The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
“Investigations may come and magistrates may go, but the rule of Joe Gorgon in the city of New York is still with us. But where his brother, Eddie, is constantly in trouble, the breath of scandal has not blown upon Joe Gorgon — at least, not hard enough to blow him into a prison cell, where he undoubtedly belongs.”
That was headline stuff. I skipped to the column heads. One, at least, was good for a grin and reminded me of Eddie Gorgon’s last laugh, about looking a Gorgon in the face and dying.
And the reporter here had played upon his imagination a bit, but made a rather plausible story for the public at that. He dished up first the article written by a well known columnist comparing the Gorgons to the old myth, and Hawthorne’s immortal tale of how Perseus was sent out by the wicked king to bring back to him the head of one of the Gorgons, three winged monsters with claws of bronze and serpents for hair. In this article the writer had nicely called the Gorgon brothers monsters with claws of gold, whose many hairs were the gangsters, crooked public servants and racketeers whom they controlled. But the old Greek myth said that to look a Gorgon in the face meant that the one who looked would turn to stone — or die.
And, continued the story, Eddie Gorgon had certainly stared long enough at Butch Fitzgerald, in an East Side dive, to fulfill the old myth. It is sufficient to say that Butch Fitzgerald had died — been shot to death on Delancey Street. Though Eddie Gorgon presented indisputable evidence that at the time he was visiting friends in New Bedford, Massachusetts, there are many who would bet their last nickel that Eddie Gorgon had a face, if not a hand, in the murder.
But the article, in conclusion, said that the enterprising columnist, not forgetting that the old myth and Hawthorne’s tale consisted of three Gorgons, had gone out and not only hunted himself up another Gorgon brother, but had interviewed that brother, Professor Michelle Gorgon, a quiet man surrounded by his books. “An artist and a scholar, whose collection of first prints is the envy and admiration of both amateur and professional collectors. If Michelle Gorgon feels the notoriety which his brothers have given his name, he keeps it well buried inside him. But it is rather well known that neither Joe nor Eddie often visit their brother’s apartment atop one of Park Avenue’s most pretentious dwellings.
“It would be a queer trick of fate if this educated and quiet, soft spoken Michelle Gorgon after all turned out to be the fine Italian hand that has guided his brothers up the ladder of doubtful fame. For, after all, to talk with Joe Gorgon leaves one with the impression that despite his rather forced smoothness of surface, his Gorilla days are not far behind him.”
Of course I had heard that story before. Just the fanaticism of a columnist, but maybe very real to Eddie Gorgon or his brother, Joe. After all, I’ve often said that crooks are like children at play. Anything that stimulates or satisfies their vanity is quickly grabbed at. Yep, I could very easily see them coddle to that Gorgon myth, rather than resent it. And certainly Eddie Gorgon had glared me down. But then, if I remember Hawthorne’s tale of the GORGON’S HEAD, Perseus had used a sword, and I... well... I go in heavy for guns, and I’m still alive to tell you that a forty-four in the hands of a man who knows how and has the will to use it takes a lot of glaring down — even from a Gorgon. But I shrugged my shoulders, folded up my paper, and stepping out on the subway platform climbed to the street above.
I met my man — or rather, he met me. I was hardly out of the subway station before he walked straight up to me.
“Race Williams.” He eyed me closely from under his gray felt hat. Keen, sharp, hard eyes. But I gave him look for look. And I didn’t know him. That is, I did and didn’t. His face was familiar. But we’ll simply say that he was about forty-five; clear, weather beaten skin; piercing, cold, but honest eyes — and the chin of a fighter. Not pugnacious, you understand more, determined, ambitious. A go-getter, and what I liked mostly — not a guy to be sidetracked from his purpose.
He had a way of talking straight talk.
“You will not, of course, presume on my identity. If you discover it, forget it. I shan’t go into details about your qualifications. I believe in laying my hand on men personally. If I’m fooled, I want to fool myself. I don’t want to blame any one but myself. You have been paid for this job tonight. If it is my pleasure, afterwards, I want you to forget this — this incident. That’s agreeable, of course.”
“Suits me.” I was trying to place him, but couldn’t. This much I felt. I had spotted that map in a daily paper — and not so long since either. But I shrugged my shoulders. If he wanted it strictly business he could have it his way.
He led me to a car, threw open the door and watched me climb in.
“I shall drive,” he said. “You shall watch that we are not followed. I am putting a great confidence in you.”
“Okay!” was the best I gave him as he slid behind the wheel.
“You are not a very talkative man.”
“It’s your racket.” I shrugged.
“Yes — my racket.” And he seemed to think aloud, as Rudolph Myer had described it. “Entirely my racket.” And then, with a half turn of his head toward me, “I am placing in your hands tonight the life of a man. Maybe, the life and honor of a great many men. What do you say to that?” He fairly snapped the last words at me. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like his attitude. He was treating me like an ordinary gunman — the gunman the papers sometimes painted me.
“You’re trying to buy a lot of silence in New York for five hundred dollars,” was what I said to that.
He sort of jumped the car around the corner.
“If a man’s honor is for sale, I could never raise a sufficient sum to bid for his silence against—” He hesitated, and then, “I am not buying your silence, Mr. Williams. It is my understanding that it is not for sale. I’m paying you for your time — and your courage, which I understand is for sale. I back my judgment of character rather than my bank balance.” I think that he smiled. “Perhaps it’s less altruistic and laudable when I confess that my bank balance, compared with my judgment, is negligible. I must confess that I picked you first from... well... if not exactly hearsay, from the opinion of another.”
“Rudolph Myer.” I smiled a bit.
He smiled too. A hard sort of smile.
“You believe that?” he asked.
“Well — Myer told me so.”
“Quite so. I told him that.” He nodded, pulled the car up by the iron fence of St. — well... I’ll just say, a well known city hospital, and leaving it there in the dark walked by my side to a small gate.
We passed slowly into the hospital, down the dimly lit corridor, ignored the elevator and climbed to the second floor. There another long corridor, a turn to the left, through a curtain into a dark alcove at the end — and a man who had been sitting beside a partly open door jumped to his feet, and with a hand to his hip swung and faced us.
I got a jolt out of that. The man, in plain clothes, was Detective Sergeant O’Rourke, of the New York City police.
“A police case.” I guess the words were jarred out of me, and probably not in an enthusiastic voice. The police don’t often want me in with them — and I don’t want them in with me. Fair is fair! Now, was it simply to identify a man that I was there? I turned to my guide and client. Let the police fight their own battles! They do everything to hamper mine. Five hundred dollars to identify a suspect that the police couldn’t lay a finger to! Well — I’d tell this lad where he got off. But I didn’t tell him. He was talking.
“Detective Sergeant O’Rourke,” he said very slowly, “is off duty tonight. That is, off regular police duty.”