Live Wire

“Twenty percent more how?”

“Twenty percent over what you paid him to endorse the Shear Delight Seven.”

“What?” Davis shouted, hand to heart as though warding off a heart attack. “Are you kidding? It’s practically a reshoot of the first. Our lawyers say that under the contract, we can ask him to do the reshoot and not pay one cent more.”

“Your lawyers are wrong.”

“Come on. Let’s be reasonable. We are generous people, aren’t we? Because of that-even though, really, we shouldn’t-we can give him a ten percent bonus over what he’s already getting.”

“Not enough,” Myron said.

“You’re joking, right? I know you. You’re a funny guy, Myron. You’re being funny right now, right?”

“Ricky is happy with the razor as it is,” Myron said. “If you wish to have him endorse a whole new product with a whole new marketing campaign, he will certainly need to make more money.”

“More? Are you out of your mind?”

“He won Shear’s Stubble Destroyer’s Man of the Year. That upped his worth.”

“What?” Total outrage now. “We gave him that award!”

And so it goes.

Half an hour later, when Michael Davis left cursing under his breath, Esperanza came into Myron’s office.

“I found Lex’s friend Buzz.”

10

Adiona Island is exactly five miles wide, exactly two miles long, and, as Win once put it, the “epicenter of the WASP.” It is located a scant four miles off the coast of Massachusetts. According to the Census Bureau, 211 people inhabited the island year-round. That number grew-it was hard to say by how much but it was at least several fold-during the summer months as the blue bloods from Connecticut, Philadelphia, and New York flocked in by jet or ferry. Recently, the Adiona Golf Course was named one of the top twenty-five courses by Golf Magazine. This upset rather than pleased the club members because Adiona Island was their private world. They don’t want you to visit or even know about the island. Yes, there was a “public” ferry, but the ferry was small, the departure schedule hard to figure out, and if you somehow managed to get there, the beaches and pretty much all land on the island were private and guarded. There was only one restaurant on Adiona Island, the Teapot Lodge, and it was more of a drinking pub than an eatery. There was one food market, one general store, one church. There were no hotels or inns or anyplace to stay. The mansions, most with cute names like Tippy’s Cottage or The Waterbury or Triangle House, were both spectacular and understated. If you wanted to buy one, you could-this was a free country-but you wouldn’t be welcomed, wouldn’t be allowed to join the “club,” wouldn’t be allowed on the tennis courts or the beaches and you would be discouraged from patronizing the Teapot Lodge. You had to be invited onto this private enclave or agree to go it alone as a social outcast-and pretty much no one chose to go it alone. The island was kept secure less by real guards and more with Old-World scowls of disapproval.

With no true restaurant, how did the well-heeled dine? They ate meals prepared by help. Dinner parties were the norm, almost in rotation, Bab’s turn and then a night at Fletcher’s place and maybe Conrad’s yacht on Friday and, well, Windsor’s estate on Saturday. If you summer here-and one clue might be that you use the word “summer” as a verb-chances are your father and grandfather summered here too. The air was heavy with ocean spray and eau du blue blood.

On either side of the island, there were two mysterious, fencedoff areas. One was near the grass tennis courts and owned by the military. No one knew exactly what went on there, but the rumors of covert operations and Roswell-type secrecy were endless.

The other secluded enclave was on the southern tip of the island. The land was owned by Gabriel Wire, the eccentric, ultra-reclusive lead singer of HorsePower. Wire’s compound was bathed in secrecy-a full twenty-one acres protected by security guards and the latest in surveillance technology. Wire was the exception on this island. He seemed fine alone, secluded, an outcast. In fact, Myron thought, Gabriel Wire insisted upon it.

Over the years, if rumors were to be believed, the island’s blue bloods had pretty much accepted the reclusive rocker. Some claim that they see Gabriel Wire shopping at the market. Others say that he often swam, either alone or with only a stunning beauty, on a quiet strip of beach in the later afternoons. Like much with Gabriel Wire, nothing could be confirmed.

The only real approach to Wire’s compound was a dirt road with about five thousand Keep Out signs and a guard booth with a drop arm. Myron ignored the signs because he was a crazy rulebreaker like that. Upon arrival via private boat, he had borrowed the car, a totally rad Wiesmann Roadster MF5 with retail price over a quarter of a million dollars, from Baxter Lockwood, Win’s cousin, who had a place on Adiona Island. Myron debated driving straight through the drop arm, but ol’ Bax might not appreciate the scratches.

The guard looked up from his paperback. He sported a severe crew cut and aviator sunglasses and had a hard military bearing. Myron gave him a five-finger toodle-oo wave and Smile Seventeen-charmingly shy via early Matt Damon. Pretty dazzling.

The guard said, “Turn around and leave.”

Mistake. Smile Seventeen only worked on da ladies. “If you were a lady, you’d be dazzled right now.”

“By the smile? Oh, I am. On the inside. Turn around and leave.”

“Aren’t you supposed to call the house and make sure I’m not expected?”

“Oh.” The guard made a phone with his fingers and mimed a conversation. Then he hung up his fingers and said, “Turn around and leave.”

“I’m here to see Lex Ryder.”

“I don’t think so.”

“My name is Myron Bolitar.”

“Should I genuflect?”

“I’d prefer it if you just lift the drop arm.”

The guard put down his book and slowly made his way to his feet. “I don’t think so, Myron.”

Myron had expected something like this. Over the past sixteen years, since the death of a young woman named Alista Snow, only a handful of people had even seen Gabriel Wire. Back then, when the tragedy first occurred, the media had gorged on images of the charismatic front man. Some claimed that he got preferential treatment, that at the very least, Gabriel Wire should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the witnesses backed away and even Alista Snow’s father eventually stopped demanding justice. Whatever the reason-cleared or swept under the rug-the incident changed Gabriel Wire forever. He ran off and, if rumors were to be believed, spent the next two years in Tibet and India before returning to the United States under a cloud of secrecy that would have made Howard Hughes envious.

Gabriel Wire had not been seen in public since.

Oh, there were plenty of rumors. Wire joined the conspiracy legends of the moon landing, JFK assassination, and Elvis sightings. Some say that he wore disguises and moved freely, going to movies and clubs and restaurants. Some say that he got plastic surgery or that he shaved off his famed curly hair and grew a goatee. Some say that he simply loves the seclusion of Adiona Island and that he sneaks in supermodels and assorted lovelies. This last rumor was given extra credence when one tabloid interrupted a phone call between a famous young starlet and her mother discussing her weekend with “Gabriel at Adiona,” but many, Myron included, smelled a planted story timed, by eerie coincidence, the week before said starlet’s big movie opening. Sometimes a paparazzo would be tipped off that Gabriel would be somewhere, but the picture would never be conclusive, always appearing in whatever rag with the headline IS THIS GABRIEL WIRE? Other rumors had it that Wire spent considerable time institutionalized while others insisted that the reason he kept out of sight was simple vanity: His beautiful face had been sliced up during a bar fight in Mumbai.

Gabriel Wire’s vanishing act did not spell the end of HorsePower. Just the opposite, in fact. Not surprisingly, the legend of Gabriel Wire grew. Would people remember Howard Hughes if he was just another rich guy? Were the Beatles hurt by the rumors of Paul Mc-Cartney’s death? Eccentricity sells. Gabriel, with Lex’s help, managed to keep