Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Read online

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  DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

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  A RED DEATH

  “Exhilaratingly original….”

  WHITE BUTTERFLY

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  “With White Butterfly … Mosley has established himself as one of America’s best mystery writers.”

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  BLACK BETTY

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  A LITTLE YELLOW DOG

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  GONE FISHIN’

  “It is, in some respects, the best of Mosley’s novels.”

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  Also by Walter Mosley

  RL’s DREAM

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  WALTER MOSLEY INTRODUCES

  SOCRATES FORTLOW IN THE

  ACCLAIMED NATIONAL BESTSELLER

  ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED,

  ALWAYS OUTGUNNED

  “Powerful … hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction.”

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  “Mosley’s style suits his subject perfectly. The prose is sandpapery, the sentence rhythms often rough and jabbing. But then—sudden surprise—we come upon moments of undefended lyricism.”

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  “Unveiling a new, bigger-than-life urban hero … Mosley … confer[s] on the mean streets of contemporary L. A. what filmmaker John Ford helped create for the American West: a gun-slinging mythology of street justice and a gritty, elegiac code of honor…. A maverick protagonist.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Tough but touching stories.”

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  “Gritty and lyrical, the interlinked stories are stamped with Mosley’s unique brand of street-smart comedy.”

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  “An insistently probing, philosophical gem … set in a world where standard notions of right and wrong have been blown to hell.”

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  “ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED is the work of a writer unafraid of pushing forward his own notions of responsibility and entitlement.”

  —The Los Angeles Times Book Review

  ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY

  Devil in a Blue Dress

  A Red Death

  White Butterfly

  Black Betty

  RL’s Dream

  A Little Yellow Dog

  Gone Fishin’

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  ALWAYS

  OUTNUMBERED,

  ALWAYS

  OUTGUNNED

  BY WALTER MOSLEY

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Washington Square Press Publication of

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1998 by Walter Mosley

  Published by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  ISBN-13: 978-0-671-01499-5

  ISBN-10: 0-671-01499-4

  eISBN-13: 9-781-4516-1246-2

  First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing October 1998

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered

  trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Cover design by Brigid Pearson

  Cover photo by Barry David Marcus

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  The following is a list of where some of these stories originally appeared: Black Renaissance Noir: “Midnight Meeting”; Buzz: “Equal Opportunity”; Emerge: “Man Gone”; Esquire: “The Thief”; GQ: “Double Standard”; Los Angeles Times: “Letter to Theresa”; Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine: “Firebug”; Story: “Marvane Street”; Whitney Museum: “Crimson Shadow.”

  FOR GLORIA LOOMIS

  WITH SPECIAL THANKS

  TO JULIE GRAU

  CONTENTS

  Crimson Shadow

  Midnight Meeting

  The Thief

  Double Standard

  Equal Opportunity

  Marvane Street

  Man Gone

  The Wanderer

  Lessons

  Letter to Theresa

  History

  Firebug

  Black Dog

  Last Rites

  CRIMSON SHADOW

  {1.}

  “What you doin’ there, boy?”

  It was six a.m. Socrates Fortlow had come out to the alley to see what was wrong with Billy. He hadn’t heard him crow that morning and was worried about his old friend.

  The sun was just coming up. The alley was almost pretty with the trash and broken asphalt covered in half-light. Discarded wine bottles shone like murky emeralds in the sludge. In the dawn shadows Socrates didn’t even notice the boy until he moved. He was standing in front of a small cardboard box, across the alley—next to Billy’s wire fence.

  “What bidness is it to you, old man?” the boy answered. He couldn’t have been more than twelve but he had that hard convict stare.

  Socrates knew convicts, knew them inside and out.

  “I asked you a question, boy. Ain’t yo’ momma told you t’be civil?”

  “Shit!” The boy turned away, ready to leave. He wore baggy jeans with a blooming blue T-shirt over his bony arms and chest. His hair was cut close to the scalp.

  The boy bent down to pick up the box.

  “What they call you?” Socrates asked the skinny butt stuck up in the air.

  “What’s it to you?”

  Socrates pushed open the wooden fence and leapt. If the boy hadn’t had his back turned he would have been able to dodge the stiff lunge. As it was he heard something and moved quickly to the side.

  Quickly. But not quickly enough.

  Socrates grabbed the skinny arms with his big hands—the rock breakers, as Joe Benz used to call them.

  “Ow! Shit!”

  Socrates shook the boy until the serrated steak knife, which had appeared from nowhere, fell from his hand.

