The Right Mistake (5 page)

Billy carried out a large Pyrex pan of cooked cherry filling with a dozen short biscuits floating in the red. Darryl followed him, bringing out a stack of smaller bowls while Luna collected the dishes and silverware used for the gumbo. Socrates served this time, passing the dessert around to his left.

Cassie and Antonio made coffee together.
Zeal did not partake of the desert—but he didn’t leave either. When the food and drinks were all served the talk became

“Me an’ Darryl take care of the dishes,” Socrates was saying to Billy when the front door blew off its hinges and a dozen cops in riot gear rushed into the room.

The host turned toward the advancing army, watching the short-barreled rifles pointed at them.
Some police flanked the table in a military formation while others of them rushed into the building, moving through the kitchen. Socrates could hear them stomping on the floor above.
Amid the drumbeats and the strained faces came a tall man dressed for battle but not bearing a weapon. He was tall and slender, fair-skinned and in charge. He wore gloves and a bulletproof vest.
Socrates stared at him and smiled.
“What are you smiling at?” the commanding officer asked.
“Everybody on the floor!” another voice commanded.
“Captain Beatman,” Cassie said, coming to her feet. “What is the meaning of this?”
Socrates could see the commanding officer mouthing the words, “Oh shit.”
Wheaton approached the unarmed cop.
“Counselor, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Show me your warrant,” Wheaton replied, holding her hand out.
“Everybody on the floor!” the second voice called again.
The rifles rose higher.
Captain Beatman held up a hand and the rifles came down. He handed an official looking sheet of paper to the lawyer. She read it over quickly and laid it on the table, next to Socrates.
“Drugs?” Wheaton asked.
“We saw Ronald Zeal coming to this address. We suspect him of trafficking.”
“So you break down an innocent man’s door?”
“Mr. Fortlow is an ex-convict.”
Socrates’ smile became a grin. The footsteps upstairs rumbled like thunder.
“Either kill us all or leave,” Cassie Wheaton said, the waver in her voice underscoring anger, not fear.
“Morton,” Beatman said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Any contraband?”
“No, sir. But we haven’t performed a thorough search. With the warrant we can break out the walls . . .”
“Let’s go,” the captain told the man who wanted everyone groveling.
“But, sir . . .”
“Let’s move.”
“Everyone out!” the frustrated number two ordered.
As the attack team moved to leave Socrates stood up and faced Captain Beatman.
“You know my name?” Socrates asked.

Socrates held out a hand to the man. For some reason Beatman shook it.
“Thank you, Captain,” Socrates said. “Without you they might not have come back.”
Beatman released his grip and turned away.
“Clear your calendar for tomorrow, Captain,” Cassie said as the captain went out the door. “I will see you in your commander’s office in the morning.”

“I ain’t dealin’ no drugs, man,” he said. “Must be some othah niggah they lookin’ for.”
“Thanks for comin’,” Socrates replied.
“I ain’t comin’ back.”

Darryl was in the kitchen washing the cherry cobbler casserole dish. Marianne Lodz and Luna were the last ones leaving. A driver in a late model Lincoln was waiting at the curb.

“We’ll come back next week for sure, Mr. Fortlow,” Marianne said, kissing his cheek. “You know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Say hey to Leroy for me.”
“Okay. Come on, Luna.”
As the light-skinned singer waltzed toward her car her darker

Myrtle Brown lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building on Piney Court, two blocks over from Hooper. The wooden structure was painted a bright turquoise blue and edged in navy, which made it stand out almost as much as the tin-plated Big Nickel where Socrates met with people from all over SouthCentral and beyond talking about what was and what might be.

The zigzagging stairway leading up to Myrtle’s door ran along the exterior of the house on the driveway side. Socrates could hear the wooden steps straining, sighing under his muscular weight. He stopped halfway up the last tier, not because he needed to rest but to enjoy a momentary reverie celebrating his now long ago release from prison. He did this from time to time, especially when he had something difficult ahead of him.

“They don’t have me in a cage yet,” he said aloud, not for the first time. He stared out over the mostly single-story dwellings and asphalt streets; over the black and brown pedestrians walking alone and in pairs; over the automobiles that stained the blue sky the way tobacco smoke does a white fiber filter.

Socrates had spent more than two-thirds of his adult life in maximum security lockdown—compliments of the state of Indiana. There he dreamed of this very moment, on Myrtle Brown’s stairs and elsewhere, looking out over a broad space that he could traverse on a whim.

He felt a deep appreciation for those moments because, like almost every ex-convict, he expected to be re-incarcerated at any moment.

