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
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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.
And my gun was up. I won’t say that I read the will to fire suddenly in Eddie’s reflection in the cup. I won’t say that I recognized it in his voice, though I think I did. I won’t even say that The Flame’s sudden shrill cry did the trick.
But she did call out.
“Now, Race!”
Zip! Like that. My finger closed upon the trigger — and I threw myself forward on the table.
Chapter XXI
The Man in the Window
There were two roars, a clang like a bell in a shooting gallery — and I was on my feet. If the cup didn’t betray me I had placed a hunk of lead smack between Eddie Gorgon’s eyes.
And Eddie Gorgon stood there, his mouth hanging open in surprise. I jerked up my gun to fire again, but I didn’t fire. Eddie’s gun hung by his side, then his fingers opened and he dropped it to the floor. Not a mark of a bullet on him. No hole in the center of his forehead. And I saw his eyes just before he folded himself up like a jack-knife and sank to the floor. Eddie Gorgon had died on his feet, and only a missing tooth or two in the mouth that hung open, and the tiny bubbles forming on his lips — red bubbles — told me where the bullet had gone. Not exactly a perfect shot, maybe, but a serviceable one just the same. I’m no miracle man.
After all, Eddie Gorgon had meant to kill me, and he was dead. I shrugged my shoulders. The thing I had pressed that trigger to do had been accomplished.
The Flame was on her feet too — and clutching the cup to her. She was very white and very shaky, and I noticed that she turned her head from the body. I saw too that the cup had a hole in it — that the first two letters of the word EDDIE were missing. That was the bell-like ring then, as Eddie’s bullet hit the cup.
“Did you—? He didn’t hit you, Florence?” I was close to her now, supporting her trembling body and placing the cup on the table.
“No, no. It was the cup — saved me. His cup — saved me — and you too.”
“You saved my life, Florence. I—. And after trapping me here.”
“Fool, fool,” she cried out, beating me away as I would have held her. “I’ve taken on too much and can’t think it out. You, you won’t think. It seems impossible and too grotesque to believe, but we must believe it, must. I’ve never trapped you.” And suddenly pushing me from her and backing away:
“You have nothing to thank me for, Race. He had to go. He had to die. Brains — brains — brains. And it took the animal in Eddie to nearly ruin everything. I can’t die yet. I mustn’t die yet. I’ll die with him, as she died with him, for she died. Damn his soul, what a living death she died!”
Which was all confusing to me, you’ve got to admit.
The Flame didn’t raise a hand this time to stop me as I went toward her. She didn’t need to. It was her face, the distorted hatred of it, or was it fear, that I took for hate, or perhaps it was horror. Anyway, I held my ground and simply looked at her, turned, and picking up the cup wiped it clean of finger-prints and placed it back on the mantel.
“We better get out of here, Florence. The shot, the man by the door. The bartender, Fred, and—”
“You can be sure that there is not a soul in this house tonight, right now. If the shot was heard, it was heard outside.” She clutched at her throat and half glanced at the body.
“He’s lying there,” she said. “After all, he was human. Made by the same hand that made you and me and Michelle, and even good people we read about. I must lie like that some day. Soon — very soon — and I know it — and go on toward it. But he’s lying there, Race, a human, like you and me. Is he dead?”
I took another look at Eddie, lifted his hand and let it fall back again. I didn’t need any medical certificate of death to tell me the truth. It had to be Eddie or me, and — well — if I wasn’t exactly glad it was Eddie, I was glad it wasn’t me.
“He’s dead,” I told The Flame, felt the long envelope in my pocket bend as I knelt so — the envelope which Michelle Gorgon had asked me to deliver to his brother, Eddie. I drew it out. To leave it with Eddie now, there on his chest, would be a gruesome sort of humor, maybe. But it wasn’t that which made me stick it back in my pocket. Some one beside the Gorgon crowd might first find Eddie. No need to advertise this bit of killing yet. At least there was no need to implicate The Flame, if others knew about that money and jewelry in the envelope.
No one but Fred, the bartender, had seen me come into the Maria Cafe, and Fred was off for the night. Wise men of the underworld don’t speak of the events which precede violent death, at least, to the police, they don’t. And certainly it wouldn’t take a lot of brain work on the part of either of the Gorgon brothers to guess who sent Eddie bye-bye.
“Come!” The Flame went to the window and threw it open, and let in the cool night air. It felt good. I turned, looked the room over once for any sign of my visit, was satisfied with the inspection and reached the window in time to take the girl by the arm.
“You forget, Florence, what I came here for. I want to know where Colonel McBride is. Is he alive?”
“Yes, he must be. Let us get away from here first. Surely,” she looked at me as I still held her arm, “we can talk as well in the alley.”
“Yeah, with every ash can concealing a gunman, for all I know? You trapped me twice. You—. Oh, I give you credit for saving my life, Florence. But you change so quickly that I can’t chance it. This may be one of your weak, or perhaps, from your point of view, one of your strong moments. Anyway, to love The Flame is to die,” and somewhat bitterly maybe, “and I put myself on that sucker list tonight, in the house of Colonel McBride when you popped out of the closet. Oh, I’m not blaming you, Florence. I’m beginning to think that label you’ve won is not just a moniker of the night. The Girl with the Criminal Mind.”
She swung suddenly on me, her hands gripping my arms above the elbows, her eyes looking into mine. Anxious, fearful, haunted eyes. Different than I had ever seen her before. But then, The Flame was always different. Of course women are supposed to faint at violent death, but then, The Flame never ran true to biological or physiological, or what have you, form. Still the death of Eddie had knocked her, it seemed. Yep, The Flame was out of character, or maybe, in character. No one knew the real Flame, I guess, least of all me.
“One question, Race, just one question now. Do you, do you love me?”
“I don’t know.” I guess that was the truth.
“Did you mean what you said, there in Colonel McBride’s house, when you thought I must be caught or killed? You, you said you loved me, you know. Did you mean it?”
“Yes, I meant it then,” I told her, almost viciously. “And maybe I mean it now. It’s a queer thing though, Florence. No one can lay a finger to it. But love you or not, I don’t trust you. I don’t think you even trust yourself. I—”
She half glanced at the body again, and shivered slightly. And I let her slip over the sill and drop into the alley. Yes, I let her. But I very nearly stepped on her heels, I dropped so quickly after her.
“You better put out the light,” she told me. “I imagine that’s the way Eddie would have done it, if it were you lying in there. You see, the place is closed. They expect, or Eddie expected, to let the crime ride. Maybe it would be days before they were supposed to find you.”