“You our hero down here,” she said, her eyes glinting with Caribbean light. “Marianne Lodz talked about you in a maga
zine. I saw you in the paper too.”
“Come on by to the meetin’ house sometime, girl. Somebody
there almost every weekday mornin’. So many people want to
come to the Thursday night meetin’s that we got to screen ’em
but there’s somebody there almost every day.
“Excuse me but I just saw somebody I know.”
Lupe touched his arm and smiled at him as he moved past
her.
He was thinking about Lupe’s gift while following Tim Hollow down the street. For a block the young man was accompanied by another guy. The friend went into a doughnut shop and Tim turned off the avenue onto a side street. Two blocks down he came to a salmon pink apartment building and went in.
Standing outside, across the street from the apartment building, Socrates wondered at the fate that brought him to that juncture. There were children playing on the sidewalks, spilling over into the streets. There were mothers and older sisters, sullen teenage boys and girls who somehow seemed much older. Music came out of passing cars and apartment windows, and there was a general drone in the air.
Socrates closed his eyes and tried to imagine forgiving Tim Hollow, of walking down the street and letting sleeping dogs lie. He tried to overcome the spirit of vengeance that lay like a hot blanket over his soul.
In prison you had to hit back and hit back hard; that’s what all young convicts learned. They brought that knowledge back to the streets and turned the hood into a vast prison yard.
But Socrates had a Ph.D. in revenge; he was a master of the art. Most of the young men in the street confused killing with style or importance. They didn’t know how to get to the point and get out. Ron Zeal understood but he was unusual.
“Aren’t you that man?” a male voice inquired. He was a regular-looking kind of guy; brown-brown skin and short hair. There was a red tattoo of a Chinese symbol on his left forearm and a faded blue image burned into his neck. Other than the body art he seemed to be an everyday working man. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt with a few small holes here and there. His cap had a long visor and the brown leather belt cinched tight around his waist had a cowboy buckle of nickel and brass.
“What man?” Socrates asked.
“The one run them Thursday night meetin’s.”
Socrates nodded and wondered if he should wait for later to
exact his justice.
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“I wanna shake your hand, brother,” the everyman said. They
shook and he went on talking, “Pat Simmons my name. You know I been down here for years waitin’ for somebody to start us talkin’. I mean real talk. The kinda talk that sumpin’ gotta come out of. When I told my wife about you and how I was waitin’ for sumpin’ just like that she said, ‘Why din’t you do it yo’self?’ And it hit me that what I been sayin’ bad ’bout people not gettin’ together was true about me too.
“So I went through my phone book an’ called all my friends who know sumpin’. Tanya, that’s my wife, she cooked dinner and we all got together an’ talked. We been doin’ that for six weeks now. Next week my man Bernie gonna have us ovah his place.
“We been talkin’ ’bout gettin’ a place, either buyin’ or rentin’, an’ callin’ it the Safe House; you know like the cops an’ robbers do. Anyway our safe house be for kids to go do their homework and be calm an’ quiet an’ shit.”
“That’s a good idea,” Socrates said sincerely. “It’s a snappy name too.”
“Tanya come up wit’ it. She good about things like that.”
“She sure is.”
“You wanna go grab a drink, Mr. Fortlow?”
“I’m busy right now, Pat, but here.” Socrates took a plain white business card from his wallet. “Call this numbah and tell the answerin’ machine your name and number an’ say I said, light bulb man.”
“Light bulb man,” Pat Simmons repeated.
“Now you got to excuse me, Pat. I got some business to take care of.”
The mailbox gave Hollow’s apartment number. It was on the fourth floor at the far end of the hall. Socrates took the stairs three at a time and strode down the long hall like a screw making his rounds at the Indiana State penitentiary.
At Hollah’s front door he did not hesitate. He knocked, not too loudly, and waited.
“Who is it?” a male voice said with a slight quaver.
“Jim Beam.”
When Tim opened the door Socrates clocked him with a blow that would have killed a smaller man. Tim fell backwards and onto the floor. Socrates strode in swiftly and looked around for friends of the doomed boy.
He kicked open the bathroom door and yanked the curtain from the cheap fiberglass shower stall, making sure that they were alone. When he was back in the main room of the studio apartment Tim Hollow was halfway to his feet. Socrates hit him with an uppercut so vicious that it tore a cry from the young man.
He slammed the front door shut and turned to his kneeling victim. He lifted him and delivered two body shots, let him fall, lifted him, hit him twice more and let him fall again.
Socrates lifted him from the floor a third time.
“Please stop,” the helpless young man wheezed. “Please . . .”
Socrates slammed his hard fist into the side of Tim’s head and the boy went silent, falling to the ground like a two hundred pound sack of grain.
Breathing hard from his effort the ex-con grabbed a piano stool that sat at a single-stalk table obviously salvaged from a dump or demolition site. Socrates sat down hard, catching his breath before executing his final design. He reached into his pants pocket and came out with a folding hunter’s knife.
Unconscious Tim Hollow didn’t seem a day older than his twenty years. He was bulky with masculine muscle but had a child in his face.
Socrates opened his knife, revealing the gray, notched blade.
