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.
McGavock said gravely: “Don’t tell me you disposed of it!”
She raised her eyebrows innocently. “How did you know? That’s exactly what I did. I took it out in the country and threw it in the river. I’ll never tell anyone where. Wild horses couldn’t drag it from me.”
“It couldn’t have been Gil’s hammer?”
“Oh, no. It was a new one — I’d never seen it before.” She smiled deprecatingly. “It was in Gil’s tool chest but that doesn’t prove anything, does it?”
McGavock guffawed. “Sister, you’re a thing of beauty and a joy forever. You’re more fun than a stampede at the circus. I wish I wasn’t so busy; I’d like to give you more of my time. Cal Bradley tells me the town is pairing us off together, gossiping about our little trip to Chunky’s last night. Answer me this: wasn’t it you, yourself, that put out the story?”
Rage swept into her eyes.
“I think I’ll leave,” McGavock said hastily. “You’re getting set to touch off a string of oaths.” He left her standing there — frustrated and furious.
Malcom Jarrell was seated on the side steps of the Bennett mansion in smoking jacket and carpet slippers. He had his four-lensed spectacles hooked on the bridge of his nose. He was feeding brown sugar to a procession of big, black ants. He’d bend down, watch for a second, and then scribble a note on a jumbled sheaf of papers. Hunched with his stubbled chin between his scrawny kneecaps, he reminded McGavock of some shabby sea monster.
“You’d better turn around,” he said placidly as McGavock came into his vision. “And go straight back to town. The sheriff just phoned. He’s mad enough to top the high cotton. He’s waiting for you at Lawyer Maldron’s.” The naturalist smiled. “If I wasn’t so occupied here, I’d trot along. It’d be amusing to hear you bluster. You’re going to have to do a bit of explaining—”
“It’s you, my erudite friend of fur and feathers, it’s you, suh, who have a bit of explaining to do.” The detective bore down on him. “I want to know about that rat of yours. I want to know all about it.”
“His name is Bertram,” the naturalist said owlishly. “He’s deficient in vitamins A, C and D—”
McGavock spat, “And don’t take me for a sleigh ride. I’m talking about his hind leg. Just above the ankle, there’s a raw place in the fur — a band of flesh where the skin’s been rubbed off. What caused that?”
Jarrell nodded sagely. “I’m treating him for it. Bertram was caught in a trap. The mark of the trap’s jaws—”
McGavock said happily: “Boy, you really think on your feet! That’s a snappy answer. Now let’s see what you have to say to this. As a matter of fact, there’s no raw place on his leg at all! I know. I checked.”
Malcom Jarrell’s composure cracked. His florid cheeks went gravel-gray, sucked in, his eyes darted wildly — past McGavock’s shoulder, past his hip, evading the detective’s steady gaze.
The naturalist licked his lips. “I owe you an apology,” he croaked. “I certainly misjudged you. I should have known that Atherton wouldn’t send me a fool, that you must be smarter than you acted. Grant me this request: don’t question me. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“No can do,” McGavock said coldly. “I’m after a killer. Let’s hear about Bertram, the whole story.”
“You leave me no choice.” Jarrell gritted his huge jaw. “I’m afraid you’ve guessed the worst of it. A few weeks ago a citizen of our town, someone Lester Hodges had known all his life, came to him with an extraordinary business proposition. Who this person was, Lester refused to tell me. The rat was involved in that business deal.”
“Of course,” McGavock declared. “That’s been perfectly obvious from the start. You were keeping Hodges’ rat for him. No naturalist would confine such a large animal in such a small cage. It’s cruel. That was so Hodges could tie a string to its leg without the beast whipping around and fanging him.”
“Exactly.”
“What was this business deal?”
“This person employed Lester to search between the floors of an old, tumbledown health resort out in the pine country, Fern Springs. Hodges was half-mad—” Jarrell’s voice was patronizing, amiable. McGavock remembered Bennett’s statement: The two town nuts — Jarrell and Hodges. “Lester was half-mad,” the naturalist repeated. “He tackled the problem with a system of his own. He tied fishing line onto the rodent’s leg and used him some way in the search. I don’t know how on earth he induced the animal to act.”
“He was searching for obstructions under the floor,” McGavock explained. “He placed the rat in an opening by the baseboard. Floor joists run parallel — under every floor there’s a series of small tunnels. It was pretty clever. It saved him ripping up goodness knows how much floor space. It was the most plausible way to do it.
Malcom Jarrell frowned. “But how did he make the animal obey?”
“He scared him through with tiny firecrackers, a commodity obtainable at any Deep South country store. Hodges slipped his pet into the floor, popped off a firecracker — and judged by the length of slack in the line the progress his animal was making under the floor. Did the old man find what he was supposed to?”
“I don’t know. I should say he was slain before he was successful. He’d come over in the evening and talk to me in a vague sort of way. I got the impression that he and his employer were satisfied with the way the business was going. His employer was paying him a steady salary of four dollars a week — sending him banknotes wrapped in blank paper. Lester was quite excited over his good fortune.”
McGavock said: “You’re being candid with me? You’re telling me everything?”
Jarrell had his old poise back. “Oh, quite. You’ll have to excuse me now. You have work to do.” He resumed his scrutiny of the black ants. “And so have I.”
As soon as McGavock laid eyes on the local law he knew that he was in for a catch-as-catch-can tussle.
The sheriff of Linden County was the direct antithesis of the old-style rural sharpshooter that pinned his rusty badge to his gallus elastic and toted a .38-in-a-.44 frame at a holster on his hip as big as an English riding saddle. The young man that lolled on the corner of Hal Maldron’s desk was modest, friendly, self-effacing. He was dressed in well-cut blue-gray tweed. And his fingernails were a little over-manicured.
It was the fingernails that scared McGavock. This lad must have plenty on the ball. The hard-bitten mountain folk of Linden County wouldn’t have elected him if he was as sappy as he seemed. The coon-hunting hillmen selected their sheriff like they selected their hound dogs — for brains and guts and stamina. McGavock had the strange feeling that he was in the presence of a hotshot, deliver-the-goods career man.
The young man smiled. “Howdy. I’m Steve Robley — the current and temporary head of our local crime and punishment bureau. It’s mighty swell of you to look me up. I hope I’m not imposing?”
McGavock was stunned. “No,” he said carefully. “It’s a pleasure. Is Maldron, here, a deputy of yours?”
Hal Maldron lifted his fat lip, exposed his decayed teeth. “Yes,” he announced, “I am.”
“No,” the sheriff said, “you’re not. I’m sorry, Hal, but I’m going to have to revoke your authority for the duration of this brief but pleasant interview. We mustn’t intimidate our new friend with a belligerent show of force.” He got out a stubby briar pipe, loaded it, got it going. “I’ve gone over the hammer, Mr. McGavock. I can’t find any prints.”
McGavock remarked: “I left the hammer under the body. As a proof to you that I wasn’t down here to tamper with evidence.” It was a bluff, a case of life or death. He surged with relief when the sheriff nodded.