Ishmael Reed - Reckless Eyeballing

“Yeah,” Minsk chuckled. “We call them dybbuks.”

“Dybbuks, huh. Well, maybe that’s what happened to your old man. Your old man was listening to some dybbuk. Maybe he’s right. Maybe these white people are going to tighten the screws on the Jews. Brashford says he keeps his passport renewed, because the way the country is moving, he wouldn’t be surprised if they started up slavery again. He said that they’re pushing the clock back to the pre-Civil War period. Right now we’re in the 1880s.”

“Brashford. You listen to him a lot.”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“His talent isn’t all that large. His only play is warmed-over O’Neill. The Iceman Cometh . All of that stuff about illusion and reality. And the one scene taking place in the bar. The reason they went for it in the fifties was because the last monologue was delivered by a black guy got up in drag. Everybody knows that. That’s why he’s such a darling of the East Coast establishment.”

“Well, why can’t he steal from O’Neill? The white boys steal our shit. Brashford says that you got these sixty-year-old punk rockers saying that they invented jazz poetry and blues. The ones in their late thirties, the yuppies with their Brooks Brothers suits and things, are saying that they invented rock and roll, and some of the white dudes in their seventies claim ragtime.” Minsk looked at the clock. He had to get to the airport. When Ball said something to annoy him, Minsk would either change the subject, pretend that he didn’t hear, or come up with something else to do.

O’Reedy was seated at his desk. Tremonisha Smarts was lying on a sofa. She was dressed in a magenta-colored gauzy gown. Her thighs and tits — well, you didn’t have to strain all that much to see them. She was beckoning him. Reaching out to him. Enticing him to join her on the sofa. She even patted a place next to her, a seat she intended for him to have. O’Reedy was dressed in a tux, which fit just right, and shiny black shoes. He began to float toward her. Soon they were engaged in a mean tango, their bodies riveted. Someone cleared his throat, awakening O’Reedy from his reverie.

“Yes, what is it, Brown?” An Afro man, with keen features, a thick mustache, dressed in pants with well-defined creases and a splendid white shirt and striped tie, a shoulder holster fastened to his chest. He was holding some papers in his hand.

“The newspapers are calling him the Flower Phantom.”

“What?”

“The Flower Phantom.”

O’Reedy rustled the papers with annoyance. He tilted his head and slitted his eyes. “You’re not becoming sympathetic to this degenerate pile of shit, are you, Lieutenant?”

The young man snapped to attention. He straightened up.

“No, sir.”

“Then what’s the problem with you? Is it because you’re both black! Speak up, Brown!”

“No, not at all, sir.”

“Just because you’re both black, you must remember that he’s a criminal and you’re on the side of the law. He’s on the outside, you’re on the inside. Never forget that.”

Brown was embarrassed. “Sir, it’s just that, well, a lot of the fellows don’t like Tremonisha Smarts. She wrote that play Wrong-Headed Man . A lot of the fellows are saying that her portrayal of the brothers, well, you know, they’re saying that it’s not too cool. She makes out like we’re all wife beaters and child molesters. I mean, I don’t beat my wife. And that scene where Mose throws the woman down the stairs.”

“Did you see the play, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Go see the play, especially that scene — well, you know, well, there’s a scene — look, we’re here to protect the public, not to be theater critics. How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m thirty-two, sir,” the lieutenant said. O’Reedy sighed. Just a kid, he thought.

“Lieutenant, I have a lot of paperwork, if you will excuse me.”

“Yes, of course, sir.” The young lieutenant left the office, O’Reedy’s eyes following him. O’Reedy was looking forward to his retirement. It couldn’t come soon enough. The force certainly had changed. Along about the mid-seventies some meddlesome wimp of a judge had decreed that every time a white policeman achieved a promotion, they had to promote a black. Sure, police brutality complaints were on the decline, but that wasn’t the point. In the old days you roughed them up so that they’d realize that white men were in charge. You didn’t take any crap in those days. If they’d had this civilian review jazz in the old days, he and the boys would have seen to it that none of the complainants survived to file a complaint. He thought again about the time, decades before, when he had dropped those three bank robbers while finishing up his sandwich. If memory served him correctly, it was a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on whole wheat bread. He remembered all of the events of that day and played them over and over again in his mind. The screams, the blood and human tissue splattered all over the place. He kept blasting, and the black sons of bitches were flying in all directions, and the crowds were screaming. When he finished his sandwich, he went inside the restaurant and ordered another one. Cool as he could be. Squint-eyed and disdainful.

The whole Western World was becoming sissy. What did that sell-out Jew, Henry Kissinger, say? Something about the Western World going to the dogs, and how his job was to make it easier for the West to accept this. He’d read this in the Sunday paper. What kind of thinking was that? Jew thinking, that’s what it was. Used to have somebody around the department who agreed with him, but now all the fellows had left, gone to Vero Beach, Florida. Soon he’d join them.

Sure, they wasted a lot of the “underclass,” but in the old days the mayor and the head of the Police Benevolent Association would take your side. And if you, well, had to remove some poor slob from his misery, there was always the friendly M.E. who’d fix it up. Nowadays, the head of the Police Benevolent Association was a woman. Sanchez…Chavez…something like that. Lawrence O’Reedy dropped to one knee, pulled his gun, and mockingly pointed it at an imaginary fleeing suspect. “Freeze, you son of a bitch. Give me something to write home to Mother about.” He chuckled to himself. He got up and tugged on his pants at the waist. Brown was standing in the doorway, a puzzled expression. “You all right sir?” he asked.

Ball entered the plush building in which Jake Brashford’s in-town studio was located. He had a home on Long Island where it was claimed that he stashed away his wife and child. None of the fellas had seen them. The doorman looked him up and down before phoning up to Jake and having Jake verify his appointment. The doorman kept reading his newspaper as he nodded in the direction of the elevator. The New York Pillar said: “Flower Phantom Strikes Again.” Ian had read the paper that morning. The Flower Phantom had tied up the editor of a feminist magazine and shaved her head.

When he got off the elevator a well-tailored white woman was heading in the direction of the elevator. When she saw Ball she turned around and half trotted in the opposite direction. Ball was a large man with broad shoulders. He had large hands and ripe facial features. To some he might have resembled a large ape.

Brashford opened the door. He was slight with a thin mustache. His face was a reddish-brown color, and he had freckles: from his Irish ancestors, he claimed. He was always carrying on about the Cherokee and Irish in his background, and to skeptics would point out the famous black people with names like McCovy, MacElroy, Kennedy, McClure, McRae, and Shaw. He was frowning as usual, his hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket. The apartment was large and contained expensive furniture but very little of it. There were paintings on the wall that had been given or lent to him by friends from his generation. There were a number of books by Russian authors on his shelves. Dostoyevsky. Turgenev, whom Dostoyevsky accused of lacking ethnicity, and the old man Gogol, who ridiculed the modernist dogma that characters be “well rounded.” There was so much O’Neill memorabilia that the apartment seemed to be a shrine to the dark Irishman. In one room hung a huge portrait of Paul Robeson in Napoleonic military jacket and tights. An album cover on the top of the sleek blond (thirty thousand dollar) stereo system showed Louis Armstrong squint-eyed and grinning in an ambassador’s formal clothes. There were a number of books by American transcendentalists lining the bookshelves, plus oversized technical books on lighting, equipment, and stage design.