He got to his feet and searched Hollow’s clothing for a gun. He raised the knife for the killing blow and then retreated to his stool.
He remembered seeing Darryl in the ICU at the emergency room; tubes in his nose and mouth and three needles in his arms. He looked dead.
Socrates went to Tim again, raised his knife again, and then he went back to the stool.
“I’m pregnant,” Luna had said. “Congratulations . . .”
And there was the waitress who’d touched his arm and the man with the tattoos who shook his hand. And there were others; people that stopped him on the street and in the supermarket. For a short while, while he worked at the garage, he was approached every day by men and women who wanted to touch him and ask questions. The garage owner, a man named Gramsci, finally had to let him go because of the number of nonpaying customers who came to see the Watts philosopher.
“Please don’t,” Tim Hollow whispered.
Socrates roused from his reverie.
Tim was looking at him, hugging his ribcage.
“Don’t kill me,” he begged.
“You tried to kill Darryl. You shot my boy down in the street. He ain’t nevah done nuthin’ to you. He laid up right now, cain’t even walk right ’cause’a the way you shot him.”
“It was a mistake, man. I didn’t mean to hit him. It was this other dude I was aftah. He ripped me off, man. I was aftah him.”
The killing fever was already gone; with its departure Socrates was suddenly aware of a foul odor in the room. He didn’t know if it was the boy himself or some piece of rotting food but it was rank. Suddenly Socrates wanted to get away from that smell.
But he didn’t go. He stayed in his seat gripping the knife and staring into Hollah’s eyes.
“I know who you are, boy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t make no mistake about me, Hollah. Don’t be fooled by this big gut or bald head—I will kill you if I have to.”
“It was a mistake.”
When Socrates stood up Tim flinched and then cried in pain from the movement.
“Don’t let me see you again, Tim.”
“I need a doctor, man,” the boy whined. “Call 911.”
“Crawl there,” Socrates said and he left the room unsatisfied and discontented.
5.
That Monday Socrates stared at the cardboard box that Myrtle Brown had left at his private backyard doorstep. A note was taped to it. It was Myrtle giving Darryl back his clothes and his life.
“’Bout time that ole heifer let up on D-boy,” Luna said. She was holding Socrates by the hand as they sat side by side on matching maple chairs.
“If she a old heifer then what am I?”
“You are my man and the father of my baby.”
Socrates knew better than to argue against those words.
“You love me, Daddy?” Luna asked.
“Love?” he said. “Damn, girl, if you was to leave me it would be worse than if somebody hacked off my good leg.”
Luna smiled and Socrates snorted.
“I’d kill for you, Baby,” she said and someone knocked on the door.
Ron Zeal was standing there in the afternoon sunlight reflecting off of the lush green vegetation.
“Hey, Ron.”
“Talk to you a minute, Socco?”
As Socrates closed the door behind him he noticed that Luna had already turned away; a woman giving her man the space to do his business. In that brief moment, before he turned back to deal with Zeal, Socrates thought of how perfect he and the child were together. He was more than twice her age, he was older than her father would have been if he were alive but he never felt superior to her, not for one moment.
“Tim Hollow’s dead,” Ron said as the door shut.
“Dead how?”
“Somebody beat him up pretty bad an’ his friends come ovah to take him to the hospital. On the way he told ’em that you the one beat him and then he told ’em why. I guess it got out that he shot D-boy an’ you know you got friends all ovah this town. They kilt him comin’ outta his girlfriend’s house last night.”
“You had anything to do with that, Ronnie?”
“Uh-uh. Matter’a fact, when I heard about the trouble, I went ovah to Hollah’s friends an’ told them to tell him to leave. Either they didn’t tell him or he didn’t listen. One way or the othah it ain’t got nuthin’ to do wit’ you or me.”
It wasn’t until Friday that he went up to Chaim’s house on Lorenzo Drive in Cheviot Hills. It was a small place set up away from the street. Chaim was at work, he knew. Rosa, the housekeeper, answered the door.
“Mr. Fortlow,” she said, trying to hide her fear with a smile. Socrates could see in Rosa’s eyes that the domestic didn’t like him. She could probably tell, he thought, by his walk and mien that he was a killer.
“They in, Rosa?” he asked gently.
“Come in.”
“Mr. Fortlow,” Fanny Zetel said in greeting.
She was coming from the hallway that led to the bedrooms
wearing a turquoise dress suit and maroon shoes with modest heels. She was short and slight but her face carried both dignity and the certainty that comes with it. Her makeup was minimal and her eyes were cut from blue-gray quartz.
Fanny was in her seventies and, with Rosa, ran a perfect little house. The next day’s breakfast table was set with butter and a covered pot of air-dried beef the night before. The floors were swept every day. “She even got all hers shoes and Chaim’s in little silk bags in the closet,” Darryl had told him.
“Hi, Fanny,” Socrates said.
“He’s coming,” she replied, beaming at the powerful man. Darryl came in slowly, using a cane that Chaim had from a
knee operation a decade earlier.
“You men sit in the living room,” Fanny said. “Rosa, bring
them coffee and a soft drink.”
