Comment by patcon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patcon | Hacker News Reader

Ah, this is messy.

My speculation:

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EDIT: got mixed up with whose daughter Dominique was, but I think the general hypothesis still holds.

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- Zac was working with Shamji, under pretense of being estranged from mother

- Zac met Shamji's daughter Dominique, and they were friends or dating

- Zac was staying with Shamji's associate Sharma

- Zac's story was starting to show inconsistencies for Dominique and maybe Shamji

- when Zac's mom texted him "sending much much much love", he had a "look on his face" after reading it that caught Sharma's attention, and he asks who the msg was from. Given his estrangement from his mom and family, Zac had no quick answer that wouldn't imply another love interest. In his confusion, Zac appeared to be cheating on Dominique. Maybe he bragged about another woman, misreading how Sharma would react. Maybe Zac looks like some sort of undercover snitch, for which Sharma is hypersensitive.

- In the course of next few minutes, Sharma grabs/breaks the phone, punches Zac in the jaw and locked him on the terrace, and called Shamji, who turned around due to unresolved confusion of who Zac was

- Zac panics. He knows he knows he cannot explain without everything unraveling. He tries to jump to buy time to invent a story. He fails to make the jump.

- Sharma sees him missing from balcony, but doesn't know if he made it to water or climbed down or what.

- Shamji and Sharma don't know what is going on, and can't make sense of what happened.

- Shamji is trying to keep his daughter out of the situation, so is trapped in his lies.

I like your breakdown of events, but Dominique was Sharma's daughter, not Shamji's. It does seem very likely that he was caught one way or another and took a dive to try and make it out alive

> He explained that he’d spent Thursday evening with Zac at Riverwalk, along with Dave Sharma, a fifty-five-year-old friend who lived in the apartment. Sharma’s daughter, Dominique Sharma Clarke, who was in her early twenties, was also there.

For Dave Sharma's daughter to be named Dominique Sharma Clarke, it sounds like she was married...?

> I spoke to Ismailova recently, and she told me that she’d known Zac by yet another fictitious name, Thaimas, and that she’d believed him to be a young Kazakh who lived by himself.

A white Londoner is not capable of passing for a Kazakh.

> A white Londoner is not capable of passing for a Kazakh.

Ever heard of Borat? /s

I think they implied ethnic Russian from Kazakhstan, like Arkady Volozh (the founder of Yandex) or Vladimir Zhirinovsky (the proto-Putin of the 90s).

They should be called Kazakhstani (the nationality), not Kazakh (as in the ethnic group), but this is the New Yorker, so pathos tends to matter more than logos.

> A white Londoner is not capable of passing for a Kazakh.

A fairly large fraction of Kazakhstan's population is ethnic Russian.

> For Dave Sharma's daughter to be named Dominique Sharma Clarke, it sounds like she was married...?

Common for children of unmarried parents as well

This doesn't really comport with the information in the piece:

- Sharma wanted the money that Zac represented he had.

- Sharma remarked to Shamji (before the events) that Zac, having involved himself with them, was not allowed to run away.

- Zac was thinking (before the events) of entering witness protection.

All indications are that nothing special happened that night; the situation had already gone bad. Why postulate a comedy of errors?

Agreed, OP has seen too many movies. Other suspicious things (some of which suggest a longer-brewing confrontation):

- The "hint of a Russian accent" that Zac supposedly put on (but nobody except Shamji ever noticed)

- How quickly Shamji and his associates were to claim that Zac "seemed suicidal"

- The "heating up knives and clearing up blood" text from Shamji hours before Zac's death

- The traces of blood spotted by the police when they searched the apartment Zac jumped from

But hey, the cops asked a few questions and none of these shady characters instantly signed a confession so what more could they possibly do?

> How quickly Shamji and his associates were to claim that Zac "seemed suicidal"

It's already known that they knew he jumped into the river; this is pretty easy to explain.

