“But you now manage Lex Ryder?”
“I’m an agent. It’s slightly different. But, yes, I work with him.”
She mulled that over. “Follow me.” She led him to the steps heading down to the basement. “My husband, Horace. He was the real fan.”
The small finished basement had a ceiling so low Myron could not stand upright. There was a gray futon and an old television on a fiberglass black stand. The rest of the basement was, well, HorsePower. A fold-out table, the kind you might put out when your dining room table couldn’t handle all your family, was covered with all things HorsePower-photographs, album covers, files of sheet music, concert advertisements, guitar picks, drumsticks, shirts, dolls. Myron recognized a black shirt with snap buttons.
“Gabriel actually wore that during a concert in Houston,” she said.
There were two fold-out chairs. Myron saw several photographs of “Wire sightings” from the tabloids.
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess. After the whole Alista Snow tragedy, well, Horace was heartbroken. He used to study the paparazzi sightings of Gabriel. See, Horace was an engineer. He was so good with math and puzzles.” She gestured toward the tabloids. “They’re all fake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Horace always found a way to prove the images weren’t really Gabriel. Like this one. Gabriel Wire had a scar on the back of his right hand. Horace got the original negative and blew it up. There was no scar. On this one he ran a mathematical equation-don’t ask me to explain how-and figured that this man was wearing a size ten shoe. Gabriel Wire has a size twelve.”
Myron nodded, said nothing.
“It must seem weird. This obsession.”
“No, not really.”
“Other men follow a sports team or go to the racetrack or collect stamps. Horace loved HorsePower.”
“How about you?”
Evelyn smiled. “I was a fan, I guess. But not like Horace. It was something we did together. We camped out for concerts. We would turn the lights low and listen and try to come up with the real meaning behind the lyrics. It might not sound like much, but I’d give anything for one more night like that.”
A shadow crossed her face. Myron wondered whether he should go there and then decided, yes, maybe he should.
“What happened to Horace?” he asked.
“He died this past January,” she said, a small choke in her voice. “Heart attack. He had it crossing the street. People thought a car hit him. But Horace just fell in the crosswalk and died. Just like that. Gone. He was only fifty- three. We were high school sweethearts. Raised two kids in this house. We made plans for our old age. I’d just retired from my job at the post office, so we could travel more.”
She flashed a quick “what can you do” smile and looked away. We all have our scars and torment and ghosts. We all walk around and smile and pretend everything is okay. We are polite to strangers and share the road with them and stand in line at the supermarket and we manage to disguise the hurt and desperation. We work hard and make plans and more often than not, that all goes to hell.
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Myron said.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay.”
“I know I should get rid of this stuff. Sell it. But I just can’t yet.”
Not knowing what to say, Myron went with a classic: “I understand.”
She managed a smile. “But, really, you want to know about the symbol.”
“If you don’t mind.”
Evelyn Stackman crossed the room and opened up the filing cabinet. “Horace tried to figure out what it meant. He looked up Sanskrit and Chinese and hieroglyphics, things like that. But he could never place it.”
“Where did you first see it?”
“The symbol?” Evelyn reached into the cabinet and pulled out what appeared to be the cover for a CD. “Did you know about this album?”
Myron looked at it. It was the artwork, if that was what you called it, for an album cover. He had never seen it. On the top it read, “LIVE WIRE.” Then under that in smaller print, HORSEPOWER LIVE AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. But that wasn’t what drew your eye. Under the letters was a strange photograph of Gabriel Wire and Lex Ryder. The shot was from the waist up, both shirtless, back-to-back with their arms folded. Lex was on the left, Gabriel on the right, both turning to look at their prospective music buyer with serious glares.
“Right before the Alista Snow tragedy, they were going to do a live album,” Evelyn said. “Were you with them then?”
Myron shook his head. “I came on later.”
Myron couldn’t stop staring. Gabriel and Lex had thrown some “guyliner” on their eyes. Both men were given equal space in the photograph-if anything, Lex had a better spot, being on the left where your eye naturally goes first-but what you noticed here, what you couldn’t help but feel, was that your eyes were drawn to Gabriel Wire, almost exclusively, as though there were a bright beacon shining down on that half of the photograph. Wire was- and Myron believed this with all due hetero respect-so damn handsome. His gaze did more than smolder; it called out to you, demanded attention, insisted you look back.
Successful musicians have a variety of strengths, but rock superstars, like their athletic or thespian counterparts, also have the intangibles. That was what transformed Gabriel from musician into rock legend. Gabriel had almost supernatural charisma. Onstage or even in person, it blew you away, but even here, in a photograph from an album cover never released, you could feel it all again. It was more than just good looks. You sensed in those smoldering eyes sensitivity, tragedy, anger, intelligence. You wanted to listen to him. You wanted to know more.
Evelyn said, “Gorgeous, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true about his face being destroyed?”
“I don’t know.”
Next to Gabriel, working the pose too hard, was Lex. His folded arms were tensed up, as if he were doing the quiet bicep flex. He was strictly average-looking with somewhat nondescript features, and perhaps, if you paid him any attention at all, you realized that Lex was the sensible one, the consistent one, the stable one-in short, the boring one. Lex was the grounded yin next to Gabriel’s hypnotically volatile yang. But then again, every long-running group needs that balance, don’t they?
“I don’t see the symbol here,” Myron said.
“It never made it to the cover.” Evelyn was back in the file cabinet. She pulled out a manila envelope with the wraparound string. She took the string between her thumb and index finger, stopped, and looked up. “I keep wondering if I should show you this.”
“Mrs. Stackman?”
“Evelyn.”
“Evelyn. You know Lex is married to Suzze T, right?”
“Of course.”
“Someone is trying to hurt her. And Lex too, I guess. I’m trying to figure out who.”
“And you think this symbol is a clue?”
“It could be, yes.”
“You seem like a good man.”
Myron waited.
“I told you Horace was a big-time collector. His favorite items were the one of a kinds. A few years ago, the photographer Curk Burgess contacted him. A week before Alista Snow died, Burgess took the photograph you’re looking at now.”
“Okay.”
“But he took a bunch that day, of course. It was a long photo shoot. I guess Gabriel wanted to go with something more risque, so they took some of these pictures naked. Do you remember a few years ago when a private collector bought a Marilyn Monroe porn film so that no one else would see it?”
