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.
O’Rourke was buzzing the phone again. I said to him in a cracked voice:
“Is there an airport in Westchester — northern Westchester?”
And he didn’t answer me. The receiver clicked up and down. O’Rourke was an almanac of information. I heard him calling an airport some eight or ten miles above White Plains.
As for me. I’m not a dumb ox altogether. I was fishing into that waste basket for the envelope that O’Rourke had tossed there. And I found it, spread it out, and read what was written on it.
“Race — I trust to your honor not to read this note until twelve o’clock, noon.” I looked at my watch. It was now exactly twenty minutes to five. I guess my eyes got a little harder as they looked at O’Rourke. He had made sure I wouldn’t see what was on that envelope. But I didn’t say anything. He was talking on the phone.
“Never heard of Michelle Gorgon! Well, it’s damn near time you bought a New York newspaper. No order for a plane to go up — none gone up — and wait — just a minute. Any plane there owned by a Miss Drummond? A—. That’s it. That’s it. Her pilot dropped in with it early in the week? Listen. Get in touch with the police and see that — that that plane—. Listen— Damn it!” He pounded the hook up and down. “The fool’s cut off. Central— Damn it, give me that number I—” O’Rourke dropped the receiver. “Some one cut the wires, I’ll bet. Come on, Race. There’s a chance yet.”
“Yes, a chance yet.” I faced him as he stood up. “So you’re the light haired boy who got The Flame into his—. Who let her take this trip tonight. Who—. And you once suggested a bullet between your own eyes, O’Rourke, once—” Maybe my hand touched my gun. “Why didn’t you warn her?”
“But I did,” said O’Rourke. “As soon as you told me about that pile of jack in Rudolph Myer’s bag I rang her up and warned her not to open the door to any one, that my men would be there shortly. For her not to see Michelle Gorgon, and—”
“Maybe you did.” I thought of the letter. “She knew and she went anyway. God! O’Rourke. How could you do it? How—”
“If we’ve got to differ, Race, let it be later. Maybe, in a different way, I think as much of The Flame as you do. I’ll talk now. She’s talked in that letter. But let’s be friends now, Race, at least allies. It looks like The Flame went, purposely, to her death. Come on. To the airport in Westchester. There’s a chance.”
“There’s no chance,” I told him, as we hurried from the apartment. “He’s taking her as he took his wife. The Flame crossed him. She was out to ruin him, and he knows it.”
The sky was brightening as we dashed through the city streets. I wasn’t quite my own man. I let Brophey drive the police car, and I sat in the back with O’Rourke. That car carried the police insignia. There would be less delays.
“Look here.” O’Rourke leaned close to me and spoke. “I saw a chance to get the Gorgons through The Flame. And I was right. She found out more in a month than I had found out in a year. But she wouldn’t tell me, wouldn’t tell McBride. At least, not until she was sure, beyond any doubt, that Michelle Gorgon had maimed her sister. She was afraid I told her that simply to get her in with me.”
“Then she was working for you all along.”
“Yes and no,” said O’Rourke. “In a way she was working with me, but really working for herself. But I thought, once she was convinced of the truth, she would turn Michelle Gorgon in. It was she who found out that Toney came over on the ship with the Gorgons, though what that information was worth I never did know. It was she who discovered, through Toney, about Giovoni. But Giovoni wouldn’t talk out until he could confront Michelle Gorgon. Besides, he was taken desperately ill, aboard ship. But we got enough from him to know that he was called ‘The Devil’ years back. And you never suspected The Flame?”
“No.” And suddenly, “You knew she was at McBride’s house that night, in the locked closet?”
“Sure,” said O’Rourke. “I thought as much as soon as I found that closet door locked, and remembered that I had told The Flame about McBride signalling me with the light, for help — when she warned me that he should never be unprotected. She had come in the back way, through the door that was left open for Rudolph Myer. She knew, or felt, that McBride was in great danger and came to warn him. She hid in one of the front rooms when McBride came down stairs to meet Rudolph Myer. She thought it was the police though, and never suspected McBride was leaving by the back door with some one. So she didn’t see with whom he left. But the moment she knew he was gone she suspected some trap of the Gorgons, ran up those stairs and flashed the danger signal with the light.
“Yes, I suspected she was there in the closet, but I didn’t know for sure until I met her in the hall and gave her safe passage from the house. That’s what I meant when I said to you that the district attorney himself couldn’t leave that house without my Okay. You must have thought me an awful hick cop. But she didn’t want you to know too much, Race. She was afraid you would give the show away trying to protect her, but in her heart I think she wanted you out of the case, because she thought you’d... well... get yourself a hole in the ground.”
“I never thought of her working in with the police.”
“And she wasn’t,” snapped O’Rourke. “It was vengeance, or retribution, or a great love — or a great hate. But each day I thought she would get the proof from Michelle Gorgon himself that he had maimed his wife, her sister. And then, I thought, she’d blow it all to me. Now, she’s gone with him, knowing that he’s onto her. Why?”
“Do you think — maybe she don’t — didn’t understand you?”
“Hell! I told her flat, that Rudolph Myer had sold her out to Michelle Gorgon. Then I gave her the office to sit tight. The Flame’s no child, you know.”
“No.” Death — destruction. All that The Flame had told me came up before me now. “O’Rourke,” I said slowly, “I don’t know. But if The Flame’s dead, get away from me — get—. Good God! I—. We’ve been almost pals. I—. Why didn’t you tell me The Flame was in it — with — with us?”
“I couldn’t. I passed my word. She wouldn’t help me unless I did. And I also passed my word not to ask you into the case. In a way, I broke that promise. I had McBride bring you in — through Myer.”
“And the note, with what was written on the envelope. She trusted to my honor, and—”
“That’s it,” said O’Rourke. “There’s too much honor, been too damned much honor. If you hadn’t read that note we wouldn’t be on our way to save her now. I’m a stickler about my own honor, Race, yet not a guardian of yours. It’s best you read it, and—”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s best that I read it.”
“Good!” He stuck out his hand, but I didn’t see it. Finally he put it back in his pocket. “We must all go our way according to our light,” he said.
“Yeah. I thought you were a friend, a real friend. And you’re just, just a cop,” was the best I could give him.
“But an honest cop,” said O’Rourke. “An honest cop.”
Brophey could drive. And the police siren screeched but little in the city streets. No talk, now, between us. Up Broadway to Van Cortland Park, through the park to Central Avenue. Sometimes sixty, sometimes sixty-five. It was then that I wished I had my own car. Out on that long stretch of concrete road I could have pushed it to eighty, and perhaps ninety on that down grade just before you reach that slight upswing to the Tuckahoe Road. But, be fair about it. That down grade is quite some curve and maybe, maybe—. But this is not an automobile tour I’m writing about — nor a real estate ad for “Buy in Westchester” — nor even a treatise on the merits of certain automobile motors. It was a race against death. At least, I hoped it was. But maybe, after all, it was just a race with death, to find death.