Ricky and the Bees

About the Book

“BROCK” BROCKMAN was suicidal. It had been several years since his wife and their two children had been killed in a plane crash in Switzerland. He had gone into a morbid depression and had never recovered. He had withdrawn from the direction of his billion-dollar business empire that he had built from scratch, had left its management to people he trusted but only infrequently met with. Six months ago he had set a deadline for himself to snap out of it. Now that time was up. He was sitting on the boardwalk at Daytona Beach, subliminally making plans to take his life later that evening, when he was approached by one of the runaway kids who frequented the area hustling sex for their survival needs.

RICKY GUNDERSON was not yet sixteen, but he looked older. Not because he looked hard, he didn’t, but because he was a big boy, nearly six feet. He was a golden blond Adonis, with the face of a vulnerable little boy and the muscles of a hero. He had been ripped off by other street kids, a gang of Puerto Ricans, he said. All he had left was the tattered cutoffs and bare midriff tee shirt he was wearing. He was desperate for someone to take care of him, but he would rather die than go back to Omaha and his sexually abusive, heroin addicted mother. The chemistry of mutual desperation between Brock and Ricky worked. Brock put his suicide plans on hold and took Ricky home to Jacksonville with him. Brock knew the chances of success were slim for both of them, but neither of them had much to lose.

CARLA AND LORI were two girls Ricky met at the Biology Pond, a teen club near the community college in Jacksonville. They discovered that Ricky was something beyond a savant. He was intelligent and relatively well adjusted. They discovered that he had an eidectic memory. He could master guitar pieces with a single hearing, although he read no music, and his singing voice had perfect pitch. And his dancing! They had a band they had been trying to develop for two years, but they had never found the right male lead. When they met Ricky and saw him dance, heard him perform, they knew their time had come.

MURRAY BOSTICK also heard Ricky sing. The word of his talent spread fast through the college community. When he taped a rehearsal with the band, The Hunni Bees, they called themselves, and got it played on a local TV station, Bostick immediately set out to put Ricky under contract. But Bostick’s reputation was known to Brock, and he intervened to rescue Ricky from Bostick’s grasp. Bostick had close, direct ties to a national criminal organization. He also had a reputation for his insatiable sexual appetite for young men and very young girls.

BEN’H BENOKIAN was Brock’s friend from high school days who was now his attorney. He helped Brock organize a talent company to handle Ricky’s new career. He reviewed steps Brock had taken to create a fictional biography for Ricky, then organized legal maneuvers to secure the new identity. The band was placed under the management of Brock and Ben’H and renamed Ricky and the Bees. Within weeks, a complete company of professionals had been assembled and Ricky and the Bees were doing television and personal appearance concerts. CD and video sales were soon setting records. National and international fame came with incredible speed.

JUDITH GUNDERSON, Ricky’s mother, and her boyfriend, FRANK CIPRIANO, confronted by Brock with their abuse and criminal neglect of Ricky, confessed and mutually accused each other before Judith signed a release authorizing Brock to adopt Ricky legally.

STEVEN WRIGHT, who had declined to invest in the Bees during their early days, but who worked for them now as a video editor, was approached by Murray Bostick to leave the Bees and come to work for him. As a cover, he would be an editor for Bostick’s sports and professional wrestling television enterprises; in reality, he would become a member

About the Author

Now in full retirement, Jim Sauls lives in a mountain community in Western North Carolina and writes about his intelligence career on six continents. He has four children and four grandchildren. He also maintains contact with the family mining business he started in California in 1993 and vacations at his lodge above Lake Tahoe.