Ishmael Reed: The Last Days of Louisiana Red

A slight breeze came up. LaBas pulled his white silk scarf around his neck and turned to go.

“I hope it’s not a long time before you return.”

“Hey, Bombo, get back here.”

LaBas’ companion turned to see the white zoo attendant in his white slacks and white shirt. The zoo attendant despised the animal, because the animal, for some reason, was one of the Central Park Zoo’s main attractions. He didn’t understand it — why people from all over the world had come to gaze at this particular baboon. LaBas and others had spent many afternoons at its cage. Some even seemed to be talking to it.

“I’d like to tear him limb from limb, but for now I will say goodbye, LaBas.” Hamadryas turned and shambled off to the corner of the cage.

LaBas walked out of the New York Central Park Zoo and headed towards the subway. He had to go to the Ted Cunningham Institute, a non-profit foundation for special students. He was teaching a course in the Occult Criminology Department, lecturing on that special criminal who leaves no fingerprints, works alone, but you can smell out its spirit. LaBas cracked the toughest of cases.

He got out of the subway station in Brooklyn and before entering the brownstone gazed at the plaque which bore Ted Cunningham’s face and his words:

Every Moment Brings a New Day

He had come down today as he had every Thursday to lecture a Business seminar on “Curses,” or Telepathic Malice, as it was being called nowadays. When he entered the outer office, the secretaries rose out of respect for the master. LaBas was still going strong. He left the package of Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong records with the lady receptionist.

The whole operation of T.C. Institute was Booker-T.-Washington spit and polish. I mean, you didn’t have students throwing their teachers out of the window or turning the bathroom into a shooting gallery. They had had it out with Louisiana Red: insolence, sloppiness, attitude, sounds from the reptilian brain, dejection and nay-saying had been brought under control.

He entered the classroom where his students were going over the assignments he had given them.

“What’s the latest report?” LaBas asked one of the students who was zeroing in on a man they had decided was bad for Business and meant them no good.

“Public support for him has dropped to 25 % but like the abomination he is, he has shown remarkable resiliency. Last night he said something incoherent to the Rumanian Ambassador’s wife and had to be whisked away by aides.”

“Well, keep working on him. Haunt him day and night, with the cries of those who died on the crossing. Lay one on him from Brazil’s ‘Old Black Slave,’ toss him and turn him and give his Bethesda doctors the same thing you gave him.”

LaBas thought of how things had changed since his heyday in the twenties. They’d come a long way from pins and needles, not to mention “viruses.” Even the Grossinger circle at Goddard College was beginning to accept the African theory of disease. Now, that was something.

He walked to the front of the class to begin the lecture when the messenger came into the room and handed him the note. He excused himself and hurried from the room. It was a long-distance phone call. When he picked up the hallway phone, he heard the ancient graveled voice spewing out arcane cusswords while giving him the assignment. LaBas had never met Blue Coal, Chairman of the Board, but he had heard a lot about him. This case must have been important to him; seldom did Blue Coal, “The Chairman,” issue orders personally.

After dismissing his class at the Ted Cunningham Institute for the day, LaBas took the 5:00 plane out to San Francisco. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. Ed Yellings struck down by intruders and mutilated; done in by Louisiana Red. Though he had never met Ed, people in the Business spoke highly of his Gumbo.

Wolf was standing near the baggage area. Smiling, he went up to greet LaBas.

“I figured it was you. I’m glad you could get here so soon. I feel better already.”

“I hope I can help, Wolf. I’m sorry about your father. He was a great man. It was amazing that he could do the Work he did in such a stifling atmosphere as you have out here.”

“Sometimes I think you easterners are all alike, LaBas.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It seems stifling, but the sun can often be just as stimulating as the coldness and the snow of the east.”

“Maybe you’re right.” They headed out of the door after LaBas had picked up his bags.

As they left, LaBas saw what he took to be two beggars standing in front of the airport doors, badgering and taunting passers-by; LaBas couldn’t stand proselytizers. They were rude to be beggars, LaBas thought. Snappy. In New York the panhandlers had developed begging into an art form: “Can you lend me fifty cents? I just killed my mother-in-law and don’t want to repair the axe.” Wit. But beggars with no art must be something else. He mentioned them to Wolf. “Those men won’t collect a dime if they keep harassing passers-by like this.”

“Those are Moochers, followers of my sister Minnie. They’ve tried to get into our Business. They hate the fact that we’re selective; and they hate industry. It’s an old old conflict.”

“Yes, I know.” Another Minnie? What a coincidence! I can do my research and work on a case too . “What progress has been made in capturing Ed’s killers?”

“None. They’ve disappeared.”

“Phantoms again. You could call it crowd delusions and the black man,” LaBas said. “They pop up so often in American history.”

He remembered when John Kennedy was shot. “Two black men running from the scene” was the first report. When George Wallace was shot. “Two black men running from the scene.” He wondered was this a real murder or just a case of “two black men running from the scene.”

Wolf introduced the chauffeur to LaBas. Amos Jones was the head of the fleet of small cars Gumbo Works used to pick up customers, a custom Solid Gumbo Works picked up from Kiehl Pharmacy, Inc., 109 Third Avenue, in New York. Some of the customers were infirm or violent; they were afflicted with the disease of Louisiana Red which sometimes caused them to fly off the handle. Others wanted to keep their identity secret. LaBas believed in masks. Amos introduced himself, and LaBas returned the greeting. Amos was a pro. LaBas liked pros. While his colleagues wanted to mooch and ended up riffraff, Amos Jones was providing his family with an education, reading his daughter Xmas stories. No matter how the professional rivals and industrial spies and unchecked criminal element referred to, euphemistically, as organized crime sought to block him, Amos got the customers to the Gumbo and the Gumbo through.

Wolf and LaBas were in the back seat on the way to an inspection tour of the G.W.

“According to my instructions, Wolf, I am supposed to check your Business and weed out the industrial spies, and if it turns out that they are responsible for your dad’s death, then they will be punished; if not by me, then the old Company.”

“I appreciate that, LaBas. Dad always spoke highly of you; he said you were the leading Business troubleshooter in the country and if there were some bad spirits in the Gumbo, you would certainly X them out. By the way, I think you’ll need this.”

Wolf showed LaBas a pistol.

“A Saturday Night Special?”

“You need it out here. Lots of niggers from Texas and Louisiana. Get hateful real quick.”

“Thanks, Wolf, but I think I can get by without it.”

Berkeley’s known as Literary Town, maybe because Bret Harte once read a poem at Berkeley’s School for the Deaf or because Frank Norris (“McTeague”) flunked math at U.C. Berkeley. However, the real talent came from the town of oyster pirates whose skyline was “gothic gable.” Oakland, California, produced Jack London, Gertrude Stein, Joaquin Miller. Berkeley was a traditional “dry town”—there was a scandal very early when Cal founder Doc Durant found that his helpers were selling bootlegged booze out of his Oakland School for Boys.