  The old brown rooster was dead in the box. His head slashed so badly that half of the beak was gone.

  “Let me loose, man.” The boy kicked, but Socrates held him at arm’s length.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, boy,” he warned.
He let go of one arm and said, “Pick up that box. Pick it up!” When the boy obeyed, Socrates pulled him by the arm—dragged him through the gate, past the tomato plants and string bean vines, into the two rooms where he’d stayed since they’d let him out of prison.

  The kitchen was only big enough for a man and a half. The floor was pitted linoleum; maroon where it had kept its color, gray where it had worn through. There was a card table for dining and a fold-up plastic chair for a seat. There was a sink with a hot plate on the drainboard and shelves that were once cabinets—before the doors were torn off.

  The light fixture above the sink had a sixty-watt bulb burning in it. The room smelled of coffee. A newspaper was spread across the table.

  Socrates shoved the boy into the chair, not gently.

  “Sit’own!”

  There was a mass of webbing next to the weak lightbulb. A red spider picked its way slowly through the strands.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Socrates asked again.

  “Darryl.”

  There was a photograph of a painting tacked underneath the light. It was the image of a black woman in the doorway of a house. She wore a red dress and a red hat to protect her eyes from the sun. She had her arms crossed under her breasts and looked angry. Darryl stared at the painting while the spider danced above.

  “Why you kill my friend, asshole?”

  “What?” Darryl asked. There was fear in his voice.

  “You heard me.”

  “I-I-I din’t kill nobody.” Darryl gulped and opened his eyes wider than seemed possible. “Who told you that?”

  When Socrates didn’t say anything, Darryl jumped up to run, but the man socked him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him, pushing him back down in the chair.

  Socrates squatted down and scooped the rooster up out of the box. He held the limp old bird up in front of Darryl’s face.

  “Why you kill Billy, boy?”

  “That’s a bird.” Darryl pointed. There was relief mixed with panic in his eyes.

  “That’s my friend.”

  “You crazy, old man. That’s a bird. Bird cain’t be nobody’s friend.” Darryl’s words were still wild. Socrates knew the guilty look on his face.

  He wondered at the boy and at the rooster that had gotten him out of his bed every day for the past eight years. A rage went through him and he crushed the rooster’s neck in his fist.

  “You crazy,” Darryl said.

  A large truck made its way down the alley just then. The heavy vibrations went through the small kitchen, making plates and tinware rattle loudly.

  Socrates shoved the corpse into the boy’s lap. “Get ovah there to the sink an’ pluck it.”

  “Shit!”

  “You don’t have to do it …”

  “You better believe I ain’t gonna …”

  “… but I will kick holy shit outta you if you don’t.”

  “Pluck what? What you mean, pluck it?”

  “I mean go ovah t’that sink an’ pull out the feathers. What you kill it for if you ain’t gonna pluck it?”

  “I’as gonna sell it.”

  “Sell it?”

  “Yeah,” Darryl said. “Sell it to some old lady wanna make some chicken.”

  {2.}

  Darryl plucked the chicken bare. He wanted to stop halfway but Socrates kept pointing out where he had missed and pushed him back toward the sink. Darryl used a razor-sharp knife that Socrates gave him to cut off the feet and battered head. He slit open the old rooster’s belly and set aside the liver, heart, and gizzard.

  “Rinse out all the blood. All of it,” Socrates told his captive. “Man could get sick on blood.”

  While Darryl worked, under the older man’s supervision, Socrates made Minute rice and then green beans seasoned with lard and black pepper. He prepared them in succession, one after the other on the single hot plate. Then he sautéed the giblets, with green onions from the garden, in bacon fat that he kept in a can over the sink. He mixed the giblets in with the rice.

  When the chicken was ready he took tomatoes, basil, and garlic from the garden and put them all in a big pot on the hot plate.

  “Billy was a tough old bird,” Socrates said. “He gonna have to cook for a while.”

  “When you gonna let me go, man?”

  “Where you got to go?”

  “Home.”

  “Okay. Okay, fine. Billy could cook for a hour more. Let’s go over your house. Where’s that at?”

  “What you mean, man? You ain’t goin’ t’my house.”

  “I sure am too,” Socrates said, but he wasn’t angry anymore. “You come over here an’ murder my friend an’ I got to tell somebody responsible.”

  Darryl didn’t have any answer to that. He’d spent over an hour working in the kitchen, afraid even to speak to his captor. He was afraid mostly of those big hands. He had never felt anything as strong as those hands. Even with the chicken knife he was afraid.

