“But he took a bunch that day, of course. It was a long photo shoot. I guess Gabriel wanted to go with something more risqué, 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?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s more or less what Horace did. He bought the negatives. We really couldn’t afford it, but that was the level of his commitment.” She pointed to the album cover in his hand. “This was originally a full body shot, but they cropped it.”

She unwrapped the manila folder, slid out a photograph, showed it to him. Myron looked. The two men were shot from the side and, yes, they were naked but the shadows were, uh, tasteful and worked like fig leaves.

“I still don’t see it.”

“See that mark on Gabriel’s, er, upper thigh, I guess?”

Evelyn handed him another photograph, an extreme blowup. And there it was, on the right thigh, very close to Gabriel Wire’s somewhat legendary groin—a tattoo.

A tattoo that looked exactly like the symbol in the “Not His” post on Suzze’s Facebook page.

Chapter 14

14

There were still two hours until his meet with Kitty at the Garden State Plaza Mall. On the way to the bus stop by the George Washington Bridge, Myron filled in Big Cyndi on what he’d learned from Evelyn Stackman.

“Curious,” Big Cyndi said.

“What?”

Big Cyndi tried to shift in her seat to face him. “As you know, Mr. Bolitar, I spent many years as a rock groupie.”

He hadn’t known. In the glory heyday of the Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling on WPIX Channel 11 in the New York area, Big Cyndi had been known as Big Chief Mama. As a tag team, Big Cyndi’s Big Chief Mama and Esperanza’s Little Pocahontas were Intercontinental Champions, whatever “Intercontinental” means. They were the good guys. Little Pocahontas would usually be winning on skill before her evil adversary would do something illegal—throw sand in her eye, use the dreaded “foreign object,” distract the referee so she could be double-teamed—and then, when the crowd was in a total frenzy, crying out seemingly in vain at the horrible injustice being done to a smoking-hot babe, Big Chief Mama would roar and leap from the top rope and free her lithe, babe-a-licious partner from bondage and together, with the throngs on their feet cheering, Little Pocahontas and Big Chief Mama would restore world order and, of course, defend their Intercontinental Tag Team title.

Massively entertaining.

“You were a groupie?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Bolitar. A big one.”

She batted her eyes at him again. Myron nodded. “I didn’t know.”

“I’ve had sex with many rock stars.”

“Okay.”

She arched her right eyebrow. “Many, Mr. Bolitar.”

“Got it.”

“Some of your favorites even.”

“Okay.”