Demarco nodded.
"And I called your mother."
"Oh, Lord."
"She's sweet. I told her that I was looking after you... and that you'd be able to call her soon."
"Don't be so smooth. I know she asked you a million questions."
Jack laughed. "Yeah, she did... she knows, D."
Demarco's eyes went wide. "You told her?"
"No. No, D. I would never. It's all over the news... national. You're quite the celebrity."
Demarco put his face in his hands.
"Look," said Jack. "Let's leave it for now. You don't need the stress."
Demarco looked at him. "The stress is losing two weeks of my life, Jack... and not knowing why. You told me they caught the guy—Clark... something Clark."
"Jonathan Clark. Yeah, they did. He confessed everything for a reduced sentence. He was hired by another guy, Ignacio Stramous. Stramous is known for producing sensational content on a handful of YouTube channels... for advertising revenue... all very low-rent... no contracts, word-of-mouth, cash-under-the-table."
"Sounds like the mafia."
"No—much less organized. But I can see why you'd make the correlation. He had a partner—Russel Standridge. They were a couple."
"A gay couple is responsible for this?" Demarco said, dismayed... but before Jack could answer, he asked, "What about Abir?"
"Abir was duped like you. He was looking for an opportunity—certainly... but he but had no idea the extent to which it was being taken."
"How did he get involved?"
"World... Wide... Web," Jack said, annunciating for emphasis. "Gay chat rooms. Standridge is a computer geek. He's been phishing on the Internet in some way or another for quite a while... perfecting the method. He's a hacker too. He's the one who hacked intoThe Post'swebsite. They worked from their home in Ponoma, California. We're finding all kinds of shady shit on his personal computers, D... the most recent involving Middle Eastern youth."
"So," Demarco said, "instead of a Nigerian prince requesting wired money from little old ladies... they were seeking the prince himself. They reversed the scheme."
Jack chuckled. "Well, they got lucky there... but, yeah. The missing money that Abir mentioned—what he'dthoughthis father had somehow frozen—was taken by them. He had naively trusted them with setting up bank accounts. He basically handed it over to them."
"So, the cyber-stuff is what Standridge did... and his boyfriend, the Greek—"
"Stramous," Jack said.
"—Stramous saw a way to profit as well with his YouTube business?"
"Yeah," Jack confirmed. "He hired Jonathan Clark for the grunt work... tailing you... getting pics of you and Abir together... the fake assassination. He and Clark had known each other years prior from a show calledDude, Where's My Job?"
"I remember that," Demarco said. "We saw it in his IMDB credits."
"Yes, we did. What else do you remember, D?"
"I remember meeting Rachel... at the Rainbow place... and that little boy, Wilson."
"Anything after?"
Demarco thought hard. "No," he said finally.
Jack pulled a chair up to the bed and sat. He took Demarco's free hand and held it. "We fought... after we left the center."
