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.
He picked up the phone and said:
“Doctor Gorgon speaking. Yes, I understand. I have not been at home. Oh, I see. No, I was not asleep. I am interested in all that affects the life, the tranquil life, of our city.” A long pause, and then, “Thank you very much. I shall read of it at breakfast, in the morning.”
He placed the receiver on the hook. Carefully filled up his wine glass, lit a cigarette and settled back comfortably in the chair. He eyed us now. Those same unblinking globes, his elbows on the arm of his chair, the tips of his fingers on either hand coming slowly together. It was some time before he spoke, and then only in way of forestalling the sudden words that started from Joe Gorgon.
“It’s a funny world,” said Michelle Gorgon slowly. “A very funny world indeed. It will hardly interest either of you. But I just received a message that an Italian gentleman, lately landed in this country, was stabbed to death at Doctor Elrod’s Sanitarium. Ah — most distressing. Most distressing.”
Chapter XVI
On the Spot
Of course I understood what Michelle Gorgon meant. Giovoni, whom Colonel McBride and I had gone to so much trouble to protect — Colonel McBride very nearly losing his life when we moved the Italian gentleman from the city hospital to Doctor Elrod’s Sanitarium — was dead. Murdered within a few hours. I knew it. I believed it. But—.
“No—” I cried out as I jumped to my feet. “What time — and where were you, Doctor Michelle Gorgon?” I stopped and sat down again. But this time when I stretched out my hand, it reached for Joe Gorgon’s bottle of whisky and not the No. 1 Sherry.
“Really,” said Michelle Gorgon, “your emotions, Williams, do you proud. A poor Italian gentleman. How distressing. But you were saying something about—. Was it... er... that an evil spirit had broken his chains?” And leaning forward slightly, “Or was it that the devil was chained again, chained this time forever, in death.”
Confused? Yes, I was confused, and mad. Was this the reason that Michelle Gorgon had brought me to his home? So that I would be with him? So that he would know I could not be interfering with this murder he had planned? For that he had planned it I had little doubt. As to Joe, it seemed a cinch that he wasn’t in it. His eyes just bulged.
Michelle Gorgon walked slowly around the table and laid a hand upon his brother’s shoulder.
“Like our good friend, Williams, here, Joseph, you are a man of action. And I daresay it serves our purpose and is necessary in our every day life. But we must not forget that the physical is only an impulse, directed by the mental. When it is not so, we are told that it is reactionary, impulsive, instinctive, maybe — which is simply the polite way of placing us on the level with animals. When the brain ceases to function and leaves the body, it becomes a useless thing, no matter, Joe, if that brain is not a part of that particular body.” A pause. “I see I confuse you there. But try and remember that a brain is necessary to the body, to your body, whether it be your brain or my brain, Joe. One brain, then, may control many bodies — but many bodies can not control one brain. It—” Michelle Gorgon stopped and looked at the bewildered face of his brother. “But no matter,” he said quickly. “You understand that I am always ready to help and advise you. Ready and anxious, even, but never compelled to. In plain words, your visit here tonight was unnecessary and inopportune. You have seen that.”
“Yes—” said Joe, “I have seen that. And, the visit of Williams?”
Michelle Gorgon smiled at me.
“A weakness of mine, Joe. A petty vanity, which all great minds are subject to. For the present you have nothing to worry you. You may sleep and play and—” He looked at the bottle and shrugged his shoulders. “Mr. Race Williams has been taken care of for tonight.” He put his hand before his mouth, stifled a yawn or an affected yawn. “The hour is late. You will excuse me, Williams, I know. The interview is over.”
I hadn’t had my say; hadn’t had half a chance to open up, and now, damn it, he didn’t give me the opportunity. Joe Gorgon had moved toward the hall door. Of course I moved with him. Maybe I should have held my ground and believed in the Sanctity of the Home stuff. But I didn’t. And it was too late now. Like a woman, Michelle Gorgon had had the last word. He turned, sought the little door that his wife had gone through before, and left us flat.
There was nothing for me to do but leave — leave with Joe Gorgon, presumably New York’s biggest and most feared racketeer.
We passed out the front door, across the roof under the covered canopy, and through the thick, steel door which let us into the upper hall of the apartment house.
“He’s a great guy, isn’t he, Race?” Joe pushed out his chest and looked me over.
The elevator door clanged open, a sleepy eyed operator banged the door closed, and we descended to the street.
Silently Joe and I made our way through the spacious hall with its great pillars and towering plants — out onto Park Avenue.
“Williams,” Joe Gorgon didn’t threaten. He spoke his stuff like a man. “You know me and I know you. Judgeships have been bought and sold before your time and before my time — and will be long after it. Things haven’t changed any in the city. It’s simply newspaper competition. My world — our world — is a rather small one, after all. I’ve never laid a sucker on the spot. Men want money — you and me and them. You’re a persistent bird and no mistake. You rile a guy — rile him bad. But you can’t change life. I daresay there ain’t a lad in the city today better informed than you. Yet, you can’t do anything to me — nor Mike.” He half looked back up the apartment as he chucked in the “Mike.” “Well — Michelle may talk in circles, but when he strikes he strikes straight and hard.”
“Well,” I said, “come to the point.”
“Yeah.” He bit at a match and spat a piece of it in the gutter. “It’s a bad time for too much excitement. How much do you want to chuck the game and take up golf?”
“I don’t play golf,” I told him.
“Oh — I mean—” He paused, scratched the other end of the match on the box and stuck it to a black cigar. “All right. You and me have made our names stand out a bit. We’ve both seen plenty of trouble. Now, you’re asking for it. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I guess so, Joe,” I said.
“Okay!” He looked at me a moment and grinned. “The look of a Gorgon.” But his smile was pleasant. “It’s a silly racket. But it’s paid dividends in the right places. You’d be surprised if you knew the sales increase in Hawthorne’s bit of work. But — take care of yourself. S’long.”
Joe Gorgon turned, and was gone. There were no two ways about what he meant. In the language of the underworld, Race Williams was on the spot.
I went home. Any way you look at it, it had been a busy night. On the spot. Well, it wasn’t the first time I was put on the spot and wouldn’t be the last, I hoped. If I took a little trip for my health every time I was threatened I’d have been around the world a hundred or more times, and still traveling. No, sir, there would be nothing for yours truly, Race Williams, to do for a living unless it was conducting world tours.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t take the threat of the Gorgons seriously. Besides which, it rather pleased and flattered me. In the first place, they had something to fear from me. A dope fiend might be knocked over on the public street. An unknown Italian might be stabbed to death in a hospital. But the doing in of Race Williams is a different thing, again. Besides, which, some of the best racketeers in the city have been after me, and missed. But they didn’t stay after me very long.