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.
The girl with the mole on her left hand was sitting on the driver’s seat, her eyes wide, sparkling.
“You!” she exclaimed.
I had no time to analyze her tone, no opportunity to indulge in friendly conversation.
“You make a move or try to interfere and I’ll throw you out on your ear,” I told her, and meant it. She was a member of a gang that was out for my life, and there was to be no quarter given or asked. I had work to do, and to blunder at this stage of the game would be fatal. I had been warned specifically against this woman with the mole, and the man who gave me that warning had paid for his friendly interest with his life. He had been killed with the words still warm on his lips. Somewhere, somehow, there was a sinister influence exerted by this woman. Death and violence followed her every contact. For myself I was taking no chances.
Without a murmur, she slid off of the driver’s seat and sat, her hands in plain sight, folded on her lap, looking at me curiously. Beyond that first exclamation there had been nothing to give me a clue as to her thoughts.
It was the work of an instant to start the motor and turn the heavy truck, and in that minute the two men who had fled in the roadster knew they had been duped. They were watching their backtrail for pursuit, wondering whether the police would stop to take possession of the abandoned truck or would give pursuit. They had seen me rush to the armored truck, do something to the gasoline tank, and then jump inside. In that brief instant they had recognized the deception that had been played on them, and had swung the roadster and started back.
I turned the truck and opened the throttle, roaring down the boulevard. The lighter roadster gained rapidly, and was soon alongside. Faces that were distorted with rage glared up at me. There came the crack of a pistol shot, and the bulletproof glass radiated a thousand fine lines of silvery cracks where the bullet struck, but the leaden missile did not penetrate. That finished my last worry. I made faces at the two helpless bandits without, twiddled my fingers at my nose, and finally, making a quick swerve of the heavy car, ran them clear into the opposite curb.
There was a crash as the heavy, railroad-iron bumper did its stuff and the light roadster crumpled like an eggshell, glanced from the curb to a telephone post, and the men pitched out to the cement sidewalk.
I did not look back. They may have escaped unhurt. They may have been seriously injured. They may have been killed. This was no picnic. This was war with no quarter given or asked.
Once more we entered the traffic of the business district. At my side the girl with the mole on her hand sat and watched me with a queer look upon her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes almost starry, and they seldom left my face. Shut in there in that armored truck we were safe from attack of everything except a cannon or a bomb. Perchance, emissaries of the gang who had engineered the great robbery watched us as we thundered past. If so they were helpless.
I swung up to the curb of the place where the exhibit was to be held. There was a great crowd of excited people milling about. A squad of police held back the crowd. I saw old Redfern running about, frantic with excitement, his eyes bulging, hands waving... and then he caught sight of the truck backing up to the curb, and his eyes did bulge. Somewhere a police whistle shrilled, and there came the screech of a siren. Policemen began to cluster about the truck.
“Keep your face closed and start checking the stuff as it goes out,” I told the girl with the mole, and flung open the doors.
“Get ready to handle this stuff,” I yelled at the excited officer who thrust his head in at the door, and slammed a tray of choice platinum jewelry at him.
Mechanically, he took it, stood there, mouth open, eyes wide, seeking to interrogate me, and I slammed out another tray.
Watchmen and guards ran up, police officers milled about, and I had no words for any of them. I simply answered their questions by slamming out trays of choice jewelry, and the very apparent value of those goods was such that they mechanically turned and bore them into the place where the exhibit had been arranged.
I took the last tray in myself.
“Here’s the list,” said the girl with the mole, thrusting it into my hands; “and, oh, Ed! I had so hoped you would do just that!”
With that she was gone. A hell of a way for a member of a gang to congratulate the crook who had just outsmarted her of God knew how many thousand dollars.
I pattered on in with the tray, and an escort of cops clustered behind me. They didn’t know exactly what it was all about, but this was once they figured they had Ed Jenkins dead to rights, and they didn’t intend to let him live up to his reputation as a phantom crook by slipping through their fingers.
From somewhere behind me I caught the tail end of a hoarse whisper.
“...too deep for me; but we’ll make the pinch as soon as he starts for the door. With his record he’s sunk. He can’t alibi nothin’.”
Up ahead there was a crowd of jewelry men and customers milling around, asking questions, gabbling away like a bunch of geese. I had the cops behind me and knew I’d be pinched when I started for the door. That meant I had to keep going straight ahead; and it meant I had to think fast. However, thinking fast is the thing that’s kept me out of lots of jails.
I sat the tray down and climbed up on a chair.
“Silence, please!” I bellowed.
Everyone turned to rubber at me, and then I started my speech.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “I am a crook!”
That got ’em. If I’d started to make an address of welcome or tell ’em a story they’d all have been buzzing with whispers of their own and I wouldn’t have got their attention, but that single sentence made ’em stand stock still, and then I went on.
“But I am an honest crook, a man who has sought to make an honest living, to show that it is possible for a crook to go straight.
“I planned out this vast jewelry exhibition because I knew that it was a move in the right direction. The jewelry stores need an opportunity to exhibit to the select trade. The potential customers need to have a chance to study the latest styles in settings, to get up-to-the-minute information.
“Unfortunately, my assistant, the man upon whom I relied to sell space, to explain the idea to the merchants, turned out to be a crook. Knowing my record, he thought he could get away with the truckload of gems, and have the police blame it on to me. However, I managed to outwit this criminal and recover the entire truckload, and here it is, safe and sound, ready for the approval of the prospective purchasers.”
I made a bow and stood there, watching the maps of the cops, wondering if I was going to make it stick.
“I think I shall purchase my season’s supply of gems right now,” said a woman whose voice carried to the farthest ends of the room. “I think this is a wonderful idea, but, really, we don’t need the police here now, do we? Mr. Redfern, I wonder if you’d mind asking them to withdraw. It makes me feel sort of nervous and interferes with my purchasing.”
It was Edith Jewett Kemper, and she was playing a trump card in the nick of time. I think I had the cops buffaloed at that, but when old Redfern charged down on them, waving his hands, sputtering, expostulating, it was a rout. The cops thinned out that door like mosquitoes before a smudge.