Black Swan (11 page)

    Our connection was not a conscious thing. To me, it was an act of random happenstance, a natural phenomenon, never to be repeated. I'd decided early on that whatever Amanda was or wasn't had nothing to do with how I felt about her. Which was a vast and unquenchable longing and desire, a fantastical admixture of delight and gratitude. Not

just that such things could be felt, but that she could have her own version of these feelings for me, which I knew were manifestly undeserved.

    I might have been brooding over these fancies that evening, because without turning around from the galley stove where she was pouring two cups of green tea, she said, "What."

    "What do you mean, 'what'?"

    "What're you thinking? I can hear it all the way over here."

    "How little I like green tea."

    "It's good for you, and no you weren't."

    The wind picked that moment to whistle in the rigging of the boat, a sound we'd last heard out on the water, only now more spectral and portentous in the dimly lit cabin. The boat pitched slightly to starboard, causing a pan in the galley stowage to bang against the cabinet door.

    "What does that mean?" asked Amanda, looking up at the cabin ceiling.

    "In my experience, over twenty knots of breeze."

    "Storm's a-comin'."

    "Indeed."

    "So what're you thinking?"

    "That we need to get some sleep tonight, because tomorrow could be lively."

    So, after forcing down the tea, we did just that, serenaded by the hum of the quivering shrouds that anchored the stalwart mast, and the slap of tiny, wind-borne bay waves against the bow, insistent and merciless in their need to be heard.

I
n the misty realm of emerging wakefulness, an oncoming storm is a pleasant thing. Especially if you're on a boat, wedged agreeably next to a naked woman in the made- for-two coffin-like enclosure called the quarter berth. There was a bigger bed in the bow called the V-berth—an apt name, contrary to nautical custom, shaped as it was in a flat-bottomed V. But I didn't like it as much. Too ample and fussy.

    It was light out when I opened my eyes and saw the dull grey sky through the nearest porthole. The boat vibrated from the steady wind and the ghosts were back cavorting in the standing rigging. I looked around the cabin for Eddie, then spotted him up on the starboard settee, on his back with his rear legs splayed and tongue lolling out of his mouth. Mr. Sea Dog, impervious to the menace of natural forces.

    Recollections of the night before arrived unwanted, disrupting my unrealistically peaceful mood. Images crowded into my mind—of Myron Sanderfreud and the female cop, Derrick Hammon's studied stare, Axel Fey's inexpert use of a flashlight and Amanda leading Grace Sanderfreud up the antique stairs.

    And then I started to think about dock lines and fenders, our only points of defense against the clamor outside. A few seconds later, I was too agitated to lie still, and thought only of extracting myself without disturbing Amanda and getting on with the day.

    "Don't worry," said Amanda, reading my mind. "I've been awake for an hour. It's getting breezy out there."

    "What do you think's going on?" I asked her.

    "A storm?"

    "No. At the Black Swan."

    She settled deeper into the bed and shoved up against me.

    "Hammon and his crew came here for a reason. They were unexpected and unwelcome. As were the Sanderfreuds. The Feys are hiding something. Actually, lots of things. Axel is in la-la land, much to his father's disgust and shame, which doesn't say much about his father. 't Hooft is more than muscle and not as committed to Hammon as it might appear. And Del Rey isn't as clueless as she pretends to be. Hammon is very angry, I think at Fey, but I'm not sure. He showed little remorse over Myron's passing, only puzzlement. In fact, none of them seem as upset about Myron as they ought to be. Except for Grace, who hates Hammon, which is no great insight, since she told me so in terms that would embarrass a sailor. Wait a minute, you are a sailor, and you're never embarrassed. She thinks he killed her husband, even though he was deep in conversation with Christian Fey for at least two hours leading up to her discovering his body, which makes that a physical impossibility. When pressed, as gently as I could, she wouldn't offer up a motive other than to call Hammon a snake in designer clothing, whatever that means, along with a few other choice things. I like Trooper Poole, even though she treats me like your trashy girlfriend, and I wonder why you're avoiding Jackie Swaitkowski, who clearly needs to talk to you, since she called me on my cell

and told me in terms that would embarrass a former banker that if you don't call her today you'll be forfeiting certain treasured parts of your male anatomy."

    "That's all?"

    "There might be more after I'm actually awake."

    I got into a pair of shorts and T-shirt and I took Eddie for a jog along West Harbor and around the northern curve of the island, eventually heading west toward the ferry dock. I hadn't run for a week, and felt it, especially running against a strong headwind. Eddie trotted at my side, a habit formed over years of jogging the sand roads around the Little Peconic Bay in Southampton, where this seemingly attentive obedience would be punctuated by mad bursts into the sea grass and piney scrub growth in pursuit of God knows what. That day I still had him on a leash, an affront he took with barely contained forbearance.

    For both our sakes, I slowed to a walk when we reached the ferry dock, where as hoped, a red and gray coast guard patrol boat was tied up against the tall dock walls. There was no one on the deck, so I resorted to yelling, "Anybody home?"

    The cabin door opened and a long-haired guy with a heavily bearded face and wire rimmed glasses popped out.

    "Depends," said the guy.

    "On what?"

    "What you want."

    "A conversation. I was at the Swan last night when they found the body."

    "We don't discuss open cases."

    "What if I possessed vital information?" I asked.

    "What information?"

    "I can't tell you if you won't discuss the case."

    The guy was young, the thick curly hair that covered most of his head a deep, dense black. I think it was a signal to the rest of us that he was the intellectual sort.

