Walter Mosley - Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

DONT MISS WALTER MOSLEYS EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

I read Devil in a Blue Dress in one sitting and didnt 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 Americas 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 Mosleys novels.

Jack E. White, Time

All Available from Pocket Books

Also by Walter Mosley

RLs 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

Mosleys style suits his subject perfectly. The prose is sandpapery, the sentence rhythms often rough and jabbing. But thensudden surprisewe 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 Mosleys 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

RLs Dream

A Little Yellow Dog

Gone Fishin

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For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon & Schuster Inc., 100 Front Street, Riverside, NJ 08075.

BY WALTER MOSLEY

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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: 9-781-4516-1246-2

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

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 hadnt 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 didnt even notice the boy until he moved. He was standing in front of a small cardboard box, across the alleynext to Billys wire fence.

What bidness is it to you, old man? the boy answered. He couldnt 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. Aint yo momma told you tbe 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.

Whats it to you?

Socrates pushed open the wooden fence and leapt. If the boy hadnt 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 handsthe 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 arms length.

Dont make me hurt you, boy, he warned. He let go of one arm and said, Pick up that box. Pick it up! When the boy obeyed, Socrates pulled him by the armdragged him through the gate, past the tomato plants and string bean vines, into the two rooms where hed stayed since theyd let him out of prison.

The kitchen was only big enough for a man and a half. The floor was pitted linoleum; maroon where it had kept its color, gray where it had worn through. There was a card table for dining and a fold-up plastic chair for a seat. There was a sink with a hot plate on the drainboard and shelves that were once cabinetsbefore the doors were torn off.