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.
“Then you did trap me,” I cut in.
“Ah,” she swung on me suddenly, “then you didn’t believe I trapped you. You tried to believe it, but couldn’t. That’s it, isn’t it?” She shook me by the shoulders. “You couldn’t believe it. Try as you might, you could not believe it.”
“Couldn’t!” And maybe my laugh was queer. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it, but that I didn’t was a different thing, again. Inside of me, maybe, I denied it to myself. But I’m a reasoning man, and certainly I believed it.
“You mean to tell me that you didn’t know Eddie was there!” I demanded.
“No, I didn’t know. I don’t expect you to believe me. But I didn’t know until I heard him, saw him.”
“But who told Eddie? Fred, the bartender?”
“Fred didn’t know whom I was to meet, until you came. He didn’t know I was to meet any one until five minutes before you came. That he got in touch with Eddie, or that Eddie just happened to come here, would be impossible.”
“And you didn’t have Eddie come to the apartment, your apartment, that night he jumped me from the window?” There certainly was disbelief in my voice.
“No,” she said slowly, “I didn’t.”
“Quite a coincidence, quite a coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Nor do I.” She snapped that back at me as she slipped down the alley and we reached the street. “But I do believe in using your brains, just once in a while, Race. You can’t plug on always like you do.” And with what might have been a smile, “There won’t always be a woman, a woman with a criminal mind, to lift loving cups for you and—”
“Florence,” I said, “what of Colonel McBride? You promised if I let you go—”
“Oh, I may have lied to you, to get away. It might have been a promise I can never keep. But I’ll try, I’ll try. Michelle Gorgon knows where he is, and I—. Michelle Gorgon is friendly toward me.”
“Yes,” I said, “he is.” And with an effort I stuck to my client. “What about Colonel McBride?”
“Well.” She blazed up. “Michelle Gorgon wants information from him. He wants to know who is behind McBride, where McBride learns things, and—. Race, go to Michelle, tell him you’ll quit the case.”
“Quit for that mountebank!” I sniffed. “I should say not. A client hired me, and—. But I’ll go to Michelle Gorgon all right.”
“If you stay on the case, nothing can save your life now, now that Eddie is dead. Don’t you see? Michelle Gorgon loves me. And superstition or not, to love The Flame is to die.” Her lips curled, and her smile was more sad than sinister.
“Death for me too, then.” I half laughed. I could feel her fingers bite into my arm, but she did not speak.
“Florence,” I said. “You love this man, this Michelle Gorgon. You have been swept off your feet by his influence, his money, his air of superiority, and his admiration for—”
She turned on me viciously. Then, after a moment, she said, almost softly:
“But, yes, he attracts me greatly. To have him love me, want me. It is the ambition of my life.”
She tried to go. I held her arm. But I couldn’t say anything. She looked straight at me and spoke again.
“Race, use your head. When the day comes that you believe in me, absolutely trust me, take pencil and paper and go over this, all of this, from the beginning — from the very second that you stepped into the case. Think who is the best informed one you know, of you and me, and—” Then suddenly, “O’Rourke brought you into this, didn’t he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“No— No— But he must have. He must have. It couldn’t have been—”
“It was—” And I stopped. I couldn’t trust her.
“Rudolph Myer, maybe.” She thought aloud. Then, “No. That wouldn’t be logical. That wouldn’t—. But of course it was Rudolph Myer.”
She turned suddenly, flung both arms about my neck, and kissed me. And she left me. Walked smack out of the alley just as a harness bull turned the corner and sauntered leisurely down the street, half a block away.
As for me. I went back down that alley, hopped in the window again and turned out the light. I’d pay a little visit to Michelle Gorgon before Eddie’s body was cold.
But I wasn’t to pay my little visit to Michelle Gorgon just then. Feet sounded in the alley outside, feet that hit heavily for a moment against stone, then moved cautiously toward that window. It was a cinch that those feet belonged to a heavy body that had dropped from the fence dividing the houses.
It wasn’t the harness bull from outside then. My first impulse was to beat it by the front way. My second, to stick it out. It might be one of the Gorgon outfit, come to see if Eddie had disposed of me. There was only one way to find out, that was to wait and see what broke. Nothing dangerous in my position now. There I was, close to one side of the window, my back pushed against the wall, my gun in my hand. No, there was nothing to be alarmed about.
A form blotted out the faint semblance of light from the window. Not light enough there to recognize a man, or anywhere near it. But light enough to barely make out the bulkiness of huge shoulders, and the whiteness of a face. For a moment I got a thrill. To myself I said, “The Second Gorgon, Joe Gorgon.” My finger squeezed a gun trigger slightly. I was beginning to dislike the Gorgons.
A white hand crept over the sill. A split second later a pencil of light bit into the darkness, crept along the floor, picked out a lifeless foot, ran quickly up the body of Eddie Gorgon and smacked on the side of his face. I rather liked that. The dead gangster lay so that you could not recognize him. My friend at the window would have to come into the room if he wanted to identify the thing that had been Eddie Gorgon, feared racketeer.
He did just that little thing. And what’s more, he didn’t like it overmuch. Not from any lack of moral courage, I guess, but from the physical effort. For although he started in the window without a moment’s hesitation, he didn’t like the bodily exertion, for I heard him grunt plainly.
Chapter XXII
O’Rourke Has a Hunch
He was in the room now, across to the body, leaning over and turning the dead face into the light of the flash. He whistled softly, muttered something to himself that didn’t seem like a curse, and I was smack behind him, my gun in his back.
“Don’t move, brother,” I said, “unless you want to lie down beside your little playmate. Now — that flash. Good.” And the man laughed, and the light struck his face.
Maybe I laughed too, but not with quite as much mirth. The hard, grizzled map I looked into was that of the “honest cop,” Detective Sergeant O’Rourke.
“Well,” I said, “what are you going to do?”
And I didn’t drop my gun. The first thing I thought of then was Rudolph Myer, a habeas corpus writ, and the amount of bail. Not that I didn’t trust O’Rourke, but he might be the efficient cop now, not the loyal friend. Through and through O’Rourke was a cop.
“What am I going to do?” He ignored my gun, walked to the window, closed it, pulled down the shade and pressed the electric button. “It’s what are you going to do, and what did you do?”
“I took your advice,” I told him, “and laid a bullet in one of the Gorgons. It was self-defense, and more. I was, was trapped here. And you put a tail on me, after you promised you wouldn’t.”
“Well,” he said, “it don’t look like you were trapped. Let’s talk it out, Race. You and me are in the same racket and under the same boss, but working at odds. And I ain’t above telling you now, that I got you into the Gorgon mess. But that’s confidential.”
“You got me in. I thought—”