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.
Of his more than four hundred mystery stories, forty are about Chief Fire Marshall Ben Pedley, the tough investigator who hunts down arsonists with single-minded intensity; he also starred in nine novels, beginning with Five Alarm Funeral (1942). His other major series detectives are Gil Vine, a hotel dick at the Plaza Royale, in eight books, and department store detective Don Cadee in the Spencer Dean novels. Other Winchell pseudonyms are Jay de Bekker and Dexter St. Clair.
“Ten Carats of Lead” was published in the August 1940 issue.
It was a case for the Homicide men according to all the rules, but Mike Hansard of the headquarters hockshop squad knew it had germinated under the three gold balls of his own special province, and that it could only end when he pulled the correct “blue card” from his “suspected” file.
Chapter One
Death on the Diamond Exchange
Mike Hansard stood just outside the door as two white-clad interns wheeled the operating carriage into the wardroom. They left the room silently without bothering to transfer the man in the short-sleeved hospital shirt to the cot.
A grave-eyed nurse touched Hansard on the sleeve. “He won’t be out of it for half an hour. You might have a little while with him, then.”
The plainclothesman eyed the strained, weather-beaten face on the pillow. “No chance to pull through?”
She shook her head. “An ordinary man would’ve died on the table. He...”
“Yeah.” Mike’s jaw was rocky. “Guy gets toughened up after twenty years on a beat. Makes it that much harder to check out.”
The nurse moved quietly down the long corridor. Mike sat down on the cot.
The dying man groaned, stirred a bandaged arm uneasily. Mike had a similar bandage on his own arm, where they’d made the transfusion. But he didn’t have three bullet holes in his guts, the way Tom MacReady did. Mike would have given a lot more than a pint of blood to help Tom, if he’d had the chance.
MacReady had gone to bat for him plenty of times. There was that night when Mike was new to harness, and the Cassati crowd had cornered him in a blind alley and put the lead to him. Tom hadn’t even been on duty, but he’d heard the gunfire and come in blasting, just as Joe Cassati was about to dot Mike’s eye. There would be a three-inch scar, somewhere on MacReady’s chest, under those bandages, that the older man had carried ever since as a memento of Cassati.
Mike had been close to Tom in those rookie days. They both reported to the reserve-room in the same precinct house. Both had similar ambitions. But Mike had passed his qualifying examinations and gone on up. Tom just couldn’t seem to make the grade, but that was just because some of the gold-braid boys couldn’t get it through their thick skulls that MacReady had what it takes to be a first-class detective and then some.
They knew now — too late. And they’d be out in force at the funeral, to give honor to a cop who’d faced a murderous pistol fire in performance of his duty. Hansard ground out his cigarette and cursed helplessly. A hell of a lot of good official honors would do Tom’s widow and ten-year-old kid!
The man on the pillow muttered incoherently and rolled his head from side to side. He opened his eyes, stared vacantly up at the detective. It was another five minutes before there was a light of recognition in his gaze; then he reached out feebly for Hansard’s hand.
“Hello, Mike,” he whispered hoarsely.
“How you feel, Tom?”
MacReady grimaced. “Not so bad. I guess they... fixed me up O.K.”
“Sure.” Mike grinned cheerfully. What they had fixed Tom up with had been a load of morphine. That was all they could do. “Feel like telling me what happened?”
The wounded man closed his eyes. “Ain’t much I can tell, Mike. I’m coming along Hester Street. To see if old lady Kruger got her coal from the relief. When I get to the corner opposite Dumont’s jewelry store—” He groaned, tried to put a hand to his belly, fumbled at the bandages for a little, then stiffened and lay still.
Hansard lit a cigarette, held it to MacReady’s lips. “Take a drag, Tom.”
The patrolman inhaled greedily, let the smoke dribble slowly from his nostrils. “I see these two punks and a dame huddled in front of Dumont’s window. When they spot me, they move on kind of sudden. So I go over to give a peek.” His voice was weaker, his lips looked like blue steel. “When I get up close, I see this Red Cross poster stuck on the outside of the window... Ah! It does hurt!”
“Take it easy, old-timer.”
“The old gray mare, Mike, ain’t what she used to be.” Sweat glistened on MacReady’s face. He went on, slowly. “Knew that poster was screwy. Stuck over hole in the glass. They’d used a glass cutter and a suction cup. Half the junk was gone out of the window. So I... went after ’em.”
“You get a look at them, Tom?”
MacReady licked his lips. “Couldn’t see ’em clear. Light was bad. They went... up the Bowery. Turned in that alley. Middle of the block.” A trickle of pink saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth. “When I hit the corner... they jumped me. Didn’t get a chance...” His voice trailed off into nothing, but his lips continued to work.
Hansard put his ear close to MacReady’s mouth.
“Be a while,” the patrolman was gasping, “before I... get back... to roll call.”
“A little while, Tom. Yeah.”
“You’ll have to... look after it, Mike.” MacReady’s eyes opened suddenly, very wide. He hoisted himself up convulsively, on one elbow. “They assigned you... to the case... didn’t they, Mike? It’s a hockshop case... ain’t it?”
“Sure it is. Inspector put me on it personal.”
“That’s O.K... then.” The patrolman fell back limply. “Long as... you’re on it, Mike.” His eyes glazed. He fought to focus them on the man bending over him. “When’ll... Mary and Steve... be over... to see me?”
“Ought to be here any minute, Tom. Any minute, now.”
There wasn’t any answer. The faded blue eyes stared fixedly up at the ceiling.
Hansard took out his watch, rubbed the back to mirror brightness on his vest, held it to MacReady’s lips. After a minute he put the watch back in his pocket.
“You sure got lousy breaks, pal. You sure did. I don’t know if anything can be done to balance the books for you, but I’ll give it a try, Tom.”
He rang the bell on the wall.
In the shadow of the El, the street was dark and gloomy, but the opposite side of the Bowery was a blaze of naked electric bulbs over dazzling displays of silverplate and glittering rows of gaudy gems. One jewelry store crowded against another, elbowing for space in this brilliant white light of Little Maiden Lane.
As Mike stalked toward the sign — DUMONT’S — DIAMONDS — he saw a bulky-shouldered man lounging in the doorway. When Hansard angled toward the Red Cross poster on Dumont’s window, the man stepped out into the light. His eyes were narrow slits in a brick-red face. He had his right hand in his coat pocket and his voice was brusque.
“Keep movin’, mister... right along, now. Right along.”
Hansard didn’t even bother to show his badge. “Crysake, don’t you Ames dummies know a cop when you see one?”
The representative of the Ames Patrol took his hand out of his coat pocket. “I ain’t takin’ no chances. Buddy of mine had the switch snapped on him a little while ago, right up there on the corner.”