” said Rosie, without a lot of conviction. “It’s not easy being gay. Hell, it’s not easy being human,” she added, glancing over at Burton. “He confided in me a little bit, but the relationship was asymmetrical. I’m a donor, he’s a beggar. You know, professionally.” She turned to Joshua. “That sounded terrible.”

  Joshua had likely been born with curly hair, but the thinning process had taken hold, and something akin to a perm had been installed to make the most of the declining resource. Over the years I’d known him, his hair had also lightened, leaving the overall effect of an orange Brillo Pad left too long in the kitchen sink.

  He put his hand on Rosie’s shoulder.

  “We’re all a little shook up,” he told Cermanski.

  “Sure. I get that,” he said, flipping to another page in his case book.

  It was a warm night in late August, but as always, the prevailing south southwesterly off the Atlantic kept the temperature in check. Since we were only a few hundred yards from the ocean, we could hear the steady churn of the surf. I could feel the dampness of the ocean breeze on my face, and imagined all the nice wooden stuff I’d built to decorate the Edelsteins’ bountiful garden slowly succumbing to the corrosive salt air.

  The crime scene investigation on the other side of the house was in full frenzy, with strobing lights in various colors, bursts of radio transmissions, and busy people in yellow jumpsuits going up and down the driveway carrying expensive-looking equipment. It was through this hubbub that Jackie Swaitkowski strode in her black, form-fitting dress and nose-bleed-high pumps.

  She walked past me and the others and put her hand on Burt’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Lewis, we’re out of here.”

  Cermanski barely got the first syllable out of his mouth before she cut him off.

  “Nice to see you, detective,” she said. “Interview’s over. Sam, care to join us?”

  She half lifted Burton out of his lawn chair, and with arms locked, walked him back toward the driveway. The Edelsteins looked bereft, rightly so. Cermanski grinned at me but called to her.

  “Nice to see you, too, counselor,” he yelled.

  I followed.

  ISABELLA, BURT’S housekeeper, and incidentally, chief-of-staff for his sprawling financial empire, was waiting for us at the front door of his house. Along with two cats, who curled around Isabella’s legs and looked warily at the clamor heading their way.

  Jackie walked Burton over the hundred-mile journey to the patio on the far side of the house and planted him in a white wicker chair. I took the one next door. Isabella repeated “What is it?” a few dozen times, until Jackie shut her up with drink orders.

  “Now, Isabella,” she said. “I’ll explain later.”

  When she left, Jackie dragged a chair up to Burton and asked him to go through everything his memory would allow.

  “Honestly, Jackie, not that much to go through. It was just a reasonably pleasant, albeit somewhat awkward, social occasion. I’ve only known the Edelsteins for a few years, since they built their house on Gin Lane. I’d run into Joshua in the city f
rom time to time. He sits on various boards, financial companies, some of which are clients of ours. Easy going. I like him. Not sure about Rosie. Edgy woman.”

  “What about Elton Darby?” she asked.

  The question made him uncomfortable.

  “Deferential, but a little too inquisitive about one’s private life.”

  “I know the type,” she said.

  “Nothing major,” he said. “Just not my cup of tea.”

  Knowing Burton as well as we did, that brand of tea would have been closer to battery acid.

  I pantomimed looking at a nonexistent watch on my wrist. His pained expression deepened.

  “Somehow he got ahold of my watch,” he told Jackie. “He was holding it when we found him.”

  Jackie cocked her head like a startled golden retriever.

  “He was holding it?”

  Burton nodded.

  “Patek Philippe,” he said. “One of the better ones.”

  Jackie Swaitkowski, born Jackie O’Dwyer, had been a real estate lawyer trying to figure out what to do with herself after her Polish-American husband stuck his Porsche into a tree at over a hundred miles an hour, when a series of events, mostly involving me, thrust her into the very different world of criminal defense. Burton had been looking for someone to represent his pro-bono law practice on the East End and Jackie turned out to be the ideal choice.

  To say she was utterly devoted to both Burton and his good works was a vast understatement.

  “Do you know how he got hold of it?” she asked.

  Burton rolled up his shirt sleeve. There were deep, ugly red scratches down his forearm.

  “He took it, believe it or not. Darby wasn’t just inclined to stand a little too close. He made a pass. I pushed him away. He grabbed my arm, and when I shook off his hand, the watch came with it. I wasn’t ready to share that detail with the detective.”

  “Oh, Burton,” she said, getting up from her chair and walking out to the edge of the patio where she could look out into the night.

  “Where did this happen?” I asked him.

  “Outside the bathroom of a second-floor suite. He followed me and we exchanged words and he took my watch. Uncomfortable, to say the least. So I left him there. I tried to say goodbye to the Edelsteins but couldn’t find them.”