Maxie was seated in a window booth in the empty diner. Before him was a white ceramic mug decorated with blue dots around the rim.
Socrates maneuvered his way into the bench across from the policeman.
“Riot weather out there,” the ex-con said.
“Say what?”
“The heat. Back in the sixties if the mercury got over ninety-two it was riot weather. Air-conditionin’ is the only reason the United States didn’t have a revolution in the sixties.” Socrates smiled at his own humor but the man that had joined his Thinker’s group only a month before was no longer interested in his ideas.
“I’m not comin’ to your place anymore,” he told Fortlow.
“Why not?”
The police spy was at a loss for words. He simply stared at his host.
“You want somethin’ to drink, Socco?” asked a small black man in a white sailor’s cap.
“You got limeade, Salty?”
“Made it fresh this mornin’,” the waiter and cook said with a smile.
As Salty moved away Socrates repeated his question.
“Why you not comin’ back to the Big Nickel?”
“Because I’m a cop and you found me out.”
“So? Ain’t nobody among us turn you away for that. And we’d like to talk to you. You the man we need to know. I mean here you are a brother and still you come in an’ report us to the people standin’ in our way and on our heads at the same time.”
“It’s not white people standin’ in your way,” Truman said.
“I didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout white people. I just said people . . .”
“Here you go, Socco,” the middle-aged restaurateur said. He placed a tall frosty glass of the too-green beverage on the table.
“I called you a brother,” Socrates continued when Salty had gone again, “and the ones who stand in our way people.”
“You meant white people,” Truman said. “You mean that I’m some kinda Tom workin’ for white people.”
“Wan Tai is a brother,” Socrates said, “so is Chaim and Antonio. You don’t have to be black to be a brother an’ you don’t have to be white to be standin’ in the way.”
“What you want from me, Socrates?”
“I wanna know three things.”
“What?”
“Why did you come to our meetin’ in the first place?” “That’s my job. I’m s’posed to get inside organizations, criminal organizations, and find out what they’re doin’.”
“And how’m I a criminal organization?”
“Ron Zeal,” Truman said as if the name alone were proof.
“And if Ron started goin’ to Holy Baptist or Alcoholics Anonymous tomorrow would you go spy on them?”
Officer Truman worked his way to the edge of the seat and stood. He took out a five dollar bill and placed it next to his coffee mug.
“Fuck this,” he said. “I’m outta here.”
Socrates said nothing to this. He just pushed out his lower lip and nodded. The cop looked down on him, expecting something but obviously not getting it.
“What do you want?” Truman asked again.
“For you to answer my three questions.”
“And then we’re through?”
“That’s up to you.”
“What the fuck is that s’posed to mean?”
“Sit down, Maxie. Sit down and talk to me.”
Officer Martin Truman, responding to his alias, sat back upon the bench, across the table from the self-proclaimed thinker of the Big Table.
“I answered the first question.”
“Not completely,” Socrates said. “I asked would you spy on the Catholic Church if Ronnie started takin’ mass.”
“We would infiltrate any group that poses a threat to our city,” the policeman said.
“The city council?”
“Of course not.”
“And so because Ron Zeal comes to our meetin’s they put you on us like some kinda dog on a thief?”
“You have gang meetings in that house,” Truman said. “There are communists, anarchists, prostitutes in there and then you have daycare for children. It is the responsibility of the city government to protect children.”
“Even the children of prostitutes?” Socrates asked, “and of gang members, communists, and anarchists?”
“Drug dealers have been seen in your Big Nickel.”
“If they sold one stick in my place it would be the last thing they ever did,” Socrates vowed.
“That’s not the point. Police intelligence sees your place as a potential breeding ground of criminal activity and so they got me infiltrating your group.”
“That brings me to my second question,” Socrates said.
“You know I don’t have to talk to you, Mr. Fortlow,” Truman said. “I could get a group of men down at your place and beat you until you told us where that letter was.”
“I doubt that, Maxie. I mean I don’t doubt that you could get the manpower. I’m sure that they’d put the hurt to me. But you know there ain’t a soul in this city has studied pain more than I have. I got a Ph.D. in pain. Anyway you owe me.”
“Owe you what?”
“When you came out your door with that gun at your side I coulda killed you whenever I wanted. Stomped your foot and broke your neck. I could do it this very minute. And if you beat me you’d have to kill me ’cause you know I’d get you on the comeback. You know it. So let’s not sit here makin’ threats. You done answered one question. There’s only two more.” Truman sat back in his seat and turned his head to the side.
“Did you find out we was doin’ sumpin’ wrong at the Big Table?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Ain’t you there to find out if we was a threat?”
“Even if you aren’t a threat right now it doesn’t mean that you won’t be one in the future,” Truman argued. “You’re a felon. You might be taking innocent people and planning to turn them into crooks.”
“And did you see me doing that?” Socrates asked. “Was I tryin’ to fool them people?”
“You were talking shit to them. Actin’ like we could do somethin’ about malaria in Africa and terrorism. Shit.”
“We?” Socrates asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“You doin’ somethin’ ’bout terrorism, Maxie, and you’re just one man. One man get in with us and find all our bombs.”
