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.
I’d had a sure thing in the fourth that afternoon and consequently was wondering what I would use for money the rest of the month, so pay on the side sounded good. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway — and you’d understand that if you’d seen the girl. I have my weaknesses.
“I was just going to dinner,” I said. “Come along and you can explain in detail.”
I went by and nicked my old agent for thirty, and the girl and I went to a place in the Quarter where they boil shrimp the way I like them. I said we should have a drink before eating and she said she’d drink a martini. I took a pousse l’amour. I ate there fairly often so the waiter didn’t even blink, but the girl did when she saw the drink.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
“Nothing but maraschino, the yolk of an egg, vanilla cordial, and brandy.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s all?”
“That’s all. Now tell me about this missing uncle of yours.”
“I’m his only niece; in fact, I’m the only relative he has.” She smiled. Her lips were full, the lower one puckering down a little, the way I like them. They were bright red and her teeth were white. She was a honey. “My name’s Mary Swanson and I’m a junior in medical school.”
“What?” I said. “Huh?”
She laughed. “Everybody looks that way when I say I’m studying medicine, but I am. I won’t be much longer, though, if I don’t find Uncle David and put the bee on him. He wasn’t very definite in his last letter, so I decided I’d come down — from St. Louis — and try to talk him out of a thousand dollars. After all, I’m his only living relative, and I happen to know that he gets half his income every year about the first of February. But I’ve got to be back at school in a couple of days, and I haven’t been able to find him.”
“He’s hiding out on you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s always been generous with me. I’ve never had to ask him for money before. But he did sound strange when I talked to him over the phone — kind of frightened. I’m afraid something has happened to him.”
She took another martini and I had a brandy scaffa, which is made of raspberry syrup, maraschino, green chartreuse, and brandy, the liquors kept in separate layers. She said it was pretty, but that she didn’t want to sample it. Which was probably my loss.
I asked why she hadn’t gone to the police about her uncle.
She sipped at her drink and then looked up, half serious and half grinning. “I’m afraid my uncle’s got himself mixed up in some kind of personal affair. Nothing bad, but... well, I have my reasons.”
I said that I could understand, and that Sandy Rice was to be relied on to be discreet in matters of this kind. And she said, “I’m sure you are, Mr. Rice.”
And I said, “Call me Sandy.”
So we ate dinner, and afterwards she drank cognac and I took a brandy sangaree, which is a mild concoction of sugar and water and brandy and port wine with nutmeg sprinkled on top.
It was cold when we went outside. The wind whipped down Conti Street, and Mary — she was Mary by now and I didn’t even remember her last name — put her hand in my elbow. “Let’s go over to your uncle’s hotel,” I said. “If we don’t learn anything, we can take in the first show at the Blue Room without getting out in the cold again.”
Sam, the night clerk at the hotel, said, “McCracken phoned a couple of times to know if he had any mail, but I haven’t seen him the last three nights. I told the girl you were the guy to help her.” Mary was standing several yards behind me. Sam said, “Nice, huh?” and leered out of one corner of his eye like a cop who has caught you speeding but doesn’t want to write a ticket. “One good turn deserves another, Sandy.”
I said, “There is some rumor that Old Cactus will take the fourth tomorrow, but I wouldn’t put more than two bucks on it.”
“Thanks.”
It was my inning now.
“How about giving me the key to McCracken’s room and letting me go up and look around?”
“I like this job,” Sam said. “I don’t want to lose it.”
“Is it still the same room?”
“Yes. Five twelve.”
I said, “If the odds go below five to one, tomorrow might not be Old Cactus’ day after all.”
“You are a hell of a detective,” Sam said. “You protect the people’s interests, don’t you?”
“I work for the track. I investigate what they tell me to. I can’t help rumors.”
I told Mary to wait for me in the lobby. I rode up to the fifth floor and went up to five twelve, the first door around the bend in the hall. There are quite a few keys on my key ring and they will open a lot of doors, but none of them opened this one. Wondering why, I tried the knob. The door was already unlocked. I stepped inside and closed the door again.
It was dark in the room, just a little gray haze coming through the windows. I moved to the left, feeling for the light switch, and my foot touched something big and heavy and rubbery. My hand touched the switch at the same time and I clicked it on. I looked down at the thing at my feet.
It was a man. He lay on his back with one arm flung back. The coat was messy with blood and the knife was still there under his left shoulder blade. Blood was bubbling slowly around it, but he was dead, plenty. And they tell me that when a corpse is still bleeding, then it hasn’t been a corpse more than a few minutes.
I looked at the dead man’s face, and I had never seen him before. Then I looked up and saw that the door to the adjoining room was open.
It was very still and very quiet; that kind of quiet stillness that comes just before a big race when there is actually some movement and sound all around you but you don’t hear it or see it anymore. It was the kind of stiff quietness that you feel.
When McCracken and Arthur Andrews — the man who had been killed in the accident at the track — had come here they had taken adjoining rooms, and after Andrews’ death, McCracken had kept both rooms. The one beyond the open door was dark except for the yellow rectangle of light on the floor.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a gun and I didn’t have any business here — though Sam, the desk clerk, knew damn well I had come up — and I didn’t know if there was anybody in that dark room beyond the door. But there wasn’t much time to think and I did a fool thing... maybe Mary and I shouldn’t have stopped in that bar on the way to the hotel where I put down an East India cocktail of raspberry syrup, caroni bitters, red curaçao, maraschino, and a double brandy. Anyway, I reached down and took the knife out of the dead man’s back — it was really stuck in there. I had to pull hard to get it loose. Then I circled the bed and went through that open door into the room beyond.
I could see the outline of the room, but nothing else. I turned on the light to make sure. The room was empty.
I tried the door opening into the hall. It was unlocked.
When I looked down, I saw that several drops of blood had dripped from the knife blade onto the floor. The palm of my hand was sticky, and all at once I felt a little sick at the pit of my stomach. I realized I had been so scared the backs of my knees were aching.
I returned to the room where the dead man lay. Somebody knocked on the door, two sharp raps, and then the door opened and a man came in. He said, “Ah, David, if you won’t answer my letters, I—” Then he stumbled over the dead man.