    "I'm a crime scene investigator," he said. "You need to talk to the regular cops."

    "Over your head. I get that."

    The guy's glasses were too thick to clearly see his eyes. Instead, the refraction made him look like a confused bug. A very hairy bug.

    "Okay, what kind of information," he said, after a long pause.

    "The killer knew boats. And ropes."

    "Who said there was a killer?" he asked. "We were sent out here on a suicide report."

    "You're kidding, right?" I asked.

    "Haven't seen a hanging yet that wasn't self-inflicted."

    "In the shower?" I said.

    "Still possible."

    "Is there somebody on board who's ready to take this seriously?" I asked.

    "If you mean another CSI, no. I'm it."

    "Ah, crap," I said, kicking the ground like a ten-year-old. Eddie looked up at me, vaguely unsettled.

    "Listen, sir, I appreciate your eagerness to help, but everything is under control. Let us do our job and we'll sort this all out."

    "You don't appreciate me at all. And what you're doing is guaranteeing you'll never figure out what happened here. The police are sending in the Rockville Little League to play the Boston Red Sox. You're already fucked and you haven't even finished your report."

    "I beg to differ. And as of right now, this conversation is over," he said, then popped back into the boat.

    Nicely done, Sam, I said to myself.

    "Hey, sorry," I yelled at the boat. "Come on back. I apologize."

    A different guy came out, this one a foot taller in height and wider at the shoulders. A coastie.

    "Something I can help you with?" he asked, in a flat, dead voice.

    "I was trying to talk to the CSI."

    "Not on my boat you aren't," he said. "Please step away."

    Eddie looked ready to jump aboard and make some new friends, but I used what little sense I had left, and after giving the captain a quick salute, turned and strolled back down the tall breakwater and out to the street. As I tried to remember the location of the state police office my cell phone rang. The little screen said it was Burton Lewis.

    "Hi, Burt."

    "Hah!" said Jackie Swaitkowski, "I knew it."

    "Ah, shit, Jackie, I don't want to do this now. How'd you get Burton's phone?"

    "He handed it to me. We're here in my office. It's decision time and I can't hold them off much longer."

    I'd known Jackie since she was a real estate lawyer working out of her house, and then a screwball office in Watermill, a little village within the Town of Southampton. During that time she'd switched over to criminal law, providing her the opportunity to defend me on several occasions, successfully, through no fault of my own. Now she ran the East End office of Burton's free legal defense operation, which he'd started in Manhattan and slowly built out across Long Island and into Upstate New York. This particular matter, however, was strictly civil, in the legal sense.

    "Yes you can," I said. "Rushing you is just a legal tactic. If stall ball was in their favor they'd be doing that. Anyway, I'm busy right now. Geez, Jackie, show a little backbone."

    "You're impossible," she said.

    "Since Burt's right there, could you put him on the line?"

    I couldn't hear what she said when she handed him the phone, but I could guess.

    "Say, Burt, remember when you told me seeking help from friends was good for the soul?" I asked.

"I do. It still is."

    "Then could you do me a favor? Get one of your minions to do a little research on Subversive Technologies. What's their financial and operational status? What's the public story and what's going on behind the scenes, the extent to which we can figure that out."

    Ordinarily this was the kind of favor I'd ask of Jackie, but now didn't seem the ripest time. Anyway, I'd asked Burton for help along these lines once or twice before, and he was always gracious about it. Having a few thousand tax lawyers at his disposal was particularly handy. They not only knew numbers, they knew people in every corporate office in the country.

    "Already underway," he said.

    "Really."

    "I knew you'd want to know. And take your time with the boat. I was only going to pull her out for the winter anyway."

    I almost got off the phone feeling nothing but warmth and gratitude toward Burton Lewis, when he spoiled it by putting Jackie back on the line.

    "I don't understand your reluctance over this," she said, using her reasonable-girl voice. "There's a lot of money at stake. Have you been broke for so long you don't remember what lovely things money can buy?"

    She was referring to the lawsuit against my old company Con Globe, brought by a group of people in the engineering department. It involved an intellectual property claim on some technology they developed, the rights for which Con Globe had done a lousy job retaining solely for itself. I'd assumed I forfeited all such claims myself when they shitcanned me, and had me sign things in return for ignoring that I'd punched our corporate counsel in the nose.

    But in the following years a lot had happened, like the prosecution of Con Globe's senior management for fraud

and the take-over of the company by one of their competitors. I had a hand in making some of that happen, in the midst of which Jackie found a way to void my severance agreement and get my name added to the settlement, which was soon to be wrapped up by the courts.

    When Jackie got on to something she could be a mixedbreed bloodhound and Staffordshire terrier, and this was no different. What got her particularly exercised was learning that the technology in question, an octane-enhancement device, had been developed by a research team led by the director of R&D, who was credited with some of the key design features that made the thing work, and whose name appeared prominently on the patent. That director being me.

    "Get the best deal you can without taking anything from the others and I'll sign the papers," I said.

    An unfamiliar silence formed on the other end of the line.

    "Just like that?" she asked. "After stalling and wheedling and avoiding me at every turn?"

    "I just hadn't figured out what to do with the money," I said.

    "And now you do."

    "Just now. Thanks to you," I said.

    She asked for an explanation and I was going to give her one when Officer Poole pulled up next to me. Jackie didn't believe me, but I told her I really had to go.

    Poole looked unhappy when she climbed out of her car.

    "I just had to have a coast guard patrol boat captain surgically removed from up my ass," she said.

    "Sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have let that CSI get to me."