Foreword 2 page

That’s when the giant squid sort of appeared. It didn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a Wall Street tycoon, to realize what I did at that moment. The poltergeist activity from last night wasn’t fed from the Smiths, but from SPRITE. Point of sale: Randall.

Some unresolved issues there. A little frustration and anger?

“Christ! Get the cameras rolling! We have activity in the den!”

I moved to the side, behind what looked like the eye of the squid. It continued to grab up random objects with its tentacles and toss them at the doorway. Keeping quiet while it was busy, I looked for the fetter. Anything that might work.

A fetter was a leash of sorts. So, it’d have to be somehow connected to old Squidward here, right? Not around his neck because he didn’t seem to have one. So‑where?

Randall and Herb arrived then, as well as Ron, who sported a nasty bruise on his right cheek. Randall had the thermal imager in hand and was getting it geared up to point in the room. I moved to the side, out of the way and hopefully still out of sight of the poltergeist.

“Anything?” Herb said.

“No… wait. What the hell is that?”

I moved up behind them, slipping in between the two so I could look at the imager’s screen. Had they seen the squid?

“I‑that’s weird,” Randall looked at the monitor and then up into the room. “What’s so hot?”

Ah ha! There was a hot thing in there. The fetter? I moved in a little bit closer and saw it. Some orange and red spot in the far corner of the room.

Wait… wasn’t that‑

“Is that the camera?” Herb asked as he squinted into the room.

“Yeah,” Ron said. “What camera is that? I don’t recognize it.”

“It’s one the Smiths found when they moved in,” Randall said.

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. “It’s a classic Polaroid, and Mr. Smith said I could have it.”

“Why is it hot?” Herb said.

Old camera… I moved away from the trio and eased to the left of the room around the squid. It’d been busy extending its tentacles through the house again, and it hadn’t seen me.

Yet.

So the fetter was a camera. I guess cameras could be a source of frustration. Especially if they’d been used in some oogy way. Like for porno? For taking pictures that shouldn’t be taken?

Somehow I needed to convince them to destroy it‑and from the sound of admiration in Randall’s voice, that wasn’t going to be easy.

“There she is,” Randall said. “Just to the left in the room. See her?”

“Wow… you weren’t kidding,” Ron said.

I turned and glared at them. They needed to stop focusing on me and focus on the squid. Why couldn’t they see the squid? Didn’t make any sense to me‑not that I understood any of this.

“Why’d she throw the television at us?” Herb said.

“Because she’s a poltergeist.” Randall said. He faced the room, with no idea he was less than two feet from a giant glowing squid. “We mean you no harm‑why are you trying to kill us? Are you angry? Did something really bad happen to you here?” He held something in his hand, and I realized it was an MP3 recorder.

Wow… I’d never been interviewed before.

Something rumbled under my feet. I turned and saw the squid had turned as well and was looking at me with its one good eye. Yikes!

Tentacles whipped out of every nook and cranny of the room and threw themselves at me. It looked like thousands of white ropes uncoiling my way‑and I had nowhere to run!

Within seconds I was encased in them. They moved slowly through me as they had my ankles the night before, but as some fell away, they were quickly replaced by others.

I was trapped… and cold. Antarctica cold. My teeth rattled in my head, and I felt myself drop to my knees. I tried to concentrate on my cord, but I couldn’t find it in all the tentacles encircling me.

“What’s‑” Randall said. “What’s happening? She looks like she’s sick.”

“Randall… what are those snakelike things?”

I tried to concentrate on their voices to keep from disappearing into the ice surrounding my body. “Destroy… camera,” I managed to say. But could they hear me through the sound of the wind in my ears?

Wind? There was wind?

“Ron, did you hear that too?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me rewind.” I heard my voice replayed again and again.

“Does it mean the new camera?” Herb said. Then he said louder. “Can you tell us why?”

“Killing… me,” I managed to get out. “You… geek. ”

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that last part. But I was cold.

“Killing her,” Ron muttered and even I could hear the incredulousness in his voice. “How can it kill her if she’s a ghost?”

“Randall.” Herb’s voice sounded a little high. I pushed and pressed on the tentacles encasing me, but they continued to pass through me and then replaced themselves. “Look at the monitor closer. There and there… what the hell are those?”

