Ishmael Reed - The Terrible Threes

When they arrived at the Greenwich Village address, the man started to get out of the car, when they both noticed another man, or rather a creature, standing across the street, his muscles bulging under an overcoat. He was built like Arnold Schwarzenneger, and had Mike Tyson’s thick neck. He started for the limousine. “Lock the door,” Nance’s passenger said. The creature moved across the street as if in slow motion, and when he reached the car he began to bang on the windows. To Nance, he looked as though he were dressed for Halloween. He wore one of those horned Viking helmets over blond hair tied in pigtails. His mustache and beard were also blond. He was bare down to his waist. His middle was covered with what appeared to be bear skin. He wore boots tied in a zigzag pattern.

“We got to get out of here,” the man said.

“Holy shit,” Nance said. He started up the engine and began to move, but the Hercules merely grabbed hold of the car’s rear. Nance accelerated the machine, but it wouldn’t move, its wheels spun. Finally, the creature fell back and Nance sent the car spinning around the corner. The creature began running toward them, but soon disappeared from sight.

“Hey,” Nance finally said. “I know you. I saw your photo in the newspaper. You’re Bob Krantz, advisor to President Jesse Hatch, you said that blacks couldn’t accept Victorian values because their genes were bad.” Nance stopped the car. “Get the fuck out of my car. And I don’t want your money.”

“But, but. They’ll kill me. I don’t have anywhere to go.” There was no time for conversation, because heading toward them was the creature, Joe Beowulf, driving a red Triumph. Nance swerved out of the way and headed uptown, tearing through traffic.

“What do we do now?”

“That’s your problem, buddy, I don’t want to get mixed up in this jam you’ve gotten yourself into.” Bob Krantz put a thousand-dollar bill into the tray that was built into the window separating the back and the front seats. Nance took a long take of the money.

“I’ll put you up in my place until we can lose this guy.” They drove uptown, and Nance, who knew Manhattan like a spider knows his web, finally lost the creature.

Big Mike and the boys were sitting around, playing cards in the back room of Acme Records. The walls in the lobby were covered with gold records their artists had won. They were talking about how some of the younger members of the “organization” didn’t have “no” respect, and how one of them had come up to Big Mike and called him by that name, the name that had been reserved for only some of his “executives.” “I tried to keep him in the lobby, boss, but the guy pushed me out of the way,” Mike’s “secretary” said. “It’s OK,” Big Mike said, chewing on a cigar stub and not lifting his head from the cards. When the other fellas saw that Mike wasn’t bothered, they and the secretary put away their “toys.”

“What’s on your mind, Moog?” Mike said.

“You got a lotta nerve busting in here like this,” one of Mike’s assistants said. Mike looked over at the assistant, who was furious, and calmed him with his eyes. He then focused on Moog, and Moog could tell that he was annoyed, but Moog didn’t care. He was standing there scratching himself; he smelled as though his clothes had been cleaned by cheap chemicals.

“Mike, I’ll come to the point, I … I need some cash. I thought we’d get Boy Junior to make another album, you know, like the last one, we sold thirty million copies. Mike. Man, these people are threatening to put a foreclosure on my house, and I …” Moog nodded for a moment, shut his eyes. He began to reel. And scratch himself. He then awoke. “Mike, O shit, I forgot what I came up here for.” The guys who were sitting with Mike, playing a hand of cards, began to look at each other and smile.

“You were saying that you needed some cash. What the fuck do you want me to do, spade?”

“Motherfucker, I’m the one who brought Boy Junior up here. Man, I was the one who sold him to you. Shit, you’ve made millions of dollars off of his ass.” Moog was screaming. The shit was all in his bloodstream and brain cells, and he felt bold and confident.

“But what about the money you owe me?”

“Get lost nigger, you’ve been coming up here for three weeks asking me the same thing.” Moog thought for a minute.

“I have?” The men laughed. The laughter was derisive, mocking.

“Well, pay me then.”

“Fuck you, Moog. You snorted and free based all of your profits.”

“But, but you said that the shit, and the pills, and the dope, and all — you said — I thought you were giving me that shit to get me to … to do my arrangements better.” The men laughed again.

