by Elle Gray
“Palmer Tinsley,” I say. “Attorney to the criminal underworld. How are you today?”
“I’m well, thank you. And when you say ‘criminal underworld’, I say, ‘well-paying clients’,” he says, his voice rich and cultured. “And as I am on retainer to Mr. Petrosyan, I’m here to inform you that this interview is over.”
“Interview?” Astra asks. “We were merely having a conversation with an obviously distraught young lady.”
“Relationship stuff,” I add. “A little girl talk, so if you don’t mind…”
“Actually, I do.”
“Oh, good,” Astra pipes in. “We were just about to discuss menstrual cycles, so if you have a perspective you’d like to share, we’d be happy to hear it.”
He laughs softly. “Charming. To the last,” he says. “But, as I assume you have no warrant, you have no right to be here.”
“Counselor, we were just having a conversation,” I say.
“A conversation that is now over,” he replies. “So unless you are planning on charging my client with something, I think it’s best that you leave.”
I look at Chloe and see her sinking further and further into herself. She looks absolutely miserable. Her face is red and splotchy and the tears running down her cheeks glisten upon her skin. I’ve never had a maternal instinct in my life, but right now, all I want to do is hold her and let her cry.
“Chloe, you’re an adult. You can make him go away,” I tell her. “If you want to talk to us, just tell Mr. Tinsley here that he’s fired and send him packing.”
Tinsley’s expression darkens and he casts a meaningful glance at Chloe. She sits up on the sofa and uses the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe the tears from her face. She sniffs loudly and looks at me. I can see the fear sharply etched into her face, but she shakes her head.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she says, her voice trembling. “Please leave.”
“Well, there you have it,” Tinsley immediately announces. “Time for you to go, Agents. Thanks for stopping by.”
I get to my feet and stand toe-to-toe with Tinsley, my eyes boring into his. He’s a cool customer, though, not seeming rattled in the least. A smile curls one corner of his mouth upward.
“Send our regards to Mr. Petrosyan,” I say.
“And tell him that we’ll see him soon,” adds Astra.
“Good luck with that,” Tinsley replies.
We walk out of Chloe’s place, and I feel a fire burning in my gut. The direction of the investigation is shifting—again. But I fear I might also be running down another blind alley. This is just another confusing point on this muddled, indecipherable stereogram.
“What are you thinking?” Astra asks as we emerge from the building and back out onto the street.
Light rain has started to fall, and a cool wind buffets us. It feels nice against my skin, which is burning hot with anger.
“I’m thinking that Chloe has a lot to say,” I reply. “A lot she’s not being allowed to say.”
“I agree,” she nods. “But it’s maybe a stretch. I mean, breaking Chloe’s heart by pulling her out of school to kill a relationship is one thing. Killing her boyfriend is something else entirely.”
“People have killed for far less,” I remind her.
“That’s true. But we have nothing linking Petrosyan to Ben directly. I’m still thinking the drug angle is more likely.”
I nod. “Alright. Why don’t you go back and talk to the Kings,” I tell her. “See if you can get anything out of them.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see about finding a link between Petrosyan and Ben.”
Twenty-Seven
Jade Pearl Billiards House, Chinatown-International District; Seattle, WA
“It’s lovely to see you again, Blake. But if you keep coming around, people will say we’re in love,” Fish says, doing a passable impersonation of Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter.
“I forgot that’s your favorite film,” I say.
“It’s cinematic brilliance,” he replies. “I dare you to find a better film.”
“I don’t know. I was pretty hyped up about Captain Marvel.”
“Heathen. What is wrong with you?” he says, making me laugh.
“That’s right. You identify with Lecter—the misunderstood and tortured genius.”
He shrugs. “I do not consider myself tortured,” he says. “Nor am I a cannibal. I could never eat a human—too much fat and far too many chemicals. It would only pollute my pristine body. It is a temple, after all.”
A smile crosses my face. “I’m glad to know you draw the line somewhere.”
Fish, otherwise known as Huan Zhao, a Chinese immigrant turned underworld kingpin turned confidential informant, sits behind his desk across from me. He’s an intriguing man of many different hats who has his own code of morality—which, as much as I hate to admit it, doesn’t entirely differ from my own. Fish is self-educated and self-made. He got his start selling drugs while he worked as a fishmonger down along Pike Place—hence the moniker.
He’s a complicated man. He did unspeakable things during his rise to power. But he’s also done incredible good in the community. He’s perhaps the smartest, savviest person I’ve ever known and has charisma for days. It’s easy to hate the dark and criminal side of his world, but it’s almost impossible to not like him as a person. It makes for a very complex relationship between us that I’d describe as something of a tenuous friendship.
Perhaps best illustrating that duality in Fish is the fact that just outside his office doors where we’re sitting right now is an illegal gambling hall. Fortunes are being won and lost as we sit here. And yet, down below us is a perfectly legal billiards hall and bar. And I know for a fact that he uses one hundred percent of the profits of the billiards hall to fund half a dozen programs around Seattle—most of them aimed at providing food and shelter for children.
