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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.
    Â Â Â Â "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.
    Â Â Â Â 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.
    Â Â Â Â 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.
    Â Â Â Â "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.
    Â Â Â Â 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.
    Â Â Â Â 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 Amanda, who at the time