“Holy‑” Randall said and his voice cracked. “They’re strangling her!”

Finally! Hello? Geeks are sloooooowwww.

I saw Herb move past me, skirting the edge of the poltergeist’s position, and grab for the camera. Two tentacles that oozed through me whipped out toward him‑no‑they whipped out ahead of him as if to grab the camera.

“Herb!” Randall called out before I could. “It’s going for‑”

It grabbed the camera before Herb could get to it and slammed it against the side of his face. I felt a slight warming around me and did my best to move away from the tentacles. My mind was racing ahead to my physical body‑thinking of the bruises on my ankles from a single brush with its tentacles and terrified of what I’d find left in my bed after this little travel.

Herb went down, and Randall moved into action. He dropped the thermal imager on the floor and dove for the camera. It whipped about in the air. I screamed for him to watch his left, then his right, and then it moved through me‑

And I was free.

Wha‑?

I wasted no time in moving out of the way. I was free, and warm, and not rooted to the spot as I’d been the night before. I didn’t know why that’d happened and in that instant I didn’t care. I just knew I needed to somehow get that frackin’ camera away from the poltergiesty squid.

Randall was still doing his jump and duck dance about the den, Herb lay on the floor clutching his head but making a solid attempt to get up, and Ron‑well, he was struck dumb at the door, probably freaked out by the levitating camera. I moved to the back, able to see what Randall couldn’t.

If I looked carefully, the thing’s tentacle arms moved as well as looked like a squid, so the lower parts attached to the body led the movement. I watched it for a few seconds to test my theory, and after two near misses at Randall’s skull, I knew right where it would be next.

Yelling at Randall to go right and up, I gave a good ole Georgia Bulldog woof when he caught the thing like a football, intercepting a supernatural pass.

“Smash it!” Herb yelled.

“No,” Randall said, scrambling to get out of the den and shoving Ron to the side. “It’s an antique.”

“It’s a damned fetter!” I shouted and ran around the poltergeist, jumping over the tentacles and doing a limbo. “Destroy it.”

“I‑can’t,” Randall said.

And just when I thought I was going to have to do some serious tongue‑lashing (damn, I wish I could move solid things!), Ron unfroze and grabbed the camera out of Randall’s hand. He moved with it down the hall.

A tentacle followed, and so did I. As did Randall and a stumbling Herb.

I got there in time to see Ron set the camera on the counter. He grabbed a hammer from the junk drawer (isn’t it interesting how every kitchen has one of those drawers, and they have hammers in them?), and opened a can of whup‑ass on that piece of electronic equipment.

It was broken in two whacks, pulverized in four, and by the ninth hit, he was denting the white and gold‑flecked formica counter.

Ohhh… Ron gets busy.

Randall grabbed Ron’s raised hammer hand and put a finger to his own lips. Everyone stopped. The hum in the house was gone (not that I’d realized there was one till it was missing). Was it…?

That’s when hell broke loose.

Every thingie that carried a current of any kind sparked in the house at the same instant. I ducked, even though my hair wouldn’t actually catch fire from the exploding microwave behind Herb. In fact, everyone was on the floor.

Once the fireworks stopped, I stood first and moved quickly back to the den. The poltergeist was gone. But was it really gone? As in dissolved into the abysmal plane?

I didn’t know. Nor did I care. I just really didn’t want anyone else hurt by it.

SPRITE’s electronic equipment lay on the orange and turquoise blue rug in smoking heaps. Ooh, they were not going to be happy about that.

“Oh, hell,” Randall said as he saw the mess. “Look what that ghost did.”

“This is going to cost us a fortune.” Herb still clutched at his head as he knelt down beside the sparking remains of the thermal imager. “And to think we helped her‑and she does this to our equipment?”

Me? They thought I did this?

That’s it.

I went home.

SPRITE did blame me, as I thought they would. All their equipment was destroyed, and in an odd twist of circumstance, the video they’d captured of me went missing. Even the copy Randall had kept was wiped clean.

I didn’t know how, and I didn’t care. The Smiths arranged for the house to be bulldozed and sold the property for more money than they paid. Bully for them. Woohoo.

It took me a week to get back on my feet, and I did come back to my body with a series of bruises over every inch of skin and muscle.

