Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1)

DON’T MISS WALTER MOSLEY’S EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

“I read Devil
in a Blue Dress
in one sitting and didn’t want it to end. An astonishing first novel.”

—Jonathan Kellerman

A RED DEATH

“Exhilaratingly original….”

WHITE BUTTERFLY

—
Philadelphia Inquirer

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

—Parnell Hall,
The New York Times

BLACK BETTY

“Detective fiction at its best-bold, breathtaking, and brutal….”

—Avis L. Weathersbee,
Chicago Sun-Times

A LITTLE YELLOW DOG

“A superb novel in a superb series.”

—Bill Ott,
Booklist

GONE FISHIN’

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

—Jack E. White,
Time

All Available from Pocket Books

Also by Walter Mosley

RL’s DREAM

“A beautiful little masterpiece … every page comes alive.”

—Tom De Haven,
Entertainment Weekly

Available from Washington Square Press

WALTER MOSLEY INTRODUCES
SOCRATES FORTLOW IN THE
ACCLAIMED NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED
,
ALWAYS OUTGUNNED

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

—
Booklist

“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.”

—Sven Birkerts,
The New York Times Book Review

“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.”

—
Playboy

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

—Amazon.com

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

—
Sonoma County Independent

“
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

A
LSO BY
W
ALTER
M
OSLEY

Devil in a Blue Dress

A Red Death

White Butterfly

Black Betty

RL’s Dream

A Little Yellow Dog

Gone Fishin’

For orders other than by individual consumers, Pocket Books grants a discount on the purchase of
10 or more
copies of single titles for special markets or premium use. For further details, please write to the Vice President of Special Markets, Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10020-1586.

For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon & Schuster Inc., 100 Front Street, Riverside, NJ 08075.

ALWAYS
OUTNUMBERED,
ALWAYS
OUTGUNNED

BY
W
ALTER
M
OSLEY

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.

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: 9-781-45161246-2

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

C
ONTENTS

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

C
RIMSON
S
HADOW