Nick went into Thiel’s office ready to participate in Zelman’s arrest and hopefully rescue Malkin. However, after his last outburst, he wondered whether Thiel would even want Nick near the premises.
Stevie was pulling papers from a printer while Thiel and Karen stood in front of the wall monitor and watched Zelman stare out his window at the parking lot below his office.
“Everything okay?” Thiel asked when Nick and Matt returned.
Nick nodded. “We’re good.”
Stevie handed Thiel a pack of folded papers and the SAC examined them before looking at Nick and handing them over. “Here you go.”
Nick stared at the paperwork.
“Take the team over there and wait for my signal,” Thiel said. “Once Judge Mitchell makes it official, I’ll text you the signed copy.”
Nick took the papers and glanced down at them with a sense of acceptance. “Okay, we won’t start until . . .”
The door opened. Tommy walked in with a thin kid in a ponytail and a tie-dye T-shirt. They both wore visitor lanyards around their neck.
“Where’ve you been?” Nick asked.
“Around,” Tommy said. He pointed around the room to give the kid everyone’s name, then stopped at the lip-reader. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Karen,” she said.
“Hi, Karen,” Tommy said. Then he pointed to the kid. “This here is Jerry Zelman.”
There was a startled silence.
“Yeah, he’s Khasi’s son,” Tommy said. He gestured toward Stevie and said, “That’s the guy you want.”
Jerry Zelman walked over to the desk and handed Stevie a flash drive. “You might need this,” he said in a small voice. Then the kid turned toward the group who were all staring at him and said, “I’m really sorry for everything my father has done.”
Stevie held the flash drive with a question on his face.
“It’s that keystroke logger you gave me when I picked you up at the airport,” Tommy explained. “It has Zelman’s IP address, login, and password loaded. Jerry got it from his dad’s computer earlier today.”
“Please, all I ask,” Jerry said. “Do not hurt him.” Then he shook Tommy’s hand, lowered his head, and left the room.
Stevie pushed the flash drive into his computer, while everyone else looked at Tommy for an explanation.
Tommy shrugged. “Long story.”
“Is he alive?” Karen said, still doing her job and reading Zelman’s lips on the monitor.
Tommy moved next to Nick and Matt watching the screen by the window.
“Is who alive?” Tommy asked.
“You’ve been gone a while,” Nick said. “We got Malkin to plant the camera on a poster across from Zelman’s desk, but lost the audio. Zelman smelled a rat, then beat Malkin pretty good with a bat.”
“Huh,” Tommy said, looking at Matt and holding out his hand. “You got another piece of gum?”
Matt gave him one.
“Good,” Karen said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Make sure he can’t make any noise while I’m meeting with the Italian.”
“So,” Nick said, “are you going to tell us how you got Jerry Zelman to turn on his father?”
“Not so hard,” Tommy said. “I got the idea from Sal’s book. It mentions that Khasi Zelman was abused as a child.”
“Yeah, but there was nothing about him being abusive to any of his kids.”
“True,” Tommy said, chewing on his gum. “However, I saw this show on PBS once about abused children. They took a random group of kids from a middle school in Pennsylvania like ten years ago and had them all draw a picture of something in their room. Most of the kids drew pictures of their fish, or baseball trophies, normal stuff like that. But there was a small group of them who drew pictures of their doorknob.”
Nick looked over at Stevie and saw him nodding with a smile on his face. When he caught Nick’s glance, he gave him a thumbs up.
“So anyway,” Tommy continued, as Thiel conspicuously moved closer to them. “They later find out that eighty percent of all the kids who drew a picture of their doorknob were physically abused. It took years for them to backtrack and find all the kids and trace all the data, but what they concluded was that abused children tended to focus on the one thing in their room that always preceded a beating. The turning of their doorknob. An image that never left their mind.”
“Wow,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” Tommy agreed. “Wow.”
“So, how does that relate to Jerry Zelman?” Nick asked.
“The name of his band is The Doorknobs,” Tommy said. “I went to see him play a gig at Jake’s, and I noticed the bass drum had an image of a doorknob. It was made to look like a child drew the picture, but when I met with him after the show, Jerry told me it was his artwork from when he was a child. He liked the image so much, he kept it.”
On the monitor, Zelman was out of the frame, but Stevie wasn’t moving the camera to find him because he was so busy with the flash drive.
“So, how did you bring up the subject?” Nick asked. “Not exactly a conversation starter.”
“First, I told him how much I liked his songs. He’s really good. I meant that. We talked about his guitar work and the writing process. I gave him some advice. Then I pointed to his drum set and told him about the PBS show and waited for a reaction.”
“And?”
“The guy broke down right there on the side of the stage. It was obvious he’d had this pent-up emotion inside for a while. So we spoke about his youth. His father’s abusive nature. I settled him down, but thought maybe I could transition his despair into something useful, so we talked about his dad and his business dealings. He knew. After a while I even suggested that his father had something to do with Sal Perrino’s murder. I thought he would kick me straight out of there, but I had to try. You know what he said?”
“What?”
“He wanted to know if Sal was a good father. Whether he ever beat his kids. That’s when I knew he was ready to help.”
They watched Zelman return to the screen, sitting behind his desk and moving the laptop in front of him.
Nick looked over at Stevie. “Well?”
Stevie smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. “I’m in.”
Thiel reached out his hand to Nick and said, “Give me those papers back.” Then he glanced over at Tommy with a smirk and said, “PBS, huh?”