  “I’m hungry. When we gonna eat?” Darryl asked. “I mean I hope you plan t’eat this here after all this cookin’.”

  “Naw, man,” Socrates said. “I thought we could go out an’ sell it t’some ole lady like t’eat chicken.”

  “Huh?” Darryl said.

  The kitchen was filling up with the aroma of chicken and sauce. Darryl’s stomach growled loudly.

  “You hungry?” Socrates asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good. That s good.”

  “Shit. Ain’t good ’less I get sumpin’ t’eat.”

  “Boy should be hungry. Yeah. Boys is always hungry. That’s how they get to be men.”

  “What the fuck you mean, man? You just crazy. That’s all.”

  “If you know you hungry then you know you need sumpin’. Sumpin’ missin’ an’ hungry tell you what it is.”

  “That’s some kinda friend to you too?” Darryl sneered. “Hungry yo’ friend?”

  Socrates smiled then. His broad black face shone with delight. He wasn’t a very old man, somewhere in his fifties. His teeth were all his own and healthy, though darkly stained. The top of his head was completely bald; tufts of wiry white hovered behind his ears.

  “Hungry, horny, hello, and how come. They all my friends, my best friends.”

  Darryl sniffed the air and his stomach growled again.

  “Uh-huh,” Socrates hummed. “That’s right. They all my friends. All of ’em. You got to have good friends you wanna make it through the penitentiary.”

  “You up in jail?” Darryl asked.

  “Yup.”

  “My old man s up in jail,” Darryl said. “Least he was. He died though.”

  “Oh. Sorry t’hear it, li’l brother. I’m sorry.”

  “What you in jail for?”

  Socrates didn’t seem to hear the question. He was looking at the picture of the painting above the sink. The right side of the scene was an open field of yellow grasses under a light blue sky. The windows of the house were shuttered and dark but the sun shone hard on the woman in red.

  “You still hungry?” Socrates asked.

  Darryl’s stomach growled again and Socrates laughed.

  {3.}

  Socrates made Darryl sit in the chair while he turned over the trash can for his seat. He read the paper for half an hour or more while the rooster simmered on the hot plate. Darryl knew to keep quiet. When it was done, Socrates served the meal on three plates—one for each dish. The man and boy shoveled down dirty rice, green beans, and tough rooster like they were starving men; eating off the same plates, neither one uttered a word. The only drink they had was water—their glasses were mayonnaise jars. Their breathing was loud and slobbery. Hands moved in syncopation; tearing and scooping.

  Anyone witnessing the orgy would have said that they hailed from the same land; prayed to the same gods.

  When the plates were clean they sat back bringing hands across bellies. They both sighed and shook their heads.

  “That was some good shit,�
� Darryl said. “Mm!”

  “Bet you didn’t know you could cook, huh?” Socrates asked.

  “Shit no!” the boy said.

  “Keep your mouth clean, li’l brother. You keep it clean an’ then they know you mean business when you say sumpin’ strong.”

  Darryl was about to say something but decided against it. He looked over at the door, and then back at Socrates.

  “Could I go now?” he asked, a boy talking to his elder at last.

  “Not yet.”

  “How come?” There was an edge of fear in the boy’s voice. Socrates remembered many times reveling in the fear he brought to young men in their cells. Back then he enjoyed the company of fear.

  “Not till I hear it. You cain’t go till then.”

  “Hear what?”

  “You know what. So don’t be playin’ stupid. Don’t be playin’ stupid an’ you just et my friend.”

  Darryl made to push himself up but abandoned that idea when he saw those hands rise from the table.

  “You should be afraid, Darryl,” Socrates said, reading the boy’s eyes. “I kilt men with these hands. Choked an’ broke ’em. I could crush yo’ head wit’ one hand.” Socrates held out his left palm.

  “I ain’t afraid’a you,” Darryl said.

  “Yes you are. I know you are ’cause you ain’t no fool. You seen some bad things out there but I’m the worst. I’m the worst you ever seen.”

  Darryl looked at the door again.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna come save you, li’l brother. Ain’t nobody gonna come. If you wanna make it outta here then you better give me what I want.”

  Socrates knew just when the tears would come. He had seen it a hundred times. In prison it made him want to laugh; but now he was sad. He wanted to reach out to the blubbering child and tell him that it was okay; that everything was all right. But it wasn’t all right, might not ever be.

  “Stop cryin’ now, son. Stop cryin’ an’ tell me about it.”