Ow, ow, and ow. Rest and plenty of Mom’s cooking and I’d be okay. Maybe a few pounds heavier. A new job came in‑a small case involving a dot com company‑involving snooping on the owners while they watched Chicago.

Two weeks away, mid‑November. Tuesday.

With Rhonda in tow, I tracked down the Brentwood daughter and learned the camera had been her father’s. And it’d been used to do exactly what I was afraid of‑to take pictures of her naked and prostrate.

But it hadn’t been her father that did it. It’d been her uncle.

We were sitting in a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia. The crisp turn of cold bit at my nose as we sat outside, enjoying the break from the south’s cruel and soupy heat. It was nice now, but we all knew it’d be hot again in a day or so.

Pumpkins and corn stalks propped on hay bails still decorated the corner.

Rhonda sat forward. “Did your dad know?”

The daughter nodded. She was still a pretty woman at forty‑five. Slim. Delicate. Careful. “I hid the camera, and my uncle accused my dad of taking it and keeping the pictures for himself. Dad found out what he’d been doing.” She gave a half smile. “And I never saw my uncle again. Even to this day I don’t know where he is. No one’s seen him.”

Rhonda and I looked at each other then, and I felt icy fingers move up along my spine to the base of my skull. I didn’t want to think about it or even consider it. But it’d be interesting to see what sort of things happened in whatever building rose on Web Ginn House Road.

The Hex Is In: A Harry the Book Story by Mike Resnick

So I am sitting there in the stands, and the Pittsburgh Pompadoodles are beating the Manhattan Misfits by a score of 63 to 10, which is not unexpected since the Misfits have not won a game since John Alden had a fling with Pocahontas, and I am silently cursing my luck, because the point spread is 46, and if the Misfits could have managed just one more touchdown, I would not have to pay off any bets to either side.

But it is the fourth quarter, and there are only twenty‑two seconds left on the clock, and the Misfits are eighty‑seven yards away from paydirt, and the Pompadoodles have been beating them like a drum all day. And then, suddenly, Godzilla Monsoon finds a hole off left tackle, and he races through it, and two of the Pompadoodles’ defensive backs run into each other, and damned if he hasn’t passed the midfield mark and is racing toward the end zone. Everyone is chasing him, but Godzilla’s got a head of steam up, and no one gets close to him. Now he’s at the forty‑yard line, now he’s at the thirty, now the twenty‑and then, just as I’m counting my profits, a piano falls out of the sky on top of him, and the ref whistles the play dead on the eight‑yard line.

Benny Fifth Street turns to me, a puzzled expression on his face. “You ever seen it rain pianos before?” he asks.

“Not that I can remember,” I admit.

“I wonder if it was a Steinway,” says Gently Gently Dawkins, who is sitting on the other side of me.

“What difference does it make?” I ask.

“Them Steinways are always a little flat in the upper scales,” he says.

“You want to see flat, take a look at Godzilla Monsoon,” offers Benny Fifth Street.

“You guys are getting off the point,” I say.

“Was there one?” asks Gently Gently Dawkins.

“The subject was rain,” answers Benny. “I suppose if it can rain cats and dogs, it can rain pianos every once in a while.”

“The subject,” I say, “is who wanted the Pompadoodles to beat the spread?”

“That should be easy enough,” says Benny. “Who put some serious money on the Pompadoodles?”

“Everybody,” says Gently Gently, chuckling in amusement. “The last time the Misfits won they were the New Amsterdam Misfits‑and then they only won because the other team was attacked by Indians on the way to the game and never showed up.”

I give what has occurred a little serious thought, and then I say, “You know, pianos hardly ever fall out of the sky on their own.”

“Maybe it fell out of an airplane,” says Gently Gently.

“Or maybe a roc was carrying it off to its nest,” adds Benny.

“Rocks don’t fly,” protests Gently Gently. “They just lie there quietly, and sometimes they grow moss, which I figure is like a five o’clock shadow for inanimate objects.”

“You guys are missing the point,” I say. “Clearly the hex is in, and I paid my hex protection to Big‑Hearted Milton. If the piano was going to fall on anyone, it should have fallen on the referee, who’s been blowing calls all afternoon.”

“Or the tuba player in the band,” adds Benny. “He’s always off key.”

“So why didn’t Milton stop it, or at least misdirect it?” I continue.

