Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery)

by Chris Knopf

"No I didn't," Axel yelled. "I didn't tell him a fucking thing!"

  In the dim, moonlit night, I saw Hammon smile, or maybe it was a sneer. Either way, it was a good target. I put the gun back in its holster, took a step forward and smashed him in the face with my good left hand.

  Knocking someone out with a single punch is a lot harder than people think. Hammon was small, but fit, and with my right fist out of commission, I had to rely on my weaker left. I gave it everything I had, throwing all my weight behind a power jab, snapping my fist the way I was taught by my addled old trainers. It took. Hammon's head whipped back and he crumpled to the ground like an imploding building.

  It's not the blow to the face that does the work, it's the brain smacking into the inside of the skull. So I hoped I'd only given him a concussion and not an early death.

  Axel squealed and started hopping again. I grabbed him by the shoulder and once again pulled him along, this time across the field to the north and into another formless mass of murky undergrowth.

  Ten minutes into another thrashing dash through illcared for woods, Axel gave out. I kept him from falling by holding him around the waist. He didn't weigh much for an eighteen-year-old, but was plenty heavy enough under the circumstances. I tried to take my own advice and calm the mind, but it was having none of it as I felt the creeping approach of exhaustion. So instead of calm, I switched to rage, growling profanities with my rapidly weakening breath.

  Branches raked my face and vines yanked at my feet. The ground began to pitch downward, which improved our velocity, but made it harder to stay upright. Axel's staggering attempts to help the effort tipped the balance, and we both fell headlong, with my face and chest taking most of the blow. My right cheek caught something sharp, and I felt a rivulet of blood run down the top of my shirt. I wiped it off with my sleeve as I got us back on our feet, and more carefully this time, continued down the steep incline.

  Then suddenly we were out of the woods again, now in the backyard of a small house. There were lights on inside and a dog started to bark. I made for the driveway at the end of which was parked a panel truck. Along with another car parked farther down, it provided brief cover on the way out to the street.

  Security lights lit the ensuing scene. We were across the street from Buchanan's Marina, one of several small outfitting and repair operations at the rear of a channel that began at the Swan. We crossed the street and I stowed Axel and the backpacks under some foliage and told him to be quiet and stay put. He was breathing too heavily to answer, but he gave his head a feeble nod.

  I dug a set of Vise-Grips and a pair of wire cutters out of my pack, part of the collection of tools I'd brought on the expedition. I felt around my cheek before moving off. It was slick with blood, but the cut was more long than deep. It could wait.

  The marina had two docks running perpendicular to the shore. I walked down the first, assessing what was available. A small, white, hard-shell tender, the type of auxiliary boat preferred by traditional sailors, popped out of the low light. I rejected it for that reason, but pulled out the oars and laid them on the dock. Farther down were two matching aluminum-hulled open boats with squared-off corners, raised helm and big four-cycle motors. Cushioning around the gunwales confirmed that they were the marina's working boats, used to both push and tow customers' boats in and out of the slips.

  Even better, they had oarlocks.

  I retrieved the oars off the dock and brought them with me onto the aluminum boat, where I first sat at the helm and checked out the controls. Then I moved to the rear and examined the motor, with poor results in the limited light. I set the oars in the oarlocks, which were a little oversized, preferable to the other way around, then went forward and untied the line. I used one of the oars to paddle backwards into the channel, then both to push the boat forward over to the waterline.

  I had to step up to my knees in the water to make a quiet landing, pulling the bow of the boat up on a tuft of grass. I retrieved Axel, who was lying on his back with his knees drawn up, staring up into the leafy bush.

  "It's Sam," I whispered, hoping to avoid startling him. "Stand up and hand me the backpacks. You only have to walk a few feet."

  "I can't."

  "Come on."

  He rose as if testing for broken bones in his arms and legs, then dragged the backpacks over to my feet. I picked them up and got them reinstalled on my back. I walked him to the boat and held the bow.

  "Get in," I said.

  "You bought a boat?"

  "No, I'm stealing it. Get in."

