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.
“Hai! It is Choy!” Wei Lum cried out, pushing forward, but the parrot gave no sign of recognition, merely staring at them with drooping, cynical eyes.
O’Hara caught the first dawning of doubt on Wei Lum’s face as the yellow man scrutinized the green bird more closely — then saw the doubt deepen into reluctant conviction.
“I make mistake, Sah-jin,” Wei Lum confessed. “This Feather Devil same for size and color, but it is not Choy.”
“His name Shao,” Tai Gat put in, and the green Feather Devil, cocking its head and crisping its claw, burst into sudden angry clamor with a raucous repetition of “Shao! Shao! Shao!”
“Shao — that means fire or flame,” O’Hara remarked. “He should have some red feathers with a name like that... Well, sorry to have troubled you, Tai Gat.”
The mafoo made a polite bow. “You likee stop see Master Chang? Maybe you not see him again. Doctor Meng say Master go soon to join honorable ancestors.”
On the way downstairs they stopped briefly at the room where the stricken silversmith lay silent and motionless on his k’ang, as though Yo Fei the Dread One had already tapped his shoulder.
Young Chang Loo stood at the window, smoking a cigarette. Doctor Meng the apothecary kept watch beside the k’ang, eyes fixed on Chang Pao’s withered face. The gray-bearded tuchum of the Five Tongs Council was also present, and Sang Lee the scrivener, busy painting the prayers that would be burned the moment old Chang “mounted the Dragon.”
They all bowed gravely at O’Hara’s entrance, all but young Chang, who only turned his head far enough for a sullen, sidelong flicker.
O’Hara stood beside the k’ang, looking down at the unconscious silversmith. “Has there been any change?” he asked Meng.
The apothecary held a silvered mirror above Chang’s nostrils and examined the result, peering through iron-rimmed spectacles which were without lenses. “Sah-jin, the Breath of Life grows weaker with every hour.”
“I’m sorry,” O’Hara said gently, for he regarded Chang Pao as an old friend. The Death Watch bowed gravely again as O’Hara turned toward the door, but out of the corner of his eye he saw young Chang scowl and make the same furtive “finger curse.”
“Well, Wei Lum, we struck out on that clue,” O’Hara remarked to the crestfallen yellow man when they were outside. “Are you sure you picked the right house?”
“Sah-jin, I play twice on the flute, and listen twice, to make sure it is Choy,” Wei Lum declared.
O’Hara shook his head. “I suppose a couple of green parrots that look alike, sound alike, too. Don’t give up your search, Wei Lum. Maybe you’ll have better luck next time.”
“Kwei lung — devil dragons!” Wei Lum muttered as he tucked the bamboo flute into his sleeve and padded off into the darkness of Lantern Court.
O’Hara glanced up at the lighted windows of Chang Pao’s room. A distorted shadow slanted across the drawn shades — Chang Loo the lucky nephew, smoking his White Devil cigarettes, watching beady-eyed for the dawn of his Day of Riches.
And young Chang did not have long to wait, for the old silversmith died that night. Still unconscious, he breathed his last during the hour of the Tiger, which is between four and six a.m. by White Devil reckoning. O’Hara learned this from Doc Stanage, who had issued the death certificate.
O’Hara knew what routine steps would follow Chang Pao’s demise. After prayers had been burned and the death candles lit, Chang’s body would be placed in its ironwood coffin and conveyed to the Hall of Sorrows in the Plum Blossom Joss House.
Then the tong tuchum, with the proper witnesses, would seal the doors of Chang’s house with paper strips bearing the tong insignia — seals which would not be broken until the silversmith’s will had been read and his lawful heir placed in possession.
Later in the day O’Hara and Driscoll attended that brief ceremony in the silk-draped office of Lee Shu the Chinese banker. Lee opened his iron vault and brought out Chang’s sealed will, which had been in his keeping for several years. It turned out to be a short, concise document, leaving his entire estate, without condition, to his nephew, Chang Loo.
So Chang Loo presented his credentials for formal inspection by Lee Shu and the tong council, and became master of No. 14 Lantern Court and its sealed riches.
“That guy was born with a horseshoe in each fist!” Driscoll remarked. “Chances are he never had one dollar to rub against another, and now look at him. I hear old Chang left a shelf-ful of ginger-jars filled up and running over with Rice Face cash. But I bet young Chang’ll empty ’em quick enough. You can see he’s just itchin’ to step out high, wide and handsome.”
O’Hara nodded. “Funny, how Wei Lum’s tip on the parrot brought us to Chang’s house. When I caught young Chang making the ‘finger curse,’ I thought maybe we had something.”
“Listen, Sarge.” Driscoll grinned. “If we started hauling in all the Chinks who hate cops, we’d run out of cell-space in half an hour.”
“But there was a parrot in the house,” O’Hara declared.
“So what?” Driscoll argued. “Wei Lum looked it over and told you it wasn’t Choy. What more do you want?”
O’Hara made a restless gesture. “I don’t know, Driscoll, but I have a sort of hunch that I’ve overlooked something — somewhere.”
Then came the night when Sergeant O’Hara learned that stronger names than Feather Devil could be applied to a parrot. It was a night of lowering blue fog that turned the neon lights of Mulberry Lane into gaudy strings of smoldering jewels.
O’Hara, pursuing his usual rounds, paused at the gilded doorway of a tong house to put on the black slicker he had been carrying on his arm. The misty fog was changing rapidly to a steady, cold drizzle, and the few Celestials who were abroad drifted past like blurred shadows.
The iron bell of St. Mary’s steeple tolled out ten solemn strokes — the hour of the Fox — as O’Hara came within sight of the glass lantern hanging beside the doorway to the Plum Blossom Joss House — a deep blue glow which floated in the smoky void like a sinister moon.
A globular shadow loomed up on O’Hara’s left, bobbing along toward the brownstone steps of the joss house, and as the bulky figure passed under the peacock-blue lantern O’Hara recognized Mark Sin, Chinatown’s Number One gambler.
He watched the slant-eyed master of gaming disappear through the Plum Blossom portals. Mark Sin’s visits to the joss house were for one purpose only — to burn silver-paper prayers at the shrine of Liu Hai the Money God. Which meant there would be another “floating” fan-tan game tonight somewhere in Paradise Court.
“And just try to break it up!” O’Hara muttered, with the wry smile that came of long experience with the cunning ways of the Yellow Quarter.
O’Hara even knew who would be the principal players around Mark Sin’s gaming table. There would be Wing Lung the silk merchant, Kim Yao the goldsmith, Meng Tai the apothecary, Long Jon of the Tea House — and yes, no doubt young Chang Loo, the two-handed spendthrift who was treading a silken path since he had fallen heir to the wealth of his uncle, Chang Pao.
“Beggar on horseback!” O’Hara growled, recalling the many stories about young Chang’s unceasing round of carousing and drinking and reckless gaming. Chang Loo had not even made a pretense of mourning his dead uncle — no white sorrow-robes for him, no period of fasting and seclusion, no ancestor joss burning in the Plum Blossom.