Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Read online

  Clyde, completely naked, had wedged himself between the toilet and the wall. Socrates didn’t know if it was because he was trying to hide or if Fitzroy liked to keep him there.

  Fitzroy lay back on his bunk, naked to the waist.

  If Socrates’ thinking mind had been working at that moment he would have known why men were afraid of Fitzroy. The man was a giant. Big arms, big chest, and a big stomach that seemed to be stretched over a solid oaken barrel.

  He had big hands too, but Socrates’ hands were larger.

  Fitzroy lifted his head and focused his mud-colored eyes on the intruder. A smile came to his ragged lips. Even the scars on his face seemed to grin.

  Now Socrates had a new thought in his mind. If he gets to his feet I’m dead.

  By the time Fitzroy was sitting up Socrates was there over him. Before he could say a word Socrates struck with both fists in rapid order. The rock breakers, those hands were called.

  Clyde grinned when he heard the muffled snap of vertebrae.

  “I’m sayin’,” Socrates said, looking the old veteran in the eye, “that killin’ ain’t no answer for civilized men. I’m sayin’ that bein’ right won’t wash the blood from your hands.”

  The men listened. Stony even nodded.

  “So they ain’t nuthin’ t’do, right?” Markham asked.

  “I thought you said that you had somewhere t’be, Markham?” Socrates said in a friendly tone.

  “Uh, well, I thought well, you know …”

  “You could go on, brother.” Socrates stepped aside to make a way through the door. “We could play some checkers next week.”

  “Yeah,” Right said derisively. “Go on.”

  “Well, you know, my wife ’spects me home sometimes.”

  Nobody spoke as Markham pushed himself up from the cushions. They were quiet as he pulled on his sweater and looked around the couch to make sure that nothing had fallen out of his pockets.

  Markham tripped going through the doorway to the kitchen. Nobody said anything; nobody moved to see if he was okay.

  No one spoke until they heard the door to the outside slam shut.

  {2.}

  “Shit,” Right said. “Fuckin’ coward need t’run home t’his woman. Maybe he should sen’ her down here.”

  “I’ont know, man.” Stony coughed and ran his hand over his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “Markham mighta been right. What could we do about dope addicts an’ killers?”

  “Yeah,” Socrates said. “At least Markham know what he can do, an’ what he cain’t. That’s all I ever ask of a man: tell me where you stand. That’s all. You tell me where you stand an’ then I know where I’m comin’ from.”

  Right and Stony nodded their agreement. Howard just sat there; distrust and fear in his eyes.

  “’Cause we don’t want nobody cain’t stand up to what’s got to be done,” Socrates said.

  “An’just what is that?” Howard asked.

  “What’s the biggest problem a black man have?” Socrates asked as if the answer was as plain as his wallpaper.

  “A black woman,” Right said.

  They all laughed—even Socrates.

  “The po-lice,” said Howard.

  Socrates smiled. “Yeah, yeah. It’s always trouble on the street—and at home too. But they ain’t the problem—not really.”

  “So what is?” Stony asked.

  “Bein’ a man, that’s what. Standin’ up an’ sayin’ what it is we want an’ what it is we ain’t gonna take.”

  “Say to who?” Right asked. “To the cops?”

  “I don’t believe in goin’ t’no cops ovah somethin’ like this here,” Socrates said. “A black man—no matter how bad he is—bein’ brutalized by the cops is a hurt to all of us. Goin’ to the cops ovah a brother is like askin’ for chains.”

  “Uh-huh.” Stony was frowning, trying to understand. “Then who we talk to? If not the cops, then a minister?”

  Socrates just stared.

  “I know,” Howard said.

  “What?” asked Stony.

  “He wanna go up to Petis. He wanna talk to him.”

  Socrates smiled like a teacher approving of his student’s lesson.

  “Naw,” Right said. “How talkin’ to a killer gonna help?”

  “He the one we mad at,” Howard answered. “He the one done it. That’s just it. Go up to the motherfucker an’ tell’im we know who he is. Tell ’im that we ain’t gonna take that shit. Tell’im what you said, Right. Tell’im that he’s just hangin’ by a thread.”

