The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

1

“How does your client plead, Ms. Marsh?” the pencil-faced judge asked. He was wearing a dark sports jacket that was a size or two too big for his bony frame.

“Not guilty, your honor,” the young black lawyer said, gesturing with her fingers pressed tightly together and using equally her lips, tongue, and teeth.

“Fine.” The judge had been distracted by something on his desk. “Bail will be…”

“Your honor,” spoke up the prosecutor, a chubby man who was the color of a cup of coffee with too much milk mixed in. “Before you decide on bail the people would like to have it pointed out that Mr. Fortlow is a convicted felon. He was found guilty of a double homicide in Indiana in nineteen sixty and was sentenced to life in that state; he spent almost thirty years in prison.”

“Twenty-seven years, your honor,” Brenda Marsh articulated.

So much respect, so much honor, Socrates Fortlow thought. A harsh laugh escaped his lips.

“And,” Brenda Marsh continued. “He’s been leading a respectable life here in Los Angeles for the past eight years. He’s employed full-time by Bounty Supermarket and he hasn’t had any other negative involvement with the law.”

“Still, your honor,” the bulbous Negro said, “Mr. Fortlow is being tried for a violent crime—”

“But he hasn’t been convicted,” said Ms. Marsh.

“Regardless,” said the nameless prosecutor.

“Your honor…”

The Honorable Felix Fisk tore his eyes away from whatever had been distracting him. Socrates thought it was probably a picture magazine; probably about yachting, Socrates thought. He knew, from his days in prison, that many judges got rich off of the blood of felons.

“All right,” Judge Fisk said. “All right. Let’s see.”

He fumbled around with some papers and produced a pair of glasses from the top of his head. He peered closely at whatever was written and then regarded the bulky ex-con.

“My, my,” the judge muttered.

Socrates felt hair growing in his windpipe.

“The people would like to see Mr. Fortlow held without bail, your honor,” chubby said.

“Your honor.” Ms. Marsh’s pleading didn’t seem to fit with her overly precise enunciation. “Eight years and there was no serious injury.”

“Intent,” the prosecutor said, “informs the law.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars bail,” the judge intoned.

A short brown guard next to Socrates grabbed the prisoner’s beefy biceps and said, “Come on.”

Socrates turned around and saw Dolly Straight at the back of the small courtroom. She had red hair and freckles, and a look of shock on her face. When her eyes caught Socrates’ gaze she smiled and waved.

Then she ran out of the courtroom while still holding her hand high in greeting.

2

The night before there had been no room in the West L.A. jail so they put Socrates in a secured office for lockup. But now he was at the main courthouse. They took him to a cellblock in the basement crammed with more than a dozen prisoners. Most of them were tattooed; one had scars so violent that he could have been arrested and jailed simply because of how terrible he appeared.

Mostly young men; mostly black and Latino. There were a couple of whites by themselves in a corner at the back of the cell. Socrates wondered what those white men had done to be put in jeopardy like that.

“Hey, brother,” a bearded man with an empty eye socket said to Socrates.

Socrates nodded.

“Hey, niggah,” said a big, black, baby-faced man who stood next to the bearded one. “Cain’t you talk?”

Socrates didn’t say anything. He went past the men toward an empty spot on a bench next to a stone-faced Mexican.

“Niggah!” the baby face said again.

He laid a hand, not gently, on Socrates’ shoulder. But Babyface hesitated. He felt, Socrates knew, the strength in that old shoulder. And in that brief moment Socrates shot out his left hand to grab the young man’s throat. The man threw a fist but Socrates caught that with his right hand while increasing the pressure in his left.

The boy’s eyes bulged and he went down on his knees as Socrates stood up. First Babyface tried to dislodge the big fist from his throat, then he tried slugging Socrates’ arm and side.

While he was dying the men stood around.

Sounds like the snapping of brittle twigs came from the boy’s throat.

His dying eyes flitted from one prisoner to another but no one moved to help him.

A few seconds before the boy would have lost consciousness, no more than fifteen seconds before he’d’ve died, Socrates let go.

The boy sucked in a breath of life so deep and so hoarse that a guard came down to see what was happening.

Some of the men were laughing.

“What’s goin’ on?” the guard asked.

“I was just showin’ the boy a trick,” the big bearded Negro with one eye said.

