BOSTON

The sun through my office window told me summer was coming, and everything was getting hotter—except business. I sat at my desk and stared at the opaque glass door, reading the peeling lettering—"SNOITAGITSE VNI. " To visitors, it read "INVESTIGATIONS."

I'd begun to enjoy whole days of waiting for nobody to walk through that door, which always seemed to happen. But the woman who ran the agency would call too often from the Michigan home office, badgering me to snag the Boston case. It was the biggest mystery in the record business —unknown band sells six million albums, then disappears. I'd put in enough pitches with the obviously worried record company to choke a