Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) by Walter Mosley Read Free Book Online

shoulder, feeling his hard muscle, and said, “You got a good tongue there, brother. You good as a preacher, or a cop, when it comes to talkin’ that talk.”
    Wilfred stood up and Socrates swiveled around on his seat, ready for the fight.
    Iula sensed the tension and came out with a cigarette dangling from her lips.
    Wilfred stripped off his exercise jacket and stepped out of the gaudy nylon pants. Underneath he was wearing a two-piece tweed suit with a brown suede vest. His silk tie showed golden-and-green clouds with little flecks of red floating here and there. His shirt was white as Sunday’s clothesline.
    “What you think?” Wilfred asked his audience.
    Iula grunted and turned back to her kitchen. He was too skinny for her no matter what he had on.
    “Come here,” Wilfred said to Socrates. “Look out here in the street.”
    Socrates went to the bus window and crouched down to look outside. There was a new tan car, a foreign job, parked out there. Socrates didn’t know the model but it looked like a nice little car.
    “That’s my ride,” Wilfred said.
    “Where it take you?” Socrates asked.
    “Wherever I wanna go,” Wilfred answered. “But mostly I hit the big malls an’ shoppin’ centers up in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and what-have-you.
    “I get one’a my girlfriends to rent me a car. Then I get all dressed up like this an’ put on a runnin’ suit, or maybe some funky clothes like you got on, over that. An’ I always got me a hat or a headband or somethin’. You know they could hardly ever pick you out of a lineup if you had sumpin’ on yo’ head.”
    Socrates had learned that in jail too.
    “I grab ’em in the parkin’ lot.” Wilfred sneered with violent pleasure. “I put my knife up hard against they necks an’ tell’em they dead. You know I don’t care if I cut ’em up a li’l bit. Shit. I had one young Jap girl peed on herself.”
    Wilfred waited for a laugh or something. When it didn’t come the jaunty young man went back to his seat.
    “You don’t like it,” Wilfred said. “Too bad.”
    “I don’t give a damn what you do, boy,” Socrates answered. He sat back down and scooped up the last bit of gravy in his spoon. “I cain’t keep a fool from messin’ up.”
    “I ain’t no fool, old man. I don’t mess up neither. I get they money an’ cut ’em up some so they call a doctor fo’ they call the cops. Then I run an’ th’ow off my niggah clothes. When the cops come I’m in my suit, in my car comin’ home. An’ if they stop me I look up all innocent an’ lie an’ tell’em that I work for A&M Records. I tell’em that I’m a manager in the mailroom over there. No sir, I don’t fuck up at all.”
    “Uh-huh,” Socrates said. He put a yam in his mouth after dipping it in the honey butter sauce at the bottom of the dish; it was just about the best thing he had ever tasted.
    “Mothahfuckah, you gonna sit there an’ dis me with yo’ mouth fulla the food I’m buyin’?” Wilfred was amazed.
    “You asked me an’ I told ya,” Socrates said. “I don’t care what you do, boy. But that don’t mean I got to call it right.”
    “What you talkin’ ’bout, man? I ain’t stealin’ from no brother. I ain’t stealin’ where no po’ brother live. I’m takin’ the good life from people who got it—just like you said.”
    “You call my clothes funky, din’t ya, boy?”
    “Hey, man. I din’t mean nuthin’.”
    “Yes you did,” Socrates said. “You think I’m funky an’ smelly an’ I ain’t got no feelin’s. That’s what you think. You don’t see that I keep my socks darned an’ my clothes clean. You don’t see that you walkin’ all over me like I was some piece’a dog shit. An’ you don’t care. You just put on a monkey suit an’ steal a few pennies from some po’ woman’s purse. You come down here slummin’, flashin’ your twenty-dollar bills, talkin’ all big. But when you all through people gonna look at me