“Speaking of Milton, here,” says Gently Gently, handing me five one‑hundred‑dollar bills.

“If I speak of Milton, will you lay another five C‑NOTES on me?” asked Benny curiously.

“This is a bet,” answers Gently Gently. “I forgot to give it to you.”

“From Big‑Hearted Milton?” I say, frowning.

“Right. He gave it to me at halftime.”

“But Milton never bets,” I say. “It’s against the rules of the Mages Guild.”

“I heard they tossed him out for nonpayment,” says Benny.

“Which team did he bet on, as if I didn’t know?” I ask.

“The Pompadoodles, of course,” answers Gently Gently.

“Well, that explains why he didn’t stop the piano,” puts in Benny.

I get to my feet. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Where are you going, Harry?” asks Benny.

“I got to pay off all the guys who bet on Pittsburgh, and then I have to have a talk with Milton.”

“Where will you find him?”

“Same place as always,” I reply.

So I do like I say, and pay Longshot Louie and Velma the Vamp and Hagridden Henry and all the others, and then I head over to Joey Chicago’s Bar, where my office is the third booth on the left, and I toss my hat there and then go to men’s room, where I find Big‑Hearted Milton sitting on the tile floor as usual, surrounded by five candles and half‑singing half‑muttering some chant.

“ Milton,” I say, “we’ve got to talk.”

“Why, Harry the Book‑what a surprise,” he says. “Wait’ll I finish this spell.” He goes back to chanting in a tongue so alien that it might very well be French. Finally he looks up. “Okay, I’m done. Did you bring my money?”

“That’s what we have to talk about,” I say.

“All right,” he says, getting to his feet and snuffing out the candles with his shoe. “But I want you to know that I’m protected against spells, curses, betrayals, demonic visitations, and small nuclear devices.”

“Are you protected against a punch in the nose?” I ask.

He frowns and looks worried. “No.”

“Then let’s talk.”

“About my money?”

“About Godzilla Monsoon getting flattened by a piano.”

“He’ll be all right,” says Milton. “It fell on his head. It’s not as if it hit him in the knee or anything he ever uses.”

“Why did it hit him at all?” I ask. “And just when he was about to wipe out the spread?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” whimpers Milton.

“Come on, Milton,” I say. “The only time in five years you make a bet, and nine million pounds of music falls down on the guy who’s about to make you lose?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Maybe you didn’t drop it,” I say. “But I pay for hex protection, and you didn’t stop it.”

“It’s too complicated to explain,” says Milton. “Just give me my winnings and we’ll agree never to discuss it again.”

“Come on, Milton,” I say. “You can tell me what’s going on. We’ve known each other for fifteen years now.”

“We’ve been friends for fifteen years?” he says, surprised. “How time flies.”

“I didn’t say we were friends. I said we’ve known each other. Now, what the hell is going on?”

He cups his hand to his ear. “They’re calling you from the bar, Harry.”

“The bar’s empty, except for Joey Chicago, who was guzzling some Old Peculiar from the tap when I walked through.”

He looks at his wrist. “Oh, my goodness, look at the time!” he exclaims. “I’m late for an appointment. I really must run.”

“ Milton, you’re not wearing a watch,” I point out.

“I pawned it,” he says. “But I remember where the hands should be.”

“ Milton,” I say, “I just want you to know that this hurts me more than it hurts you.”

And with that, I haul off and punch him in the nose.

He hits the ground with a thud!, pulls out a handkerchief to try to push the blood back into his nostrils, and climbs slowly to his feet.

“You were wrong, Harry,” he says reproachfully. “It hurts me much more than it hurt you.”

“An honest mistake,” I say. “And now, unless you tell me what’s going on, I am going to make honest mistakes all over your face.”

“All right, all right,” he says. “But let’s leave my office and go to yours. I feel the need of a drink.”

We emerge from the men’s room and walk over to my booth, where Milton orders us each an Old Washensox.

“My treat,” he says. “Joey, put ’em on my tab.”

“I been meaning to talk to you about your tab,” says Joey.

“Holler when it hits fifty,” says Milton.

“I been hollering since it hit twenty, for all the good it’s done me,” answers Joey.

Joey brings us our beers, mutters the usual about firing Milton and hiring Morris the Mage to protect the place, and goes back to the bar.

