Ishmael Reed - The Last Days of Louisiana Red

Sister was on the sofa in the other room being given sedation by the family doctor. The police came downstairs. Wolf had been racing around and couldn’t find out what was what.

“What’s going on?” he asked a Berkeley policeman.

“There’s been a murder… Ed Yellings.”

Wolf was shocked.

“According to the Nanny, she heard Ed groaning upstairs. She ran up, and there he was, lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from stab wounds. Said she saw two negro men, a short one and a tall one, racing across the lawn below the window.”

“Did she get a complete description?”

“It all happened too fast. The men maybe thought that Ed was away at the Solid Gumbo Works and used it as an opportunity to rob him. They didn’t take any money but rifled his papers.”

“Industrial spies.”

“What?”

“Industrial spies,” Wolf repeated. “We’ve had a lot of snooping about the place since that cancer cure. Government agencies too. You’d think they’d be glad to have a cancer cure; I don’t know how their mind works.”

Wolf wasn’t ready for Ed’s death. The Workers had had a meeting in which they discussed the possible reprisals for curing cancer, but nothing was done.

Amos Jones, Ed’s driver, wanted to give him extra protection, but Ed refused it.

Wolf told the Nanny he still wanted her to stay on, and she thanked him. She said she would pray for Ed’s soul so that it wouldn’t enter the torment of those who died a violent death. And then she crossed herself. Sweet old soul, Wolf thought. Such childlike commitment.

In order to keep the Gumbo from going under, strong security was needed. Wolf called upon the Board of Directors of the Ancient Co. for instructions. They in turn would dispatch one of their topnotch troubleshooters.

“You won’t be coming around for a long time, LaBas.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“It’s true. You’ll see.”

“Well, I haven’t known you to be wrong. Explain.”

“I won’t go into it completely. You see, there’s a man in a small town that thinks it’s radical: Berkeley, California.”

“Stop speaking in riddles.”

“It is a small town of the west, not the international experimental social and political laboratory it pretends to be. It’s the same town it was a hundred years ago when they drove cattle over its north and south hills. There’s a man out there. An inventor. He is on the brink of one of the great discoveries of all time, but he won’t live to see it. I don’t understand all of it. Our powers are not as keen as they were centuries ago when we were worshipped and consulted by the Golden Kings. I know that in a few hours he’ll be dead.”

“Well, I could use a little detective job. Outside of the class at the Ted Cunningham Institute, which will be ending in a few days, I haven’t had anything planned for the summer except continuing my investigation on Minnie the emotional and psychic thief.”

“Minnie?”

“Yes, Minnie the Moocher. She’s a special type of psychic crook we want to find a cure for, but first we have to get her details on file so that we’ll be able to spot her whenever she victimizes someone.”

“What’s her horoscope?”

“I’m trying to find out by using the lyrics of a song popularized and co-authored by Cab Calloway. You know. It begins with the lines (sings): ‘Now here’s a story ’bout Minnie the Moocher/She was a low-down hoochy coocher */She messed around wid a bloke named Smokey/She loved him tho’ he was a ‘cokey.’

“This is the first clue: a strong, glamorous female with hustling powers whose old man is her inferior, a ‘cokey’ who has a drug problem. A classical emotional vamp who conned the King of Sweden into providing her with riches: ‘gold and steel home,’ ‘a platinum car with diamond-studded wheels,’ a ‘town-house and racing horses,’ until the authorities arrested her and her accomplice, for pimping and prostitution. The scandal would have embarrassed the royal family, and so Minnie and Smokey were quietly deported to the United States.”

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” LaBas’ companion said.

LaBas gave his companion a pear and began to pace up and down in front of his cage. He was dressed in his characteristic black woolen overcoat of many years and his glossy black “Old Doctor” shoes; a touch of grey showed here and there on the bare bushy head of hair towering above his million-year-old Olmec negro face. He was the same, except that his 1914 Locomobile had been replaced long ago by an inconspicuous foreign car. He had learned the hard way that it pays to be inconspicuous. A man who brags of his wealth attracts moochers like bait on a wet piece of cardboard attracts slugs.

“Well, they weren’t even wanted in the United States, and so they were extradited to New Jersey, where Minnie feigned religion; she was still hard as nails. She seduced an A.M.E. Zion bishop who was won over by her sexual prowess—‘praise the Lord’—turned on by her you-got-what-it-takes, until she was exposed by a supernatural bunko squad. You will notice in one line it reads: ‘They took her where they put the crazies.’”

“What do you need from me, LaBas?”

“A translation of the line, ‘Skid a ma rinky dee, Ho de ho de ho.’ In those lines lies the key to Minnie-detection. You see, it has been held that her problems originated from outside of her, suggested in the liberal-social worker lines, ‘just a good gal but they done her wrong.’ This means the lines were tampered with. You see, if I can prove that she was no helpless object swept away by forces beyond her control but a dedicated agent of the sphinx’s jinx, an acolyte of an ugly cause, if I can interpret her through African Witchcraft, then a lot of people’s eyes will be opened and they will be on the lookout for this character posing as a victim of history while all the time she is a cruel jinx with her zombie companion, Smokey. Who do you think gave him the coke and took care of his habit? Before you knew it, his brains were scrambled and his nose blown. That way she had him where she wanted him. She was sent to destroy the patriarchy — notice how her victims are connected with Royalty and the Theocracy.”

“You know too much to be in your young seventies, LaBas. Don’t let nobody know you know these things. You know how primitive people hate those who know too much.”

“I don’t worry; they say I’m crazy. As long as I’m crazy, they’ll see me as harmless and will leave me alone so that I can continue my Work. Our time in this life is so short.”

“Don’t worry, LaBas. Your race and mine have been here for a million years or more. Somebody will turn up and continue your Work …” Hamadryas the scorpion-catcher and leopard-pounder began to gaze into the distance. This meant that he was about to receive some new data. The quadruped had a great royal grey mane, a long sad face and red eyes deeply set.

“I just received some more information on your trip. I got a flash of sync when I said somebody else will carry on your Work. This man in California. He was carrying on somebody else’s Work. Somebody from New Orleans.”

“I’m beginning to get the picture.”

“Leave the lines you want me to translate.”

LaBas pushed a piece of paper with the lines in question written on it through the bars. Hamadryas held it in his hand.

“What else do you know about this Minnie?”

“She’s the worst of tyrants. Like the Black Widow spider that draws its prey, loves it, then drains it. Only she doesn’t drain it physically, she drains it emotionally. She deprives her victim of the ability to express itself. The victim becomes a hollow zombie thing, enlisted into her ranks of slaves. She takes the energy of her subjects and lives off of it.”