The guard regarded the boy.

“You okay, Peters?”

There was no voice in Peters’s throat but he nodded.

“Okay,” the guard said. “Now cut it out down here.”

Socrates took his place on the bench. The fight was just an initiation. Now everyone in the cell knew: Socrates was not a man to be taken lightly.

“Fortlow?” the same guard called out forty-five minutes later.

“Yo.”

“Socrates Fortlow?”

“That’s right.” It hadn’t been long but the feeling of freedom had already drained from Socrates’ bones and flesh.

He’d checked out every man in the holding cell; witnessed one of the white men get beaten while his buddy backed away. He’d made up his mind to go against the bearded Negro, Benny Hite, if they remained in the cell together.

Benny was a leader and naturally wanted to hold everyone else down. But Socrates wouldn’t go down for anyone and so there had to be blood before there could be sleep.

“Come with me,” the guard said. He had two large policemen with him.

3

“Hi, Mr. Fortlow,” Dolly Straight said. Her skin was pale under thousands of orange and brown freckles. “I posted your bail.”

They’d given him his street clothes back but it was too late; the body lice, crabs, from the prison garb had already begun to make him itch.

“What you doin’?” he asked the young woman in front of the courthouse.

“I’m parked illegally up the block,” she said, hurrying down the concrete stairs. “I didn’t know it would take so long to give them the money and get you out.”

Socrates tried to ask again, why, but Dolly kept running ahead of him.

“I hope they haven’t towed it,” she said.

Her pickup was from the fifties, a Dodge. It was sky-blue with a flatbed back that had an animal cage moored in the center.

“Come on,” she said, taking the parking ticket from under the windshield wiper. “Get in.”

“What’s this all about?” Socrates asked as they made their way from downtown.

“I put up your bail.” Dolly was redheaded, plain-faced, and she had green eyes that blazed. There were fans of tiny wrinkles around her eyes but she was no more than forty.

“What for?”

“Because of Bruno,” she said as if it should have been obvious.

“Who’s that?”

“The dog. That’s what I called him. I mean you can’t take care of somebody if he doesn’t even have a name. Most of your best vets always name their patients if they don’t get a name from the owners.”

“Oh,” Socrates said. He was wondering what to do with his liberation. Some men who’d spent as many years behind bars as Socrates had wanted to go back to jail; they liked the order that they found there.

“I’d rather be dead,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Why’d you get me outta there?”

“Because,” Dolly said. “Because I know what you did you did because of Bruno. He was almost dead when you brought him in to me. And when those policemen came to arrest you I just got mad. They think that they can just walk in anywhere.”

He hadn’t been looking for a fight. It was an early work day because he’d had to help with inventory at the supermarket and that started at four in the morning. He’d worked twelve hours and was tired. A dog, big and black, was nosing around, begging for food and Socrates told him to git. The dog got himself into the street and a speeding Nissan slammed him down. The man didn’t even hit the brakes until after the accident.

Socrates was already to the dog when the white man backed up and parked. The poor dog was scrabbling with his front paws, trying to rise, and whining from the pain in his crushed hind legs.

Socrates just wanted to help. As far as he was concerned the white man broke his own nose.

“How you know why I did what I did?” Socrates asked Dolly.

“Because I went back to where you told me the accident happened. I wanted to find out if the owner was somewhere nearby. I thought that I’d have to put Bruno to sleep but I didn’t want to do that until I talked to the owner.

“But there wasn’t an owner. Bruno didn’t have a home but I met an old lady who saw what happened. That’s what I told your lawyer. You know I don’t know if Miss Marsh would have gone down there or not. But I told her about Bruno and Mrs. Galesky and then she told me how I could put up your bail.

“I don’t know if I’d want her for a lawyer, Mr. Fortlow.”

“Why’s that?”

“She was trying to tell me how you were a convicted felon and that this charge against you was tough and you might run if you could. Even after I told her that I knew that you were innocent. I thought you black people helped each other out?”

“Dog gonna live?” Socrates asked.

Dolly’s face got harder and Socrates found himself liking her in spite of her youth and race.

“I don’t know,” she said. “His legs are broken and so’s his hip. I don’t even think they could do a replacement on a human hip that was that bad. His organs seem fine. No bleeding inside but he’ll never use those legs again.”

