__________________

By midmorning, Neda’s shivers had stopped and some color had seeped back into her face. Drops of perspiration moistened her hairline and slid down her temples, and the scent of humidity mixed with dried blood rose from her like rot in an old, enclosed place. When she had answered all of Leon’s questions, she gave him permission to talk to her daughters.

The older girl, Nicole, had bright red hair and hazel eyes, and the smooth, round face, impeccable white skin, and softly aquiline nose of the girls in dreamy fashion magazine photos. She was the type of child—quiet, kind, smart, and studious—most parents dream of having, then spend years worrying about: her quietness made her insipid, her kindness allowed others to take advantage of her, her intelligence frightened boys, and her studiousness meant she had no friends.

Nicole was a senior at the Brentwood School. She got a near-perfect SAT score the first time she took the test, ran cross-country, and was a concert pianist. But she was always alone, at home or in the library, chewing at her nails and avoiding the gaze of others—crushed, it seemed, under a weight so exacting, she needed every last breath with which to fight it.

She told Leon she had been at the library till nine o’clock the night before. She had come home through the garage and gone straight to her room, where she had stayed till she was awakened by Esperanza’s barking through the foyer as she spoke to the emergency operator on a cordless phone. Nicole hadn’t seen anyone when she came home, didn’t remember if her parents’ cars were in the garage. She had no idea who else was at home, but that again wasn’t unusual for their family.

“We’re not the communicative type,” she explained. “Most of the time, everyone’s in their own room with the door locked.”

She spoke with her eyes cast down and her skin blushing a faint pink. She hadn’t heard the crash that awakened Neda, didn’t know what time Esperanza started to scream. Asked if she had any idea who might have wanted to harm her father, Nicole studied Leon’s face, then shrugged ever so slightly and said, in a voice that was at once removed and ridden with heartache, “Everyone.”

The younger sister, Kayla, was tall and busty, with long, shapely legs and wavy, light-brown hair. She sat on her bed wearing a pair of old Uggs, very short frayed shorts, and a thin, loose top that, depending on how she moved, revealed or covered the chai tattoo on the curve of her lower back. She had large brown eyes, still painted heavily from the night before, full lips, perfect teeth, a second tattoo on the tip of her left shoulder.

She had been “out” till about three the previous night, first at one friend’s and then another’s, “and then we went to Hyde because my friends wanted to go but I don’t like that place. We got a table and ordered a magnum, but we got bored and left after a half hour.”

A table at Hyde cost anywhere from $3,000 and up. The tab was picked up by Kayla’s friend Ati, the daughter of an Indonesian “industrialist” and her Russian racecar-driving husband. Ati and her brother lived together in a $12 million house in Beverly Hills. There was a permanent staff of five to tend to their needs, but they hadn’t seen their parents since Ati was nine years old. She had a yellow Ferrari Enzo; her brother drove a $1,700,000 Bugatti.

From Hyde, Kayla and Ati and their friends had gone to the bar at the Roosevelt, but it was a Sunday night and nothing was happening. They headed home around two thirty, which was okay even on a school night because Kayla went to New Roads—“one of those places where parents park their kids just to keep them out of trouble during high school,” she told Leon. Her sister was the studious one in the family.

As for her parents, Kayla thought they were both FOB—Fresh off the Boat—“Persies” with a totally skewed view of themselves.

“They have this idea that we’re this nice, respectable, normal family, like all those other Persians,” she told Leon. Her cell phone vibrated in her hand every few seconds with a text or call, and she stopped to check the screen each time.

“They don’t want me hanging out with my friends because it’s bad for their aabehroo, bad for my reputation, bad for marriage, bad for my kids. Except, Hello? We don’t have a reputation. Well, except a shitty one. People hate us. Even Americans who didn’t lose money to my dad have read about him and hate us. Little kids at Jewish day schools are telling each other jokes about us.”

She got up from the bed, fished a pack of Marlboro Lights from her bag, and lit up.

“Do you mind?” she asked Leon only after she had exhaled two long puffs.

“So I say fuck my dad. I don’t give a shit what happened to him. He can be dead for all I care, he’s a jerk and a bastard and he cheated all his friends and even cheated on my mom God knows how many times, and she knows it too and doesn’t say anything, hasn’t once stood up for herself or my sister because, what do you know, it’s bad for our fucking nonexistent aabehroo.”