The Right Mistake

by Mosley, Walter

  But that day Socrates didn’t want to play.

  “I got a problem, Chaim.”

  The old man smiled at the irony of the statement. Socrates laughed.

  “Tinheart wanna put me on the witness stand an’ I don’t

  know if I trust him.”

  “Because of the woman?”

  “How you know that?”

  “Strong women like strong men. They like to push up against

  them.”

  “What do you think I should do?” Socrates asked. “The one thing, the only thing they cannot ask of us is silence,

  my friend,” the old man told the killer. “We all die. We are all dragged away. But we do not have to go quietly. We owe it to our children and our friends and even to our enemies to speak out.” “Why the enemy?”

  “He needs to hear the truth too.”

  “But what if I’m not sure about what is true?” “Even if you are not the truth is still there.”

  That night Socrates had a dream about himself when he was six years old. He had stolen a ballpoint pen from a 5 and 10 on Garner Street. He took the pen to his Aunt Bellandra and said it was for her birthday. She took the present from him and smiled at it. The smile lasted for more than a minute and then she handed it back to the child.

  “It’s very lovely, Socrates,” she said. “Now I want you to go back to the people you stole it from and give it back. That will be the best gift you evah give me.”

  4.

  “In your own words, Mr. Fortlow,” Cassie Wheaton said, “tell us what happened the day Kelly Beardsley died.” At the last moment Tinheart decided to let Cassie represent the defense in examining Socrates. He provided a list of questions but she discarded them.

  “I was in the kitchen lookin’ for a sandwich but we had given them all away,” Socrates remembered. “And it was like I saw somethin’, a shadow or somethin’ like that in the corner of my eye. At first I didn’t think anything of it but there wasn’t supposed to be anybody in the house and it started botherin’ me. So I went upstairs and I saw that the door to my office was closed. Now I knew I had left it open and so I went in . . .

  “Kelly was there lookin’ in the top drawer of my file cabinet. I knew that he had to have broken the lock because my file cabinet locks automatically and only me and Billy Psalms have the keys. And the drawer got a counterweight on it so I couldn’t have left it open.

  “I asked Kelly what he was doin’ but he just walked past me out into the hallway. I went out aftah him and called his name but he just kep’ on goin’. I raised my voice and he turned and at the same time was pullin’ a pistol from his pants. I moved up on him real quick an’ hit him two times. He went down and I checked him out but he was dead. I called 911 but the cops got there before the ambulance.”

  “You asked for medical care?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Not just for the police?”

  “No, ma’am. I knew the police had to come but, but I didn’t

  want anybody to say that I didn’t try to help Kelly aftah hurtin’ him like that.”

  “What happened after that?” Cassie Wheaton asked.

  “Cops come in with their guns out. They put me in chains and took me off to jail.”

  “Did you intend to kill Mr. Beardsley?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Why didn’t you try to grab his gun hand and disarm him?”

  “Might as well try an’ grab a viper by his fangs,” Socrates said flatly.

  “Were you aware that Mr. Beardsley was a police spy?”

  “Objection,” Marlene Quest ejaculated. “Prejudicial language.”

  “Mr. Beardsley was a police agent who pretended to be a member of the Big Nickel group,” Wheaton said. “He secretly gathered information on the people in that institution and reported his findings to Mr. Winegarten. In everyday parlance he was a spy.”

  “I’m going to have to agree with the defense on this point, Ms. Quest,” Judge Tanaka said, almost apologetically. “Objection overruled.”

  “I repeat the question, Mr. Fortlow,” Cassie Wheaton said. “Did you know that Kelly Beardsley was a spy?”

  “When I saw that he broke into my file I knew that he was after something that he thought was a secret. I didn’t know if he was a cop or not but I didn’t think he was just a thief neither.”

  “So you didn’t know.”

  “Not before I saw him in my file.”

  Socrates saw that Cassie was unhappy with his answer but he had already decided that he was going to tell the truth with every word he uttered in that witness chair.

  “So you knew he was gathering information on you?” Marlene Quest asked at the beginning of her cross-examination. “And that’s why you killed him?”

  “He died because he pulled out a pistol and I hit him.” “Hard enough to break his jaw and his neck,” Quest said as if she were reminding him of something he forgot.

  “I was movin’ fast, counselor. A man was moving a gun muzzle in my direction. How hard I hit him had to do with how fast I was movin’.”

  “But what about the pistol?” the prosecutor said with the leer of satisfaction in her tone.

  This question came as no surprise. The handgun that had Kelly Beardsley’s prints on it was at the other end of the hall when the police got there. It was one of the central points of the prosecution that the gun was either a plant or a red herring placed by Socrates to hide his crime.