They drove on toward Dolly’s Animal Clinic on Robertson near Olympic.

4

Bruno was a biggish dog, sixty pounds or more, and little of that was fat. He was unconscious in a big cage on an examining table in Dolly’s clinic.

“I gave him a tranc,” she said. “I don’t like to do that but he was in so much pain and his crying bothered my other patients.”

In a large room connected to the examining room Socrates could see rows of cages that ran from small to large. Most of the “patients” were dogs and cats fitted with casts or bandages or attached to odd machines. But there was also a monkey, three different kinds of birds, a goat, and something that looked like a tiny albino sloth.

“Would he die if you left him alone?” Socrates asked. It was ten o’clock or later. There was only him and Dolly in the small animal clinic. He realized that he was pinching the skin through his pants pockets and stopped.

“I don’t know,” Dolly said. “I don’t think so. His vitals are strong.

You’d have to get his bones set as well as possible and then keep him immobile for a couple of weeks. All that and he’d live. But he’d have to crawl.”

“Anything’s better than prison or death.”

“You pick that up in the jail?” Dolly asked.

Socrates realized that he was scratching again.

“My dad used to get that all the time,” she said. “He was a political activist down San Diego in the sixties. I remember they’d bust up his protests and beat him until he had black blood coming out. But the only thing he ever complained about was getting crabs in jail. He used to say that they could at least keep it clean in there.” She smiled a very plain smile and said, “I got some soap’ll clear that up in two days.”

Bruno whimpered in his cage.

“I’ma be in a cage if they put me down for assault,” he said.

“But I gave your lawyer Mrs. Galesky’s number. I’m sure she’ll straighten it out.”

“You are, huh?”

“Yeah.” Dolly’s homely smile was growing on him. “I got a house right in back here,” she said. “You could stay in the guest bed.”

5

Dolly heated apple cider spiced with cinnamon sticks. Then she made sandwiches out of alfalfa sprouts, grilled chicken, Gruyere cheese, and avocado. Socrates had four sandwiches and over a quart of cider.

Who knew when he’d be eating again?

Dolly had fed, petted, and talked to each patient and then led Socrates out of the back door of the clinic. There was a yard in back and a large flowering tree that was dark and sweet-smelling. Past the tree was a wooden fence. The gate in the fence opened to a beautiful little house.

“Nobody can ever see my house if I don’t invite them,” Dolly said to Socrates as she fumbled around for her keys. “I like that.”

“Where’s your father?” Socrates asked after supper. It was late, past midnight, and Dolly was folding out the bed in the living room.

“He died,” she said. “He was always big and strong but then he just got old one year and passed away.”

“Didn’t he ever tell you about people like me?”

“He never knew anybody like you, Mr. Fortiow.”

“How the hell you know what I’m like?” Socrates said belligerently. “Didn’t you hear what they said about me in that courtroom?” Dolly looked up.

With a stern gaze she said, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking why would she take a man, a convicted murderer, and take him back here in her house? A man like that could rob me, rape me, kill me.” Then her serious face turned into a smile. “But I don’t have a choice so I can’t be worried about it.”

“What you mean you ain’t got no choice?”

“Because my father died when I was only twelve and my mother just left,” she said. “Because the only one who ever loved me was my dog, Buster. And the only thing I ever knew was how to love him and to take care of him. If I see anyone who cares about animals they’re okay with me. I treat them like human beings.”

“So you mean that anybody bring a hurt animal to you can sit at your table and sleep in your guest bed?”

“No,” Dolly said. She was hurt.

“Then what do you mean?”

“I mean that a dog is a living being just like you’n me. It doesn’t matter if there is a God or not. Life is what’s important. You’re not like one of those rich bitches that shave a dog like he was some kind of fuckin’ hedge and then bring him to me so I could castrate him.

“You knocked a man down and then carried that big dog over a mile. You went to jail because that dog has a right. How can I look at that and not do all I can do for you?”

6

Socrates was up late in his foldout bed. It was an old couch and the bed was more comfortable than his own. There was no sound coming through the walls in the house. There was a sweet odor. For a long time Socrates let his mind wander trying to figure out the smell. It was familiar but he couldn’t place it.