“That’s different,” Truman said. “I’m with the police.”
“I’m with the brothers, Maxie. You been to my table. There’s some smart people there. Honest people. Even Ron Zeal is honest. He a killer but he don’t try ’n hide that. He wrong but he willin’ t’learn. Why can’t a man learn and then do somethin’?”
“Is that all your questions?”
“No. I got one more. I already asked you once but it’s worth comin’ back to.”
“Hurry up. I got to be someplace.”
“You mean you got some mo’ po’ niggahs to spy on?”
“Go on.”
“Will you come back to our meetin’s?”
“What?”
“Come back to us, Maxie. Come to the Big Table and tell everybody who you are an’ let them talk to you.”
“Are you crazy? Do you know what they’d do to me?”
“I ain’t done nuthin’ to ya, Max. I knew what you was and all I wanted to do was talk. I know you think what you doin’ is right. But I know too that you seen what we was. And you know bettah than any other man at that table that our fears about the world are right. We talk about people spyin’ on us and here you are the spy. It will help us to know you and hear what you got to say. Like I said—a brothah spyin’ on his own an’ he don’t even know it.”
“You’re serious,” Truman said as the truth dawned upon him. “You really believe all that stuff you sayin’.”
“If you don’t believe, Maxie, then you might as well give up. I learnt that in a eight by ten cell. There’s no life if y
ou don’t believe in sumpin’. I was in prison for a long time, a very long time. It was possible that I’d never be free again. But I believed I’d be free and that I would get a chance to make amends for the things I did.”
“I know what you did,” Truman said. “I read your file.”
Socrates lowered his head, thinking how many eyes had studied him and dismissed him; how many people knew of the pain he’d inflicted on those youngsters. And for a moment he almost gave up. How could he pass judgment on Maxie when he was guilty? How could he talk about doing right when he was so wrong?
“Does that make what you do better?” Socrates asked, strength flowing back through his lungs. “I did my crime. I served my time. I know in my heart how wrong I was. I don’t blame nobody and I never, not even once, claimed to be innocent. That’s all I’m askin’ of you.”
“What?”
“Come over to the Nickel and tell us about bein’ a spy. And you don’t have to worry, I promise I won’t tell ’em your real name or where you live at. Even if you don’t come your secret is safe with me.”
Truman could only stare, his features distorted by confusion. He shook his head, seemed about to speak, but the words didn’t come. He tried again but the amazement at this last question left him speechless.
“I can’t,” he said at last.
“You won’t.”
“I, I couldn’t. I mean I been doin’ this work for more than two years. You not the first people I got over on. I’d have to leave L.A.”
“What if somebody saw you one day at the Beverly Center with your wife and baby, shoppin’ for clothes? They might suspect sumpin’. And if they told somebody else your whole game might come to light.”
The darkness that invaded Truman’s features was not for the first time. But, Socrates thought, it was the first time someone had corroborated his fears.
“Are you gonna expose me, Mr. Fortlow?”
“I already told you—no. I just wanted to ask you those questions. I just wanted you to know that you not invisible and that the man you work for is not your friend.”
4.
“Why don’t you just tell the group about him?” Cassie Wheaton asked. Socrates and the defense lawyer were having hot dogs at an outside stand across the street from the criminal justice building.
“Because he got a nice young wife and a baby.”
“He’s a spy,” she reasoned. “He put them in jeopardy.” “You pregnant, aren’t you, girl?”
Socrates grinned because of the rare show of surprise on the lawyer’s face.
“Who told you that?” she asked.
“Nobody.”
“Then how would you know? How’s a man spent his whole life in prison gonna know a woman is a few weeks pregnant?”
“I was in that prison with men,” Socrates said.
“Yes.”
“And that’s what I been looking at—your man. Antonio treat you like you’d break if he didn’t pull out your chair. You with child and he the father.”
“Okay,” she said. “I am pregnant but what has that got to do with Truman?”
“You got people off that done wrong haven’t you, Cassie?”
“They were never guilty in court,” she said.
“But they killed people, they sold drugs and caused pain.”
“So?”
“Ron Zeal killed those boys that Leanne knew.”
“This is my job,” Cassie said. “If there were no defense lawyers there’d be no justice.”
“Yeah, and if we didn’t have cops we’d have to carry our kids with us like kangaroos or crocodiles.”
Cassie sniffed and took a bite of her hot dog.
“He spied on us, Mr. Fortlow.”
“Call Maxie’s boss and let him know that we seen him comin’. Tell him that we just want justice. Tell him that we’d like him to come to a meetin’ and tell us why we’re enemies of the state.”
Cassie frowned and shook her head.
“Does anyone else know about me?” she asked.
“They know about you and Antonio. I think they were surprised by that.”
“Because he’s a Mexican?” she asked, ready to be angry.
“Naw. ’Cause he so short.” Socrates laughed then. “They know about him but I don’t think they know about your condition.”
“You always surprise me, Socrates.”
“That’s what they tell me,” the self-made philosopher said. “An’ here I am just doin’ what I do.”
