Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) (24 page)

“They played it fair, Socco,” Stony said. They were sitting in Socrates’ house on a Monday afternoon, each drinking from his own bottle of Cold Duck. Stony had been laid off from Avon Imports. “How could they help it if the man sees ’em comin’ an’ shoots hisself? You cain’t blame the cops for ev’rything.”

Socrates took another drink from his bottle. He wanted to hit Stony but held back.

They drank for a long time after that.

And then they drank some more.

“Socco?”

“Yeah, Stony?”

“What about that money?”

“What money?”

“The reward. I know they keep them Crime Watchers names quiet but if you turnt Ponzelle in then you musta got somethin’.”

“Cops kept the reward ’cept for a few hunnert dollars,” Socrates said. “I spent the first hunnert on the liquor you helpin’ me drink.”

Socrates lit a match and took a hundred dollar bill from his pocket. He set fire to the corner of the bill.

“Want it?” he asked Stony.

Stony grabbed for the bill from Socrates’ hand and snubbed out the flame with his thick workman’s fingers.

“What’s wrong wit’ you? This here’s a hundred dollars.”

“And it’s yours, Stony. That’s your share for helpin’ t’kill Ponzelle. All you had to do was grab for it.”

{8.}

Socrates awoke in the night thinking about the hundred and forty-seven hundred dollar bills that were buried in his meager yard. Three feet down they rested in their plastic bag. And with them the diary of the firebug.

The cops had found maps, clippings, notes, and paraphernalia enough to convince them that Ponzelle was their man. But Socrates had the diary.

He remembered one part by heart:

…
if I could just get them to see that we got to burn down all this mess we done stacked up and hacked up and shacked up all around us. If they could see the torch of change, the burning of flames all around their eyes. We could come together in fire and steel and blood and love and make ourselves a home. Not this shit, not this TV and church world. Not this jungle of dirty clothes and Christmas seals. Not ham on Sunday and grandma’s dead already and can’t even eat her piece….

B
LACK
D
OG

{1.}

“How does your client plead, Ms. Marsh?” the pencil-faced judge asked. He was wearing a dark sports jacket that was a size or two too big for his bony frame.

“Not guilty, your honor,” the young black lawyer said, gesturing with her fingers pressed tightly together and using equally her lips, tongue, and teeth.

“Fine.” The judge had been distracted by something on his desk. “Bail will be …”

“Your honor,” spoke up the prosecutor, a chubby man who was the color of a cup of coffee with too much milk mixed in. “Before you decide on bail the people would like to have it pointed out that Mr. Fortlow is a convicted felon. He was found guilty of a double homicide in Indiana in nineteen sixty and was sentenced to life in that state; he spent almost thirty years in prison.”

“Twenty-seven years, your honor,” Brenda Marsh articulated.

So much respect, so much honor
, Socrates Fortlow thought. A harsh laugh escaped his lips.

“And,” Brenda Marsh continued. “He’s been leading a respectable life here in Los Angeles for the past eight years. He’s employed full-time by Bounty Supermarket and he hasn’t had any other negative involvement with the law.”

“Still, your honor,” the bulbous Negro said, “Mr. Fortlow is being tried for a violent crime—”

“But he hasn’t been convicted,” said Ms. Marsh.

“Regardless,” said the nameless prosecutor.

“Your honor …”

The Honorable Felix Fisk tore his eyes away from whatever had been distracting him. Socrates thought it was probably a picture magazine; probably about yachting, Socrates thought. He knew, from his days in prison, that many judges got rich off of the blood of felons.

“All right,” Judge Fisk said. “All right. Let’s see.”

He fumbled around with some papers and produced a pair of glasses from the top of his head. He peered closely at whatever was written and then regarded the bulky ex-con.

“My, my,” the judge muttered.

Socrates felt hair growing in his windpipe.

“The people would like to see Mr. Fortlow held without bail, your honor,” chubby said.

“Your honor.” Ms. Marsh’s pleading didn’t seem to fit with her overly precise enunciation. “Eight years and there was no serious injury.”

“Intent,” the prosecutor said, “informs the law.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars bail,” the judge intoned.

A short brown guard next to Socrates grabbed the prisoners beefy biceps and said, “Come on.”

Socrates turned around and saw Dolly Straight at the back of the small courtroom. She had red hair and freckles, and a look of shock on her face. When her eyes caught Socrates’ gaze she smiled and waved.

Then she ran out of the courtroom while still holding her hand high in greeting.

{2.}

The night before there had been no room in the West L.A. jail so they put Socrates in a secured office for lockup. But now he was at the main courthouse. They took him to a cellblock in the basement crammed with more than a dozen prisoners. Most of them were tattooed; one had scars so violent that he could have been arrested and jailed simply because of how terrible he appeared.

Mostly young men; mostly black and Latino. There were a couple of whites by themselves in a corner at the back of the cell. Socrates wondered what those white men had done to be put in jeopardy like that.

“Hey, brother,” a bearded man with an empty eye socket said to Socrates.

Socrates nodded.

“Hey, niggah,” said a big, black, baby-faced man who stood next to the bearded one. “Cain’t you talk?”

Socrates didn’t say anything. He went past the men toward an empty spot on a bench next to a stone-faced Mexican.

“Niggah!” the baby face said again.

He laid a hand, not gently, on Socrates’ shoulder. But Babyface hesitated. He felt, Socrates knew, the strength in that old shoulder. And in that brief moment Socrates shot out his left hand to grab the young man’s throat. The man threw a fist but Socrates caught that with his right hand while increasing the pressure in his left.