  "You can't steal a boat."

  "I'll give it back. Call it a loan. Get the hell in."

  "I'm afraid of boats."

  "Get in the boat or I'll drown you myself."

  He picked up his right foot, hesitated, then put it back on the ground. He gripped the edge of the boat and lifted his left leg, waved it over the side for a few moments, then dropped it back again.

  "I don't know how," he said.

  "Just step in. I'll support you," I said, gripping a familiar handhold at his shoulder.

  This time he made it, though I thought he'd fall over when the boat tipped slightly in the water. I had him sit in the bow facing the helm while I pushed the boat off the patch of grass and into the water. Before clambering aboard, I turned it around and gave it a little shove. The noise from all this sounded impossibly loud, but I was committed. The boat drifted into the channel as I found a place to kneel with a minimum of pain and wield the oars, which were short for the purpose, but workable.

  I braced myself for angry yells, floodlights, gunfire over the bow, but none were forthcoming. Instead, all we heard was the bump of the oars inside the oarlocks, the soft slap as the blades entered the water, chirping bugs in the trees and the occasional flip of a fish breaking the surface.

  I held close to the far side of the channel, which was undeveloped marshland and clear of lights. The boat had a minimum draft, though I managed to hang us up a few times as I hugged the waterline. We passed a few more modest houses built directly on the water, some with boat docks and moorings, and cars and trucks parked in the driveways. Local people, likely the third or fourth generation living there.

  The channel widened as we turned a corner and moved past the Swan. I didn't know if Axel knew where we were, and if so, if he saw the hotel go by. Few lights were on, inside or out. The parking lot was on the other side of the building, so I couldn't see who was there. I knew from living at the end of the dock that this side of the quickly widening channel was hard to see at night. Though in a few minutes it was open all the way and we were in the Inner Harbor, heading for the opening in the breakwater.

  I began to row harder, less concerned with the sound of the oars bumping around the oarlocks, motivated as much by the agony in my knees as by fear of apprehension.

  When I made it all the way into the Inner Harbor, I whispered, "Axel, you still alive?"

  "No, I'm dead. Where are we?"

  I told him, explaining that we'd recently rowed past the Black Swan. Without being noticed. He moaned and said something that I couldn't make out. I shipped the oars, struggled into a squat, then stood up at the helm, which I lit with my flashlight. All the essentials were there: start button, throttle and gear lever. The motor started on the first crank and ran smoothly and almost silently. A marina mechanic's baby.

  It was a quick trip along the south side of West Harbor to where I'd secreted my dinghy.

  "You ever telling me where we're going?" asked Axel.

  "No, I'm going to show you," I said, looking down at where he huddled inside the bow. "First, we have to switch boats. Keep your head down," I added as I killed the motor and drifted through the branches that spread out from the trees growing on the shore. I flicked on the flashlight and saw the dinghy where I'd left it, seemingly untouched and ready for boarding. I normally hated dinghies, the definition of a necessary evil, but seeing the little inflatable caused a surge of affection in my breast.

  "
Good dinghy. Good, good dinghy," I said.

  "Great. He's talking to boats."

  "Did you know a sense of humor can be surgically implanted?" I asked as I came alongside the dinghy and slipped my hand under the nylon rope strung along the top of the pontoon. I pulled it tight against the marina boat and told Axel to climb aboard. He strained to get to his feet, his legs likely as firm and controllable as a pair of rubber bands. I reached down and helped him up.

  His hands were soft and slippery. After he made it to his feet I checked my palm and it was slick with blood. I took his hand back and looked.

  "You're cut," I said.

  "You think? You should see you. Where's David Cronenberg?"

  He learned the dynamics of boarding an inflatable tender the moment his foot hit the sole and the little boat zinged out from under him. Before he fell backward, I put my hand between his shoulder blades and shoved him the rest of the way in. He fell against the opposite pontoon, then bounced back into the bow, his favorite place.

  I transferred the backpacks, tied the aluminum boat to a branch overhead, then came aboard. In less than a minute I had the motor started, the line pulled and the dinghy underway.

