Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 boys 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.”
    Iula laid her finger across his knucklebones.
    “You could work here,” she said. “There’s room enough for two behind this here counter.”
    Iula turned her head to indicate what she meant. In doing so she revealed her amber throat. It was a lighter shade than her face.
    He remembered another woman, just a girl really, and her delicate neck. That woman died by the same hand Iula stroked. She died and hadn’t done a thing to deserve even a bruise. He had killed her and was a little sorrier every day; every day for thirty-five years. He got sadder but she was still dead. She was dead and he was still asking himself why.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “What?”
    “I don’t know what to say, I.”
    “What is there to say?” she demanded. “All you could say is yeah. You ain’t got hardly a dime. You need a job. And the Lord knows I could use you too.”
    “I got to think about it,” he said.
    “Think about it?” Just that fast Iula was