Sam and Ed also believed in the existence of the gaseous vertebrate, the immaculate generation of senators, the pictures on the tube, and premarital chastity for at least some women (their own sisters, wives, and daughters). They also believed that they were twice as ugly and ten times as dangerous as wild gorillas, but that they had a right to be that way. They called it Black Pride.
Once inside the Wildeblood apartment, Ed and Sam were as efficient as a pay- of vacuum cleaners. To say they took everything that wasn't nailed down is to underestimate their rapacity. If something that looked valuable was nailed down, they employed pliers and other tools. When they finally drove away the U-Haul truck was as stuffed with goodies as the miniature sled allegedly circling the skies at that moment. When Mary Margaret Wildeblood returned from her month in Vermont, she was heard to compare her condition to that of the Chinese farmer in The Good Earth after the locusts had passed.
Ed and Sam drove directly to the Sugar Hill apartment of Hassan i Sabbah X, which is not listed on the mailboxes and can only be reached through another apartment with the name LESTER MADDOX on it. Ed, who knew this scene better than Sam, knocked.
"White," said a muffled voice from inside.
"Man," Ed replied.
"Native," came the voice again.
"Born," Ed completed the formula.
The door opened, and they were ushered into the home of a very respectable Afro-Methodist clergyman who had never been publicly connected in any way with Hassan i Sabbah X.
"What was that jive?" Sam demanded.
"Password," Ed explained briefly.
"Borrowed from the Ku Klux Klan," the clergyman added with some glee. "He got himself one weird sense of humor, Brother Hassan." He ushered them into the kitchen, slid the refrigerator around easily on specially built ball rollers, and they passed through to an apartment that did not exist in anybody's records anywhere.
The air was heavy with the smell of Indian hemp; an enormous statue of Kali, the Black Mother, dominated the room. A group of black men sat in a circle and Sam recognized two small cigarettes circulating in opposite directions, which he called clockwise and counterclockwise, not knowing the technical magical terms deosil and widdershins.
"You will now ascend to the sixth plane, without my guidance," said Hassan i Sabbah X to the circle. "I am returning to the earth plane briefly. Aummmm…"
"Aummmm…" came the blissful reply from the students.
Hassan led Sam and Ed to another room.
"What's all that sixth-plane shit?" Sam whispered to Ed.
"Astral projection," was the brief reply.
Hassan seated himself at his desk and smiled genially. "Been out celebrating the Lord's birthday?" he asked pleasantly. "Expropriating the expropriators?"
"We got a fuckin' truckload downstairs," Ed replied.
"Mmmm-mm/" Hassan said. "A merry Yuletide indeed. Class merchandise from Honkyville, or were you ripping off our brothers and sisters again?"
"Class," Sam said emphatically.
"And a truckload." Hassan smiled dreamily. "Why, brothers, if I'm as generous as my reputation, you likely to end up owning more horse than the Kentucky Derby!" He pressed a button and another black man entered the room. This was Robert Pearson by birth, Robert Pearson, Ph.D., according to the anthropology department at U.C.-Berkeley, El Hajj Stackerlee Mohammed during a militant period in the sixties, Clark Kent (with his Supermen) during his commercial rock music years, and now Robert Pearson again. "Accompany these cats to our warehouse and e-valuate the cash value of their merchandise," Hassan instructed.
Another trip brought Ed and Sam, with Pearson, to a building on Canal Street bearing the legend BHAVANI IMPORTS. Here the truck was unloaded, cataloged and priced.
"A genuine Klee or I'm a brass monkey," Pearson said once. "Your uh client has bread as well as taste."
"Now, what's this shit?" he said later, scrutinizing a saccharine rendition of two naked boys preparing to dive into a swimming hole, framed by a gingerbread copper-plated oval. "Oh, well, we can sell it as camp."
His sharpest reaction came when he confronted the redwood plaque bearing the ithyphallic eidolon.
"Jesus H. Christ on a unicycle," he breathed.
Sam and Ed exchanged glances. "We can't figure that one out, either," Sam ventured. "Beats the hell out of our ass."
"Looks like some bozo's joint," Ed suggested helpfully.
Pearson put out an exploratory hand. "Feels like some bozo's joint," he amended. "Sure as shit ain't plastic." He
shook his head wearily. "What I want to know is what kind of bozo would do this to his joint?"
Sam and Ed shrugged. "He was a white bozo," Sam contributed finally.
"I can see that," Pearson said. "A crazy white bozo," He rolled his eyes heavenward. "Lawd, Lawd," he said in down-home accents, "the things that white folks do, it's just too much for this simple cullud boy." "Skin!" cried Sam.
"Skin," Pearson agreed. They slapped palms. And there the mystery rested until Hassan i Sabbah X arrived personally to inspect the new imports a few days later.
"Namu Amida Butsu," he said, peering closely. "Shee-it."
"Where do you think we can sell it?" Pearson asked dubiously.
"That I do not know," Hassan i Sabbah X pronounced slowly. "But when we do find a buyer, the price will make your head swim. This is a one-of-a-kind item." Things were coming to a head. The key was no key. Hassan had other things on his mind that weekend; he was well aware that "Frank Sullivan" (probably, in his estimation, a double agent for both Washington and Peking) had recognized "Washy" Bridge and that opened a very wiggly can of worms, indeed. Ever since Washy had told him about Project Pan, in fact, Hassan had felt increasingly like the Sorcerer's Apprentice in the legend. A line from an H. P. Lovecraft story came back to his consciousness over and over again: "Do not, I beseech you, call up any that you cannot put down." Like many another occultist before him, Hassan i Sabbah X now wished he had taken that warning a bit more seriously a bit sooner…
Even before he left Bhavani Imports he was startled by an incident that seemed a definite Santaria synchromesh. "Hey, listen, man," an art appraiser cried, catching his sleeve, "I've just heard the greatest limerick. Listen, just listen: 'A habit obscene and unsavory-' " He broke down, laughing, caught himself, and repeated urgently, "Listen." He tried again:
"A habit obscene and unsavory