The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
“Miles,” Spade said hoarsely, “was a—. I found that out the first week we were in business together, and I intended to kick him out as soon as the year was up. You didn’t do me a damned bit of harm by murdering him.”
“Then what?”
Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said:
“Listen. This isn’t a damned bit of good. You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once more, and then we’ll give it up. In my part of the world when your partner’s killed you’re supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it happens that we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your employees, or a partner, or anybody connected with your detective business is killed, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around, bad for that one agency, and bad for every detective — bad all around. Third, I’m a detective, and expecting me to run any criminal down and then let him go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and then let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it’s not the natural thing.”
“But—”
“Wait till I’m through and then you can talk. Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now, it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go now without having myself dragged in with Gutman, Cairo and the kid. Next, I’ve no reason in God’s world to think I can trust you, and if I did this, and got away with it, you’d have something on me that you could use if you ever happened to want to. That’s five of them. The sixth would be that, since I’d also have something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t decide to shoot holes in me some day. Seventh, I don’t like the idea of even thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker. And eighth — but that’s enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them seem unimportant, but look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you?”
“You know,” she whispered, “whether you do or not.”
“I don’t. It’s easy enough for me to be nuts about you.” He looked hungrily from her hair to her feet and up to her eyes again. “But I don’t know what that amounts to. Does anybody ever? But suppose I do: what of it? Maybe next month I won’t. I’ve been through it before — when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I’ll remember you and I’ll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over, as I probably would, then I’d be sure I’d been the sap. Well, if I send you over I’ll be sorry as hell — I’ll have some rotten nights — but that’ll pass.”
She raised her hands to his cheeks and drew his face down.
“Look at me,” she said, “and tell me the truth. Would you have done this if the falcon had been real, and you had been paid your money?”
“What difference does that make now? Don’t be too sure that I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That kind of a reputation might be good business, bringing in high-priced jobs and making dealings with the enemy easier.”
She looked at him, saying nothing.
He moved his shoulders slightly and said: “Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.”
She put her face up to his face. Her mouth was partly open, with lips thrust a little out. She whispered: “If you loved me you’d need nothing more on that side.”
Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: “I won’t play the sap for you.”
She put her mouth against his, slowly, her arms around him, and came into his arms.
She was in his arms when the doorbell rang.
Spade, left arm around Brigid O’Shaughnessy, opened the corridor door. Lieutenant Dundy, Detective Sergeant Polhaus and two other detectives were there.
Spade said: “Hello, Tom. Get them?”
Polhaus said: “Got them.”
“Swell. Come in. Here’s another one for you.” Spade pressed the girl forward. “She killed Miles. And I’ve got some more exhibits — the boy’s guns, one of Cairo’s, a black statuette that all the hell was about, and a thousand-buck bill that I was supposed to be bribed with.” He looked at Dundy, drew his brows together, leaned forward to peer insolently into the Lieutenant’s face, and then burst out laughing. “What the hell’s the matter with your little playmate, Tom? He looks heartbroken.” He laughed again. “I bet, by God, when he heard Gutman’s story he thought he had me at last!”
“Cut it out, Sam,” Tom grumbled. “We didn’t think—”
“Like hell he didn’t,” Spade said merrily. “He came up here with his mouth watering, though you’d have sense enough to know I’d been stringing Gutman.”
“Cut it out,” Tom grumbled again, looking uneasily sidewise at his superior. “Anyways, we got it from Cairo. Gutman’s dead. The kid shot him up just before we got there.”
Spade nodded.
“He ought to have expected that,” he said.
Effie Perine put down her newspaper and jumped up from Spade’s chair when he came into the office at a little after nine o’clock Monday morning.
He said: “Morning, angel.”
“Is that — what the papers have — right?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” He dropped his hat on the desk and sat down. His face was pasty in color, but its lines were strong and cheerful, and his eyes, though shot with blood, were clear.
The girl’s brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer twist to her mouth. She stood beside him, staring down at him.
He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly: “So much for your woman’s intuition.”
Her voice was queer as the expression on her face. “You did that, Sam, to her?”
He nodded. “Your Sam’s a detective.” He looked sharply at her. He put his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. “She did kill Miles, angel,” he said gently, “offhand, like that.” He snapped fingers of his other hand.
She moved away from his encircling arm as if it had hurt her.
“Don’t, please, don’t touch me,” she said brokenly. “I know — I know you’re right. You’re right. But don’t touch me now — not now.”
Spade’s face became pale as his collar.
The corridor door’s knob rattled. Effie Perine turned quickly and went into the outer office, shutting the door behind her. When she came in again she shut it behind her.
She said in a small, flat voice: “Iva is here.”
Spade, looking down at his desk, nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Yes,” he said and shivered. “Iva. Well, send her in.”
Ten Carats of Lead
Stewart Sterling
Stewart Sterling, the pseudonym of Prentice Winchell (1895–1976), was born in Illinois but lived for many years in Florida. He began his career as a journalist and editor of trade publications before becoming the writer and producer of more than five hundred programs for radio, mostly mystery series, as well as writing for film and television. Among his many radio shows were Bill Lance (which ran on West Coast stations in 1944 and 1945) and the early series The Eno Crime Club, which first aired on CBS on February 9, 1931, as a five-times-a-week show; it underwent several format and title changes during its five-year run. Written by Sterling, it featured pure detective stories about Spencer Dean, known as “the Manhunter”; beginning in 1954, Sterling wrote a series of nine mysteries under the Spencer Dean pseudonym. His best-known screenplay was Having Wonderful Crime (1945), very loosely based on the 1943 John J. Malone novel by Craig Rice, starring Pat O’Brien, George Murphy, and Carole Landis.