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.
Connors stiffened his body; he stared up at the fight manager. He said fiercely:
“You ain’t falling for the line, Gus. For God’s sake — you don’t think—”
Gus smiled just a little. “Yeah,” he said in a soft tone. “You did the job, Connors. You talked about Giant being a good guy — but you did the job. Sure as hell — you did it.”
The girl started to cry. Gus said sharply:
“Don’t do that, Kid! Where’s Hurry — and Little Andy—”
The blonde stopped crying and looked at Gus. Her voice was broken when she spoke.
“They split up — after the kill — got out of the burg. They had coin — they didn’t leave me any—”
Connors turned his head towards the fight manager, shook it from side to side.
“Jeeze, Gus,” he breathed, “I’m tellin’ you it’s a fix! If you don’t—”
“All right,” the manager cut in softly. “All right, Connors. It’s a fix.”
The girl said: “Burke went — with them. They cleaned up plenty — and they got your—”
She stopped, said softly: “And he squealed on me. He hit me, Gus. He went to—”
Connors’s eyes were looking down towards the white surface of the table. The manager spoke in a steady tone.
“Don’t get careless, Connors. Keep your hands where I can see them. We’re just — talkin’.”
Connors swore. “She’s just — lying!” he said huskily. “She’s killing time, maybe. If we stick here they’ll walk in on—”
Gus Monkly smiled. “Edna and me — we’ve got plenty of time,” he said. “You — maybe you ain’t got so much.”
Connors’s eyes widened. His lips parted — he stared at Gus. He said:
“Now listen, Gus — I’m telling you—”
The fight manager said slowly: “Never mind, Connors. You slipped that gun to the guy working with you, in the ring. But you hung on to the towel. I got a look at it. The gas burned it a little. I couldn’t be sure about that, so I played along. I treated you like you were a white guy, Connors.”
His voice got suddenly hard. “But that’s done now. You killed, Connors — and you won’t get free. Maybe the others won’t, either. You can’t tell. I don’t know about that. But I know about you!”
Connors relaxed in the chair and stared at the fight manager. He shook his head slowly. An amazed smile showed in his eyes.
“You’re falling for her line!” he said hoarsely. “I’ll be damned if you ain’t falling for—”
His body moved forward — the table came up from the floor. The girl screamed as the white surface battered against her head. Gus Monkly stepped to one side and squeezed the gun trigger.
The bullet ricocheted from the iron leg nearest him. Connors’s gun crashed. Gus felt a hot pain over his left thigh. He squeezed the trigger a second time. Connors cried out. But his gun crashed again.
Gus Monkly felt as though he had been lifted away for a little while — hot waves ran through his body. He saw the body of Connors roll clear of the fallen table. He leveled the muzzle and squeezed the trigger until the gun was silent. He looked at the girl. She was sprawled on the floor, her face white.
He said to Lippe, very weakly: “She’s just — knocked cold — fix her up.”
He went over and looked down at Connors. The handler’s eyes were half closed — already they had a stare in them.
Gus said in a whisper: “You can’t fix him up—”
Lippe was muttering words Gus couldn’t understand. He walked slowly past the fat man, went into the hallway. It took him time to get the lock turned. When he reached the street the air felt good. There was a bluish light down near the docks — he moved in that direction. His body felt like something that didn’t belong to him. There was a moving coldness down his thighs. He walked a little like a drunken man.
When he reached the bluish light there was a lunch-wagon below it. It took him time to climb the three steps and get inside. A lean-faced man looked at him and grinned. Gus said weakly:
“Pack of — Camels — light me one — will you?”
The lean-faced man stared at him. Gus got his right hand inside a pocket, and tossed a half dollar on the counter. He said hoarsely:
“Make it — fast—”
There was a pounding in his ears that sounded a lot like the knockdown timekeeper’s mallet, hitting the wood, in the Garden. The lunch-wagon proprietor was fumbling with a pack of cigarettes. It was cold inside the place.
Gus thought of Giant Pardo and said very softly:
“Don’t look — at me — go to — a neutral corner—”
When the proprietor of the lunch-wagon heard Gus’s body fall, he came around from behind the counter and swore. He put the lighted cigarette between his own lips. When he leaned over Gus’s body he saw the red stain on the floor. Gus had been dead ten minutes when the first cop reached the place. It was a cold dawn, and they weren’t easy to find.
The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk
Walter C. Brown
Walter C. Brown, a Pennsylvanian, quit his job as a bookkeeper to become partner in a bookshop, then acquired an extensive collection of criminological information, much of it unpublished. From these files, as well as a dedicated reading of mystery and detective fiction, he had sufficient material to make the decision to write mysteries himself.
His first short story, “The Squealer,” was published in the pulp magazine Clues in 1929, the same year in which his first novel, The Second Guess, appeared. He went on to write two more mystery novels, Laughing Death (1932) and Murder at Mocking House (1933), as well as dozens of stories in the 1930s and 1940s for such pulps as Argosy, Blue Book, Detective Tales, and Black Mask, as well as such higher-paying slicks as Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post.
Several of his short stories were adapted for early television series, and his novella “Prelude to Murder,” first published in the October 1945 issue of Blue Book, served as the basis for the highly suspenseful, if largely unknown, British motion picture House in the Woods (1957). It is the chilling story of a couple, played by Patricia Roc and Michael Gough, who seek solitude and rent an isolated house whose landlord, played by Ronald Howard (the son of Trevor Howard and once the star of a 1950s Sherlock Holmes television series), is an artist and very weird indeed. It was directed by Maxwell Munden, who also wrote the screenplay.
“The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk” was published in the January 1942 issue.
Sah-jin O’Hara, Blue Coat Devil of the Chinatown Squad, had been handed some queer crime clues in his dealings with the slant-eyed Sons of Han, but never a plastered parrot that wouldn’t talk — not even to utter the three little words that held the key to a fabulous fortune.
Chapter One
The Purloined Parrot
The parrot is known by many names, but call it perico, papagei or perroquet, it is still a remarkable bird. Bespectacled professors describe it as a zygodactyl of the order Psittaci; howling black savages of the Congo speak of it as The Talking Ghost — and down in Chinatown the slant-eyed Sons of Han call it The Feather Devil.
But mention the word “parrot” to Sergeant Dennis O’Hara of the Chinatown Squad and you will hear a shorter and stronger name for the species, for the Red-Hair Sah-jin, as the Yellow Quarter calls him, is not likely to forget the mystery of The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk.