David Mark Simpson is a journalist based in Los Angeles. Design updated in The phone rang: a call from an unknown number. Through a window near my cubicle, I could see a blood orange sunset falling over the Pacific Ocean. The ringing stopped. After a brief silence, it started up again.
This time I grabbed the receiver, planning to keep whatever conversation transpired as short as possible. A frantic voice was on the other end.
You could take a picture of it. I knew who Farzam was. Everybody in Santa Monica did. He was 35, with a doughy face and salt-and-pepper hair. He lived in a multi-million-dollar home and was a natty dresser, sometimes donning a plaid tie or jacket.
Now the man on the phone was telling me that this pillar of the community had been hit with some 60 criminal charges, most of them felonies. Nothing immediately came up in an internet search. He had to be insane, I thought. Still, after we hung up, I called the local jail. When the watch commander answered, I apologized for phoning about such a weird tip.
A pause followed. I had barely put down the receiver when the phone started ringing again: the untraceable number, the excited caller. He was eager to hear what the police had said. I phoned the California DOJ. A spokesperson confirmed that there was a case against Farzamβa big one.
