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.
A chubby, muscle-bound man with a receding chin stepped out. He was wearing a lemon yellow polo shirt stuck into new overalls and carried an army automatic casually at his side — as though it were a monkey wrench.
McGavock said: “I’m a friend of Cal Bradley’s.” He walked into the patch of light. “I’m a traveling man.”
The chubby man chewed it over in his slow mind. “I guess you’re all right,” he decided. He led McGavock into the hut, closed the tar-paper door.
It was a low, vicious crowd. There were seven men in the room — three sprawled sullenly at a rough-sawed makeshift bar at the back; the remaining four were deadlocked in a game of stud under a hissing gasoline lamp.
Gil Bennett was in the poker game. He was easy to spot. Dressed in a quiet business suit, he was the only man present wearing neither leather boots nor denim. He was a decent-looking guy in his middle fifties. McGavock wondered what devious pressure had cast him into marriage with so young a wife and then perversely, had driven him to such a deadfall as this.
The detective rested his shoulders against a wall joist and watched the game. There were two bottles of red whiskey on the table and the liquor was kept in constant rotation. Bennett’s playmates lolled and simpered and put on a silly show of being skin-tight. The businessman appeared to be cold sober.
When Gil Bennett took the bottle to drink, he grasped the neck with his fist close to the bottle’s mouth. The foxy pup, McGavock thought, he’s tonguing it, cutting off his intake.
“I hate to break this up,” the detective said cheerfully. “But Mr. Bennett’s roast is burning. He has to hustle home.”
There was an ominous silence in the little shack.
Gil Bennett asked: “Did my wife send you?”
McGavock nodded. “That she did.”
The chubby houseman strolled over. “Out!” he ordered hoarsely. He tossed his knobby, dwarfed chin towards the door. “You’re not welcome here.” He grabbed McGavock’s wrist.
McGavock relaxed. He twisted his trapped wrist, caught the stocky man’s forearm in a grip of steel — a double-lock. His opponent stiffened. McGavock stepped straight into him, thrusting his thigh behind the chubby man’s knee. The chubby man went backwards heels over breakfast and McGavock, in close position, hit him three times at the hinge of his jaw. He was out before he struck the floor.
It was touch and go for a split second. Anything could have happened. Then everybody laughed. The show of brutality exhilarated them. A gambler with a Mexican leather-work holster peeping from his shiny blue serge suit got up from the table and shook McGavock’s hand. A downy-faced youth at the bar hauled a mouth harp from his hat and began running off minors. There was an air of general festivity.
In Bennett’s coupe, on the way back to town, McGavock made an astounding discovery. His companion, in spite of all his bottle tonguing, was drunker than a shoat in a silo.
“How long have you been haunting that dump?” the detective asked genially.
Gil Bennett hiccoughed. “About two weeks. And, boy, have I had bad luck! All the time I lose! At first it wasn’t so bad, seven-eight dollars. Now the jinx has really got me. I run as much as twenty bucks in the hole as regular as clockwork.” He shook his head fuzzily. “I try to outslick them but I can’t seem to make any headway—”
“How much have you lost to date?”
“One hundred and eighty-three frog skins. Down the old sewer. That’s plenty bucks. Wow!”
McGavock grinned to himself. The case was finally cracking; at last he was getting his teeth into it. “It’s a heap of small change,” he agreed. “But it’s not what breaks up wealthy family life. Mrs. Bennett said your losses were enormous — that was the word she used. I thought it sounded fishy. I couldn’t see how the town big shot, you, owner of the cotton gin, garage, et al., could find any real financial competition among the local bedrock sportsmen. Why then the secret withdrawals?”
Bennett chuckled. “You catch. This gambling business is a ruse. The Bennett Cotton Gin, the Bennett Drugstore — phooey! Everything I own is in partnership with my wife. And I don’t mean matrimonial partnership — I mean business partnership. Hal Maldron looks after her end and the way they whipsaw me is nobody’s business. Every time we get a little money ahead they put it into reserve pools and running expenses and stuff like that. I couldn’t tell you within ten thousand dollars what my present capital is.”
McGavock prodded him. “And?”
“I’ve got plans. They probably seem wacky to you but they’re the best I can do. My wife and I have a joint bank account. That’s my only access to cash. I make big withdrawals, as much as the traffic will stand. I send the money out of town to a city bank. I’ve got it deposited under a different name. I can make a fresh start any time they give me the bum’s rush. All I’m waiting for now is for Laurel and that leechy lawyer of hers to sock me with their divorce—”
“Divorce?” McGavock perked up.
“Sure. I bet they’ve got the papers all filled out.” He went cagy. “What are you pumping me for? Where did you come from, anyway? By golly, you’re a detective working for Hal and Laurel!”
“I’m a detective, all right,” McGavock confirmed. “I might as well admit it. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to know it. But I’m not working for Hal Maldron. I’m employed by a slave driver in Memphis. I’m here to find out who knocked off Lester Hodges — and, more important, how come?”
That sobered him. “Old Les Hodges has been murdered?” The idea seemed to give him some inner fear. “That’s going to be a blow to Malcom.”
“If so, he’s standing up under it extremely well,” McGavock remarked. “Why should it affect him?”
“They were bosom pals. The town’s two nuts. Hodges illiterate, Jarrell overeducated.” He said in a strained voice: “Laurel and Hal aren’t mixed up in this, are they?”
“Not so far as I know,” McGavock lied. “Why do you ask?”
Bennett pulled up in front of the court square, idled his engine. “Alcohol’s treacherous. It makes me think I’m smarter than I am. Forget the whole thing. Thanks for your interest — and good-night.”
McGavock produced his compass, handed it to his companion. “Listen to me and listen carefully. Are you sober enough to understand me? Good.” He glared at the drunken man with a fond fierceness. “The slayer of Lester Hodges used a mean weapon. A magnetized hammer, like bill-posters use, only I imagine this was a big baby, like carpenters use. He carried the tack on the hammerhead, followed Hodges down a dark street. At the right moment he reared back and swung. That’s the way it was done.” The detective paused. “I bought this gadget for myself but I’ve decided to hand it over to you. If anyone approaches you with a bulky package, a bundle, something that might conceal a hammer, stall ’em while you make a few careless passes with this compass. If there’s a magnet in the vicinity, the compass needle will whip around and point it out.”
Gil Bennett scoffed. “Why give it to me? I’m in no danger.” He slammed the car door.
McGavock watched him from the street, saw him place the gadget tenderly in his breast pocket. The black coupe whammed off in a screeching of gears.
“He’s afraid,” McGavock said. “He thinks something is after him — and he doesn’t know just what it is!”
McGavock had ordered Malcom Jarrell to spend the night with the Bennetts for a very definite reason. The detective wanted to give the little vine-covered brick cottage a thorough searching — and he wanted a free hand while doing it. One thing had bothered him all evening, the incident that had occurred when he had first visited his client. Jarrell had met him from the inside of the house, at the front door — yet he had closed the door behind him and led the detective not into the house, but around it.