Maid of the Mist Read Online Free PDF

door closed. 'Easy now?'
    Corrigan shook his head. He took another sip of his coffee then set it down on the floor. 'Mark, just tell me who it is, before I put you in a fucking cell.'
    'You really don't know?'
    'I really don't know.'
    Stirling looked incredulous. 'It's Pongo,' he said.
    'Who the fuck is Pongo?'
    'You're serious?'
    'I'm serious.'
    'The singer.'
    Corrigan shook his head. 'Sorry, lost me.'
    'He's huge.' Stirling started to sing something, jutting his head forward at the same time, egging Corrigan on to remember it.
    'Sorry. Although I hope he sings it better than that. OK, Mark, you've had your fun, now what is the singer Pongo doing in one of my cells, and why all the fucking mystery?'
     
    It was a name given with a child's mix of venom and jest, a soubriquet spat from a split lip after a playground collision at an exclusive private boarding school nestling in the Green Mountains in Vermont. Pongo. Ali was thirteen and one of the few students of non-European extraction attending the school and therefore subject to more accidental collisions than most. He couldn't remember now the name of the boy who had delivered it: only the fact that it had mystified him. Pongo. He had thought at first that it was a reference to body odour, but dismissed that; if anything, he washed excessively. Soon everyone was calling him Pongo, even the Old Cripple. In fact it wasn't for another six months that he discovered Pongo was from 101 Dalmatians. And another month after that to establish the connection: spots. His pus-puffed face was a testament to a losing battle with puberty and what were Dalmatians famous for but their spots? He had hated it for a long time, long after puberty had departed and left in its wake a near perfect complexion, and a boy blossomed into youth and not inconsiderable beauty.
    He had never really understood what the Old Cripple did for a living, but one day a car came to the school and he was forced to pack his bags and depart with barely an hour's notice. His father was relocating to New York. It meant a change of friends, and a change of name. He was no longer Ali, he was someone else. There had been two or three names since. It was the nature of the Old Cripple's business and he had to accept it. The only thing of lasting value he brought with him from Vermont was Pongo.
    A lonely teenager in New York turned to the only thing he had any love for: rock'n'roll. He taught himself guitar, began to compose songs. He bought a drum-machine, then a portastudio – the Old Cripple was, of course, extremely wealthy, despite, or possibly because of his sudden geographical shifts – and recorded a demo in his bedroom. He thought it was pretty cool. Sent it to Warner Brothers. A photo as well. They hated the demo, but loved the photo.
    So out they came to the current mansion to take a good look at him. Then they closeted themselves away with his father, who knew how to drive a hard bargain. Within a month he was in a real recording studio, he had a producer, a team of songwriters, a stylist, a PR woman, a single, a video and a guest appearance in a top teenage soap opera.
    It was the start of Pongo mania.
    Twelve number-one singles, hit albums in every country in the Western world.
    He sang of teenage love. He swivelled his exquisite hips. The music they chose for him was an odd hybrid of Motown and gangsta rap, with the gangsta removed. Music critics dismissed it as cop-rock: horns, soul and respect for the law. But it came at the right time. Gangster violence was not only tearing up the cities, but the farmlands as well. Music was harsh and tuneless and every second word was Mothafucka. This was sweet and wholesome and a mother would be proud to buy it for her children, and she wouldn't mind getting Pongo into bed either.
    He was huge. For five years he was the number-one-selling recording artist in the United States. If he wore it, it was fashion, if he drank it, it was cool. He said no to drugs, safe sex