I only know this because I’ve done some serious background research on him over the years. He doesn’t publicize his charitable endeavors and never talks about them. He only confirmed it for me when I pressed him on it, and he’s refused to speak of it since. For all the bad he does, Fish does twice as much good. How can you truly hate somebody who does something like that? Or for that matter, write him off as an unredeemable criminal?
“So, what can I do for you today, Blake? Not that I don’t enjoy your company,” he says.
My smile slips and a feeling of dread settles down over me. “What can you tell me about the Armenian mob? Specifically, the Elezi crime family and Stephen Petrosyan?”
Fish whistles low and a shadow crosses his face. “I can tell you two things with absolute certainty,” he says. “First, without Petrosyan, there is no Armenian mob in Seattle. He is the Armenian mob.”
I nod. That’s about the extent of what I’ve heard. “And second?”
“Second is that you do not want to tangle with Petrosyan. He is, hands down, the most violent and brutal man in the entire Pacific Northwest. He had to be, or he was going to be wiped out by the Russians and Italians,” he says. “I do not know what sort of case you are working on, but I would suggest that you walk away from it.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then pass it on to somebody else, Blake,” he says. “I genuinely fear for your safety if you try to lock horns with this man. He is cunning and he is dangerous.”
The fact that Fish fears Petrosyan sends a cold chill down my spine. The man is usually as fearless as he is unflappable. Nobody scares him. At least, I don’t think anybody scares him. But as he talks about Petrosyan, I can see genuine fear in his eyes. And I find that unsettling, to say the least.
“Blake, I generally don’t believe people are pure evil. I believe we’re more complex than that. It’s a delicate balance. All people are capable of good—and bad,” he says, though I don’t think he’s referring to himself. “But that man comes as close to that line as possible. He
has the darkest soul I’ve ever seen. He has very few redeeming qualities. If any.”
I sit back in my seat and ponder what Fish has told me so far. It’s not great news for the home team, that’s for sure. Anybody who can rattle Fish’s cage is somebody to be incredibly wary of, that’s for sure.
“May I ask what he did that’s prompting your investigation?” Fish asks.
“He murdered a kid,” I say. “At least, I believe he did. The boyfriend of his daughter.”
Fish nods, a knowing look in his eye. “Yes, he would certainly do something like that.”
“This kid—he used to run with the Eighth Street Kings, but got out of it,” I explain. “He was pre-med at WSU and was going to do something with his life.”
“But Petrosyan did not approve, I take it.”
“I can’t prove that Petrosyan even knew about the relationship,” I tell him. “Ben—that’s his name—and Petrosyan’s daughter kept it a secret. A deeply buried secret. Very few people knew about it.”
“And what does the lovely Agent Russo think?” he asks. “She’s very smart and intuitive. I’m surprised you’re coming to me rather than leaning on her.”
“Between Ben’s gang ties in the past and the fact that he was a small-time weed cultivator and seller, she thinks somebody in one of the gangs hit him,” I explain. “She very well could be right, but this reads more mob hit than street gang hit to me.”
“And why is that?”
“The body was found completely disarticulated. The joints were surgically sliced,” I reply. “This wasn’t some crazed dude with a machete hacking a man to pieces. This was methodical. Practiced. And that doesn’t read ‘street gang’ to me.”
Fish steeples his fingers in front of him as he looks at me. I watch as he processes everything I’ve told him. But his face is a complete blank. I can’t get a read on what he’s thinking, one way or the other.
“As for the girlfriend, Petrosyan’s daughter,we paid her a visit, and she is an absolute wreck. I know she knows what happened. But before we could get anything out of her, Petrosyan’s thousand-dollar-an-hour mouthpiece showed up and put the kibosh on everything. Kicked us out of her place.”
A wide smile crosses Fish’s face. “And how is Mr. Tinsley?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I should have figured you’d know him.”
“Of course. In my rarified line of work, it is wise to have somebody of his skill and talents on retainer,” Fish says. “As you Americans like to say, my mother did not raise a fool.”
“No. No, she did not,” I say with a hearty laugh.
We sit in silence for a long moment, each of us seeming to be thinking about the situation. The trouble is, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. I hate what Petrosyan is doing to Chloe. She’s terrified. And she has to suffer through the murder of her boyfriend, a man she was purportedly deeply in love with, all alone. Even worse is the fact that she has to cope with the fact that her father is the one who murdered him. I can’t even imagine what that must feel like or what it does to a person. Chloe is never going to be the same after this. How could she be?
“Why would this man murder a boy his daughter loved?” I ask. “To keep her under his thumb? To keep his boot on the back of her neck? Is controlling her that important to him?”
“With all due respect, I believe you’re asking the wrong question,” Fish replies. “The question you should be asking is: what lengths would a father go to keep his daughter from making what he believes is a terrible mistake?”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you were to ask me if Petrosyan is capable of killing a boy to keep his daughter from making what he feels is a mistake, then the answer is yes. Without a doubt,” Fish clarifies. “But believe me when I say it would be as much for him as it would be for his daughter. And I believe he knows that. He guards his daughter so zealously because he knows without her he would be lost.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chloe is Petrosyan’s humanity. She keeps him tethered to the world. Without her, he would be even more of a savage beast than he is now. He would unravel. And believe me, that would be good for nobody,” Fish goes on. “She stung him once by refusing his name. He might not be willing to allow her to sting him a second time by being with somebody of whom he does not approve. There was something about this boy Petrosyan rejected, and I doubt it had anything to do with the weed he was selling.”
