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.
“What did you think Sandy Rice wanted with McCracken?”
“Well, Sandy used to play poker up here sometimes, I think. I—” Sam began to stammer; and Murphy started looking at me with his mouth grinning and his pale eyes cold.
“Gambling,” he said. He had it all worked out now. Somehow the gambling would furnish a motive; and I’d practically been caught in the act of murder. They’d make a cinch case out of it. I’d have a chance like a three-legged mule in a match race with Johnstown.
“Damn it!” I said. “Let’s get Mary up here and she’ll tell you—”
“Mary?” Murphy asked.
“McCracken’s niece, you idiot. She’s downstairs in the lobby. She’ll tell you what I was doing.”
He told the other cops to keep their eyes on Blumberry and the redheaded girl and the corpse, and we would be right back. We rode down on the elevator. Pete said, “I lost twenty bucks on that pig you touted me on. I hope to Gawd you try something cute.”
There wasn’t any need to argue with him. He wasn’t much better than a half-wit anyway.
We started across the lobby. I couldn’t see Mary anywhere. “Where is she?” Pete said.
A man and woman in evening clothes passed us. The woman wore one of these dresses without any shoulder straps at all — the kind that looks like it has already started to fall off and is halfway gone. Pete said, “My Gawd! Look at that!” and turned to watch.
It was then I saw another couple going out the street door at the far end of the lobby. Mary and David McCracken! I started to run after them.
Halfway across the lobby, I heard Pete bellow, just a roar of sound at first, changing into, “Hey! Hey, you!” and of all things, “Halt!”
Mary and Dave McCracken were already out of sight, but I wasn’t going to lose them. I kept going.
I was running, five yards from the door, the Negro doorman staring at me and at Pete, who was following across the lobby. All at once the Negro’s face went a sort of ash gray and he went straight up and came down running. At the same time a hole popped in the door — and then I heard the shot. I hadn’t thought that idiot Pete would shoot, but now I was going too fast to stop. The second bullet whined at my ear as I plunged down the steps.
A quarter block down the lighted street I saw McCracken helping Mary into an automobile. She had stopped, half in and half out, and was staring back toward the sound of the shots. I yelled, “Hey! Wait!”
McCracken shoved her. He shoved her so hard she must have bounced against the other side of the car. He dived after her.
I saw I couldn’t catch him on foot, so I angled for one of the cabs lined up in front of the hotel. Behind me there was a crash as Pete Murphy came through the hotel door, waving his gun. The driver of the cab I was going for took one look and went out the other side and I jumped under the wheel. I got the taxi going just as that half-witted cop let go with another bullet. I heard it smack into the rear of the car.
There was only one car between McCracken and me. I figured I’d catch him easy enough. By this time I was mad as hell, getting shoved around and accused of murder and shot at. I put my foot down hard on the gas.
The streetlight was green, and McCracken went straight across Canal into Dauphine Street. I knew I had him. He was going the wrong way on a one-way street. The first block was almost empty of traffic, but if he turned, he’d have to slow down; and if he went straight, he’d jam up in traffic.
And then my motor gave a couple of sputs and died. Pete Murphy had shot a hole in the gas tank. My luck with McCracken was holding steady. Less than a block behind me cops were blowing whistles and running and waving guns and people were yelling.
I left the taxi where it stopped. In fact, I left it before it stopped.
The joint I picked was called The Purple Door. I had never been there but once, and nobody knew me, and they had closed booths along the rear wall. I went past the bar, across what they called a dance floor where a three-piece Negro orchestra was blowing its lungs out, and into a booth. I sat down and one of the house girls sat down opposite me.
“Run along,” I said. “I got trouble.”
“You waiting for one of the other girls?”
“I’m waiting for a drink.”
“Well, you want to buy me one, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t. I just want to sit here and do some deep thinking.”
A waiter stuck his head in the booth and the girl said, “Hey, Doug, this guy don’t want to buy me a drink.”
“What’s he want?” Doug demanded. “Hold his own hand? You can do that outside, squirt.”
I was deciding that with the cops looking for me I would be less conspicuous in the French Quarter with a girl than without one, so I said, “All right, I’ll buy her a drink. What you want, baby?”
“I know what she wants,” Doug said. “What about you?”
“A Roman punch.”
“A what?”
“If the bartender don’t know how to make it, tell him to look it up. He can read, can’t he?”
Doug spat out of one corner of his mouth. “What difference’s it to you? You ain’t big enough to complain.”
He went off and the girl said, “It’s a cold night, ain’t it?” and I didn’t say anything. I had a lot of hard thinking to do. I had a murder charge hanging over me and I was guilty of stealing a taxi. I had run away from the scene of the crime and Pete Murphy would be sure I was guilty; once he got me in jail, that would be the end of it. From there to the hot seat would be shorter than the road from the betting ring to the poorhouse. Once they got me in jail it would all be over — so I had to keep out of jail and learn who had murdered the man in the hotel room — and I didn’t even know who the murdered man was!
The waiter brought our drinks. He looked at my Roman punch and at me and shook his head and went away again. The girl said, “My Lord! What’s in there beside a fruit salad?”
“A mixture. Raspberry syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, curaçao, rum, and brandy. I like the brandy.”
“I been working in this joint for six months,” she said, “and this is the first time I ever thought I got the best of it by drinking this colored water they serve us girls.”
I said, “Uh,” and went back to figuring what I had ahead of me. I couldn’t go home, because the cops would be watching the place, and I couldn’t go to the track tomorrow because they’d be there too. I tried to think of Mary’s last name and I couldn’t remember it — and she hadn’t told me which hotel she was staying in. But obviously the thing to do was find her and McCracken, because I felt sure McCracken would at least know the corpse in his hotel room. But how to find McCracken?
The waiter stuck his head in the door. “You ready for a drink, buddy? That ain’t a park bench you’re setting on.”
The girl said, “I’ll take another one.”
“A brandy flip,” I said.
The waiter brought it and when I took a sip the girl said, “You’re drunker than I thought you were; you wouldn’t drink that thing sober.”
“I like it. There’s nothing in it but hot ale and egg and sugar and nutmeg and brandy.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re one of these straight whiskey drinkers, huh?”
I said, “I love to buy you whiskey, or that colored water they serve you girls for whiskey. But I’d love it better if you kept quiet. I got some thinking to do.”
“It’s oke with me. I get paid by the drink.”
“It’s a wonder that pink water don’t rot your stomach out,” I said, and then went back to my thinking. I tried to remember everything that had ever happened to me which had any connection with David McCracken. It was a dismal list, all bad. I tried to remember everything that had happened tonight from the time Mary rang my doorbell and asked if I could find her uncle. I thought about this a while and said to the girclass="underline"