Finally he realized that the scent was from the tree outside. A window must have been open. It was the thought of an open window that got Socrates to giggle uncontrollably. He hadn’t slept next to an open window in over forty years.

7

Over the next three weeks Socrates dropped by Dolly’s every day after work. He talked to Bruno and accepted meals in the back house.

“If Bruno live an’ I don’t go to jail,” he promised Dolly, “I’ll take him home wit’ me and keep’im for my pet.”

The trial came four weeks after that declaration.

8

“You’re with the Public Defender’s Office?” the judge, Katherine Hemp, asked Brenda Marsh.

“Yes, your honor,” Brenda replied. “I’ve just been with them three months now.”

“And how does your client plead, Ms. Marsh?” asked Judge Hemp, an older woman with gray hair and sad eyes.

“Not guilty, your honor.”

“I don’t want to drag this thing out, counselor. I have a full caseload and all we want to know here is if your client assaulted, um,” the judge looked down at her notes, “Benheim Lunge.”

“I appreciate the court’s time, Judge Hemp. I have only three witnesses and each of them has less than forty-five minutes of testimony.” Brenda Marsh spoke in her own fashion, as usual, pronouncing each word separately as if it had come in its own individual wrapper. Socrates wondered if Brenda thought that she sounded like a white woman talking like that.

“Benheim Lunge,” said the tall young man in the witness seat. He might have been handsome if it wasn’t for the sour twist of his lips.

“…and were you then assaulted by this man?” asked Conrad MacAlister, the pudgy cafe-au-lait prosecutor.

“Yes sir. He hit me. I’m in good shape but he must’ve been boxing in that prison or something.”

Socrates’ eyes wandered over to the jurors’ box. They were mostly women and he could see that they were appalled by Lunge’s description of his broken nose and whiplash from just one swipe of the ex-convict’s fist.

“Thank you, Mr. Lunge.” MacAlister smiled at Brenda Marsh. “Your witness.”

Brenda Marsh got up purposefully and stalked over to Lunge. “Did you, Mr. Lunge, go up to where the dog lay with a brick in your hand?”

“No.”

“I see. Tell me, Mr. Lunge, what is your profession?”

“I sell sporting goods. My father owns a store on Rodeo Drive and I run it.”

“So,” asked Brenda. “Then you don’t have a medical background?”

“No.”

“But didn’t you tell Mr. Fortlow that the dog was done for and that he should be put out of his suffering? And don’t you think it was likely that the defendant thought that you intended to kill the dog with the brick you held?”

“Objection,” said Prosecutor MacAlister. “Mr. Lunge has already stated that he didn’t have a brick in his hand.”

“A stone then?” asked Ms. Marsh. “Did you have a stone, Mr. Lunge?”

“No.”

“Did you have anything in your hands when you approached the wounded dog and Mr. Fortlow on Olympic Boulevard?”

“Urn, well, I don’t remember. I, uh, I might have grabbed a, a, a, you know, a thing, a ten-pound weight I keep in the backseat.”

“A ten-pound weight? What was this weight made from?”

“Iron.”

“So, you approached Mr. Fortlow with ten pounds of iron in your hand?”

“How was I to know what would happen? For all I knew it was his dog. I wanted to help but I wanted to protect myself too. He looked, well, dangerous. And he was big. I knew I had to stop for hitting the dog but I wanted to protect myself too.”

“And did you say that you’d kill the dog with the weight? Didn’t you say that you wanted to stop his pain?”

“Absolutely not. I mean I never said that I wanted to kill the dog. I thought he was going to die, though, I mean you should have seen him. He was a mess.”

9

“That man right there,” said Marjorie Galesky. She was pointing at Benheim Lunge. Dolly Straight had already testified that Socrates Fortiow came to her clinic with the bleeding and crying black dog in his arms. He’d carried the sixty-two-pound dog eleven blocks to get him care.

“…I was sitting in my front yard,” seventy-nine-year-old Mrs. Galesky said, “like always when it’s over seventy-two degrees. It was getting colder and I was about to go in when I see this car run over that poor dog. It hit him and then the tires ran over his legs. This man,” she said, pointing at Socrates, “the black one, had gone up to help the dog when the other man, the one driving the car, comes running over with a brick in his hand. At least it looked like a brick. They say it was a weight, whatever that means, but it was big and that man came running over with it. He said something to the black man and then he tried to get at the dog. First off the black man pushed the white one and then he hauled off and hit him.” The old woman was a few inches under five feet and slight. She looked like an excited child up there on the stand. There was an ancient glee at the memory of the punch. Socrates tried to keep from smiling.

