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.
Sergeant Crowell cocked his head grimly. “That point you don’t have to think about twice, sir. With me they don’t escape alive.”
Nick retrieved the vaccine carton, put it in his pocket, and fled. He took a cab and drove quickly to Dr. Wing’s home, which was located out in Nuuanu Valley not far from the Country Club. From the outside, the stucco house was ordinary, but its interior was carpeted with luxuriantly deep rugs, the walls studded with Hawaiian objets d’art, the furniture polished teakwood, the place alive with books of many languages. There was a musty richness about Eddie Wing’s home which did not match his youth. “Nicholas,” he said. “Welcome to Stony Broke. Come in, please, quickly—”
“It’s plague,” Nick breathed, unable to contain himself. “It’s plague, Eddie, bubonic plague. Look at this.” He thrust the carton at Wing. “Paul Cameron inoculated himself with this stuff tonight. It means he’s either working with plague or trying to break this thing himself, and the second possibility is an impossibility. I’m convinced. He’s been in and out of the thing vaguely ever since I found it. His signature was forged to the credentials Zeller used to get MacFerson and his nurse out of the hospital. Now I don’t think it was a forgery at all. His resigning his post here — leaving tomorrow himself — it all fits, don’t you see? He’s in it! My God, I can’t believe such a thing, but he’s in it!”
“Huapala, catch your breath,” Eddie Wing said, his voice a whisper in comparison with Nick’s hoarseness. “You’re too excited. Come upstairs quickly. Sergeant Woolton is here, and he has news. I don’t believe it’s plague. You can’t use plague in artificial fashion. Too dangerous.”
“Yes?” Nick said. “It’s plague, all right! If it hadn’t been plague, I might not be here. It was plague to the damned gunman who— Where is Woolton, Eddie? I’m out of hand.”
“Upstairs in the forward bedroom. Go ahead — scramble! Go right up and visit with him, but don’t let him get excited. He’s wounded.”
Nick nodded and ran up the stairs. He knew the guest-room well, had spent many nights in it. There was a faint scent of sandalwood upstairs. He opened the guest-room door, went in, and found Sergeant Woolton reposing in bed, a young man, brawny and huge, with a big face, big hands and wild hair. He sat up instantly, his face showing some pain, and he said: “Hello, pal, who are you?”
“I’m Nicholas Adams,” Nick said, “Woolton?”
“That’s the name, Doc. My friends call me Boitie.”
“You’re wounded?”
“Yeah, Doc, the — slipped me one. Square in the groin, but that won’t stop me. It didn’t stop me when I caught it. I wish to hell you could patch me up for the final because I’m a fighting man, Doc, and I’d like to be in this thing for the windup.”
“You take it easy,” Nick said. “Let’s see it.”
It was a serious wound. Eddie Wing had already attended to the extraction of the bullet. If there was going to be peritonitis, Bertie Woolton was in trouble. But he didn’t seem to mind. His energy, under the circumstances, was amazing. “Will I make the grade, Doc?”
“Yes, if you give yourself a chance and stay strong.”
“Good. I’ll moider ’em when I get out.”
Nick replied: “How did you get shot and who shot you?”
“Jap named Kita shot me because I got too nosy,” said Woolton, his voice strong. “Oh, he was a sneaky little monkey. I never got a shot at him. I’m glad you came down, sir. I knew the colonel was going to wire you. That was the last I saw of him, when he went to R.C.A. on King. ‘Boitie,’ he says to me, ‘you keep your glimmers on Kita until you hear from me. Kita knows where the focus is and Kita will lead you there.’ ”
Nick said: “Now talk slowly and take it easy. You’d better start at the beginning, Woolton.”
“O.K.,” Woolton said, nodding. He leaned back in bed and rested a moment. “Began yesterday morning. Punk named Robert MacFoison reported in at Stafford ill. Slinky little rat. Colonel Venner put him to bed. MacFoison was fulla lumps. Colonel got Miss Wilson, told me to get out. I ain’t a butcher, y’see.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Next thing, the colonel comes dashing out like an M-3 heading for Libya. ‘Boitie,’ he says, ‘hell to pay. We’ve gotta woik fast, lotsa woik, Boitie, before they toin this island into a pesthole.’ ”
Nick said: “Did Venner tell you what MacFerson had related to him?”
“If you’ll hold your hat, Doc, I’ll tell you exactly like I was told. And this man-hole in my belly hoits.” He stirred restlessly. Nick knew that Bertie Woolton couldn’t be killed by one wound. The fellow’s strength and sang froid were wonderful. “Now the colonel didn’t talk much. ‘What it is,’ he says, ‘I can’t tell you, Boitie. But in brief, this MacFoison was part of a plot to spread a lot of death around this island where it would do the most good. The punk was gonna introduce the Schofield Barracks to this screwy blitz. That was his job. And he came down with the same sickness he had planned for his pals.’ ” Woolton frowned. “It was a sickness of some kind.”
“I know what it is now,” Nick said. “I don’t like to be impatient under the circumstances, Woolton, but time is precious.”
“Sure, pal.” Woolton nodded. “I’ll blitz it. So the colonel says: ‘I’m going down for a snort with Doc Wing because there is only one mug for this job and that’s his pal Nicholas Adams’ — you. ‘I’ve got to get Adams here at once,’ he says, ‘because MacFoison said inoculation has already begun, and they plan to loose the sickness on the island within forty-eight hours, when the rats are thoroughly infected.’ I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, I’m a fighting man, I ain’t a sawbones.”
“You’re making fine sense,” Nick said. “Keep going, Woolton. Did he know where the focus was?”
“Focus, focus, he said focus too. What’s a focus?”
“A focus is the center. It’s where they would have these infected rats.”
“No, my fran’, that he didn’t know. That yellow rat MacFoison got hold of himself, Doc. He’d been outa his head for fear and spouting all this dope, and all of a sudden, MacFoison got leery that the colonel wouldn’t save him. So he shut up like a clam and said he would give out no more singing unless Colonel Venner saved him from the lumps. The colonel threatened him with every torture this side of Canarsie, but MacFoison wouldn’t open up. Foist, he’d been afraid of what he had, then he was afraid of the colonel leaving him to die. Colonel Venner said there was nothing he could do anyhow.”
“What was MacFerson’s job in the thing?” Nick asked.
“He was going to infect Schofield Barracks.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know,” Woolton said. “How the hell would a man infect a barracks? You should know, Doc.”
“He’d have to transport infected rats by truck,” Nick said.
“Truck?” said Woolton. “You’re within a smell of it, Doc. Because MacFoison had raved about some people, see? He’d mentioned a man named Zeller and a man named the Chief, and a man named Kita. The colonel told me that I was to find Kita and that Kita was a trucker, and that I was to follow Kita until he led me to the focus.”
“And you found Kita?”
“He had a trucking agency on Chulia Street. There was a spot over the road from the garage and I hung in there with a bottle until it was a dead marine. Then the Nipper came out of the garage. He drove his own car. I chased him in a taxi. He went down to Bishop Street and stopped in front of a place called Laboratories, Limited. That was when I caught my slug. Kita saw me leave the cab, and if I’d not been in uniform, it woulda been different. I ducked into an alley and thought I’d lost the Nip, but I hadn’t. I was rounding the corner behind the stores when I caught one. I heard the shot and he just got me toining — see how it hit me — and I went down. Then I got up and I could still walk but I knew I couldn’t get far. There was a parking space behind the alley, and six trucks lined up with Kita’s name on the side of them. They had tarpaulin over the back so I crawled under there. The trucks was empty.”