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 stood in the doorway looking in.
David McCracken was walking across the floor with a half-filled glass of whiskey and soda in his hand, walking like a man who has been at it a long time, back and forth. He looked worried and frightened. He spun around as I entered, turning so fast some of the liquor spilled from his glass. “What — What...” His mouth hung open.
I let him have it. I said, “I want to know why you killed that man in your hotel room.”
He’d been frightened before, but now he looked as though he was going to faint. His face got green and he just stammered without making any sense. He didn’t seem able to say anything but, “What? What? What?”
“The dead man in your hotel room,” I said. “A Roscoe Jancey. Why did you kill him?”
The whiskey glass slid out of his hand and broke on the floor. He didn’t notice it. His mouth was working with froth coming out of it like he was a horse who’d run the mile and a quarter in mud. Finally he said, “I didn’t kill anybody. I haven’t been in that room in three days.” He swallowed hard. “Who’d you say was killed?”
“Roscoe Jancey, of New York.”
“I never heard of him.”
I was watching him when he said it, and I would have sworn he was telling the truth. It gave me an empty feeling in the stomach, because I’d counted on something here that would help. This made the whole mess crazier than ever.
And then the door on the far side of the room opened and Mary came in, looking as pretty and cute as a puppy. She was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were a little worried. Her black hair waved smooth down to her shoulders and she must have just finished putting on fresh make-up. “I thought I heard your voice,” she said. “What was all the excitement in front of the hotel just as Mr. Smith and I were leaving?”
“You didn’t want to see.”
“I wanted to. But Mr. Smith said that if I wanted to find Uncle Dave I’d have to hurry.”
I stared at her, trying to make sense out of her words. “Who said what?”
“Mr. Smith said he’d take me to Uncle Dave, but there wasn’t any time to waste. I knew you’d understand.”
“I don’t. Isn’t Dave McCracken your uncle?”
It was her turn to stare.
“Why, of course.”
I was really confused now.
“Then you mean this man here isn’t McCracken?”
“Certainly not. But he said he knew where Uncle Dave—”
McCracken jumped. I never saw anybody move so fast. I was spinning sideways but he got his left hand on my coat, and held on. He was bigger than I was and the top coat handicapped me. I hit him twice in the face with all I had, but he still held on. And then he had the gun out of his hip pocket and slammed me over the head with it.
The room began to spin around in easy circles, but I could tell I was on hands and knees, and I could feel the blood running down my forehead from the cut the gun had made. I heard somebody screaming, away off, it seemed; and then I knew it was right there in the room with me. It was Mary. She was backed into a corner and McCracken was going for her.
I tried to get up and I stumbled and fell. My head hit the arm of a chair. I went down flat — and cold.
I came to on the floor where I had fallen. My wrists and ankles were tied and I was gagged and my head hurt like hell. There was dried blood in my eyes and I couldn’t see very clearly.
I blinked a few times and twisted around and there was Mary on the floor across the room from me. She was tied up the same way I was and her hair wasn’t in smooth waves anymore; but she was conscious and she didn’t seem to be hurt. She tried to grin at me, which is quite a job when you have a lemon in your mouth with a handkerchief tied outside to keep it there.
My head hurt worse than a homebrew hangover, but I started wiggling around, trying to get loose. McCracken had been hurried and frightened and he’d done a lousy job of tying me up with some neckties. In five minutes I knew I was going to make it. It took about fifteen minutes altogether. Then I untied Mary.
“Well, well,” she said, “fancy meeting you here.” She began to laugh. She was scared almost sick, but she was fighting against it. That girl had what it takes.
“Where’d McCracken go?” I asked.
“Who?”
“McCracken. At least, he’s the fellow I knew as David McCracken. You called him Smith.”
“That’s what he told me his name was. The one thing I’m certain of; he’s not my uncle.”
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. But don’t you think we better leave here before he comes back? He might,” she swallowed, “might do worse next time.”
“Wait a minute. Maybe I can find a gun.” I searched the house and the only thing of interest was a small batch of drawings done in pencil. They were pretty good. One of them showed a horse and jockey and under the picture was written: Sandy Rice on Morning Glory.
I said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” But I didn’t find a gun.
Mary and I walked two blocks before we located an all-night drug store and I phoned for a cab. My watch showed ten minutes after four. It was cold, that wet kind of New Orleans cold that soaks through you so you feel as cold in the middle of your stomach as outside.
Mary was explaining, “I was waiting for you in the lobby. You must have been gone nearly a half hour. And the clerk who’d been at the desk—”
“Sam?”
“I think that’s the one. He’d left the desk a few minutes before. Then this Mr. Smith, or whatever his real name is, came up and asked for my uncle’s mail. I heard him and so I asked him if he knew where Uncle Dave was. He looked frightened, and then he said yes, he knew where Uncle Dave was, and he’d take me to him. As we were getting in his car we heard the shooting and I saw you run out; but Mr. Smith shoved me into the car. He said Uncle Dave was already in trouble and couldn’t afford any more. He brought me to that house, and he said for me to wait until Uncle Dave came. After two or three hours you came in.”
We were waiting for the cab, drinking black scalding coffee at the soda fountain. I asked, “After he bopped me, what?”
“He tied me up; he didn’t hurt me once I quit fighting. Then he tied you and walked up and down the room like he didn’t know what to do next, until finally he turned around and said he would be back later, and went dashing out the door.”
It looked to me as though I had part of this crazy matter worked out; but I still couldn’t be sure. I told Mary about the murder and she said she had never heard of a Roscoe Jancey; as far as I could tell the world wasn’t going to miss Roscoe Jancey very much. Nobody seemed to have heard of him. He was a hell of a man to get sent to the electric chair about.
“What about a Mr. Linden Blumberry?” I asked.
“I know him. He had charge of Uncle David’s estate. And by the way, when I was waiting for you in the lobby I thought I saw him coming down the stairs, but then somebody got in the way and, when I looked again, I decided I was wrong.”
“He was there.” The cab was blowing outside and we went out to it. It was cold in the taxi and we sat close together. “Downtown,” I told the driver. And then I asked Mary, “What about this Blumberry?”
“I always had an idea he’d be crooked if he needed to.”
“Well, he’s a lawyer, isn’t he?”
She laughed and said I must not like lawyers and I started to tell her about the time I got sued for breach of promise by a girl I had never seen but once in my life — that was when I was riding and in the money — but I skipped it. I asked her if she had ever heard of a Nell Parker, a good-looking redhead.
Mary looked up at me, frowning a little. “No... Why?”