Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

170 Pages·1998·0.91 MB·English

by  Mosley Walter

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
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’
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 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: 9-781-45161246-2
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

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.