  “You wit’ me?” Socrates asked the men.

  No one said no.

  {3.}

  Socrates and his friends went to see Petis the next afternoon. They came to the last door on the left-hand side of the Magnolia Terrace, a horseshoe shaped court of cheap bungalow apartments. When they got there Socrates turned to his companions and said, “Let me do the talkin’.”

  Then he knocked and waited.

  He knocked again.

  A group of seven small children cruised by on plastic tricycles. They made squealing noises with their mouths and turned away down the cracked cement lane that the fourteen bungalows faced.

  The thought of children near the dope fiend steeled Socrates.

  “Who is it?” a voice called from behind the door.

  “Me, Petis. Socrates Fortlow.”

  “What you want, man?” the husky voice whined. “I’m sleepin’ in here.”

  “I got money on my mind, Petis,” Socrates said. “Money an’ how you’n me could get some.”

  Stony shifted from one foot to the other.

  Right rubbed his nose with the back of his paralyzed hand.

  The door came open and the men behind Socrates squared off. Petis stood there dressed only in a white T-shirt and blue boxer shorts.

  Petis had the doorknob in his left hand, a six-inch carving knife in his right. He took a moment too long deciding whether to slam or to stab. In that moment of indecision Socrates delivered a terrible uppercut to the young man’s gut.

  The wind forced out of Petis smelled like the breath of a corpse. The tallish, loose-skinned man hurtled backwards and landed on the floor. Socrates walked in quickly and kicked the knife away.

  A teenaged girl came running out of a closet. She was brown with small bare breasts and tight black panty hose. She looked at Socrates as if maybe he was there for her.

  “Get your clothes on, girl,” Socrates said. “An’ get yo’ ass outta here.”

  Petis was vomiting on the floor.

  “I thought you said that you just wanted to talk to’im,” Howard whispered in Socrates’ ear.

  “This is talk, Howard. It’s the way to get a tough boy like Petis to pay attention.”

  “You from my daddy?” the girl asked Socrates. She had pulled a short dress on over her head.

  He regarded her for a long moment.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right,” he said at last. “Now get yo’ ass home.”

  “What you gonna do to Petty?”

  “Talk to’im is all.”

  That seemed to be enough for her. She grabbed a sack purse from out of the closet and made it through the group of men to the door.

  “Close it,” Socrates said after she was gone.

  It was dark in the room, with only a few shafts of light making it through the drawn and battered Venetian blinds. Petis had stopped throwing up but he was still gasping after his breath.

  One of the men flipped the light switch. The bare bulb from the overhead fixture could hardly have been called light.

  When Socrates took a step back from Petis he noticed that the floor was sticky. He saw the bottle lying on its side. Somebody had spilled an orange soda and hadn’t cleaned up.

  The room was no larger than Socrates’ living room. The only furniture was a straightback wooden chair and slender blue-and-white-striped mattress. Socrates pulled Petis up by an arm and put him in the chair.

  Petis was young but his s
kin was old; gray instead of brown, loose and pocked. His eyes were dark but otherwise colorless.

  “We know what you been doin’, Petis,” Socrates said.

  “What?”

  Socrates slapped the young man so hard that he fell.

  “Get back up in the chair, boy.”

  “Don’t talk, Petis. Nobody wanna hear what you got to say. We come here to talk to you. What you got to do is listen.”

  While Petis reseated himself he looked around for an escape. When he saw that there was none he gave his attention to his bald accuser.

  “We know what you been doin’, Petis. We got a witness to you killin’ LeRoy. We had a trial too…”

  Socrates paused and grinned his most evil grin.

  Petis belched and grabbed his stomach with both hands.

  “One man wanted just to shoot you. One man wanted to go to the police. We probably should kill you, I know. But finally we decided on sumpin’ else.”

  “What?” Petis asked quietly so that he wouldn’t be hit again.

  “You got to go, boy.”

  “What you sayin’?”

