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

and smoke a cigarette before more customers came.
    “Bring out a big plate for me an’ my friend here.”
    Iula brought out the food without saying a word to Socrates. But he wasn’t worried about her silence.
    He came around on Tuesdays, when Tony was gone, because he wanted Iula for something; a girlfriend, a few nights in bed, maybe more, maybe. He hadn’t touched a woman since before prison.
    And now he was afraid of what his hands could do.
    Iula was petulant but she didn’t understand how scared he was even to want her.
    She wanted a man up there on stilts with her to lift tubs of shortening that she couldn’t budge. She wanted a man to sit down next to her in the heat that those stoves threw off.
    If he came up there he’d probably get fat.
    “What you thinkin’ about, brother?” Wilfred asked.
    “That they ain’t nuthin’ for free.”
    “Well … maybe sometime they is.”
    “Maybe,” Socrates said. “But I don’t think so.”
    Wilfred grinned.
    Socrates asked, “What kinda work you do, Wilfred?”
    “I’m self-employed. I’m a businessman.”
    “Oh yeah? What kinda business?”
    Wilfred smiled and tried to look coy. “What you think?”
    “I’d say a thief,” Socrates answered. He speared a hot yam and pushed it in his mouth.
    Wilfred’s smile widened but his eyes went cold.
    “You got sumpin’ against a man makin’ a livin’?” he asked.
    “Depends.”
    “’Pends on what?”
    “On if it’s wrong or not.”
    “Stealin’s stealin’, man. It’s all the same thing. You got it—I take it.”
    “If you say so.”
    “That’s what I do say,” Wilfred said. “Stealin’s right for the man takin’ an’ wrong fo’ the man bein’ took. That’s all they is to it.”
    Socrates decided that he didn’t like Wilfred. But his stomach was full and he’d become playful. “But if a man take some bread an’ he’s hungry, starvin’,” he said. “That’s not wrong to nobody. That’s good sense.”
    “Yeah. You right,” Wilfred conceded. “But s’pose you hungry for a good life. For a nice house with a bathtub an’ not just some shower. S’pose you want some nice shoes an’ socks don’t bust out through the toe the first time you wear’em?”
    “That depends too.”
    “’Pends on what? What I want don’t depend on a damn thing.” Wilfred’s smile was gone now.
    “Maybe not. I mean maybe the wantin’ don’t depend on nuthin’ but how you get it does, though.”
    “Like what you mean?”
    “Well let’s say that there’s a store sellin’ this good life you so hungry for. They got it in a box somewhere. Now you go an’ steal it. Well, I guess that’s okay. That means the man got the good life give it up to you. That’s cool.”
    “Shit,” Wilfred said. “If they had a good life in a box you know I steal me hunnert’a them things. I be right down here on Adams sellin’ ’em for half price.”
    “Uh-huh. But they don’t have it in a box now do they?”
    “What you tryin’ t’say, man?” Wilfred was losing patience. He was, Socrates thought, a kind benefactor as long as he didn’t have to see a man eye to eye.
    “I’m sayin’ that this good life you talkin’ ’bout stealin’ comes outta your own brother’s house. Either you gonna steal from a man like me or you gonna steal from a shop where I do my business. An’ ev’ry time I go in there I be payin’ for security cameras an’ security guards an’ up-to-the-roof insurance that they got t’pay off what people been stealin’. An’ they gonna raise the prices higher’n a motherfucker to pay the bills, wit’ a little extra t’pay us back for you stealin’.”
    Socrates thought that Wilfred might get mad. He half expected the youth to pull out a gun. But Socrates wasn’t worried about a gun in those quarters. He was stronger than Wilfred, and, as he had learned in prison, a strong arm can beat a gun up close.
    But Wilfred wasn’t mad. He laughed happily. He patted Socrates on the