So what if he was headed for a showdown? He was at liberty right then and could eat a hamburger any time of the day or night. He could buy a beer or a butcher’s knife—or a night with a woman.

In spite of all these potential treasures Socrates took a rueful breath and climbed the rest of the way to Myrtle’s poorly painted, two-toned, matte-brown door.

At eye-level the middle-aged waitress had hung the laminated picture a young male musician who was singing into a microphone, beseeching the Infinite for love or release. The man was bare-chested except for a golden medallion that hung from a thick chain around his neck. The singer was fifteen years younger than Myrtle and he still had almost a decade on Darryl.

A woman sighed behind the door.
Socrates hesitated and then he knocked.
There was silence and then the stumbling rumble of footsteps, silence again and then a woman asking, “Who is it?”

She said something else but he couldn’t make out the words. There came the indecipherable tenor hum of his young friend Darryl, answering her.

“What you want?” Myrtle asked out loud.
“Darryl there?”
“We’re not dressed.”
“So put somethin’ on.” Socrates waited a moment and then

There was more talk and footsteps, rustling and the sound of the lock tripping.
The door swayed inward, revealing Myrtle. She wore only a peach gown of satin that barely came down to her thighs. Socrates could see why a man would get hot over her. She didn’t have a pretty face but her legs were shapely and firm and her breasts stood up well under the sheer fabric and forty something years.
“What you want wit’ Darryl?” she asked.
Socrates could see the strain in her horsy features. Myrtle had big lips naturally but they seemed even larger now, swollen, almost bruised from the passion she’d had over the past few days.
“He got sumpin’ for me,” Socrates said, feeling regret for having barged into the teenager’s life.
Darryl came up from behind the waitress wearing only black trousers. Tall and lanky, dark brown and cowed, the boy looked at the floor saying, “Hey, Socco. Sorry I didn’t come by.”
They stood there for a moment—the mismatched lovers and the ex-con.
“Why, why’ont you come in a minute?” Myrtle said reluctantly.
She and Darryl backed away from the door and Socrates entered the small, one room love nest. There were clothes all over the floor. The mattress of the bed was a quarter way off the frame. The radio was on but turned low. Marianne Lodz was singing “Be My Desire.” The kitchen was a tiny refrigerator with a hotplate on top shoved in a corner.
The room smelled of concentrated body odors, lubricants, tobacco smoke, and incense.
Darryl fumbled around trying to pull on a dull orange T-shirt.
“How you two doin’?” Socrates asked.
“Sit down, Mr. Fortlow,” Myrtle said. She was holding the lapels of her nightie with one hand to hide her cleavage. The other hand she had fanned out over her groin area.
Socrates took in a deep breath through his nostrils, grimaced and said, “Naw. I just come to get my phone.”
“Phone?” Myrtle said.
“Oh shit,” Darryl said.
“You forget, D-boy?”
“Yeah,” Darryl said. “I mean no. I mean I got it I just forgot to bring it ovah.”
With that the boy got down on his hands and knees in the clothes and blankets, pillows and papers covering the floor.
There was a single window in Myrtle’s studio. It was open and the sun shone but the room was still dark. In the dim shadows Darryl was becoming frantic in his search.
“You seen my green bag, Myr?” the boy asked.
“No, baby. What bag?”
“The bag I always have. You know . . .”
“Oh . . . yeah. Uh-uh. Where’d you put it?”
“If I knew where it was I wouldn’t be askin’,” the boy said, his words reminding Socrates of himself.
Myrtle’s queen sized bed stood high off the floor. Darryl stuck his head under to look, then he reached below, pulling out a hatbox and a small carton filled with paperback books. The books had photographs of scantily clad black women and barechested, powerful black men on the covers that Socrates could see. One red-lipped woman was preparing to kiss her man between his swollen pectoral muscles.
“What you doin’, baby?” Myrtle cried. “Don’t be takin’ all my private stuff out from under there.”
She made as if to get down on the floor but realized that her satin covering would come undone and so she just curved her shoulders and bent her knees, pleading with Darryl to be gentle with her possessions. But Darryl did not heed her. He pulled out another box that held creams and condoms, a huge anatomically correct black dildo and a strand of large red plastic beads spaced at three-inch intervals on a yard long red silken string.
“Oh no,” Myrtle whispered.
“I got it,” Darryl said excitedly. “Here it is.”
He stood up grinning, holding out a drab green army bag.
“That’s brown,” Myrtle said.
“Nuh-uh. It’s green. Right, Socco?”
