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.
And I gagged him. But his eyes bothered me. They were watching that bag, the closed bag. I wondered why, tried to open the bag and found it locked, started to take the gag out of Myer’s mouth, saw the excitement in his eyes and tried his vest pocket — and there was the key, attached to the generous watch chain.
I snapped open that bag and got a jar. No wonder Myer was interested in that bag. He was afraid to tell me about it, and was afraid not to. The bag was full of money. Crisp, new bills of large denominations. Rudolph Myer, then, had been leaving the city for an extended visit. I didn’t have to count it. But I closed the bag, carried it to the closet and chucked it behind a lot of clothes.
“I don’t blame you, worrying,” I told him. “That’s a lot of jack. But it’ll be safe there until I return.”
There were many things I wanted to ask him. Each one perhaps more important than the other. But there wasn’t time. Not long now before dawn, and the life of Colonel McBride at stake. Who was Rose Marie? Why did she cry out for vengeance? Did Myer know whose voice on the phone so upset Michelle Gorgon? I didn’t wait for that information. I only stopped long enough down stairs to put through a call to O’Rourke.
“Hop a subway,” I told him, “and I’ll pick you up at The Bridge. Don’t argue. I’ve got a line on McBride. The time for chin-chin is passed. Snap into it.”
Well, I had used my brains for once, as The Flame had suggested, but I hadn’t used them until Jerry told me that Rudolph Myer was the man who escaped down the street after the attack and abduction of Colonel McBride. Then, maybe it wasn’t much thinking. I just got a kaleidoscope picture of past events and knew that Rudolph Myer was my meat.
I met O’Rourke and I told him what was on my chest.
“They’ll kill McBride if we come in force, yet we can’t chance an attack alone. Just one man may be guarding that garage and maybe ten. Here’s the ticket. I know Ricorro’s. It’s an all-night garage. The big front doors are always open. It would look bad if they closed them now. I’m for betting they’ll be open.”
“Ricorro’s Garage!” O’Rourke stroked his chin. “Well, it’s got a bad enough name, though we’ve never really pinned a thing on Ricorro. And you don’t know if McBride is in the basement below or on the floor above.”
“I don’t know even if he’s there at all. But dying men are supposed to speak the truth. And I’m telling you, O’Rourke, Rudolph Myer was as near death as any man who ever peeped a final message. But I’m strong for the basement. Here’s the lay. There may be a way out that we don’t know of. You get a raiding squad and cover the block, but not till I’m inside.”
“You and me inside,” O’Rourke horned in.
“No. Just me. This is my racket. If I’m discovered, they may think I’m alone, and not kill McBride. I work alone. If you’re with me — but you have a wife and kid.”
O’Rourke laughed.
“I’ve been reported killed so many times, and given up by the ambulance surgeon so many times, that the old lady wouldn’t even get a bad turn. Besides which, what has the old lady got to do with police business? As for my kid, well, he’s going to be a copper, Race — a real copper.” And suddenly bursting out on me, “Where do you get the stuff that you’re the only living man in New York with any guts, any eye — and any gun hand? I’ll be a—”
I switched that talk and turned to McBride’s interest. Finally O’Rourke saw it enough my way to let me flop into the garage first. Once the surprise was over, he’d follow. That seemed fair enough. What I was mostly afraid of were spies. Watchers on the outside, who’d give the alarm as soon as the cops got anywhere near the garage.
O’Rourke put through a call for the boys to meet us. He had a picked crew waiting and ready, and told me it wouldn’t take five minutes to fill that garage with flatties. I didn’t like waiting for the coppers there in the dark street some six blocks from Ricorro’s Garage. I get restless just before a bit of action, not nervous, you understand, sort of rarin’ to go, and the longer I wait the worse I get. So I spent my time telling O’Rourke all that had taken place in my talk with Michelle Gorgon, and his offer of a hundred thousand dollars for the name of the party behind McBride, the party who rang up Michelle Gorgon. Of the note, “Rose Marie cries out for Vengeance—” with a couple of words erased at the end of it.
“Yeah, Michelle Gorgon would like to know.” O’Rourke chewed an unlighted cigar. “McBride could tell him, but won’t. I could tell him, but won’t. I—.
“O’Rourke,” I cut in, “I’ve laid my cards on the table. What about yours? Who is the one who knows so much, and why can’t you get the information from that party?”
“Because I can’t,” snapped O’Rourke. “And I have passed my—. Well — I can’t tell you who it is — that’s flat.” And suddenly changing the subject, “Who’d think it of Rudolph Myer? Imagine it! The police have been trying to get something on Myer for years and always failed, and finally he mixes himself up with a bit of murder, kidnaping, maybe torture, and what have you, all at once. There’s no understanding human nature, Race. But it’ll just show you what a lad we’re dealing with in Michelle Gorgon. Certainly he must have put the stony, Gorgon look on Myer. And you say Myer was ready to jump the city, bags packed and all. But why? He never guessed you were onto him. He couldn’t know that Jerry saw and recognized him. Maybe he was just leaving for a day or so, on business, business for the Gorgons, Michelle Gorgon.”
“Not Myer.” I nodded confidently. And I told O’Rourke of the suitcase full of money. “Did that look like a short trip?” I asked.
“Yeah?” And O’Rourke let his mouth hang open a minute. “One hundred thousand dollars for the name of the one behind McBride,” he said thoughtfully. “For the one who strikes fear in Michelle Gorgon’s stomach, for he hasn’t any heart. One hundred thousand dollars for even a hint of who it might be. One hundred thousand dollars for—” And O’Rourke suddenly clutched me by the arm. “You don’t think — think that bag contained exactly one hundred thousand dollars?”
“It might. Why? You don’t think—?”
“But I do think, exactly what you think now. That Rudolph Myer knew, or guessed, and sold the information to Michelle Gorgon. It—. Wait.” And O’Rourke climbed suddenly from the car, went back into that all-night drug store, and following him to the corner I saw him step into the telephone booth.
“Phew—” he rubbed his forehead when he came out. “At least, no harm has been done yet.”
“O’Rourke—” I started, and stopped. The riot squad was on the job. Two big cars were coming down the street.
Now, I didn’t have things my own way. O’Rourke did agree with me that the police cars stay five blocks from Ricorro’s. But O’Rourke trailed along with me to within a couple of blocks of the garage — then I let him out of my boat.
“I don’t know what you told the cops, O’Rourke,” was my final message to him, “but I’m certain that a police parade will kill the show.”
“Nothing to worry about,” O’Rourke told me. “They’ve got orders to wait, then surround the block. I’ll sort of keep an eye on you.”
“Too much interest, and McBride dies.” I took the hand that O’Rourke held out to me. And I grinned as I put the police whistle into my pocket. Why argue over that?
“You’ve sure got guts, Race,” he said simply, and I drove off.
Chapter XXIX
Joe Gorgon Does His Stuff
There are times when I feel that I earn my money. This was one of them. I had an idea that one man, working alone, might get to McBride. One man, driving alone into that garage, would probably not send a signal of warning to Joe Gorgon. One man might—. But I swung the corner, dashed down the main street, spotted the wide open doors of Ricorro’s Garage and drove smack in. I want to tell you it was a big moment.