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.
“No, no. Not then, Race. It was The Flame. I wanted her. I loved her. I thought—”
“The Flame? You!” I had to laugh.
“Why not?” And Rudolph Myer’s beady eyes snapped back to life. “Many have, others have. Am I any different? I’m not so young, but neither is Michelle Gorgon. I’m not so, not—. Don’t you see, Race? What she did to others she did to me. And, Race, she led me on. I swear she did. I’ve done business for Michelle Gorgon. She got it out of me, all out of me. She sucked me dry of every bit of information, then laughed in my face and—”
He read it in my eyes. He clutched at my coat now, kneeling there at my feet.
“Don’t kill me, don’t. I know you can get away with it. I know the man-made laws can’t touch you. But you’ve never done that. Never gone in for murder, Race. Never—. You’ve lived clean. There’s other laws beside those of man. There’s God’s.”
“There’s the laws of God and the laws of man, Myer. And there’s the law of death, for the rat, for the stoolie, for the two-timer. You sent Giovoni to his death. You sent Colonel McBride to worse than death. You tried to send me to death, and — By God! you’ve got to pay the price.” I half raised my gun.
Was I going to kill him then? I don’t know, so you don’t know. But certainly Rudolph Myer thought he knew. He screamed out as he clutched at my knees and begged for life.
“I’ll tell you where McBride is if you let me go. Don’t you see? It was The Flame, The Girl with the Criminal Mind. Am I made of different stuff than other men? Isn’t there blood in my body too? And she laughed at me and told me she loved you, and you only. And, and—. God! Race, I was mad, mad. I wanted you dead. I thought, if you were — if you—. Don’t, don’t kill me. It’ll be death for McBride. Death for The Flame.”
Was it to save McBride that my finger didn’t close on that trigger, or was it because of The Flame? What Rudolph Myer said might easily be true, for I guess most any man would fall a victim to The Flame. Most any would, and many had. Or was it simply that I couldn’t get up the guts to press that trigger and snap out Myer’s life? Or—? But I did say:
“You, you wouldn’t know where McBride is.”
“Yes, I do. I do! Promise, give me your word that you won’t... won’t kill me if I tell you.”
“If I save McBride, you can go free,” I told him. “But I’ll know if you lie about him. I know more than you think. To begin with, I know that you fled down that street, stopped in a telephone booth in a drug store and made two telephone calls. One to me, the other to—”
“To Michelle Gorgon,” he told me, and I believed him. Then he gave me his story.
“Michelle Gorgon found out that Colonel McBride was coming to the city by the request of the Police Commissioner, through the Deputy Commissioner. He had me worm my way into McBride’s confidence by telling him things about the Gorgons — things that O’Rourke had already unearthed, but were not evidence. McBride told me about this Giovoni, but no more than his name and that he had arrived in New York, and was taken sick. He didn’t tell me where he was, nor where he was going to take him. That was the night before I met you. I watched McBride’s house and saw him go to Doctor Elrod’s Sanitarium the following morning. So I knew that would be where he’d take Giovoni. I was working, alone, for Michelle Gorgon. Joe or Eddie knew nothing about my connection with Michelle. Michelle Gorgon liked to play without his brothers once in a while. It strengthened his hold over them.”
“Did Michelle have you notify Eddie when The Flame had you date me up for her, both those times?”
“No. I did it myself. I let Eddie think it came from The Flame. I wanted you—. I, I loved The Flame.”
That was a funny one, maybe — but easy to believe.
Chapter XXVIII
The Police Horn In
I looked at my watch. The “whys” the “wherefores” of the thing were not as important as knowing where McBride was. I told Myer to talk, and quickly. He did. He said:
“I went to see Colonel McBride. He expected me and left the kitchen door open, as he didn’t want the police to know I was there. He was telephoning, up stairs. I whistled up to him from the kitchen door. I was nervous. I thought I heard some one in one of the front rooms, so I kept in the dark. I thought it might be the police. Colonel McBride came down to me. I pretended excitement. I told him I had some one in a car on the street behind, who would tell him all about Rose Marie, and how she was murdered. I told him the person wouldn’t come in, for him to come out. He said he was expecting you, Race, but he came with me when I said it would only take a minute. He—” Myer had the good grace to gulp, anyway, “He trusted me. Joe Gorgon was out in the car, with some others and—. I didn’t know they intended to torture him. That’s the truth.”
“And they told you where they were going to take him?”
“No,” he said, “they didn’t. But I had a... a colleague around the corner with a car to follow them. I... well... I like to have information of my own if things go wrong, like now.” He looked at my gun and tried to smile.
I nodded at that. It would be like Myer. Slippery — never trusting any one. Always with a card up his sleeve. Yes — I believed him.
Then he gave me the address where Joe Gorgon and his racketeers had taken Colonel McBride. Ricorro’s garage. A notorious, all night garage, where the front doors never closed. I had a hunch Myer was speaking the truth. Somehow, at such times you KNOW.
One more question I couldn’t help. I had always looked on Myer as a straight shooter to the one who paid him, if crooked every other way, and certainly not in the cesspool of the city’s rackets.
“What made you double-cross McBride, Myer?” I asked. “Did Michelle Gorgon hold something over your head?”
“Not in the sense of blackmail, if you mean that.” Rudolph Myer had recovered quickly and was on his feet now, lighting a cigarette with a shaky hand. “I don’t think any one could ever get anything on me again. No, Michelle Gorgon’s methods are much simpler and much more direct. He came to me, Race, and pounded a long finger against my chest. ‘I need you, Myer,’ he said. ‘Come come, we won’t quibble. I’ll pay you well to act for me. I always do. It’s not for you to decide, but for me to decide. You’re in with me now, till I’m through with you — or you’re dead by morning.’ That was all he said, Race. That was all he needed to say. I know my city. I know my law, and know too what little protection it could offer me. I’d have felt safer hearing my sentence of death passed by a judge in court. For law or no law, I knew as well, or even better than any man, that Michelle Gorgon is above the law. And... and I wanted very much to live.”
And the worst of it was, it was true.
But I didn’t kill any more time. And I didn’t listen to Rudolph Myer’s protestations when I took those straps from the bag and a couple of bathrobe cords from the closet and trussed him up.
“I daresay you can work yourself free of those straps, but not these,” I said, as I jerked out my irons and fastened them about his ankles. “I’ll come back and release you as soon as Colonel McBride is free. Now, anything else to tell me? For your life depends on my success.”
He could take that any way he liked — but he talked. He said:
“Joe Gorgon’ll be there tonight, not Michelle though. How many Joe will have with him I don’t know, but he won’t trust many in this... this, I don’t think.”