“You got my phone, boy?” the elder asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. Right here.”
Darryl rummaged through the rucksack, coming out with an open bag of potato chips and a handheld electronic game machine. Then he pulled out a clear plastic box over a bright orange carton. There was a small silvery phone and a power plug fit snugly into indentations in the carton.
“The numbah is on a strip’a paper on the back’a the phone,” the boy was saying. “It’s got a hundred dollars on it now and you can go into the sto’ at Central an’ 69th to put more money on it.”
“Is it listed?” Socrates asked.
“Uh-uh. Cain’t list a cell phone numbah. An’ when they ask for your code for your messages or addin’ on minutes all you got to say is 635-992.”
“What kind’a password is that?” Myrtle asked. “How you expect somebody to remembah a numbah don’t make no sense?”
Socrates was holding the box in his big hands. He grinned for the first time that day.
“That was
my
numbah in the penitentiary, Miss Brown,” he said. “When I’m old an’ forgot the color green I’ll still know those numbers. Oh yeah. You’d have to shoot them digits out my head.”
“Why’ont you sit down, Socco?” Darryl said. “We could have some lemonade.”
“Yeah,” Myrtle added, “sit.”
“Naw,” Socrates replied. “You guys don’t need me around . . .” The ex-con looked at Myrtle, who was still covering herself with both hands; he had a sudden vision of the young woman he raped, bludgeoned, and strangled decades before.
“No,” he said. “I got to get goin’.”
He turned around, struggling to keep his equilibrium. It had been many months since he’d thought deeply about his personal damnation, his crimes that could never be washed away.
Darryl said something but Socrates didn’t take the words in. He lurched out past the brown door into the smoggy sunlight. He lumbered down the stairway stiff-kneed, needing to hold onto the banister.
He was almost to the street. Someone was calling out somewhere. In the back of Socrates’ mind it was a woman lecturing her child. But then a hand pulled against his shoulder. Myrtle Brown was standing there still clad only in peach colored satin; her hands no longer covering up.
When Socrates looked at her he felt a wave of nausea that was both sexual and a symptom of deep despair.
“Don’t you do this to me, Socrates Fortlow,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You know what,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “Darryl talk about you all the time.
Socco did this. Socco did that. Socrates told somebody sumpin’ an’ he back down an’ run.
He’d do anything for you.”
Socrates took off his army jacket and draped it around the woman’s shoulders. She took the collars and crossed her hands to cover her near nakedness.
“He’ll leave me if you won’t even sit in my house.”
“Baby, I ain’t said a word against you to Darryl. He sleep where he want to. I cain’t stop that.”
“I love him,” she said, the tears now rolling down her face.
“He’s a child, Myrtle. You almost old enough to be his grandmother.”
“I love him,” she said again. “There ain’t a man out here twice his age treat me like he do.”
“That’s yo’ ass talkin’, honey,” Socrates said with surprising gentleness. “We both know how sweet a child can be.”
“No. It’s somethin’ else,” she said. “I can see the man in him, the man you helped to make. He gonna be somebody.”
“What’s that got to do wit’ you?”
Myrtle’s head went back as if Socrates had slapped her.
“He’s my man,” she cried, shivering under the coarse material of the army jacket.
“He’s a boy,” Socrates said.
“He’s man enough for me.”
“He’s a child, Ms. Brown. An’ you know what a child will do. The first li’l girl out here flip her skirt at him and he’ll be gone. You know that.”
“He loves me.”
“Ev’ry man up an’ down this street been in love like that . . . a hunnert times.”
“You ’ont understand, Mr. Fortlow. It ain’t like that wit’ us.”
Socrates took in her words. She was right, he didn’t know. He hadn’t asked Darryl about the days and nights he’d spent on Piney with Myrtle. He hadn’t wanted to know.
He was distracted by the meetings held at the Big Nickel, his meeting house. He’d leased the house for a dollar a year for five years and then opened it to all comers. There were treaty meetings between gang members that had complaints against each other, and the regular Thursday night meeting where his friends from all over discussed the world and what would be the right thing to do.
With all that talk and organization Socrates had ignored Darryl and his girlfriend.
“You right, Myrtle,” he said at length. “You right.”
“So you gonna come up and have a drink wit’us?”
“Not right now, baby. Have Darryl invite me and I’ll come ovah. Maybe we’ll go out to dinnah or sumpin’ like that.”
“I got lemonade right now,” she offered.
Socrates saw her lips move but all he could hear was the pleading whine of the woman he’d raped and then murdered.
“I gotta go,” he said.