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.
I’m not a lad who runs when the bullets fly — at least, if I do run, I run forward and not backward. And if Joe Gorgon wouldn’t have any touch of conscience about putting a bullet in me, I wouldn’t have any either about putting one in him. An even break, that.
Jerry was waiting up for me.
“There’s a lad been calling you on the phone. Sputtered, he did — and seemed to think you spent your time with the receiver clamped to your ear. Trying to make a telephone operator out of me too, and—”
“Did he hang a tag on himself, Jerry?” I asked.
“No. He said you’d know. And for you not to go out again until he got you. He’d ring every fifteen minutes. But, Gawd! He’s been buzzing up the bell every five, I think. There you are. Seven minutes, by the clock.” Jerry pushed his hands out as the phone rang.
It was my client, Colonel McBride. His mouth was full of words, his words full of sputters. He sounded like a bunch of Japanese firecrackers.
But I got enough.
“The man, Giovoni — dead — murdered — stabbed to death in the hospital.”
“I know,” I said. Giovoni, of course, was our little friend that I had carted about.
“How... how do you know?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Does it matter?” I asked him. “The question is, how did they know where he was? But here’s a surprise for you. I spent the evening, or the last hour, with Doctor Michelle Gorgon. Some one was kind enough to ring him up and tell him of the murder. How important was Giovoni? I mean, to you, not himself.”
“Important!” He fairly gasped the words. “Giovoni was Michelle Gorgon’s father-in-law. He was everything. The man who could return Doctor Gorgon to Italy for a brutal murder — clear him out of the country — straighten—”
When he stopped for breath I encouraged.
“His father-in-law?” I didn’t get that. The woman called Madame had not looked like a wop.
The fire-crackers went on.
“Yes, at least, I think so. I was told that. Oh... damn it — I have nothing to go on, now. Giovoni never talked much, never gave me much information. He wanted to confront Michelle Gorgon and denounce him. Pay him back for — Michelle Gorgon killed Giovoni’s daughter years back, in Italy. It was a brutal murder. Damn it, man, he saw his daughter murdered, watched it, helpless and—”
So he, Giovoni, was not the father of Madame.
“He told you this? He—”
“No, he didn’t tell me. He was an old man. He lived his life, spent his days, in an Italian prison. It was vengeance to him. Toney, who you said was killed, told me, the little drug addict. I brought Giovoni from Italy. Now he’s dead. How did they know where he was?”
“You must have talked to some one.”
“No one, not a soul. I learned enough from Giovoni and Toney. I have sent an agent to Naples to investigate the story that Michelle Gorgon killed his wife there, over twenty years ago. She was Giovoni’s daughter, and her name was Rose Marie. The story is that Michelle Gorgon was convicted of the crime, and escaped. It may be another week before I learn the truth from Italy. In that week of waiting we will leave Michelle Gorgon alone — make him feel that he is safe from the crimes of the past, that he actually committed himself — at least, if the whole thing is not a fabric of lies or the hallucinations of a drug crazed mind. It is possible that Toney may have misled both Giovoni and me.
“Would you be willing, Mr. Williams? I need your services against the Gorgons if this proves true or false, and I will mail you a check in the morning as a retainer. But don’t come to see me. Don’t ring me up. I want Michelle Gorgon to think that I have dropped you, perhaps even dropped him. I will get in touch with you when I hear from Italy, or from one who knows much, but will not talk yet. It may be only a few days. It may be a week. What do you say? Will you risk it? The pay will be good.”
“Don’t forget to mail the check in the morning,” was my answer.
Chapter XVII
Influence Versus Gun-Play
As a matter of fact it was ten days before I again heard from my client, Colonel Charles Halsey McBride. But the check had come, and where it wasn’t a fortune, it was for ten thousand dollars. Which is plenty of jack, as real money goes today.
But I kept to the letter of Colonel McBride’s instruction. I didn’t frequent any place where I might meet the Gorgons. That was a little tough. It might look to the Gorgons as if I were afraid of that “on the spot” threat. Also, I still had the envelope containing the currency and jewelry which Michelle Gorgon had asked me to return to his brother, Eddie. Yep, the temptation was strong to look Eddie up and slip it in his hand. For the money and jewelry were given to The Flame by Eddie — as an inducement, I guess, to bring her into the Gorgon outfit. But Doctor Michelle Gorgon had looked at The Flame and seen bigger things for her. So it was that he suggested rather sarcastically that I return the money and jewelry to Eddie Gorgon.
Anyway, since the killing of Toney, the little drug addict, not far from the Golden Dog night club, Eddie had sort of disappeared from his usual haunts in the city. That is, for several days. The last couple of days he was back again. But I understood that the police were not looking for him. Such was the power of Michelle Gorgon — or the so-called cleverness of the police in giving Eddie a free run. Take your choice.
But, as I said, it was ten days before I heard from Colonel McBride. Then, on Thursday evening, at exactly eleven-fifteen, he called me on the phone.
“I should have called you before.” He got down to business. “Giovoni, Toney, it all seemed so strange. Yet Toney came over on the boat with the Gorgon brothers, over twenty years ago. They were called Gorgonette them. Michelle was twenty-seven then, but looked younger, Joe no more than in his twenties, and Eddie just a small boy. Williams, we may have to start over, try to prove something here in New York. You see, I thought we could pin this crime of years back on Michelle Gorgon. No excitement in the city; no involving others; no influence, no bribery, no jury fixing to fight against. Just the turning of Michelle Gorgon over to the Italian authorities for the murder of his wife years back. Now the Italian investigation seems to have proved a... well... entirely false.”
“There must be something in it. Giovoni was murdered. Toney was murdered. And certainly by the Gorgons. Why kill them if they didn’t fear what they could say?”
“Yes. But, Williams, we should have a long talk. My life was attempted yesterday. Some one else has told me that Michelle Gorgon did kill his wife in Italy. But on top of that I have indisputable evidence from my agent in Naples that Michelle Gorgon, or Michelle Gorgonette was never married in Italy. But, enough talk on the phone. I am wondering if I should come to see you or have you come and—”
“I’ll come and see you,” I cut in quickly. “The Gorgons have killed two men, who for all they know may have told you something. There was an attempt on your life, you say. If the Gorgons think you know too much, then you are a menace to them. And get this straight, Colonel. The Gorgons have a direct and efficient way of dealing with menaces. I’ve been looking up the Gorgon record during the past week. And I guess I can name as many murders that they committed as any dick on the Force, including your friend, Sergeant O’Rourke. But naming them and presenting them as evidence to a jury are two different stories, which the Gorgons know as well as I do.
“It’s well known in the underworld that Joe Gorgon shot down Lieutenant Carlsley over four years ago. Yet, they couldn’t even get the grand jury to indict Joe. Then there’s Eddie Gorgon’s brutal murder of the laundry owner who defied the laundry racket and paid for it with his life. At least four people saw that murder. No graft there. The jury was composed of honest citizens. That was straight out and out terror. One witness was drowned; another had disappeared; and two others changed their stories right on the witness stand, giving a description of a murderer that would better fit any man in the city of New York than it would Eddie Gorgon. Friends gave Eddie a dinner and presented him with a loving cup the night he was freed.