“All right,” says Milton, “here’s the situation. I find myself a little short for money this year”‑which is not a surprise; Milton has been short for money since Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill ‑“and suddenly someone throws a beautiful gift in my lap.”

“What was her name?” asks Joey, who was listening from behind the bar.

“Opportunity,” says Milton.

“Not much of a name,” says Joey, making a face. “I prefer Bubbles, or maybe Fifi.”

“So tell me about this opportunity,” I say, as Joey leans forward to get her measurements.

“Gerhardt the Goblin‑you know, that little green critter who’s always screaming ‘Down in front!’ at Tasteful Teddy’s 5‑Star Burlesque Emporium‑anyway, Gerhardt approaches me one day last week and tells me that he’s got a client who wants to put five hundred down on the Pompadoodles, but doesn’t want to do it himself, and that if I knew anyone who would act as a middleman, he’d get twenty percent of the winnings.”

“And you don’t know who you’re working for?”

“I’m working for me,” says Milton with dignity. “I don’t know whose money I’m betting, but that’s a whole different matter.”

“Where can I find Gerhardt?” I ask.

“Beside Tasteful Teddy’s?” says Milton. “He loves betting on the lady mud wrestlers over at Club Elegante.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “They’re the only wrestling matches in the whole city that aren’t fixed.”

“You know,” I say, “I’ve been there a couple of times‑just for the coffee, mind you; I paid no attention to the wrestlers at all‑but I don’t remember any of the matches having a winner.”

“They don’t.”

“Then what’s to bet on?”

“Which one gets naked first. How long before they’re so covered with mud you can’t tell ’ em apart. How many men say they just go there for the coffee. That kind of thing.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I ask.

“Not a thing.”

“Okay, Milton,” I say, getting up. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Where’s my money?” he asks.

“Right here,” I say, patting my vest pocket. “And it’s my money.”

“Aw, come on, Harry,” he pleads. “Show a little charity.”

“You insist?” I say.

“I do.”

“Okay,” I say. “Tomorrow I’ll hunt up some charitable organization that repairs pianos.”

Then, before he can say another word, I am out the door.

I stop by Club Elegante looking for Gerhardt the Goblin, grab a ringside table, and when he hasn’t shown up by the seventh match, I decide to leave, especially because the next match features Botox Betty, who once broke her hand slapping my face over a friendly misunderstanding and a couple of intimate pinches, and Lizzie the Lizard, who shed her skin faster than French Fatima shed her clothes over at Tasteful Teddy’s.

By the time I get to my apartment, Benny Fifth Street is already there, watching replays of the piano flattening Godzilla Monsoon just as he crosses the ten‑yard line, followed by a hospital interview with Godzilla, who doesn’t sound any more punch‑drunk than usual, and finally a statement from the winning coach to all the young Pompadoodle fans out there that they should never neglect their music lessons because today clearly proves that music is important to their daily lives, and without music they might only have won by 46 points and disappointed all the big Pittsburgh plungers who bet on them to beat the spread.

Gently Gently Dawkins shows up just as we turn off the television‑he was busy eating his fourth meal of the day, which puts him maybe two hours behind his normal schedule‑and I tell them what Milton told me.

“Clearly, it’s got to be some Pittsburgh fan,” says Gently Gently.

“Why?” I reply. “You don’t have to be a Pittsburgh fan to fix a game.”

“You don’t?” he ask, frowning, and I can see he’s still a few thousand calories short of functioning on all cylinders.

“No,” I say. “Maybe this isn’t confined to Milton, or even to Manhattan. I mean, it’s got to cost a lot of loot to get a wizard good enough to pull that stunt with the piano. Maybe we should see if anything like that has happened anywhere else.”

“How should we go about it?” asks Benny.

“Start by calling Vegas. See if anything like today has happened when it looked like an underdog might win, or even just beat the spread.”

“I’ll do it,” says Gently Gently.

“Are you sure?” asks Benny. “I don’t mind making the call.”

“No problem,” says Gently Gently.

“Okay,” I say. “The phone’s in the next room.”

“I know,” he says, getting up. “So are the cookies.”

“He eats three more cookies and a biscuit, and you won’t need Milton to hex the bad guys,” says Benny, as Gently Gently leaves the room. “Just have him breathe on ’em, or maybe step on their toes.”

Gently Gently is back out in less than a minute.