They sat for a while. Darryl went into a story about how the man across the street, a Mr. Stegner, had a swimming pool that he let Darryl exercise in.
“I just walk from one end to the other ten or twelve times and then I get out.”
Rosa was no taller than Fanny, the color of burnished copper. She bore fancy freckles and had done her best work many years before. She put down the tray with their drinks and left without speaking.
“You evah hear of a boy named Tim Hollow?” Socrates asked, interrupting Darryl’s new line of thought about how he and Fanny had gone to Santa Monica to see the ocean.
“Uh-uh.”
“He the one shot you.”
Darryl blinked and his mouth twitched.
“Somebody killed him,” Socrates said.
“Good.”
“I wasn’t me, D-boy. I kicked his sorry ass but I couldn’t kill him. Not no more.”
Darryl thought about this a moment and then he nodded.
“Myrtle left all your stuff in a box at my door.”
“Yeah. She said she would.”
“It’s ovah?”
“I’ma move in a room Chaim an’ them got out back,” the boy said. “I’ma get me a old car an’ go to Santa Monica City College.”
“Since when?” Socrates asked.
“You mad?”
“Naw. I ain’t mad. You know I been tryin’ to get you to go back to high school an’ now you say you goin’ to college.”
“They got a program get your GED an’ start college at the same time.”
It was Socrates’ turn to be quiet.
“It’s like you told me, Socco.”
“What?”
“When sumpin’ bad happen you nevah know, it might be for the best.”
Socrates wanted to say something but felt as if he’d already said it.
“Luna’s havin’ a baby,” he said at last.
“I know. She been comin’ ovah ev’ry othah day. Congratulations.”
“How are you two doing?” Fanny asked from the hall.
“I think we both be ready for long pants soon,” Socrates said. “Why’ont you come on in an’ join us. I’m about to be a father and Darryl here ’bout to be a man.”
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RED CADDY
1. They had been talking all night, Luna and Socrates. She was telling him about an apartment she lived in that was also a drug factory, distribution warehouse, and store.
“My daddy worked there and my mothah and brothahs too,” she said. “It was at the back of the first floor apartment of a small buildin’. We had a steel door with sixteen locks. I was thirteen an’ my boyfriend, Darien, was thirty-six.”
Socrates stroked her wild mane and laid his left palm over her still-flat belly.
“I nevah cried,” she said, “not when they shot Darien down in the street, not when my daddy died from poisonin’ hisself wit’ alcohol an’ drugs. One’a my brothers was dead an’ the other was on the run when they arrested my mama an’ I was still only thirteen. I lived on my own after that.”
Luna put both her small hands on Socrates’.
“I wanna tell you everything now we like this together,” she said. “You know I did the things that a woman do when she on the streets alone. I sold myself to old men and women too. I sold drugs an’ I even was with some men when they killed somebody one time.”
They were lying in the bed of his small cottage behind the big house in Watts. She turned to him and he kissed her gently next to her severe mouth.
“What do that mean?” she asked.
“That I love you, Luna.”
“Then why don’t you kiss my lips?”
He did so.
“You don’t have to stay wit’ me if you don’t want,” she said.
“Luna.”
“What?”
“When I first met you you wouldn’t say more’n three words at a time. Even when we got together you didn’t talk much. But now everything I say, even what I don’t say, you got some comment. An�
�� usually you either think I’m lyin’ or that I said sumpin’ I didn’t.
“What do you want from me, girl?”
She smiled and turned on her side to face him.
“I was in a juvenile detention center when my mama died. They had me in there for prostitution an’ because I was wit’ those men kilt that othah man. I run away and then, a long time later, I saved Marianne an’ she got me a lawyer that cleared it with the court for me.”
“Uh-huh. I figured that,” Socrates said.
“Do you love me, Mr. Fortlow?”
“Yes I do.”
“An’ you don’t care about what I did?”
“Not one bit. Not for one second.”
“Then why you got to be goin’ out in the middle’a the night an’ stayin’ away for days?”
Socrates laughed and Luna slammed her fist against his chest.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m just surprised, girl. I nevah thought in a million years that a pretty young thing like you be jealous of a old man like me.”
“That ain’t no answer.”
“Billy an’ me goin’ to San Francisco, that’s all. He got these people up there he want me to meet, says they could help out the Nickel. I ain’t nevah had a vacation in my whole life. It’s just me an’ him.”
“An’ all them hos up in Frisco.”
“You the only woman in my life, Luna. I ain’t lookin’ for nobody else.”
She pouted and hit him again. It was just a tap this time.
“What’s goin’ on, L? You know I ain’t no hound. You had to chase me down just to get me to look you in the eye.”
She smiled. “That’s ’cause I was so young an’ you thought they was gonna put you in jail.”
“You not that young,” he said. “Anyway, you know me better’n that.”
“Look at me,” she said.
He did.
“You sayin’ you don’t see trash from the street?” she asked.
“That ain’t the right question.”
“Huh?”
“The question is, do you see yo’self in my eyes an’ see trash? You know what I think an’ you don’t care what nobody else think. You done taken the leap, let yourself be pregnant and be with a man. You know I love you. You know where I’m from. But what you don’t know—”
The Right Mistake Page 14