“Huh,” I say, gnawing on my bottom lip as I think it over.
“All of this is conjecture, mind you. Based on the idea that you are right and that it is Petrosyan behind the killing of this boy. Which I cannot have an opinion of one way or the other at this point.”
“Right. Of course,” I nod. “I’m not even one hundred percent sure of anything in my own mind right now.”
“With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one,” he quotes.
“Occam’s Razor,” I reply.
“Quite right,” he says. “Don’t overthink things. It’s one of the most often cited theories for a reason.”
“Yeah. But I don’t know what the simplest explanation is right now.”
“Oh. I think you do.”
A weak smile touches my lips. “I’m glad you have faith in me.”
“I always do, Agent Wilder,” he says. “And I always will.”
Twenty-Eight
Wilder Residence; The Emerald Pines Luxury Apartments, Downtown Seattle
I shut the door behind me, lock it, and drop my keys, badge, and gun on the table, feeling spent. I drop my bag next to the table, then kick off my shoes, letting them rest where they fall next to my bag. All I want is a glass of wine, a hot shower, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I think that would be heavenly. It would have me feeling like a new woman in the morning. Hell, if I get that much sleep in one go, maybe I’ll even wake up with the answers in my head already.
My meeting with Fish left me with more questions than answers, but at least he gave me a lot to think about. I also managed to extract a promise from him to squeeze his sources to see what he could find out about the murder and whether it’s related to Petrosyan or not. It’s something I appreciate, as he’s obviously reticent to get involved with the Armenians.
If Occam’s razor is correct this time, the simplest explanation is that Petrosyan killed Ben to keep him away from Chloe. He didn’t approve of Ben for a variety of reasons—his ties to the Kings, his dealing weed, and most especially, because Ben is black. The Armenian mob, like most mob families, tends to be insular and virulently racist. They only approve their offspring marriages to members of the same ethnic group, be they Italian, Russian, or Armenian. The crime families do not like bloodlines being mixed—or, as they put it, diluted.
It’s a sick way to live and to see the world, but it is what it is. Racism has a long and sordid history. I’d like to believe people are capable of looking past something as trivial as skin color, but all around the world—America included—it continues to be a major problem. It’s thoughts like these that sometimes make me wonder what it is we’re fighting for. If the people of the world are going to continue to separate themselves by their ethnic tribes and murder those who don’t look like them, are we even worth saving as a species?
It’s a depressing thought and one I just don’t even want to think about anymore. But we need to start getting some answers. It’s time to drill down and figure out which explanation is the simplest—the Kings or Petrosyan. I’m firmly convinced one of them murdered Ben Davis. I feel the truth of it down in my bones.
I flip on the stereo and put on some smooth jazz—something a little mellower to settle my nerves. After that, I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of Chardonnay, then leave the bottle on the counter, because I know I’ll be needing a refill soon. After that, I pull out my phone and call Astra. It goes to voicemail after a few rings—she’s probably enjoying her evening with Benjamin. The thought p
rompts me to look around my empty apartment and, for the first time, feel a twinge of self-pity.
It would be nice to come home to somebody, I have to admit. No, I’m not softening my stance on Mark. Astra was right—he’s not the right fit for me. But it might be nice to find someone who is. Maybe once we’ve put Ben Davis’ case to bed, I’ll be a little more proactive about looking for somebody. Maybe I’ll even let Astra set me up with Benjamin’s friend.
The beep sounds on her voicemail. “Hey, it’s me. Not sure how things went with the Kings today, but I’m thinking we need to bring them in as well as Chloe Diamatta. We need to have a formal sit-down and get them all on the record. Somebody’s lying to us and I’m tired of it, so it’s time to go full-court press and crack them. We’ll hook up in the shop tomorrow morning to talk strategy. Hope you and Benjamin are having a good night.”
I click off the call and drop my phone on the counter, then take a long swallow of wine as I try to clear my mind of all the garbage of the day. I drain the glass then pour another and head down the hall toward my bedroom. The siren song of my war room pulls at me, though. I try to resist it but realize it’s futile, so I promise myself that I’ll just take a peek and let my subconscious do the work while I sleep.
I turn on the light—and have just enough time to process the fact that somebody is standing right in front of me before his fist smashes into my face. Pain exploding in my head, I stagger backward, barely registering the sound of the wine glass shattering on the floor. I somehow manage to keep my feet as the dark figure rushes out of the war room. I’m stunned, but still coherent enough to lash out with my foot and trip him up. The figure goes down hard and then I’m on him.
But the exact instant I grab hold of his left arm, intending to twist it up behind his back, his right elbow crashes into my temple. Bright bursts of light flare behind my eyes and I’m rocked to the side, but I keep hold of his wrist. I drive my fist into his kidneys, and when I hear the grunt of pain that bursts from his mouth, I realize it’s not a him at all. My intruder is a woman.
