The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit Read Online Free PDF Page A

bucketloads of enthusiasm for broadcasting but little talent and less wit. He would liberally spray spittle onto the hand-held microphone as he chortled and blathered away. Tony winced as the mike was handed back to him; I noted how Tony’s ready smile could manifest as a form of violence.
    The donkeys arrived with a fairy-tale figure called Johnny, who looked like he lived in the stables with his animals. The crotch of his trousers hung down near his knees and his thin leather belt, having lost its buckle, was tied off in a double knot. He had a bit of straw in his hair and one ear that stood perpendicular to his head whereas the other did not. His team of donkeys smelled less of donkey than he did.
    “He spends hours perfecting that look,” Pinky told me, deadpan. “Just so he can make a case for a better fee next time.” I didn’t know if he was joking or not.
    I don’t know whether donkeys can ever be said to look “happy” but Johnny’s herd seemed totally pissed off at life. Flea-bitten molting things, they made me nervous. One triedto bite me before I snatched my hand away just in time. I also saw one kick out. I worried that they might try to take a chunk out of one of the children, so I kept a close watch.
    The jockeys were those children brave enough to scramble on a donkey’s back. I was told to grade the children by age so that we could run off five races over the course of the afternoon. Each event had a name like Seahorse Stakes and Jellyfish Handicap. While I tied high-colored silks to the children, Nikki or one of the other girls grabbed the donkey’s halter so that Sammy could hoist the child onto the donkey, hopefully without incident. A genuine bookie appeared from nowhere with a blackboard, chalking odds on the board at 3–1 the field. The parents waved shocking amounts of cash at him as they backed their own kid to win the race. I made a quick calculation. Identical odds. For every race if he took sixty pounds he knew he’d only have to pay out thirty; if he took a hundred he’d pay out sixty. For the bookie it was like scooping money up off the beach.
    While I was making my calculation, I saw Pinky squeeze by the bookie and give him a pat on the behind. It was odd because the crowd wasn’t so tight that he needed to squeeze by, but in that moment I saw a brown envelope change hands in Pinky’s direction. It was such a rapid sleight of hand it could have happened on the Abdul-Shazam! Magic Show.
    But it was a gala afternoon for the holidaymakers, and the sunlight rippled off the dazzling silks while the parents roared as if they were at Ascot. Tony ratcheted up the excitement with a commentary that echoed from the Tannoy speakers around the playing field. As for the race, it was impossible to predict a winner because all the beasts did the same thing,which was to bolt five yards and then stop dead until Johnny, running behind them in his flapping, baggy pants, laid his crop over their loins. Then they’d advance another five yards. It reminded me of the mechanical horse race I’d seen in the slot-machine arcade.
    After five races I was hot, fly-bitten, and reeking of donkey, but there was still one more race to go. Tony took up the microphone and announced the Thoroughbred Fillies Half-Dash Triple Crown, in which mothers—exclusively—were invited to mount the donkeys. For some reason this attracted the most overweight women. It was a struggle for me to get the ladies mounted. The crowd thought I was playing it for comedy. I wasn’t. It was hard work to hoist these large ladies onto donkeys that knew what was coming. The canny beasts sidestepped, backed up, dipped forward, or even bucked to avoid their fate. After a lot of sweating, grunting, endless hilarity, and reckless betting from the spectators, we managed to get them all under starters orders.
    From the off the women screamed, the donkeys brayed, and Johnny’s whip lashed through the burning afternoon air. Instead of five