The boy’s eyes bulged and he went down on his knees as Socrates stood up. First Babyface tried to dislodge the big fist from his throat, then he tried slugging Socrates’ arm and side.

While he was dying the men stood around.

Sounds like the snapping of brittle twigs came from the boy’s throat.

His dying eyes flitted from one prisoner to another but no one moved to help him.

A few seconds before the boy would have lost consciousness, no more than fifteen seconds before he’d’ve died, Socrates let go.

The boy sucked in a breath of life so deep and so hoarse that a guard came down to see what was happening.

Some of the men were laughing.

“What’s goin’ on?” the guard asked.

“I was just showin’ the boy a trick,” the big bearded Negro with one eye said.

The guard regarded the boy.

“You okay, Peters?”

There was no voice in Peters’s throat but he nodded.

“Okay,” the guard said. “Now cut it out down here.”

Socrates took his place on the bench. The fight was just an initiation. Now everyone in the cell knew: Socrates was not a man to be taken lightly.

“F
ortlow?” the same guard called out forty-five minutes later.

“Yo.”

“Socrates Fortlow?”

“That’s right.” It hadn’t been long but the feeling of freedom had already drained from Socrates’ bones and flesh.

He’d checked out every man in the holding cell; witnessed one of the white men get beaten while his buddy backed away. He’d made up his mind to go against the bearded Negro, Benny Hite, if they remained in the cell together.

Benny was a leader and naturally wanted to hold everyone else down. But Socrates wouldn’t go down for anyone and so there had to be blood before there could be sleep.

“Come with me,” the guard said. He had two large policemen with him.

{3.}

“Hi, Mr. Fortlow,” Dolly Straight said. Her skin was pale under thousands of orange and brown freckles. “I posted your bail.”

They’d given him his street clothes back but it was too late; the body lice, crabs, from the prison garb had already begun to make him itch.

“What you doin’?” he asked the young woman in front of the courthouse.

“I’m parked illegally up the block,” she said, hurrying down the concrete stairs. “I didn’t know it would take so long to give them the money and get you out.”

Socrates tried to ask again,
why
, but Dolly kept running ahead of him.

“I hope they haven’t towed it,” she said.

Her pickup was from the fifties, a Dodge. It was sky-blue with a flatbed back that had an animal cage moored in the center.

“Come on,” she said, taking the parking ticket from under the windshield wiper. “Get in.”

“W
hat’s this all about?” Socrates asked as they made their way from downtown.

“I put up your bail.” Dolly was redheaded, plain-faced, and she had green eyes that blazed. There were fans of tiny wrinkles around her eyes but she was no more than forty.

“What for?”

“Because of Bruno,” she said as if it should have been obvious.

“Who’s that?”

“The dog. That’s what I called him. I mean you can’t take care of somebody if he doesn’t even have a name. Most of your best vets always name their patients if they don’t get a name from the owners.”

“Oh,” Socrates said. He was wondering what to do with his liberation. Some men who’d spent as many years behind bars as Socrates had wanted to go back to jail; they liked the order that they found there.

“I’d rather be dead,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Why’d you get me outta there?”

“Because,” Dolly said. “Because I know what you did you did because of Bruno. He was almost dead when you brought him in to me. And when those policemen came to arrest you I just got mad. They think that they can just walk in anywhere.”

He hadn’t been looking for a fight. It was an early work day because he’d had to help with inventory at the supermarket and that started at four in the morning. He’d worked twelve hours and was tired. A dog, big and black, was nosing around, begging for food and Socrates told him to
git
. The dog got himself into the street and a speeding Nissan slammed him down. The man didn’t even hit the brakes until after the accident.

Socrates was already to the dog when the white man backed up and parked. The poor dog was scrabbling with his front paws, trying to rise, and whining from the pain in his crushed hind legs.

Socrates just wanted to help. As far as he was concerned the white man broke his own nose.

“How you know why I did what I did?” Socrates asked Dolly.

“Because I went back to where you told me the accident happened. I wanted to find out if the owner was somewhere nearby. I thought that I’d have to put Bruno to sleep but I didn’t want to do that until I talked to the owner.

“But there wasn’t an owner. Bruno didn’t have a home but I met an old lady who saw what happened. That’s what I told your lawyer. You know I don’t know if Miss Marsh would have gone down there or not. But I told her about Bruno and Mrs. Galesky and then she told me how I could put up your bail.

“I don’t know if I’d want her for a lawyer, Mr. Fortlow.”

“Why’s that?”

“She was trying to tell me how you were a convicted felon and that this charge against you was tough and you might run if you could. Even after I told her that I knew that you were innocent. I thought you black people helped each other out?”

“Dog gonna live?” Socrates asked.

Dolly’s face got harder and Socrates found himself liking her in spite of her youth and race.

“I don’t know,” she said. “His legs are broken and so’s his hip. I don’t even think they could do a replacement on a human hip that was that bad. His organs seem fine. No bleeding inside but he’ll never use those legs again.”

They drove on toward Dolly’s Animal Clinic on Robertson near Olympic.

{4.}

Bruno was a biggish dog, sixty pounds or more, and little of that was fat. He was unconscious in a big cage on an examining table in Dolly’s clinic.

“I gave him a tranc,” she said. “I don’t like to do that but he was in so much pain and his crying bothered my other patients.”

In a large room connected to the examining room Socrates could see rows of cages that ran from small to large. Most of the “patients” were dogs and cats fitted with casts or bandages or attached to odd machines. But there was also a monkey, three different kinds of birds, a goat, and something that looked like a tiny albino sloth.