Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) by Walter Mosley

eyes and smug satisfaction that sang through her body.
    Ralphie was trying to press his erection down to the side so that it wouldn’t be seen pressing against his pants. When she put out her hand to help him he pushed it away and gave Socrates a shy sideways glance.
    “It’s the 86A,” she said, pointing at the bus.
    Not Socrates’ line.
    “Why’ont you wait for the next one?” Ralphie asked. His voice was gruff and petulant at once.
    The bus was only half a block away, barreling down fast.
    “Come on, Linda,” Ralphie demanded. “Stay.”
    Even the way they talked was like sex; Ralphie begging for it and Linda ... Linda wanted to give it to him but she couldn’t. She had to get on that bus and so decided to enjoy the sweet pain she was bringing her man.
    “I got to go, Ralphie,” she said, cold as that rain. “I’ll see you Tuesday though. Right?”
    The bus’s brakes squealed up to the stop.
    “Stay,” he said, taking her by the hand.
    The bus doors came open and Linda took a step backward into the door.
    “Come on. Hurry it up,” the bus driver said.
    Linda, both feet up in the bus and bent half over, tugged twice against Ralphie’s grip. She yelled, “Let me go, Ralphie!” like a child trying to get her best friend in trouble.
    She couldn’t have broken the big man’s grip, his hands were almost as large as Socrates’ rock-breaking mitts, but Ralphie let her go. She fell backwards into the bus. The doors levered shut immediately.
    “See you Tuesday!” Ralphie cried out but the bus was already moving on.
    The big man got on his tiptoes in a vain attempt to see her one last time. But the rain was too hard and the bus swerved at the wrong angle—even if the weather had been good he wouldn’t have been able to see her.
    Ralphie? Socrates thought.
    {3.}
    Close up Socrates could see Ralphie’s dark face. It protruded from his oval-shaped head. A perfect egg head with fish eyes and big sensual lips that, Socrates imagined, were even more swollen from Linda chewing on them. The big man didn’t want to have anything to do with Socrates. That was no surprise. Socrates’ khakis were stained and faded, there were thick veins at the knees from where he’d mended the secondhand pants. His bright, red-striped T-shirt, even under the army jacket, made him look like some kind of fool. Top all that off with a tan fishing cap that had Fisherman’s Wharf stitched across it, and you had a bum—what people called a street person in the 1990s.
    S ocrates liked to talk to people, but he didn’t have to talk to Ralphie. He didn’t care about the young man. He would have let things lie if the bus had come; if the rain had let up and allowed him to wander away from the shelter; if Ralphie had just nodded or said something to make him feel like he was at least considered a part of the human race.
    There was a time that Socrates would have hurt a man for ignoring him the way Ralphie did.
    Socrates Fortlow was a violent man. He’d come up hard and gave as good as he got. The rage he carried brought him to prison but the Indiana Correctional Authority wasn’t able to stem his anger.
    He looked Ralphie in the eye, giving him one last chance to be civil. Ralphie registered no more recognition than if a stray dog had regarded him.
    “Your backside got pretty wet there, brother,” Socrates said, proving that he had the ability to speak.
    The young man looked. Then he sneered and shook his head.
    “Listen, man.” Ralphie pointed his finger. “I’m lettin’ you stay here ’cause nobody should be out in no rain like this. But I don’t want you talkin’ t’me. Hear?”
    Socrates smiled.
    “What you laughin’ at, niggah?” Ralphie wanted to know.
    “Oh,” Socrates sang. “I just think it’s funny.”
    “What’s funny?” Ralphie took a step forward. Another man might have been frightened of Ralphie’s bulk, but Socrates wasn’t scared.
    “I don’t know. I mean, here you are callin’ me a niggah