TRIFECTA
1. “I wanna say the first words,” Billy Psalms announced at the twenty-fourth weekly Thinkers’ Meeting. He was standing at the head of the Big Table after having served jambalaya and collard greens, corn on the cob and a green salad.
It was early evening at the Big Nickel and eighteen men, women, and a few teenagers crowded around the odd-shaped table sitting in mismatched chairs in front of plates of every size and shape. It was often said that the dinners, always prepared by Billy Psalms, at Socrates Fortlow’s Thursday night meeting were what kept many of the members coming back.
It was the custom on those evenings for someone to start out with a few words, a kind of prayer that was not necessarily or specifically religious.
The week before the junkman, son of many generations of junkmen, Chaim Zetel told an old joke: “A man,” the diminutive septuagenarian began, “prayed every morning to God. And every morning he made the same plea, ‘Please, God let me win the Lottery for a million dollars.’”
Many of the men and women at the table smiled, thinking of the thousands of dollars they had spent on the same dream; or maybe the many millions of dollars that poor people paid every day on that unlikely hope.
“For many, many years this man spoke the same words,” Chaim continued. “And as the years went on he married, raised a family, buried his wife and daughters, and he grew bitter. But still every day he would raise his hands to God and say, ‘Let me win the Lottery for a million dollars.’
“Finally on his ninety-seventh birthday, after having made this plea twenty-seven thousand seven-hundred and forty-one mornings, God appeared to the old man. ‘Jacob, please,’ the Creator of heaven and earth said, ‘help me out. Buy a ticket.’”
Socrates Fortlow was surprised that Psalms wanted to speak this week. He saw the inveterate gambler as a kind of sniper in the world of public oratory. He would wait until he saw an opening, a chance, and then send out a quick barb or quip or maybe even a word of support. He wasn’t the type to stand up in front of a crowd and make himself known—there was no percentage in doing that and Psalms was a gambler down to his dead father’s bones.
But there he stood in his black cotton trousers, black dress shirt, black undershirt and his signature herringbone jacket. It was a new jacket, Socrates noticed, which meant that Billy had been lucky at the track recently. The gambler took off his shortbrimmed, dark green Stetson and rubbed a thumb over the yellow feather in the hatband that he replaced every year on the second of January.
He cracked his knuckles, then slapped his hands together and rubbed them like a hungry fly. Sensing his nervous tension the diners became quiet. Soon the only sound was of forks hitting china.
“I’m not used to standin’ up and speakin’ my mind,” Billy said. “I’m a listener and a watcher, usually. I ah, I . . . I get worried. Not nervous mind ya, just worried because talkin’ is like the roulette wheel, where it get to no one knows.”
A few of the women smiled, understanding how hard it was for a man to allow himself to be exposed like that. Socrates could see the truth of this gentle care reflected in the sour, uncomfortable frowns on most of the men’s faces. Ron Zeal couldn’t even bring himself to look at Billy.
Luna Barnet was looking at Billy but she wasn’t smiling. Next to her sat a young black man wearing a bright orange wifebeater and black leather pants. He was a good-looking boy who kept a possessive arm around Luna’s shoulders.
Because she wouldn’t look at Socrates he g
ot the rare opportunity to study her. Her wild hair and world-weary expression did nothing to reduce her beauty.
“There’s a thing at the race track,” Psalms continued, “that most of you know. It’s called the trifecta and it’s the Holy Grail of race tracks all over the world and all the way back to before even the Christian church.”
“Aw come on now, Billy,” Mustafa Ali said. “That’s just the white man’s trick to get fools like you to throw yo’ money away.”
“These are first words,” Socrates said, raising his voice more than he intended to. “You cain’t argue when somebody got that flo’.”
Mustafa nodded and sat back in his bamboo chair.
Socrates realized that his heart was beating fast.
Four days ago he’d told Luna that he wanted her to look for some other man. That was during their nightly telephone conversation.
“I tried to see myself wit’ you,” he said in even, unemotional words, “but you just a child and I got evil in my hands.” “All right,” she said simply. “Bye.”
They had not spoken since then and tonight she came rolling in with a greasy-haired boy who had his arm around her shoulders. Socrates couldn’t imagine being jealous but there he was shouting at Mustafa Ali when Billy could have stood up for himself.
“Thank you, Brother Socrates,” Billy said, “but I wanna address what Mr. Ali says. The word trifecta, Brother Ali, comes from the ancient Roman word perfecta. That’s Latin and Latin’s older than the New Testament.”
Billy nodded and twisted his lips, daring anyone to contradict him.
“Anyway,” he continued, “The trifecta is the closest thing to perfect that a gambler can have. The trifecta is why some peoples wake up in the mornin’. Three horses. That’s all you need. Bet on three horses predictin’ which one comes in first, second, and third. You do that and they put it in the papers. You do that and it’s like a poker player hittin’ a royal flush in high stakes poker game when the rent is due an’ the repo man done drove off with yo’ favorite red Cadillac.”
Even the men could smile at that.
For a moment it seemed that Billy had finished. He turned to Socrates, who was looking at Luna with his big fists clenched.
Then Billy returned his attention to the Thinkers at the philosophy table.
The Right Mistake Page 9