Again, may be sheathing up knives, not heating them

You'd have to assume he was a nonnative speaker for that, and he isn't.

The part that doesn't add together for me is when they mention how Shamji almost certainly knew of Zac's real surname and accent. Shamji brushes it off saying that Zac's dad told him to use a different surname, but that doesn't explain the accent part.

Shamji also doesn't have interest in Zac's 'family money'. Or, at least, there's no documented action he takes which would indicate any interest.

Shamji seems interested in leveraging Zac's actual family contacts to fleece them in typical, above board, business-type scams. Or at least he has Zac set up meetings so that they can potentially identify a mark together.

Sharma seems to genuinely believe the tale about Zac's background, even after Zac jumps, as evidenced by the call with the chauffeur. Sharma seems to think Zac is (or could be) alive the next day, as evidenced by sending the chauffeur at all. Sharma also knows the address to Zac's parents' house while still believing that his mom is in Dubai.

>At 10:35 p.m., Shamji texted a friend of his named Mervin Sealy, sounding agitated. “I have just been heating up knives and clearing up blood,” he wrote. A few minutes later, he followed up with a voice message to Mervin: “I’m not fucking around, ni---r, come to fucking Pimlico and pick up this fucking car and drop me home, bro.” He added, “Shit’s about to go wrong. Wrong!”

This message is weird for a few reasons. 1, it potentially shows that the situation was heated well before Shamji and Dominique left the apartment. 2, I have no earthly idea what 'heating up knives' means in this context. 3, he sends this text just an hour and a half after they arrive at the apartment. So an hour and a half after arrival Shamji feels the need to frantically text and leave a voice message for someone to come get him out of the apartment and drive him home using his own car. Shamji doesn't, at this point, feel like he can drive himself home and Dominique is either unable or unwilling to do this either. If he's drunk and 'heatin up knives and clearing up' is some kind of slang for trying to sober up, then why can't Zac drive him home? Why can't Dominique? Why can't he just call an Uber? For whatever reason he wants to get out of there and make sure his car isn't left at the scene.

>“Mr. Shamji is then seen to look over the river wall in directly the spot that Zac has fallen into.” The wall is about four feet high, and Shamji cranes his torso over it, peering down into the water. Then he straightens, returns to his Mercedes, and drives away.

Shamji presumably sees the body and makes no calls or texts to Sharma. Sharma wakes up the next morning thinking that Zac is/might be alive and sends a goon to go find him. _Somehow_ he knows to send the goon to look for Zac at his parents' house without knowing that it's his parents who live there.

>“I’m thinking fuck this little kid,” Sharma messaged Shamji on the morning of November 28, 2019—Zac’s final day.

Whatever happened that night, it does not seem like a 'spur of the moment, Zac said something that seemed suspicious/off' scenario.

heating up knives may also be drug slang for hot knifing cannabis (or other drugs).

May not be heating up knives, rather, sheathing up knives, putting them away. Spell check error.

Nobody does that outside of feudal Japan or the Veldt.

Anyone heating up knives is either sterilizing them for emergency surgery or preparing them for torture (branding).

Given that he’d been saying “fuck this kid” to Sharma, and then Zac subsequently died potentially attempting to survive a leap with a broken jaw at Sharma’s apartment… maybe Sharma was the knife and Shamji was agitating him

Everybody in such games seems to participate in a bit of self delusion. Even the cons. Even if they come across some details that don’t add up, they would rather shut up and stay in the game rather than question it and walk away.

If you were the sort who would question every little detail then you are unlikely to be a participant in this sort of deal making/fixing enterprise.

Those who would obsess over minute details would either be rank outsiders and non players, or those who have already made it and have too much to lose.

Zac had not passed his driving test yet. Remember he emailed his mother to tell her that he had used her credit card to book part if his driving test? That's when she texted him with the much much much love reply. Also Dominique had brought her own car which he had parked in the Riverside apt car park. So she could not drive Shamjis car for him

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