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.
A car topped the hill and raced down towards them as he clambered out to the running-board. Ten feet off it slowed, and a startled white face looked out at Keenan, at the automatic he picked from the floor, where the fat man had dropped it. Then the car was past, racing on again with an accelerated roar of sound.
The fat man, Feeney, was moaning, rolling his head loosely from side to side as Keenan pulled him out. The driver was still out cold, and Keenan laid them flat on the grass, by each other, and went back to the car. When he slipped behind the wheel the motor responded readily enough, and he put it in reverse, circled it in the road, and left it facing back the way they had come.
As he got out of the car again, Feeney was sitting dazedly up, propped by his arms. He cursed sullenly, indistinctly, as he rubbed his jaw. The coldness in Keenan’s gray eyes hardened and became more evident; looking up, Feeney saw that coldness and stopped suddenly.
Keenan said in a quiet voice: “That’s fine. Be nice, fellow. Who wanted me snatched? Who hired you and your friend for the job?”
“Go to hell,” the fat man snarled, with an attempt at bravado. He tried to hold Keenan’s stare and failed; after a moment his own flinched uneasily away. He began to lick his lips.
Holding the grip of the automatic, Keenan weighed the barrel in his free hand. He went on in his quiet tone: “Maybe you’ve never been pistol whipped. It isn’t nice. Me, I’d talk. Who hired you?”
Feeney did not answer. Joe Keenan’s eyes glittered and grew small. He asked again, curiously soft: “Who hired you?”
“Listen,” the fat man wheezed, his eyes pathetically earnest. “I never had a thing against you, Keenan. I told you that. We weren’t going to hurt you. Honest to—”
Down the road there was a faint motor sound that grew rapidly louder. As Keenan turned two motorcycles whined around the curve of the hill and squealed to a stop opposite the parked car. A big state trooper swung off one and crossed the road cautiously, his partner coming at the car from the side.
“Drop your gun,” he told Keenan. “What’s going on here?”
Keenan obeyed, gave his story briefly. The auto that had raced by five minutes before would have reported them in the next town, of course. And if he had had only five minutes longer with the fat man — Feeney would have talked; he’d have been glad to. And now nothing had been cleared up; the motive behind it all remained as vague, as apparently pointless as ever.
In the troopers’ barracks Keenan gave his story again, presented credentials. But it was five o’clock before he was free to go, and the fat man and his friend had been led away to cells. They both kept obdurately silent; they knew nothing, could tell nothing.
In the chilly station, where he had to wait two hours for the earliest commuters’ train, Keenan went over it again in his mind. And presently it began to hang cloudily together. It was robbery, of course; get him out of the way and in the morning they could have picked up Ellen Bridges easily enough, after she had drawn the money from the bank.
But who besides Russell knew of that? Of course, there was no surety that Peale had come to the house alone; perhaps some of his accomplices had been there, staying in hiding until he and the girl had gone. They could have murdered Russell last night and taken the stones; they could even be waiting there at the cottage for the girl to come.
On the train he dismissed it tiredly. The vital part, the thing that would have made it jell, was missing. And, without that, it was useless racking his brains. At his own apartment he showered quickly, shaved, and changed his clothes. Then he got out his roadster and met Ellen Bridges at her store on upper Fifth Avenue.
She greeted him coolly, and said she did not need his help. Without answering her, Joe Keenan grasped her arm and drew her out to his roadster. He drove to the bank and went inside with her, studied the street outside carefully before allowing her to emerge again, for that disturbing sense of uneasiness still clung to him. But nothing untoward happened; they wound their way downtown and caught the eleven-o’clock ferry. On the ride across Keenan told her the events of the previous night, and before he was half through her coolness vanished in a swift rush of solicitude.
“They might have killed you, Joe. You shouldn’t have—”
“But they didn’t,” he pointed out. “And I’ve got a hunch that I’ve figured the lay all wrong. I’m going to drop you on the other side, Ellen. If they’ve killed Russell and are waiting there—”
She said, firmly, “I’m going with you. And it’s not going to do you the slightest bit of good to argue about it.”
It didn’t. Three-quarters of an hour later, when he stopped the car before Major Russell’s bungalow, she was still sitting determinedly by his side. In a moment the major himself appeared in the doorway, younger, more somber, against the morning sunlight. He bowed to Ellen, gave Keenan a quick, hard grip. Leading a way to an inner room he took a chamois bag from a wall safe and upended it on the table. “The stones are there, my dear. If everything else is ready—”
The girl nodded. “I have the cash. We were afraid something had happened to you, Major. I was nervous all the way down.”
“To me?” White teeth flashed in a smile. “Why should it? No doubt that unpleasantness last night worked on your mind. Now if you would like to examine the stones—” He pushed them across the table to her.
Keenan watched him, the uneasiness, the sense of mistrust, moving in his mind again. When the girl began: “That’s hardly—” he cut in emotionlessly: “Examine them.”
“By all means.” The major’s voice was hearty. “We must be businesslike, my dear.” His hand flung out, tossed over the huge tawny diamond Keenan had seen the night before. “Begin on that beauty.”
Looking at Keenan, the girl flushed angrily. “Of course I know, Major, that—”
“Examine them,” Joe Keenan said.
She gave him a cold, annoyed glance. Major Russell bowed, his blue eyes amused. “Perfectly all right, my dear. Mr. Keenan is merely being a good business man. Please do as he suggests.”
Her head bent for a long moment; when she raised it again and put away her glass her tone was apologetic. “Of course it’s the one I saw last night.” From the leather portmanteau at her side she drew neatly rectangular folds of bills. “And here is your money. Count it if you wish.”
The major bowed gallantly. “I never doubt a lady, my dear. Perhaps” — his eyes dwelt with a thin trace of mockery on Keenan — “I am not what you call a smart guy over here.” Carelessly he riffled fingers through the heap of diamonds, and Keenan, his gaze lowered, watched them, fascinated by their flickering swiftness. “You may get in touch with me this week at the Savoy. I’ll do all I can to help in case of any difficulty.”
Ellen Bridges flashed him a smile, but Joe Keenan’s sharp face was set in an ugly scowl. Smart guy! Last night Jerome Peale had said something like that. What was it? He had figured Joe Keenan was like him, dumb enough to — Russell had shot him there, before he could finish. Dumb enough to what?
The major was smiling at him, offering his hand. Joe Keenan ignored it. He asked out of straight lips: “You’re a good shot, Major?”
Russell smiled faintly, his eyes puzzled. “Tolerable. I’ve won a match here and there. Nothing spectacular.”
“Yeah.” Keenan nodded slowly. “You’re a good shot, maybe a swell shot. Last night you killed Peale, although a good shot wouldn’t have had to do that. He could have shot Peale’s arm, his side.”