“You said you didn’t want cash, you wanted cowboy. That’s what you said, didn’t he, boys?” Mike said. The men nodded, and laughed again.

“You got a lot of nerve calling yourself a composer. Every musician in Hollywood has got a plagiarism suit against you for stealing their shit,” Mike said, turning serious for a moment.

“Those people are just jealous. Jealous of my genius. Look, Big Mike, you’re managing Boy Junior. Get him to come down from that multimillion-dollar tree house and record another record. I should be finished with the songs tomorrow if I work all night, and I can get what’s-his-name to throw together some of that hooker choreography and we’ll go in and do a video and, before you know it—”

“We don’t need you, nor that nigger dancer anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“You came in here the day before yesterday and sold us that synthesizer that composes all of your music. You know, the one that you had that Jap make for you. We don’t need you anymore. Don’t you remember? You started crying, didn’t he, boys? Said that you were desperate for some more shit.”

“I did?” The men broke up. “Wait until Boy Junior hears about this. He needs me. He won’t stand for it. Where is he?” Fryer said, trying to make himself heard over the laughter.

“He got in his jet and flew to Greece because he heard that there was a sighting of a unicorn. You know, he’s been searching all over the world for a unicorn. Craziest spade 1 ever met, but the motherfucker is like a oil well, gushing in all of this money, right, boys? And to think. It’s all legit. Not like that other shit we used to do. Beatin’ up people and breaking their legs.”

Moog started bawling then. He slumped to one knee. He crawled on the floor toward Big Mike. The men started reaching for their toys.

When he got to where Big Mike was seated, he bent over and started cleaning Big Mike’s shoes with his tongue. Big Mike kicked him in the teeth, knocking out a couple. He lay there for a moment, sobbing. Finally, Mike said: “OK, boys. Get him outta here.”

When Moog awoke he was lying in a trash can next to the Acme Record skyscraper. Blood was all over his clothes. One of the many thieves who were crawling the urban nights was running away with his shoes. He didn’t know what to do now. He’d laid out a couple of million for that synthesizer. All he’d have to do would be to program some funk, hip hop, salsa, rap, blues, rock and roll, rock, rockabilly, C&W, bossa nova, heavy metal, African pop, bluegrass, and he usually would have an album in twenty-four hours. Moog headed back to his house.

Nance was hanging back, sucking on some scotch which he held in one hand, and, in the other, a shrimp and seaweed hors d’oeuvre. It was one of those U.N. parties, attended by people from all over the world, wearing the costume of their country. Some people were dancing to the native music of Gun, the African country that was hosting the reception. Phillip and Virginia, who’d gotten him into the party, were talking to some of the guests, and Phillip was thrusting his finger into their faces. He hated Phillip. Sometimes, while asleep, he thought of Phillip fucking his wife, his ex-wife, Virginia; he’d have to get out of bed and smoke a cigarette and couldn’t get back to sleep. That was before he became celibate. Weary of checking potential sex partners’ antibody status, he had sworn off sex. Now he could go through life without worrying about somebody penetrating somebody else, an obsession of his for the first thirty years of his life when being in love was like being the goalie in a game of ice hockey, trying to prevent somebody’s net from being pucked. He remembered about three months into his celibacy, the dream that came. These people from outer space were lining up American women and shoving them onto spaceships. They were the only ones who wanted them, he figured. American men with their mail-order brides were standing on the sidelines cheering, and his Jewish dentist who’d converted to Islam was standing with his new lady, and he was kinda leading the cheers. When one of the creatures pushed Virginia in she looked to him for assistance and he ignored her; he pretended that he didn’t know her, and that Flipachino who had threatened him about her daughter was putting up one hell of a fight, and when the spaceship took off, about three hundred feet up, they dropped her from the flying saucer. He awoke smiling. Celibacy meant that he could screw the women all of the time in his dreams. He could imagine what some of those guys up there next to the Pope dreamed about. They must have gotten surprises all of the time, like Robert Mitchum did in the scene where he returned to his motel room, and Jane Russell was lying on his bed. You couldn’t see her face for her bosom.