The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction
- Автор: Якубовски Максим, Беллем Роберт
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Constable & Robinson
- ISBN: 9781472111807
- Жанр: Крутые детективы
Электронная книга - «The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction». Краткое содержание книги:
He looked at the extra-lovely Mrs Riker. She stood motionless at the side of the bed and he stood beside her with the switchblade aiming at her velvet-sheathed flesh. She was looking at the blade and waiting for him to aim it at Riker, to put it in the sleeping man and send it in deep.
But that wasn’t the play. He smiled dimly to let her know he had something else in mind.
Riker’s left hand dangled over the side of the bed and his right hand rested on the pillow. Ken kept the knife aimed at Hilda as he reached toward the pillow and then under the pillow. His fingers touched metal. It was the barrel of a revolver and he got a two-finger hold on it and eased it out from under the pillow. The butt came into his palm and his middle finger went through the trigger-guard and nestled against the back of the guard, not touching the trigger.
He closed the switchblade and put it in his pocket. He stepped back and away from the bed and said, “Now you can wake up your husband.”
She was staring at the muzzle of the .38. It wasn’t aiming at anything in particular.
“Wake him up,” Ken murmured. “I want him to see his gun in my hand. I want him to know how I got it.”
Hilda gasped and it became a sob and then a wail and it was a hook of sound that awakened Riker. At first he was looking at Hilda. Then he saw Ken and he sat up very slowly, as though he was something made of stone and ropes were pulling him up. His eyes were riveted to Ken’s face and he hadn’t yet noticed the .38. His hand crept down along the side of the pillow and then under the pillow.
There was no noise in the room as Riker’s hand groped for the gun. Some moments passed and then there was sweat on Riker’s forehead and under his lip and he went on searching for the gun and suddenly he seemed to realize it wasn’t there. He focused on the weapon in Ken’s hand and his body began to quiver. His lips scarcely moved as he said, “The gun – the gun—”
“It’s yours,” Ken said. “Mind if I borrow it?”
Riker went on staring at the revolver. Then very slowly his head turned and he was staring at Hilda. “You,” he said. “You gave it to him.”
“Not exactly,” Ken said. “All she did was tell me where it was.”
Riker shut his eyes very tightly as though he was tied to a rack and it was pulling him apart.
Hilda’s face was expressionless. She was looking at Ken and saying, “You promised to let me walk out—”
“I’m not stopping you,” he said. Then, with a shrug and a dim smile, “I’m not stopping anyone from doing what they want to do.” And he slipped the gun into his pocket.
Hilda started for the door. Riker was up from the bed and lunging at her, grabbing her wrist and hurling her across the room. Then Riker lunged again and his hands reached for her throat as she tried to get up from the floor. Hilda began to make gurgling sounds but the noise was drowned in the torrent of insane screaming that came from Riker’s lips. Riker choked her until she died. And even then he stayed where he was and went on screaming at her.
Ken stood there, watching it happen. His mind absorbed and recorded every detail of the scene. He thought, Well, they wanted each other, and now they got each other.
He walked out of the room and down the hall and down the stairs. As he went out of the house he could still hear the screaming. On Spruce, walking toward Eleventh, he glanced back and saw a crowd gathering outside the house and then he heard the sound of approaching sirens. He waited there and saw the police cars stopping in front of the house, the policemen rushing in with drawn guns. Some moments later he heard the shots and he knew that the screaming man was trying to make a getaway. There was more shooting and suddenly there was no sound at all. He knew they’d be carrying two corpses out of the house.
He turned away from what was happening back there, walked along the curb toward the sewer-hole on the corner, took Riker’s gun from his pocket and threw it into the sewer. In the instant that he did it, there was a warm sweet taste in his mouth. He smiled, knowing what it was. Again he could hear Tillie saying, “Revenge is black pudding.”
Tillie, he thought. And the smile stayed on his face as he walked north on Eleventh. He was remembering the feeling he’d had when he’d kissed her. It was the feeling of wanting to take her out of that dark cellar, away from the loneliness and the opium. To carry her upward toward the world where they had such things as clinics, with plastic specialists who repaired scarred faces.
The feeling hit him again and he walked faster.
A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL
Max Allan Collins
It had been a long time since I’d had any trouble sleeping. Probably Vietnam, and that was gunfire that kept me awake. I’ve never been an insomniac. You might think killing people for a living would give you restless nights. Truth is, those that go into that business simply aren’t the kind who are bothered by it much.
I was no exception. I hadn’t gone into retirement because my conscience was bothering me. I retired because the man I got my contracts through got killed – well, actually I killed him, but that’s another story – and I had enough money put away to live comfortably without working, so I did.
The A-frame cottage on Paradise Lake was secluded enough for privacy, but close enough to nearby Lake Geneva to put me in contact with human beings, if I was so inclined, which I rarely was, with the exception of getting laid now and then. I’m human.
There was also a restaurant nearby, called Wilma’s Welcome Inn, a rambling two-story affair that included a gas station, modest hotel accommodations and a convenience store. I’d been toying with the idea of buying the place, which had been slipping since the death of Wilma; I’d been getting a little bored lately and needed something to do. Before I started putting people to sleep, I worked in a garage as a mechanic, so the gas station angle appealed to me.
Anyway, boredom had started to itch at me, and for the past few nights I’d had trouble sleeping. I sat up all night watching satellite TV and reading paperback westerns; then I’d drag around the next day, maybe drifting to sleep in the afternoon just long enough to fuck up my sleep cycle again that night.
It was getting irritating.
At about three-thirty in the morning on the fourth night of this shit, I decided eating might do the trick. Fill my gut with junk food and the blood could rush down from my head and warm my belly and I’d get the fuck sleepy, finally. I hadn’t tried this before because I’d been getting a trifle paunchy, since I quit working, and since winter kicked in.
In the summer I’d swim in the lake every day and get exercise and keep the spare tire off. But in the winter I’d just let my beard go and belt-size, too. Winters made me fat and lazy and, now, fucking sleepless.
The cupboard was bare so I threw on my thermal jacket and headed over to the Welcome Inn. At this time of night the convenience store was the only thing open, that and one self-serve gas pump.
The clerk was a heavy-set brunette named Cindy from nearby Twin Lakes. She was maybe twenty years old and a little surly, but she worked all night, so who could blame her.
“Mr Ryan,” she said, flatly, as I came in, the bell over the door jingling.
“Cindy,” I said, with a nod, and began prowling the place, three narrow aisles parallel to the front of the building. None of the snacks appealed to me – chips and crackers and Twinkies and other preservative-packed delights – and the frozen food case ran mostly to ice-cream sandwiches and popsicles. In this weather, that was a joke.