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.
“Florence,” I cut in, “I’m here for one purpose only. Your promise. I want to know where—”
“Yes, that’s so.” She seemed to be listening. “It’s not a good place to talk names here. But, somehow, I wanted you to know.” She leaned forward now, and barely whispered the words. “I don’t know about you, sometimes you simply blunder through things. I’ve hashed up my life; maybe I wouldn’t go if you wished it, maybe I’m hell bent for destruction. But you’re looking at a woman now, not a girl. A woman that’s going straight to her death, who’s got to go through with it.”
I didn’t like that talk. Somehow I believed it though. Somehow—. And I stiffened. There, slightly to my left, the knob of a door was turning — the door I had pushed the chair against. I didn’t say anything to The Flame. I simply laid both my elbows on the smeared table, my hands up close to my chin, one hand also close to the shoulder holster beneath my left armpit.
The door moved slightly too, very slightly, not enough to even push the chair — that is, the chair by the door. But it moved my chair — or, at least I moved my chair enough to bring me directly facing that turning knob which put my back to the alcove closet, and left me just about on the opposite side of the table from The Flame.
The Flame looked up as I moved. The color seemed to suddenly drain out of her face. Her fingers half reached for her handbag upon the table, hesitated, and she stretched her hand to the mantel and lifted down the loving cup, looking it over. Then she read aloud the inscription on it.
“To Eddie Gorgon,” she read, very slowly. “On the occasion of his return to the Maria Club — August 27th — 1929.” She read it in such a low voice, such a forced, almost ominous voice, that it startled me. But I remembered that dinner too. It was the day Eddie Gorgon was released from the Tombs, when the jury failed to convict him for the murder of an East Side laundry man, who had courageously fought against the then notorious Laundry racketeers.
The door knob quit turning. The door gave a sudden jerk and a voice spoke behind me, by those curtains, from the little alcove closet that I thought had no “out.” Yep, I had let that door take my attention.
“Don’t move,” said the voice of Eddie Gorgon. “This time, Race, we’ll be satisfied with the bullet in your back, where the bullet in any rat should be found. That a girl, Florence. Read him again what’s on the cup.”
Trapped? Certainly. Trapped like a child. I could hear Eddie Gorgon cross the floor; knew that he stood a few feet behind me. And there I was, with my right hand under my left armpit, the fingers clasping a gun that I... I could never use. Why hadn’t I made sure of that closet? Certainly, those shelves in it hid another door. Was it my stupidity, or my conceit, or my belief in The Flame, or—.
I looked at Florence. I wanted to see how she took it. I wanted to see if at the last minute she would regret my death. I wanted—. And her face was deathly white. She had betrayed me into the hands of the enemy and was paying a price for it. But a hell of a lot of good that would do me now.
“Show him the cup. Read him again what’s on the cup.” Eddie mouthed the words. “Just once more, then I’ll let him have it.”
The girl moved the cup. Her eyes sought mine, mine hers, until the cup blocked them both. Yes, the cup blocked them both. And I saw something else. I saw the sinister, rat-like eyes, the twisted lips, and the gun too, the gun held in a steady hand but a thin hand. For Eddie Gorgon seemed long and gaunt — some sixteen or more feet tall, and his arm was as thin as a match stick. And I knew. I was looking at Eddie’s reflection in the polished surface of the oval cup.
It was in my mind to draw, swing and fire. All that, of course, while Eddie Gorgon pressed the trigger of his gun. It couldn’t save my life. He was too close to miss, too close not to have a chance to fire several times. Just the one chance that I might take him over the hurdles with me.
There was no use to make excuses to myself. Eddie Gorgon had entered that closet while some lad attracted my attention at the moving door. No, I wasn’t proud of that moment. There might be one excuse for it, and the worst kind of an excuse. My own vanity. Perhaps subconsciously I had thought that once I had told The Flame I loved her I was safe. That the ambition of her life was realized, that if she could have me she would never think of—. And then just one thought. He travels farthest who travels alone. But The Flame was talking.
“Easy does it, Eddie,” she said. “Race might talk. You know what he might tell, what your brother wants to know. What—”
“This is my show,” Eddie snarled in on her. “Look the rat in the eyes, kid. Watch ’em dim. Not a move, Race. Keep them elbows so I can see them. Just a single jerk of your shoulders, and out you go.”
And what was I doing? Just sitting there waiting for death to strike through the mouth of a blazing gun held in the hand of an underworld rat, a common murderer, I had told Jerry.
No. Plainly in that cup I could see the long, gawky form of Eddie Gorgon. My elbows never moved their position on that table. But my hand moved — my fingers moved. Already my right hand had pulled my gun from the shoulder holster, eased it out and shoved it up toward my shoulder. And The Flame still held the cup in her hands — very steady.
Would I try one quick jerk and a shot over my shoulder at Eddie? Maybe I’d have to. The reflection in that cup was clear enough, the features of Eddie, the skinny appearing extended arm, the snub-nosed automatic, the barrel of which appeared long enough, as reflected in that cup, to be a rifle barrel. And—.
“Don’t shoot yet, Eddie,” The Flame said. “I got him here for you, didn’t I? I want him to answer a question.”
And my gun crept slowly higher up my left shoulder, my arm never moving, my elbows steady upon the table — just my wrist curling upward and my head moving slightly sideways, slowly sideways. I hoped Eddie was far enough behind me not to see my gun — at least, until it had crept up and over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” snarled Eddie Gorgon. “But what about me? You made a deal with me. You let me horn you in with us Gorgons, played me for a sucker until Michelle came along, and then what, then what? I got a mind to snuff you, too.”
“It’s all the same.” The Flame seemed to half appeal. “It’s the same business, the same racket. I have to listen to Michelle just as you have to listen to him. Whether you brought me in or he brought me in, I’d be working for him just the same. I—”
“That may be Michelle’s idea, but not mine,” said Eddie quickly. “He could have your mind, but not me. I was staking your body, not your mind. Besides which, I still think you’ve got a yen for this dick. I’ve played the game, taken orders, done Michelle’s dirty work. But no man can take my woman. No, by God! not even Michelle. And Michelle would never know but it was an accident if I knocked you over.”
My gun was higher, right on my shoulder now. Not over enough to show, Just—. The face of Eddie looked so long and lean in that cup, the eyes were so close together.
“Eddie,” and The Flame’s voice was soft and low, “don’t talk like that. I saw in Michelle only your interest. I saw only—”
“I seen your face and I seen Michelle’s there in your apartment, when you stuck me up. His talk of ‘in the abstract!’ Well, the abstract wasn’t in his eyes then. He was just a man who wanted a woman, my woman, and you were just a woman who wanted a man, a bigger man than Eddie Gorgon. You knew what Michelle might mean to you, and you dropped me. Michelle didn’t want no mind, he wanted a body. You sold yourself to me, I paid you cash. And, tonight, after the dick, Williams, crashes out I’ll—.But he’ll take it first.”