  “You got to go. Get outta here. Get outta this whole neighborhood. You got to go or else we kill you.”

  “I ain’t done nuthin’,” Petis said.

  Socrates slapped him.

  “I ain’t!” Petis sobbed loudly.

  Socrates hit him again.

  “You got to be gone by six, Petis. Six or we come in here and cut yo’ th’oat wit’ yo’ own knife.” Socrates picked up the blade and shoved it in his belt.

  “Six?”

  Socrates slapped him one more time. “Now what’d I say?”

  “Okay, man. Okay. But I got to say goodbye to my mother first.”

  “I don’t think you understand—if I see you anywhere but on a bus outta Watts I’m gonna kill you. Kill you.

  “There’s twelve men behind me on this, junkie. Us four and another eight from our group. We gonna kill you if we see you. An’ yo’ momma ain’t gonna stop that.”

  Petis had begun to shake. Socrates stood there a good long while staring. He hated Petis. Hated him.

  After a while he turned and said, “Com’on. Let’s go.”

  They waited on the street opposite the courts, next to Howard’s Buick. When Petis came out and saw them he ran back into his apartment.

  At sunset Socrates sent his friends home.

  “What you gonna do, Socco?” Right asked.

  “Go on home to Luvia, Right. All’a you go on.”

  Just before seven he saw Petis’s fleet shadow go toward the back of the courts. Before Socrates could react, the crackhead disappeared.

  The apartment was empty. Socrates couldn’t tell if Petis had gone for good or not because there was no telling what he might have taken or left behind.

  So Socrates waited the night. He sat in the dark and thought about poor Clyde. The warden had Clyde transferred to a hospital for the criminally insane. He was still there even while Socrates sat in the dark, the knife haft in his grip.

  Petis didn’t show up. Nobody heard about him for over a month. And when there was news it was about his death.

  Petis had drifted downtown after that day. He didn’t have any place to live and he was afraid to come back.

  He begged and lived in alleys downtown. He robbed other street people and tried his hand at drug dealing—but failed.

  Finally he got into a fight with a man he thought he could rob. Petis hadn’t realized how weak he’d become. He never recovered from the beating.

  Socrates watched his mother crying at the service.

  {4.}

  “Maybe we should have us a regular group meetin’ ’bout problems like Petis,” Stony said to Socrates one day as they were playing chess in South Park. “It worked out good the first time.”

  “I’ont think so, Stony. No I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “We ain’t some kinda gangbangers, man. We cain’t live like that. We did what we had to do. But you know, I don’t know if I’d have the heart ever to do it again.”

  THE THIEF

  {1.}

  Iula’s grill sat on aluminum stilts above an open-air, fenced-in auto garage on Slauson. Socrates liked to go to the diner at least once a month on a Tuesday because they served meat loaf and mustard greens on Tuesdays at Iula’s. The garage was run by Tony LaPort, who had rented the diner out to Iula since before their marriage; it was a good arrangement for Tony so he still leased to her eight years after their divorce.

  Tony had constructed the restaurant when he was in love and so it was well built. The diner was made from two large yellow school buses that Tony had welded together—side by side. One bus held the counter where the customers sat, while the other one held the kitchen and storage areas. The banistered stairway that led up to the door was aluminum also. When Iula closed for the night she used a motor-driven hoist to lift the staircase far up off the street. Then she’d go through the trapdoor down a wooden ladder to Tony’s work space, let herself out through the wire gate, and set the heavy padlocks that Tony used to keep thieves out.

  If the locks failed to deter an enterprising crook there was still Tina to contend with. Tina was a hundred-pound mastiff who hated everybody in the world except Iula and Tony. Tina sat right by the gate all night long, paws crossed in a holy prayer that some fool might want to test her teeth.

  She was waiting that afternoon as Socrates approached the aluminum stairs. She growled in a low tone and Socrates found himself wondering if he would have a chance to crush the big dog’s windpipe before she could tear out his throat. It was an idle thought; the kind of question that men discussed when they were in prison. In prison, studying for survival was the only real pastime.