  Cassie and Mason had told him to say that he had no idea how the gun got there.

  Might as well not open up a can of worms, Tinheart had said.

  “What about it?” Socrates asked.

  “How did it get over fifteen feet away from the corpse?”

  “I kicked it there.”

  “Kicked it?”

  “Argumentative,” Cassie Wheaton and Mason Tinheart announced as one.

  “When Kelly hit the floor the pistol fell at his side. I didn’t know if he was dead or even unconscious. I sure didn’t want him to grab the gun an’ start shootin’ so I kicked the pistol.”

  “You didn’t take it from his pocket and move it away from the body?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t sneak up on Officer Beardsley and strike him down out of jealousy?”

  “Jealousy?” Socrates asked. He was surprised for the first time during the trial. “Jealous of what?”

  “I have it on authority that Mr. Beardsley and the mother of your child, Miss Luna Barnet, had dated more than once. I have detailed affidavits from the restaurant and bar staffs.”

  The laughter that came from Socrates was honest and pure. He sat back in the witness chair, comfortable in that seat.

  “Lady, you don’t know my Luna if you think she gonna be messin’ ’round on me in a place where you could get a affidavit. She just about the onlyest person I know done had it harder than I did. She know how to keep her secrets quiet. You go to restaurant to eat, a bar to drink. But if you wanna fool around it’s the back alley all the way.”

  For a moment the prosecutor lost her bearings. The last thing she expected from a murderer was friendly laughter. She shuffled her affidavits and then looked up.

  “Ms. Wheaton tells us that Kelly Beardsley was a spy. Why would anybody spy on you, Mr. Fortlow?”

  “Same reason I’m on trial, Ms. Quest.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s bad blood down around where I come from, ma’am—a lotta bad blood. It’s like Detective Brand and Captain Winegarten say, there’s gangs and drugs and murders and prostitution on every block. And if somebody wanna do somethin’ about it he got to shove his hands in all the way to his elbows. You cain’t stop a gang member from killin’ unless you have him in. You cain’t help a drug addict or a prostitute unless you sit down with ’em. At least that.

  “And if you a man like me, a man that already went to prison over a crime that was terrible, then the cops and the judges and the juries and the prosecutor
s got to get together and see if that man is frontin’ or what.

  “I don’t like spies. I don’t like it when the police come into my house every other day because I got a record and they got a job. But I accept those things. That’s the life I live. If I was to go out and murder people because’a things like that L.A. wouldn’t have no population problem. I’d be killin’ twenty-four seven.”

  Marlene Quest had a faint smile on her face. Socrates could tell that she thought he was doing her work for her.

  “One last question, Mr. Fortlow,” she said. “We know you killed Mr. Beardsley, a policeman in the execution of his duty, what we want to know, the reason you’re here, is to know if you murdered him.”

  Socrates had refused to practice his answer to this inevitable question. The truth would be his only protection and the truth could not be rehearsed.

  “I don’t think so, Ms. Quest. I have thought about it ever since that day and—”

  “Yes or no, Mr. Fortlow,” the prosecutor said.

  “I’m answerin’ your question, counselor.”

  “Yes or no.”

  Socrates turned to the judge but didn’t speak. Their eyes met.

  “This is his day in court, Ms. Quest,” Tanaka said. “We’ll allow him the leeway to explain himself.”

  “Thank you, your honor,” Socrates said. “It’s not complex but there’s points about it. I knew Kelly was grabbin’ for a gun before I saw it, I saw it before I hit him but I was already movin’ fast. Now if he didn’t have a gun I might’a hit just as hard anyway. I was goin’ on my instinct but instinct coulda been wrong. It wasn’t but it coulda been. I saw the gun before I hit him and so when I think it all through I don’t think I murdered him but that I only killed him outta the instinct of self-defense.”

  5. After the last arguments were given it was the end of the day and so the jury was sequestered for the night.

  Socrates went to his cell and was visited by Cassie and Mason.

  “Number seven and number eleven are on your side, Socco,” Tinheart said. “Older black woman and black man. They had sympathy for you when you testified.”

  “Seven come eleven as Billy would say,” Socrates said, trying to keep up his lawyers’ spirits.

  “They’ll probably take a month to decide,” Cassie added. “Our only problem is if someone else on the jury wants to wear them down.”

  Tinheart nodded sadly.

  “Why’ont you two go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Socrates suggested.

  “I brought some sleeping pills if you need them, Socco,” Mason offered.

  “I like it in jail, Mason. I sleep like a baby behind locked doors.”

  “I ain’t had nuthin’ to do with that man,” Luna said in the visitors’ room a while later. It was the first time he’d had visiting hours since Quest had suggested her infidelity.

  “I know that, Baby.”