“That was fast,” I say.

“It was all negative,” he replies. “No one’s dropped a piano anywhere.” He pauses. “Some Acme Movers dropped a pipe organ carrying it into a church out there, if that helps.”

“Not a whole lot,” says Benny.

“Anyway, our contact’s sorry, but no pianos. The only weird thing they’ve had out there is the tidal wave.”

“A tidal wave?” I repeat. “In Las Vegas?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

“No one was hurt,” says Gently Gently. “It comes from out of nowhere and practically drowns Nasty Nick Norris just when he’s about to pull a 300‑to‑1 upset in their tennis tournament, and then as quick as it comes, it goes away. I think they would have been convinced it was a mass hallucination, except that they found half a dozen codfish and a sea urchin stuck in the net.”

I pull out my abacus and dope out the odds that the tidal wave and the piano aren’t related. Since the abacus can’t compute any higher than a google‑to‑one, it melts.

“What have a Vegas tennis match and a New York football game got in common?” I muse.

Gently Gently raises his hand. “They’re both sports?”

I ignore him and say, “We need to find the connection. Someone’s paying a hell of an expensive wizard to rig these events, which means someone’s making a bundle on them‑someone who doesn’t want his name to be known.”

“That does not make a lot of sense,” opines Benny. “So someone is paying a wizard. That doesn’t mean he has to hide his own name. Anyone can lay a bet. Are you sure Milton wasn’t holding something back?”

“Pretty sure,” I say. “But even if he is, he knows that I am also holding something back from him”‑I pat my wallet‑“and we can trade whenever he wants.”

“You mind if I turn on the TV?” asks Gently Gently.

“Trying to find out who’s robbing us doesn’t interest you enough?” asks Benny.

“It ain’t that,” explains Gently Gently. “But I got a sawbuck down on Loathesome Lortonoi in the seventh at Del Mar, and it’s almost post time.”

“You bet with some other totally illegal bookie?” demands Benny.

“It ain’t ethical to bet with the illegal bookie I work for,” responds Gently Gently. He searches for the right words. “It’s a conscript of interns.”

“Let him watch,” I say. “It’s easier than arguing with him.”

The picture comes on, and the horses are already parading to the post.

“There’s Loathesome Lortonoi!” says Gently Gently, pointing to a huge black horse who looks like he and his rider should be chasing Ichabod Crane around Sleepy Hollow. “They shipped him out there just for this race. It’s a perfect spot for him.”

There are six horses approaching the starting gate. Four of them look like close relatives of Loathesome Lortonoi. The sixth horse looks like he should be pulling a death cart in medieval Graustark, or maybe be spread throughout a few hundred cans of dog food. Even the flies avoid him. His jockey looks like he wishes he could wear a brown paper bag over his head. The tote board says he’s 750‑to‑1.

“Is that Pondscum?” asks Benny.

“No, it’s just a little smudge on the screen,” says Gently Gently.

“I mean the horse.”

Gently Gently pulls a Racing Form out of his pocket and looks at it. “Yes, it is. Have you seen him before?”

“He was losing races back when I was in grammar school,” says Benny. “He was the slowest, ugliest horse in the world even then.”

The horses enter the gate, and a few seconds later the doors spring open and Loathesome Lortonoi comes out of there like a bat out of hell, and before they hit the far turn he’s fifteen lengths in front. The next four horses are spread out over another thirty lengths. Pondscum isn’t even in the picture.

They hit the homestretch, and now Loathesome Lortonoi is twenty lengths in front‑and suddenly the crowd starts screaming, and the announcer gets so excited he starts whistling and cheering and forgets to say what’s happening, but he doesn’t have to because in another two seconds Pondscum enters the picture. He is going maybe ninety miles an hour, and it seems like his feet are hardly touching the ground‑and then I realize that his feet are hardly touching the ground, because somehow while rounding the far turn he has sprouted wings and is literally flying down the home stretch. He catches Loathesome Lortonoi with a sixteenth of a mile to go and wins by thirty lengths.

Gently Gently turns to me. “Is that fair?” he asks in hurt, puzzled tones.

“We’ll know in a minute,” I say. And sure enough, a minute later the result is official and Pondscum returns $1,578.20 for a two‑dollar bet.

I turn to Benny. “Who do we know out there?”