Fighting Chance(49)

“Because there were pictures of you on it,” Petrak said. “Only two. But they were there. And there were pictures of other people, also. And the pictures are strange. They are very … blank, I think. The people in them look dead. You look dead.”

“I am not dead,” Stefan said.

“Yes, I know that,” Petrak said. “But I thought, if there were pictures of you on this phone, then maybe the phone belongs to you, or maybe it belongs to one of your friends. Maybe one of your friends in this club that wants you to shoplift for an initiation.”

“How could it be my phone?” Stefan said. “They do not allow you to keep your phone in this place. They took it away from me as soon as I walked in here.”

“That is not the same as saying no,” Petrak said.

“Then I am saying no,” Stefan said. “Maybe if somebody stole my phone from the place where they keep the things here, maybe somebody could have dropped it in the corridor. I did not. And you know my phone. You should know if this phone is mine.”

“This is not your regular phone,” Petrak said.

“There, then. Tcha.”

“This is a phone with nothing on it,” Petrak said. “There are no games and no music, and there is nothing on the—” He struggled to find the word in Armenian, and didn’t know it. “—on the telephone directory,” he said finally. “It is like on that television show. I think it is a burn phone.”

“And you think I have a burn phone?” Stefan demanded.

“This club,” Petrak said, “how am I supposed to know what goes on in it? How do I know what it is making you do? It is already getting you arrested.”

“It’s a club, Petrak. It’s just a club. It’s not a criminal conspiracy.”

“A club can be anything,” Petrak insisted.

Stefan gave it up. “What would it matter if it was my phone?” he said. “If it’s a burn phone and there’s nothing on it? Except the pictures. You said there were pictures. So there’s something on it.”

“There is also a video on it,” Petrak said.

“A video,” Stefan said. “And is this video also about me?”

“No,” Petrak said. “It’s that video. That video—”

Stefan finally looked interested. In fact, Petrak thought, he looked stunned. “This is not good,” Stefan said.

“I know it is not good,” Petrak said. “I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to bring it in to the police, in case they think I was the one, the one who took the video. But I also did not want to do anything unless I knew that you did not take the video.”

“I could not take the video,” Stefan said. “I’ve already told you. I was under guard.”

“Or one of your friends,” Petrak said.

Stefan let out a string of profanity that made Petrak blush until he remembered that nobody around them could understand it.

“I will say it again,” Stefan said. “It is only a club. It is not a gang. It is not about drugs or having weapons. It is not about anything you have to be worrying about.”

“It has pictures of you on it,” Petrak said. “Two pictures of you on it.”

Stefan let out another stream of profanity and then stopped, dead, mid-syllable.

Petrak turned around and saw Aunt Sophie coming toward them at full steam, looking at least as angry as she had this morning. He didn’t think Aunt Sophie could understand Armenian profanity, but you could never tell.

“You were supposed to wait for me,” Aunt Sophie said as she reached the table. “I spent fifteen minutes out there, expecting you to show up, and I’d still be there if that nice woman at the desk hadn’t figured out what was going on and told me you were here. What are the two of you doing? Why are you speaking Armenian?”

“Sometimes it is easier to speak in Armenian,” Petrak said. “It’s the language we are used to. We have to work at it to speak in English.”

“Sometimes I am too depressed to speak in English,” Stefan said.

Aunt Sophie looked from one to the other. Petrak could tell she wasn’t really buying this. She almost never bought anything they said, even if it was true.

Petrak started to try to think of some way to explain what they had been doing if she insisted, but she didn’t. She just sat down and gave up on it, at least for the moment.

“I’ve got some news about what’s happening with your hearing,” she said.

Then she began to unpack things from her shoulder bag.





THREE

1

Gregor Demarkian had spent his entire adult life working in law enforcement in one capacity or another, and he knew how homicide detectives tended to think. The very first priority was a kind of tribalism. That was why Gregor had been very careful never to get a private investigator’s license. Too many books and too many movies had made private investigators the Enemy in too many police departments, and especially in the larger cities. The entire profession had been professionalized out of all recognition in the years since Gregor retired from the FBI. Forensics had gotten more elaborate and more technical and more accurate. Methods of investigation had been refined and codified and then refined again as the court cases rolled on, telling cops and agents what they were and were not allowed to do. There was a distinct air of Sacred Secrets about the whole thing. Outsiders were not only resented for being outsiders. They were also despised for being amateurs, even when they were being paid.