  How many ways were there to kill a man? What was more dangerous in a close fight—a gun or a knife? How long could you hold your breath underwater if there were policemen looking for you on the shore? Will God really forgive any sin?

  Thinking about killing that dog was just habit for Socrates. The habit of twenty-seven years behind bars out of fifty-eight.

  As he climbed the aluminum staircase he thought again about how well built it was. He liked the solid feeling that the light metal gave. He was happy because he could smell the mustard greens.

  He could almost taste that meat loaf.

  {2.}

  “Shet that do’!” Iula shouted, her back turned to Socrates. “Damn flies like t’eat me up in here.”

  “Shouldn’t cook so damn good you don’t want no notice, I.” Socrates slammed shut the makeshift screen door and walked up the step well into the bus.

  The diner was still empty at four-thirty. Socrates came early because he liked eating alone. He went to the stool nearest Iula and sat down. The musical jangle of coins came from the pockets of his army jacket.

  “You been collectin’ cans again?” Iula had turned around to admire her customer. Her face was a deep amber color splattered with dark freckles, especially around her nose. She was wide-hipped and large-breasted. Three gold teeth decorated her smile. And she was smiling at Socrates. She put a fist on one hip and pushed her apron out, making an arc that brushed her side of the counter.

  Socrates was looking at her breasts. Tony had once told him that the first time he saw those titties they were standing straight up, nipples pointing left and right.

  “Yeah, I,” he said, in answer to her question. “I got me a route now. Got three barmen keep the bottles an’ cans on the side for me. All I gotta do is clean up outside for them twice a week. I made seventeen dollars just today.”

  “Ain’t none these young boys out here try an’ take them bottles from you, Mr. Fortlow?”

  “Naw. Gangbanger be ashamed t’take bottles in a sto’. An’ you know as long as I got my black jeans and khaki I don’t got no color t’get them young bulls mad. If you know how t’handle them they leave you alone.”

  “I’ont care what you say,” Iula said. “Them bo
ys make me sick wit’ all that rap shit they playin’ an’ them guns an’ drugs.”

  “I seen worse,” Socrates said. “You know these three men live in a alley off’a Crenshaw jump me today right after I got my can money.”

  “They did?”

  “Uh-huh. Fools thought they could take me.” Socrates held out his big black hand. The thick fingers were the size of large cigars. When he made a fist the knuckles rode high like four deadly fins.

  Iula was impressed.

  “They hurt you?” she asked.

  Socrates looked down at his left forearm. There, near the wrist, was a sewn-up tear and a dark stain.

  “What’s that?” Iula cried.

  “One fool had a bottle edge. Huh! He won’t try an’ cut me soon again.”

  “Did he break the skin?”

  “Not too much.”

  “You been to a doctor, Mr. Fortlow?”

  “Naw. I went home an’ cleaned it out. Then I sewed up my damn coat. I cracked that boy’s arm ’cause he done ripped my damn coat.”

  “You better get down to the emergency room,” Iula said. “That could get infected.”

  “I cleaned it good.”

  “But you could get lockjaw.”

  “Not me. In the penitentiary they gave you a tetanus booster every year. You might get a broke jaw in jail but you ain’t never gonna get no lockjaw.”

  Socrates laughed and set his elbows on the counter. He cleared his throat and looked at Iula watching him. Behind her was the kitchen and a long frying grill. There were big pots of beef and tomato soup, mashed potatoes, braised short ribs, stewed chicken, and mustard greens simmering on the stove. The meat loaves, Socrates knew from experience, were in bread pans in the heating pantry above the ovens.

  It was hot in Iula’s diner.

  Hotter under her stare.

  She put her hand on Socrates’ arm.

  “You shouldn’t be out there hustlin’ bottles, Mr. Fortlow,” she said. Her voice was like the rustling of coarse blankets.

  “I got t’eat. An’ you know jobs don’t grow on trees, I. Anyway, I got a bad temper. I might turn around one day and break a boss man’s nose.”