Black Swan Page 3

  He and his daughter exchanged looks which seemed pregnant with hidden meaning, then he nodded his head.

  "Take the first slip," he said, "stern in. The power's still on. I can run a hose out for water. Fifty dollars a day."

  His daughter smiled in a way that told me whom I should thank for the overpriced concession. I smiled back and shook both their hands.

  "Sam Acquillo," I said.

  "Christian Fey," said the man, "and this is Anika. My daughter. We just purchased the Swan this September, at the close of the season. We're busy with remodeling, so can't be of much help to you, I'm afraid."

  "Been plenty of help already. Soon as I use your phone, I'll get out of your hair."

  Anika leaned over the reception desk, dumping half her breasts out on the counter, and lifted up the phone. Then she and her father left me alone to dial Burton's cell.

  "Hey, Burt, it's Sam."

  "Have you changed your number?"

  "I'm on Fishers Island. Cell service is down. More importantly, the cable from helm to rudder snapped on the way down from Point Judith."

  "Oh dear," he said.

  28 BLACK SWAN

  "Oh shit's more like it. It was kind of snotty out there. You've got an emergency tiller, by the way. Good thing."

  "Terribly sorry about that. What do we do now?"

  "You call the boatbuilder and have him ship the whole steering rig—cables, blocks and fittings. I haven't looked yet, but I want to change it all out. Who knows what caused the failure. Send them to me courtesy of the Black Swan. It's a hotel on the island off Inner Harbor. We secured a slip, though not without some convincing. After Labor Day this place turns into Brigadoon."

  "I know the Swan. It's next to the Harbor Club. Has Fishers' only public bar. And a pool table, as I recall."

  "Could be. It's got a new owner. Thinks he's doing us a favor letting us stay at his empty dock for fifty bucks a night."

  "It's good you're in a slip," said Burton. "More bad weather's on the way. They're saying a whole series of storms are coming up the coast and out of the southwest. It's going to be rough for a while. I tried to call your cell phone to get your position, but couldn't make a connection."

  I tried to imagine rougher water than we'd just plowed through, though I knew such a thing was more than possible.

  "Until cell service is back up Amanda's computer's off email," I said. "I'll try to call on a regular basis, if I can ingratiate myself with the owners. Otherwise, you'll have to buy a house out here to get a landline."

  It was quiet on the other end of the line as Burton pondered that option, one he was more than able to fulfill, being one of the fifty richest guys in the world according to Forbes magazine, a rating source Burton looked on with mild contempt.

  "What do they know? Those numbers they publish are ridiculous."

  "Too high?"

  "Far too low."

  Chris Knopf 29

  We talked some more about how to proceed, dismissing several options like air freighting in the parts, mostly because of the weather. Rich as he was, Burton wasn't one of those crazy billionaires who thought natural forces—like weather, the commodities markets or the NBA—should bend to his will. He took on frustration like the rest of us, as inevitable and uncontrollable.

  "I'll get you the parts," he said. "Have you heard from Jackie?"

  "Huh?"

  "Jackie Swaitkowski. Your attorney. She's been trying to reach you."

  "I haven't heard," I said. "What's up?"

  Jackie was technically my attorney because I'd once given her a dollar as a retainer against future work, which actually happened in spades, though I'd yet to increase her compensation beyond that original buck. Some day we'd have to address that, I thought.

  "She didn't say, but my guess is you need to provide some guidance on the civil matter she's handling for you."

  "Do me a favor, would you Burt, and tell her I'll call her as soon as I'm out of this junky weather."

  "Certainly. And meanwhile, call back midday tomorrow so I can report my progress. You and Amanda try to find a way to occupy yourselves. Perhaps card games. Or philosophical debate."

  After I hung up the phone, I wondered if I should find one of the Feys to thank, but decided I'd only be invading their privacy again. So I just left.

  My dinghy was still on the beach when I got back, which didn't surprise me, my technical precautions notwithstanding. The pockmarked guy, now gone, had little incentive for keeping me shore-bound. I reinstalled the part and we motored back to the Carpe Mañana, much more slowly this time as darkness had fallen across the harbor. But she

  30 BLACK SWAN

  was easy to find: Amanda had put lights on in the salon and hung a lantern from the backstay to guide us home.

  "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

  Chris Knopf 31

  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.

  Chapter

  3

  T he 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 Amand
a, who at the time also had little money beyond her paycheck. Her principal financial resource was

  32

  Chris Knopf 33

  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 sautéed 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.

  34 BLACK SWAN

  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.

  Chris Knopf 35

  "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."

  When 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 women 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,

  36 BLACK SWAN

  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

  Chris Knopf 37

  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 façade of the Bl
ack 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.