The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
When he snapped on the button of the light-switch, lamps sprang instantly to life in three corners of the inner room. The light was soft, subdued, but quite clear, and the man sitting in the easy chair that faced the door, faced Joe Keenan, blinked at it once.
He was a short man, fat, wearing a derby hat steeply slanted over one ear and a blue overcoat below that. There was an automatic in his right hand that rested negligently on one arm of the chair. Keenan’s steady gray eyes went over him without nervousness, without haste.
The fat man said: “Sit down. Just keep your hands away from your pockets and act sensible. We’re friends, Joe — I even been sampling your Scotch. It’s good.”
“Next time take rye,” Keenan grunted. “The Scotch is for friends. I don’t lay out four bucks a fifth for punks.”
The fat man said, “Okey,” good-naturedly. But when he rose and backed to the window his eyes were small and watchful, and they did not shift while he felt behind him with his free hand, grabbed the shade cord and pulled it down to the bottom, then released it with a snap that sent it spinning to the top. Coming back, he held his gun close in to his side, where it could not be seen from outside.
“Look,” he said. “Nobody’s slippin’ you the works unless you ask for it. Do what you’re told and everything will be fine. There ain’t anything to this unless you’re dumb enough to make a break now.”
In the street a car motor roared briefly and then throttled down. The front door below opened and closed, and light fast steps pattered on the stairs. In a moment the door behind Keenan opened; a young man, hard faced, dapperly dressed, came in and shut it after him.
“Frisking job,” the fat man said. “From behind and careful. Don’t miss anything.”
In back of Keenan the second man opened his coat, ran swift fingers over him. He removed the automatic and then probed the empty shoulder-holster, patted trouser legs with a practiced deftness.
“Okey,” he said, when he straightened. “Nothing on him, Feeney.”
Feeney grunted. “Then get back to the car. When the street’s clear honk twice and we’ll go down.”
Keenan took a cigarette from a box on the table, snapped a lighter against it. The fat man’s pudgy face grew ugly at the action.
“Ask the next time,” he growled.
“This isn’t a ride?” Keenan asked.
“Uh-huh.” Feeney nodded. He chuckled suddenly. “But not the kind you’re thinkin’. We got nothin’ against you. Keep on actin’ nice and in a day or two you’re turned out all rested up. Nothin’ to get fretted about, Joe.”
Keenan’s black brows drew together. “Why?”
Feeney took a bottle of Scotch from a table drawer, put it in his overcoat pocket, and patted the flap down gently. “Company, Joe. Don’t worry about why. If we wanted to jolt you it could be done here, easy and nice, with a rope around your neck and no squawk. Since we ain’t doin’ that you oughta see we don’t want to crate you. Not unless you get tough and ask for it.”
Outside a car horn honked twice. Feeney straightened the derby with his left hand and motioned with the automatic gently towards the door. They went down the steps in single file, and descended the outer stoop in the same order, meeting no one. There was a small sedan purring at the curb, with the back door open.
“In,” Feeney grunted, the automatic close against Keenan’s back, where the shine of it was hidden. Keenan bent and entered, with the fat man right after him; from the front seat the driver leaned back and pulled the door shut.
They drew away from the curb, swung south on Lexington Avenue, and began to slip smoothly by dark, empty streets. On Sixtieth they turned east, slipping under the black shadow of the elevated structure on Second Avenue to the ramp of the Queensboro Bridge.
Feeney was half facing him, with the gun against his side, low, hidden by both their bodies. The dark span of the bridge unrolled before them under the long line of lights; moving very fast, they flashed off the Long Island side and threaded out Queens Boulevard. It was after one, store fronts dark, pavements empty.
Joe Keenan’s mind tried to consider it all calmly, without fuss. It was possible that Feeney and his friend might be Jerome Peale’s men. If they were, how had they heard about his death so soon? And if he was to be killed in reprisal for Peale, why hadn’t they murdered him back in his apartment, where, as Feeney had said, it could have been done quietly, safely? Thinking it over, Keenan decided they weren’t Peale’s men; at least it didn’t seem likely. And if they weren’t, what did they want him for; what were they going to do?
He couldn’t hit on any answers. In the front seat, keeping the speedometer gyrating uneasily at fifty-five, the hard-faced man swung left from the Boulevard to one of the Parkways, and they raced away from monotonous rows of two-family houses to dark open stretches of woodland. An hour went by; the road lost its wide smoothness, narrowed to a single lane affair with trees crowded close on either side. Joe Keenan’s sharp face tightened; his light-colored irises seemed to draw in and compact. In a day or two he’d be freed, Feeney had said. What was going to happen during that time? What was so important that he must be kept out of the way?
His mind flashed to Ellen Bridges, to Major Russell. Were Feeney and his friend after the diamonds — and the thirty-five thousand in cash the girl was to bring to the Englishman tomorrow at twelve? For if Peale had known where the Englishman was hiding out mightn’t others know too? And if they knew, if they planned — A small lump of muscle formed along his jawbone. Ellen Bridges, alone, helpless — murdered, probably, as soon as they took the money from her.
The thought roused him to a cold rush of anger, and in the wake of that, desperately and almost without hope, an insane determination. Under Feeney’s careful eyes he got a cigarette from his pocket, then fumbled for a match.
Before them the road swung up the hill in a sharp S curve, indicated by a sign that flashed past his eyes. In the front seat the hard-faced man had not yet circled the wheel for the first turn; he was bent slightly forward, the base of his skull showing under close-cropped hair. Striking the match, Keenan saw it, and his plan clicked into place in his brain. Desperate, insane maybe — but a chance.
Feeney watched him, wary, alert, as the tiny match flame speared up through the darkness. Holding the match cupped, his left hand concealing the right, Keenan got his middle finger under the sliver of wood and rested it there. When the man in front slowed for the turn—
He slowed. Keenan lifted his face from his cupped hands, leaving the match still burning, and blew a thin funnel of smoke casually upward. The wariness in Feeney’s eyes relaxed — and at that instant Joe Keenan’s middle finger flipped the burning match straight between his eyes. With the same movement his left hand swung out and down with the weight of his body behind it to crash solidly against the base of the driver’s skull.
Blinded by the match, the fat man fired twice. But Keenan’s lean body had flung itself forward and down the instant before the shots, to its knees against the front seat. Feeling the breath of the shots on his neck he whirled and brought his right fist up slashing, from the floor to the point of the fat man’s chin. It was a terrific blow that almost lifted Feeney completely out of his seat; his eyes lost focus, lost consciousness, as he slumped limply back.
It all happened in a moment, in a blur of motion, as the car yawed across the road. Keenan spun to the wheel, knocking the sprawled out form of the driver from it as the concrete guarding wall on the left side of the road shot into view. They crashed with a grating scream of sound from the front fender as it crumpled like paper against the solid barrier. Keenan was slammed forward, bruising his chest on the front seat; glass fell in a showery tinkle as one of the headlights smashed. Then he yanked back the brake, and they stopped.