  “I had lunch wit’ him two times and drinks once but I nevah even kissed his cheek. He said that he wanted to get together and talk. I didn’t know that he was some kinda spy.”

  “I know that, Luna.”

  “But she made it sound like she had pictures of me up in the bed wit’ him. He was nice but you my man.”

  “And you my woman right, Luna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ain’t no white woman in a burgundy suit gonna change that.”

  Upon hearing these words Luna started to cry. Tears flowed from both her eyes and she buried her face in his big, manacled hands. She was a child for a moment. Socrates wondered what the tears between his fingers had to do with freedom. He had the urge to be at the Thursday night Thinkers’ Meeting to ask just that question.

  The next day the jury filed in. Judge Tanaka sent them off to meet and twelve minutes later they sent word that they had come to a verdict.

  A middle-aged white woman named Calla Adams rose and was asked for the verdict.

  “Not guilty,” Calla said, but the words weren’t said with finality alone, it almost sounded to Socrates like she was going to add, “of course.”

  Cassie kissed Socrates cheek while Mason Tinheart slapped his arm and shook his hand. His friends, at least eighteen strong, rose to their feet and cheered. Judge Tanaka didn’t ask for order. She announced that justice had been done and ordered that the prisoner be freed.

  That night Luna made Socrates hamburgers and a salad. “I had Billy show me how to cook you sumpin’, Daddy. I

  wanna be a good wife to you and I know that a good wife got to

  cook sometimes.”

  “Wife?”

  “Yes. Wife. We gonna get married at the Big Nickel just like

  Cassie an’ them. I’m gonna change my name and learn to cook

  and go to school and have at least two more’a your chirren.” “All I gotta do is go on on trial for murder an’ you do all’a that?” “All you got to do is believe me an’ I don’t have to prove myself,” she said. “That’s why I come knockin’ at your do’ in the first

  place.”

  “Then why you say we have to wait a year?”

  “Forgive me?”

  6. Six weeks later life had returned to normal at the Big Nickel and at Socrates and Luna’s house. The wedding was being planned and the Thursday night Thinkers’ Meeting had settled down from the upset of almost losing their founder.

  On his first Monday out of prison Socrates drove from the new house up to Lorenzo Drive in Cheviot Hills and picked up Darryl. Together they went down to fish off a pier about thirtyfive miles south of Santa Monica. They went so far away because Socrates had become a celebrity after his acquittal in the highly publicized trial.

  The little pier they went to was rarely used. “So what you gonna do now?” the boy asked him after an hour or so.

  “You wanna take a walk?” the philosopher replied.

  Barefoot they walked down by the ocean along the sparsely populated beach. The waves were loud and the sun beat down on them.

  Darryl had come down to visit Socrates once a week while he was in jail but they never discussed the trial. They talked about Darryl’s school and life at the Zetel’s. They talked about Luna and baby Bellandra or sometimes about fishing.

  “I’m gonna keep on doin’ what I been doin’,” Socrates said after they’d walked a quarter mile.

  “But they wanna kill you or throw you back in prison,” Darryl said.

  Socrates noticed that Darryl’s voice had gotten more certain in his days as a West L.A. college student.

  “Yeah,” the boy’s mentor said, “they sure do.”

  “You’n me an’ Luna could move up to Oakland or maybe even Portland,” he said. “I could finish school up there.”

  “What you know about them places?”

  “That they’re safe. I don’t want you to get killed.”

  Socrates stooped and touched the young man’s arm. They lowered down to sit in the cool sand, laying their rods and buckets by their right sides.

  “I need the Big Nickel more than I need to know I’m gonna be free,” Socrates said. “It’s not that they need me. It’s not that they couldn’t make it without me. It’s Billy’s chili and the look on people’s faces when they tryin’ to say sumpin’ an’ they don’t know what it is.

  “I don’t wanna go back to prison. I don’t want no lethal injection. But you know we all gotta go sometimes, D-boy.”

  “But you could start a new place.”

  “Then the cops be aftah me there too.”

  “Maybe they’d let you teach someplace.”

  “And they tie my hands and gag my mouth. Ain’t no school wanna hear what I got to say.”

  “Luna said that you got a extra room in your house,” Darryl said then.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So can I come stay wit’ you while I’m still in school?”

  “Sure you can. Yes, sir. That would be the icing on the cake, Little Brother.”

  “I could get a job an’ pay rent. Luna said it
was okay.”

  “I already said yeah. You don’t have to convince me.”

  “Okay,” Darryl said as he stood and picked up his rod.

  “Okay,” Socrates echoed, standing as his friend did. “I guess we bettah be gettin’ back to the war.”

  This page intentionally left blank Walter Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL’s Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin‘ the Dog. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.