10

“Socrates Fortiow,” he answered when asked to identify himself.

“Yes I did,” he said when asked if he struck Benheim Lunge. “He hit the dog and drove off for all I knew. I went up and was tryin’ to see what I could do when he come up with a chunk’a metal in his hand. He was lookin’ all over an’ said that it’d be better to put the dog outta his misery. Then he said that he wanted to take the dog in his car. I said I’d go along but he told me that there wasn’t room for me an’ the dog too. I told him that I’d seen a animal hospital not far and that I’d carry the dog there. He said no. Then I said no. He went for the dog an’ he still had the iron in his hand. I put up my hand to stop’im but he just kept comin’. So I hit him once. You know I didn’t mean to do all that to Jim, but he wasn’t gonna take that dog. Uh-uh.”

11

“We find the defendant guilty of assault,” the foreman of the jury, a black woman, said. She seemed sorry but that was the decision and she stood with it.

12

While waiting for his sentence Socrates would go to visit Bruno every day. Dolly had made a leash with a basket woven from leather straps to hold Bruno up from behind. If Socrates could heft the dog’s backside Bruno found that he could propel himself forward by walking with his front legs.

“You could put a clothesline up around your yard, Mr. Fortlow,” Dolly said. “And then attach his basket to it with a pulley. That way he could walk around without you having to help him all the time.”

“Yeah,” Socrates answered. “Dolly, what you put up behind the ten percent for my bail?”

“The house,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

Bruno was leaping from one paw to the other, yelping a little now and then because his hip still hurt, and licking the hands of the two new friends.

“If you run I don’t care,” Dolly said. “But you have to take Bruno with you.”

13

Before the sentencing Brenda Marsh had a long meeting with Socrates. He cursed her and pounded his fist down on the table in the little room that the court let them use.

He refused to do what she asked of him.

“You wanna take ev’rything from me?” he asked her.

“I’m trying to keep you out of jail,” she said in her annoying way. “Do you want to go to jail?”

“There’s a lotta things I don’t want. One of ’em is that I don’t get down on my knees to no man, woman, or child.”

Brenda Marsh did not respond. It was then that Socrates realized that she was probably a very good lawyer.

14

Three days later, after the celebration for Socrates’ suspended sentence at Iula’s diner, Socrates went to his house with Right Burke, the maimed WWII veteran. They sat in Socrates’ poor kitchen while Bruno lay on the floor laughing and licking the air.

“I hate it, Right. I hate it.”

“You free, ain’t ya?”

“Yeah, but I wake up mad as shit every day.”

Brenda Marsh had set up a private meeting with Judge Hemp. She’d pleaded for Socrates’ freedom. But the judge said that he’d been found guilty and what could she do?

That’s when Brenda revealed her plan for Socrates to apologize to the court, to Benheim Lunge, and to, the community. He’d promise to write a letter to be posted on the bus stop where he’d assaulted Benheim and to go to Benheim and ask his pardon. He’d make himself available to the juvenile court to talk to young black children and tell them how he had gone wrong but that he wouldn’t do it again.

He’d do an extra fifty hours of community service and for that they could suspend his sentence.

“But you free, Socco. Free, man,” said Right, his best friend. “That gal did you a favor. ’Cause you know she musta begged that judge. You know after that big trial they just had the court wanna put ev’ry black man they can in the can. Shit. Guilty? Go straight to jail!”

“But you know it’s just ’cause’a the dog, Right. It’s just ’cause’a the dog I said yeah.”

“How’s that?”

“He needs me out here. Him and Darryl and you too, brother. I ain’t gonna help nobody in that jail cell or on the run. You know I woulda let them take that white girl’s house if it wasn’t that I had obligations.”

The dog barked suddenly and put his nose out to be scratched.

“You just a lucky fool, Socrates Fortiow,” Right said.

“You got that right, man. I’m a fool to be who I am and I’m lucky I made it this far. Me an’ this black dog here. Shit. Me an’ this black dog.”