  "What's next?" said Axel, his eyes closed and his head laid back against the curved rubber bow. "Is there a helicopter waiting?"

  "See, that's what a sense of humor feels like."

  "I'm not trying to be funny."

  "I believe you."

  "Don't believe anything," he said.

  "That's a pretty cynical thing for an eighteen-year-old to say."

  "Who said I was eighteen?"

  "Anika."

  "I'm twenty-three," he said. "There's your proof."

  "Why would she lie about that?" I asked.

  "Why does the sun come up every day? Goddamn color head. Christ, I'm beat to holy shit."

  "How old is Anika?"

  "Thirty. I know that for sure because my mother told me."

  "I thought your mother died bearing you."

  He huffed.

  "Not exactly. Unless you think playing mahjong on the beach in Miami every day is like being dead."

  I looked at my compass as we sped across the harbor, using the little button that turned on the backlight, which wasn't adequate, so I had to use my flashlight. During all this maneuvering, the finicky dinghy took a few unexpected zigs and zags.

  "Whoa, who's driving this thing?" asked Axel.

  "Remote control guidance system developed by the NSA, though some think the Illuminati are catching up with the technology."

  "Funny, hah, hah. Just please don't flip the boat over."

  "I know. You can't swim."

  "Who said I can't swim?" he asked.

  "Your family's from Switzerland, right?"

  "Yeah. So what?"

  "Just checking."

  I slowed the dinghy and panned across the harbor with my little flashlight until I saw the glimmer of reflective material on the private red buoy at the head of my secret channel. I eased up on the throttle and felt my way along.

  "Would you've really shot Hammon?" Axel asked.

  "I don't know. Depends."

  "On what?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  He was quiet for a bit, then said, "You really walloped him."

  "He responded well, we'll give him that."

  "Anika said you were a professional boxer."

  "Short career, but you learn things."

  "I learned how to get beat up without getting killed," he said.

  "Comes in handy later in life."

  I backed off the outboard until we were at a slow crawl through the narrow inlet. The sky was now completely overcast but strangely lighter. I could see both banks of the inlet and beyond into the tiny harbor, and then after another turn, the glow from the portholes of the Carpe Mariana. A dog barked. My heart leapt.

  "Quiet, fur ball," I called.

  I opened the throttle for a short burst, then pulled out the lanyard that held the kill switch open, and glided silently into the sloop's graceful transom. Eddie stared down from above and made ecstatic noises.

  I heard Amanda running up the companionway. I climbed over Axel as we bumped into the back of the boat, making a successful grab at the swim ladder. Amanda looked over Eddie's head into the dinghy.

  "Permission to come aboard," I said.

  "I should kill you," she said.

  "Not until I get a drink."

  As the dinghy whipped around from the shift in load, I handed up the two backpacks, then helped Axel grip the swim ladder, and with Amanda's help, hoisted him up and into the cockpit. I tied off the dinghy, then made it up over the transom under my own power.

  Eddie seemed to have lost what little reserve he possessed.

  "Okay, okay," I said, digging my hands into his thick fur and letting him knock his long nose into my face. "Hasn't that woman fed you?"

  We turned our attention to Axel, who was collapsed on the cockpit floor, embracing himself, his eyes closed and his face clenched in a silent grimace. With some coaxing we got him below and laid him out on one of the settees in the center salon. Amanda sat on the edge of the settee and used her long fingers to comb back his hair, revealing his face, streaked with angry red scratches.

  "What happened to you," she said, then looked back at me. "Oh, my God, what happened to you?"

  I dug two bottles of water out of the refrigerator and handed one to Axel.

  "It's been a long night."

  Amanda took my water bottle and poured some on a paper towel, which she used to dab the blood off my cheek.

  "Look at you," she said, "you're a mess."

  I found the first aid kit and dumped the contents out on the navigation table. Using hydrogen peroxide and an antiseptic cream, we did our best to attend to Axel's hands and face, then mine. While this was going on I briefed Amanda on the events of the evening, just the facts, leaving speculation for a time when Axel was out of earshot.

