Marty took a left on Olympic heading east. The wide street was lined with low apartment buildings and nice single-family homes. Not many streetlights and not much traffic to speak of. They made good speed down toward Fairfax.
The car, Socrates thought, was as quiet as a tomb.
?No,? he said as they turned south of Fairfax. ?You let Benny have it, Marty. And just call on me for anything extra you need.?
?You sure??
?Sure as sin on Sunday.?
There was silence past Pico and Saturn and Pickford. Silence across Airdome and Eighteenth and all the way down to Venice. But when they pulled up to the bus stop and Socrates opened the door Marty said, ?Gibbs isn't leaving for six weeks. I won't make my decision until the day he's gone.?
Socrates swung one leg out of the door and then turned back to his boss.
?Why you want me, man??
?I like working with you, Mr. Fortlow. I trust you.?
?You don't know nuthin' about me.?
?I don't know anything about anybody down at the store. We work together, that's all. It's none of my business what you do some place else.?
?I'll think about it,? Socrates said. ?But I don't know. I mean if you give the job away before I get back to ya it'll be okay by me.?
?Six weeks,? the store manager repeated. ?You got till then.?
The bus ride took over two hours. He had to transfer twice. The connections were slow but Socrates didn't care. He was used to wasting time. All convicts were.
When he got to his place he had the feeling of coming home. Home to his illegal gap. Home to a place that had no street address, a jury-rigged electrical system, plumbing that turned off every once in a while, sometimes for weeks. It was a hard place. Sometimes when he was hungry, before he had a job, he had thought that jail might be better than starving freedom; jail or death. It was a place he slept in, a place to read or drink or almost cry. But it had never been home. It had never been hearth or asylum but now it was both of these things. For the first time he was thankful for what little he had. He was safe at least for one night more.
promise
N
ineteen years after Levering Jordan died, and nine years after his own release from prison, Socrates was bagging groceries when he remembered the promise he'd made.
Longarm Levering Jordan had been Socrates' back for five years in the Indiana slam. He was in for fifty-six years but prison had a way of killing some men early. It didn't matter that Levering was tall and powerful. Strength was an asset in the penitentiary but that didn't mean you'd survive.
?Brawn, brains, nor beggin' could keep you alive in here if you was born to be free,? old man Cap Richmond had always said. Cap had gone down for assault on a white woman in an armed robbery in 'forty-nine. He got seventy- four years for his crime. By 1988, when Socrates was let free, Cap had seen a thousand murderers come, serve their terms and leave.
?Seventy-four years for a slap,? Cap would say. ?Din't even knock out no tooth.?
Levering never got used to being locked down. Any night that Socrates awoke in his own tight cell he knew that he could look out of the metal grid and see Longarm across the way, his fingers laced with the steel cage, his eyes willing the walls to break open.
Maybe it was five years without sleep that finally took the toll on Levering. In the last months he was skinny and weak. One of the big rats that came out at night could have knocked him over. But the rats didn't bother and the predators among the convict population knew better than to mess with a friend of Socrates Fortlow.
?Socrates'll kill ya,? was the phrase most often used to explain to new cons how they should deal with him. Even the guards came in threes when Socrates had to be disciplined or
When Levering was dying, the chaplain, a woman named Patricia James, had three guards bring Socrates to that special room in the infirmary where they brought prisoners to die.
It was a nice room for a prison. Gray nylon carpet and a picture of flowers on the wall. The window had bars but they were widely spaced and the sun, they said, came in almost all afternoon on a clear day.
