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.
The room he was in looked like a boudoir. Rose-pink spread on the bed, fluffy drapes at the windows, a dressing-table with a vanity mirror. But no women’s clothes...
He stepped to the door leading into the hall. There was a rattling of ice in a glass, the sound of a syphon. Mike moved out into the hall.
The Babe, in a pair of vivid blue lounging pajamas, was mixing a drink. He was lifting it to his lips when Mike said: “Hang onto it, sweetheart. With both hands. Get both hands on that glass, fast!”
The Babe did as he was told, watching Hansard with sullen eyes.
Mike stepped close to him, jabbed him gently with the muzzle of his pistol. “Turn around, Babe. Up against the wall there.” He got the bracelets out of his hip pocket, clipped one-half of the nickeled cuffs to the killer’s left wrist.
There was a buzz out in the front of the apartment, another and another.
“That will be Georgie the ape-man, huh?”
Mike snapped the other half of the handcuffs around a steam riser in the corner of the kitchen. “You stay here, beautiful. I’ll go let him in. And if you yell or anything like that, I’ll put a dent in that classic nose of yours.”
Hansard went through the hall, past a daintily furnished living-room, to the front door. There was the sound of a key in the lock. Mike didn’t wait. He jerked the door open.
Gorilla George fell into the room, his jaw gaping in astonishment. Hansard had his share of the same feeling. For behind the Gorilla, a look of grim determination on his red face and an automatic clutched in his fist, was Brundage, the Ames patrolman!
Things happened fast. The Gorilla let the momentum of his plunging entrance carry him into a dive for Mike’s knees. Hansard chopped down with the barrel of his revolver, caught the ape-man beside the ear with force enough to crack the skull of an ordinary individual.
But the Gorilla didn’t stop. He got those long arms around Hansard’s knees, threw him heavily.
From the kitchen came a cry. “George. He’s got me cuffed here!” The words spurred the scar-lipped man to a frenzy. Mike shot him once, through the shoulder, but George smashed a clubbed fist to the plainclothesman’s jaw, wrenching his head to one side and sending a spasm of pain through him from the cracked rib.
Then Brundage took two quick steps, put the muzzle of his automatic in the Gorilla’s right ear, pulled the trigger. The body collapsed on top of Hansard.
“Crysake, Brundage,” Mike muttered. “You didn’t have to do that.”
The Ames man blew the smoke out of his pistol barrel. “He’d have killed you, wise guy. He was heading upstairs to do just that, when I ran into him.”
Mike got painfully to his feet. “Didn’t you run into my partner, too? I left him down there, on guard.”
“Sure.” Brundage turned the Gorilla over with his toe. “But he wanted to phone for some more of you John Laws, so I told him to go ahead. Then when I got in the building, I’m trying to find which apartment belongs to this Babe Tyler, who used to buddy around with Dumont, an’ who should come along but this rat? So I bring him up with me.”
“George!” screamed the Babe, from the kitchen. “Where did he hit you, George? If that — got you, I’ll burn his eyes out!”
Mike nodded toward the kitchen. “Georgie’s boy-friend, or something. The one who drilled Tom MacReady.”
Brundage stuck out his jaw belligerently. “I’d like a crack at that punk. I’ll run him over to the precinct house for you. You ain’t in no shape to manhandle him, fella.”
Hansard said: “I’ll be O.K. Bent a rib last time I had an argument with these two. But you can help me with him, unless you’ve got ideas about collecting any part of that Jeweler’s Association reward?”
The Ames man shook his head. “I ain’t eligible. All I’m doin’ is tryin’ to protect my job. That’s why I hammered Dumont until I dragged the Babe’s address outa him. Gimme the cuff-keys. I got a couple of new grips I want to show that scut.”
Hansard took a key from his vest pocket, tossed it to him. “Don’t bang him around too much. Prosecutor’ll give us trouble, if you do.”
Brundage went into the kitchen.
Mike waited until the private patrolman was out of sight, then followed on tiptoe. He peeked around the corner.
Brundage was having trouble with the lock on the handcuffs.
“Hurry up,” whispered the Babe. “And give me a gun.”
“Left-hand pocket,” muttered the Ames representative. “This key don’t fit.”
“Damn right it don’t,” Mike snapped. “You don’t think I was sap enough to fall for that line of horse, do you?”
Brundage snarled, fired. But his aim was spoiled by the Babe, who was desperately trying to tug the extra pistol from Brundage’s pocket.
Mike took his time, steadied himself against the door jamb, shot Brundage in the navel. He had to put another slug in the same place before the private cop sank to the floor and dropped his gun.
The Babe had managed to get the automatic from Brundage’s coat before the Ames man fell. He lifted it, sighted.
Hansard came in fast, knocked the muzzle aside, clipped the Babe once across the teeth with the barrel of his own .38.
The killer moaned and sagged limply against the chain of the handcuffs.
Brundage rolled over on his side. “They’ll get you for this, copper. My people’ll get you.”
“Sure they will, Amesy.” Mike ran water in the sink, put his head under it, said sputteringly: “They’ll get me to accept a medal for turning up a traitor. As well as a guy who’s wanted by the Frisco police.”
“You’re crazy. Ain’t... first time... cop’s gone... gun-crazy.” Brundage put a hand to his belly. Somehow the gesture reminded Mike of Tom MacReady on the operating carriage.
“No.” Mike wiped his face on a dish towel. “I might have been a little dumb. But not wacky. I had sense enough to figure out that the louse behind all these window-hole robberies must be somebody who knew a lot about the kind of stuff in jewelry-store windows and when the Ames men wouldn’t be around and what time the harness bulls would be on a different part of their beats. A guy like Dumont wouldn’t know all those angles. He wouldn’t be able to find out, either. And naturally, a couple of torpedoes like the Gorilla and the Babe here wouldn’t have that information. But you would. And working with Kutwik, you’d gotten away with it for a long time. Using a different mob of killers every so often and knocking them off yourself, when you were through with them, I suppose.”
The Babe whimpered: “George. You shot George?”
“Not me,” Mike said. “I would have, only your boss beat me to the punch.”
The youth in the pajamas reached over, clawed savagely at Brundage’s face. Mike bent down, clipped him.
“Mike! Where are you, Mike?” It was Schmidt’s worried voice, calling from the front door.
“In the kitchen,” Hansard shouted.
Schmidt came running in. “Holy cow!” he breathed as he saw the two men on the floor in the corner. “Good thing I sent for an ambulance, huh?”
“What’d you do that for, Ed?”
“That jeweler, Kutwik. I went away from the car and left that Ames gent to watch him. When I come back, the Ames lad is gone and Kutwik has a hole as big as your thumb, in his chest.”
“I hope he’ll live,” Mike growled, “to testify against this crooked private cop. His name isn’t Brundage, of course. It’s Sexton. But it won’t make much difference. The Babe will go to town on the stand. Brundage, or Sexton, bumped the Babe’s boy-friend.”
“Jeeze, Mike! What a shambles! Which one shot the blonde?”