  Then I called Two Trees.

  "That was jolly," he said, answering the phone.

  "You alright?"

  "I would be if I wasn't married. For some reason she doesn't like hiding in a barn."

  "You're in a barn?"

  "Those guys are gonna be pretty mad at me. I thought it was better to keep my head down till that damn cop answers his phone."

  "How long have you been trying?" I asked.

  "Since I got here. What is that, coupla hours?"

  I apologized for putting him in that spot. He ignored me and asked where I was. I told him what happened after he dropped us off, up to swiping the marina boat. He didn't press me to go further.

  "If you get a hold of that cop, tell him to call me," he said. "If this goes on much longer I'll be safer out there."

  Amanda remained silent through the call, then said, "We need to contact that policeman."

  "No cops," said Axel from where he lay on the settee.

  "That's not up to you," she said.

  I poured a tall vodka on the rocks and sat on the opposite settee.

  "She's right," I told him. "Your family secrets aren't as important to me as our safety. Your choices now are to come clean or convince me you can't. Either way, I'm calling Kinuei."

  He sat up on his elbows.

  "Anika really won't like that."

  Amanda huffed.

  "It's not up to her, either," she said.

  Axel lay back down and stared up at the ceiling.

  "My father got caught doing something at the company that was really bad. Something he could go to jail for. Hammon and Sanderfreud used it to kick him out."

  "Blackmail," I said.

  "Yeah. They kicked him out and made him turn over the keys to all the code."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Father headed up development. He was the only one who had complete documentation on all the applications. He had to give it up to these consultants they brought in. Only the dummies still couldn't figure everything out. H
a, ha."

  "Anika told me there's a piece missing. They don't really have everything they need."

  "She told you that? What a blabbermouth."

  "It's true?"

  "Oh, yeah. N-Spock is supposed to be the ultimate problem-solving software, and fourth- and fifth-generation programming languages are built on the premise of problem solving. Only the kinks haven't all been worked out, especially when you're talking 5GL. Nobody really knows how to do that crap. There's a ghost in the machine-let's you get halfway through the data transfer and then makes the application start eating itself. Awesome shit, in my opinion, but not for Subversive, as if I care, the lousy pricks."

  "Your father told me you worked on 5.0."

  "You're kidding. Another Chatty Kathy in the family.

  What am I, the only one who can keep his mouth shut?"

  "Fey said you just worked around the edges," I said. "But you did a lot more than that, didn't you? That's why Hammon wants you. To force you to de-bug the program. That's why you ran."

  Axel glowered at me.

  "My father wrote the backbone of 5.0 at night in our basement," said Axel. "It's in a 4GL that essentially reconfigured the entire application. Leapfrogged all that boring incremental development. After that, it was just a matter of hanging the functionality and user interface off the core like ornaments on a Christmas tree. And they couldn't even get that right."

  I looked over at Amanda to see how she might be reading the conversation. She shrugged.

  "We need to call the policeman," she said.

  Axel looked like he was about to say something sarcastic to her, but when I shook my head he thought better of it. I got out my cell phone and called the Fishers Island barracks. I got an answering machine. When Axel heard me leaving a message he chuckled.

  "If you want to report a murder, press one. Armed robbery, press two," he said.

  "It is odd," said Amanda.

  I kicked myself for not getting Kinuei's cell phone number when I had the chance.

  A breeze blew down the companionway and the boat tilted slightly. We both looked up at the ceiling as if you could see through to the sky. There were more decisions to be made, only now they seemed a lot more difficult. I had Axel, and I had Amanda and Eddie and the boat. Also two handguns and a shotgun. I could have talked myself into believing we were permanently secure, but cold reason argued otherwise. As much as I thought Hammon a selfrevering jerk, his boys seemed like the real deal. I'd handled plenty of goons and street thugs, but this was different. People like Jock and Pierre, probably not their real names, had training and technology and resources at their disposal that regular criminals couldn't dream of. I wouldn't stand a chance and there was no percentage in believing otherwise.