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.
“The very conclusion that I myself came to. I must say it gave me a bit of surprise — I’d always been under the impression that private detectives were not so cooperative.”
“I’ve tried it that way,” McGavock said. “It’s the hard way. Now I cooperate.” This boy really had a deadpan. He wondered if he was being maneuvered out on a limb. “Can I be of any service to you?”
“Yes,” the sheriff said slowly. “You certainly can be. I’m stumped. What’s it all about? Who’d want to murder harmless old Hodges?”
McGavock was impressed. “This is a long story. And a muddled one. I work for an agency in Memphis. For twenty years now we’ve been investigating a case for a brokerage firm in Cleveland. Back in nineteen-nine they had a guy abscond with seventy grand. He came down here to Fern Springs and vanished.”
He had them entranced. They were swallowing it, every word. There could be no doubt of it.
Maldron said helplessly: “Why didn’t you say so last night! I didn’t apprehend that you had such powerful backing. You people have been working on a case in this vicinity for twenty years? I can hardly believe it!”
“We’ve been working on the case — but not in this community. It was the slaying of Lester Hodges that gave us the break we’ve been looking for.”
Sheriff Robley was flustered. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Mr. McGavock. A certain party—” Maldron looked miserable. “A certain party summoned me last night by an imperative phone call. He said that you were retained by a cousin of Mr. Jarrell’s and that you came down here from Memphis for the sole purpose of obstructing justice. He said that he’d go into court and swear that you had consulted him last night about his client and had attempted to entice him into illegal conspiracy.”
“These sure-fire lawyers,” McGavock said pleasantly. “No wonder they win cases. They butter their bread on both sides. Who’s he representing — Jarrell or you? I may say at this time, that we in Memphis have had occasion to speculate a little about this Maldron. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise us to learn that somehow he’s directly involved. He knows something. He was at Fern Springs in that fatal August when Wainwright disappeared. He—”
Maldron glared. “And so were Bennett and Malcom and Bradley and half the town.”
McGavock shook a finger dramatically. “Then, sir,” he declaimed basso profundo, “then why, sir, did you write us that unusual note — the one about Wainwright’s bones, seek at Fern Springs and ye shall find?”
The lawyer fidgeted. “Nonsense. You’re out of your head.”
Steve Robley looked suddenly intent. “Go on, Mr. McGavock.”
“That’s all,” McGavock said. “Comes in this crank letter signed ‘Hal Maldron’ talking about a dead man’s bones—”
The sheriff said softly: “The letter was typewritten, of course?”
“Not as I remember it. Written in big letters, in ink, as I recall it.”
The young sheriff stepped to Maldron’s desk, inspected the surface of the much-used blotter. He rubbed his chin, looked at the ceiling for a moment, turned the blotter over. The inked imprints stood out in heavy black scrawls. The sheriff took a pocket mirror from his comb-case, held it above the inscription.
“ ‘The bones of Thompson J. Wainwright are at Fern Springs,’ ” he read. “ ‘Seek and ye shall find!’ Thank you, Mr. McGavock. You’ve been of great assistance. I’ll not keep you any longer.”
Alone, on the sun-splashed sidewalk, McGavock wiped a trembling hand across his forehead and said, “Whoo!” So the hammer was under the corpse all the time. He’d started his investigation by muffing the murder weapon. It had been a nerve-racking ten minutes. They had been waiting for him, all set to drive him out of town. He’d sidestepped it. For how long, he didn’t know — but for the time being, anyhow. And time was what he needed.
“Six hours,” McGavock decided. “Give me six hours more and I’ll blow this thing seven ways to Christmas!”
Gil Bennett was in his office at the cotton gin. A little room not much larger than a chicken coop, its walls were plastered with commercial calendars — wild ducks in topsy-turvy flight, prize bulls, and turgid maidens in air-brushed bathing suits. Bennett sat on a rocker with a spliced leg by a cluttered roll-top desk. Laid out before him were a wine glass, an egg, a bottle of pepper sauce and a salt cellar. “Glad to see you,” he said. “Hitch up and dismount.”
The only other article of furniture in the room was a battered church pew along the wall. McGavock stretched himself out full-length, propped himself up on the arm, and grinned. “Do you think you’ll live?” he asked.
Bennett’s voice was hollow. “I doubt it.” He broke the raw egg in the wine glass, dusted it with a sprinkle of salt and doused it liberally with pepper sauce. “A prairie oyster. Will you go along with me, sir?” McGavock shook his head. The businessman took it at a gulp. “You must break the yolk with your tongue as it goes down,” he said. “Ugh!”
McGavock remarked sententiously: “The wages of sin.” He laughed. “Get that wilted expression off your face. You’re afraid I’m going to continue our conversation of last evening. I’m not. You were a guest at the Fern Springs resort back in nineteen-nine when a guy named Wainwright drifted in with a satchel of hot money — and evaporated. Do you happen to remember the attendant circumstances?”
“Very well, indeed.” Bennett was grim.
“Swell. The place, I understand, is now owned by Mrs. Bennett, who inherited it. The episode occurred some years before Mrs. Bennett was born. Who did it belong to at the time?”
“To an invalid relative of hers down in Louisiana. She inherited it at his death. Mrs. Bennett, by the way, comes from New Orleans. She’s not actually a native of our country.”
“I see,” McGavock said. “If the resort had an absentee landlord, who ran the joint? Bradley?”
“Scarcely! Bradley was just a general utility man. Malcom Jarrell was the titled manager.”
“I see. One thing more. Have you any personal theory as to what happened? I mean, were you satisfied at the time by the way the thing was explained?”
Bennett’s answer was calm, detached. “There’s always been bad friendship between Malcom Jarrell and myself. Everybody in town knows it — you should understand it before I express an opinion on so grave a point. My answer is no. I wasn’t satisfied at the time and I’m less satisfied today. I think Wainwright was killed and his money was stolen.”
McGavock was silent.
“It’s this way,” Bennett amplified. “We live in a small community here. We know each other — and our families have known each other — for a good many years. We can guess the income of our neighbors to a plugged nickel. Malcom Jarrell has a most scanty income — yet he has prospered.”
McGavock retorted: “Isn’t the same true of Cal Bradley?”
“In a way, yes. But Cal’s case is a little different. He’s a low, cunning trickster. Men like Cal Bradley are destined to prosper despite all laws of order and decency.”
McGavock got to his feet, slapped his hat against his thigh. “I’d hate to go into court with that kind of a brief.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re holding back something, aren’t you?” He dropped his hat on the floor, picked it up and cocked it on the crown of his head. “Don’t let me shove you into anything.”
Bennett answered wryly: “I won’t. There’s more to this mess than shows on the surface. Whenever you—”
He was interrupted mid-sentence by a timid knock on the door and the entry of a stalwart young hillman. The caller was dressed in a plaid cotton shirt; a three-inch brass-studded belt held up his faded denim trousers. He confronted them with wooden composure. “Which one of y’all might happen to be Mr. Bennett, the man that owned that ol’ Fern Springs bat den?”