Harlan Coben - Live Wire

“And what about the profile photograph? What’s this symbol?”

“I don’t know.”

“You asked Suzze?”

“Yep. She said she had no idea. It looks almost like Chinese lettering.”

“Perhaps we can find someone to translate it.” Win sat back and re-steepled the fingers. “Did you notice the time the comment was posted?”

Myron nodded. “Three seventeen A.M.”

“Awfully late.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Myron said. “This could just be the social-networking equivalent of drunk texting.”

“An ex with issues,” Win said.

“Is there any other kind?”

“And if I recall Suzze’s rambunctious youth, there could be-conservatively speaking-several candidates.”

“But none that she imagines doing something like this.”

Win continued to stare at the screen. “So what’s our first step?”

“Really?”

“Pardon?”

Myron moved around his renovated office. Gone were the posters of Broadway plays and Batman memorabilia. They’d been taken down during the paint job, and Myron wasn’t really sure if he wanted to put them back up. Gone too were all his old trophies and awards from his playing days-his NCAA championship rings, his Parade All-American certificates, his College Player of the Year award-with one exception. Right before his first professional game as a Boston Celtic, as his dream was finally coming true, Myron had seriously injured his knee. Sports Illustrated put him on the cover with the tagline, IS HE DONE? and while they don’t answer the question, it ended up being a big fat YUP! Why he kept the framed cover up he wasn’t quite sure. If asked, he said that it was a warning to any “superstar” entering his office how quickly it can all go away, but Myron somehow suspected it went deeper than that.

“That’s not your usual modus operandi,” Myron said.

“Oh, do tell.”

“This is usually the part where you tell me that I’m an agent, not a private eye, and that you don’t see any purpose in doing this because there is no financial benefit to the firm.”

Win said nothing.

“Then you usually complain that I have a hero complex and always need to rescue someone in order to feel complete. And lastly-or I should say, most recently-you tell me how my interfering has actually done more harm than good, that I’ve ended up hurting and even killing maybe more than I’ve saved.”

Win yawned. “Is there a point?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious but here it is: Why suddenly are you willing-enthusiastic even-about taking on this particular rescue mission when in the past-”

“In the past,” Win interrupted, “I always helped out, didn’t I?”

“For the most part, yes.”

Win looked up, tapped his chin with his index finger. “How to explain this?” He stopped, thought, nodded. “We have a tendency to believe good things will last forever. It is in our nature. The Beatles, for example. Oh, they’ll be around forever. The Sopranos -that show will always be on the air. Philip Roth’s Zuckerman series. Springsteen concerts. Good things are rare. They are to be cherished because they always leave us too soon.”

Win rose, started for the door. Before he left the room, he looked back.

“Doing this stuff with you,” Win said, “is one of those good things.”

It did not take much to track down Lex Ryder.

Esperanza Diaz, Myron’s business partner at MB Reps, called him at eleven P.M. and said, “Lex just used his credit card at Three Downing.”

Myron was staying, as he often did, at Win’s co-op in the legendary Dakota building, overlooking Central Park West on the corner of Seventy-second Street. Win had a spare bedroom or three. The Dakota dates back to 1884 and it looks it. The fortresslike structure was beautiful and dark and somehow wonderfully depressing. It’s a hodgepodge of gables, balconies, finials, pediments, balustrades, half domes, cast iron, archways, ornate railing, stepped dormers-a bizarre blend that was somehow seamless, hauntingly perfect rather than overwhelming.

“What’s that?” Myron asked.

“You don’t know Three Downing?” Esperanza asked.

“Should I?”

“It’s probably the hippest bar in the city right now. Diddy, supermodels, the fashionista, that crowd. It’s in Chelsea.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a little disappointing,” Esperanza said.

“What?”

“That a playah of your magnitude doesn’t know all the trendy spots.”

“When Diddy and I go clubbing, we take the white Hummer stretch and use underground entrances. The names blur.”

“Or being engaged is cramping your style,” Esperanza said. “So do you want to head over there and pick him up?”

“I’m in my pajamas.”

“Yep, a playah. Do the pajamas have feetsies?”

Myron checked his watch again. He could be downtown before midnight. “I’m on my way.”

“Is Win there?” Esperanza asked.

“No, he’s still out.”

“So you’re going down alone?”

“You’re worried about a tasty morsel like me in a nightclub on my own?”

“I’m worried you won’t get in. I’ll meet you there. Half hour. Seventeenth Street entrance. Dress to impress.”

Esperanza hung up. This surprised Myron. Since becoming a mother, Esperanza, former all-night, bisexual party girl, never went out late anymore. She had always taken her job seriously-she now owned 49 percent of MB Reps and with Myron’s strange travels of late had really carried the load. But after a decade-plus of leading a night lifestyle so hedonistic it would have made Caligula envious, Esperanza had stopped cold, gotten married to the uber-straight Tom, and had a son named Hector. She went from Lindsay Lohan to Carol Brady in four-point-five seconds.

Myron looked in his closet and wondered what to wear to a trendy nightspot. Esperanza had said dress to impress, so he went with his tried and true-jeans-blue-blazer-expensive-loafer look-Mr. Casual Chic-mostly because that was all he owned that fit the bill. There was really little in his closet between jeansblazer and all-out suit, unless you wanted to look like the sales guy at an electronics store.

He grabbed a cab on Central Park West. The cliché of Manhattan taxi drivers is that they are all foreign and barely speak English. The cliché may be true, but it had been at least five years since Myron had actually spoken to one. Despite recent laws, every single cabdriver in New York City wore a mobile-phone Bluetooth in his ear, twenty-four/seven, quietly talking in his native tongue to whoever was on the other end. Manners aside, Myron always wondered whom they had in their lives that wanted to talk to them all day. In this sense, one could argue that these were very lucky men.

Myron figured that he’d see a long line, a velvet rope, something, but as they approached the Seventeenth Street address, there was no sign of any nightclub. Finally he realized that the “Three” stood for the third floor and that “Downing” was the name of the quasi-high-rise in front of him. Someone went to the MB Reps School of Literal Business Naming.

The elevator arrived on the third floor. As soon as the doors slid open, Myron could feel the music’s deep bass in his chest. The long queue of desperate wanna-enters started immediately. Purportedly, people went to clubs like this to have a good time, but the truth was, most stood on a line and ended up with a sharp reminder that they still weren’t cool enough to sit at the popular kids’ lunch table. VIPs walked right past them with nary a glance and somehow that made them want to go in more. There was a velvet rope, of course, signaling their lower status, and it was guarded by three steroid-stuffed bouncers with shaved heads and practiced scowls.