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 tossed him a crumpled package of cigarettes. “You don’t know it but you’re a lucky kid. Stay right where you are. The streets aren’t safe for you tonight.”
The first deep growls of thunder were bumbling across the opaque heavens as McGavock strode down the magnolia avenue of the Bennett mansion. The lawn shrubs were swaying to the pressure of the wind, showing the undersides of their leaves in silvery glitters. The great white mansion was a sulphur yellow beneath the racing storm clouds. Gil Bennett, in his singlet, wearing whipcord slacks and buckled sandals, was on the side lawn. His sparse hair, licked by the oncoming gale, lay plastered to his shiny pate. He was batting a wooden ball over the bent-grass sward, immersed in a solo game of croquet. He swung the mallet with a limp left hand; in his right he carried a jumbo sixteen-ounce mint julep. He waved to McGavock, beckoned him in.
“At it again, eh?” the detective observed dryly. He eyed the pint-sized goblet. “Tomorrow it gives prairie oysters. Where’s Mrs. Bennett?”
“She’s at Malcom’s.” He looked unhappy. “I’m supposed to join her there.” He belched. “Ole Malcom, the man of nature, with his six eyes. That man gives me the creeps. I’m getting fortified.” He walked to a wicker lawn chair, picked up a blazer jacket, slipped into it. “I thought you told me you weren’t working for Hal and Laurel?”
“I’m not. They’ve been tempting me but I haven’t succumbed. While I’ve got you alone I’d like to learn a little more about that divorce your wife is preparing to hang on you.”
“You mean what I said last night? Forget it. It was just an alcoholic hallucination.”
“That’s what I thought at the time, it sounded like a drunken sympathy gag. Now, I’m not so sure. Do you want to come in on this with me or not? There’s more at stake than meets the eye. There are wheels within wheels — if you get what I mean.”
Bennett gave his head a blunt, decisive shake. “No thanks. You’re a pal, and I appreciate it, but I’m a family man and I handle my own affairs.”
“Your wife says you are sending money to Paducah. Where did she get that idea?”
“I gave it to her. She’s been prying around, pumping me in a delicate offhand way about that money I’ve been withdrawing. I told her that I was footing the bills for a kid in finishing school up in Paducah. It wasn’t very nice of me but she had me wacky with her nagging. Boy, did she show her claws!”
McGavock said: “That I can believe. Where are you sending this money, by the way?”
Bennett grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know! I’m sending it to a big bank in a little town on the West Coast. More than that, I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It’s perfectly legal, you understand. It’s my own money.” He seemed uneasy. “Why the gathering at Malcom’s? What’s Old Spooky trying to pull?”
McGavock laughed. “Time will tell. It’s not Jarrell’s party — it’s mine. The sheriff and I are going to saw this business off. It’s the finale.”
“Wheels within wheels is right!” Bennett studied his fingerails. “You’ve got your little scheme, Maldron’s got his — and I’ve got mine. And ten to one, all our schemes, all our plans, are perfectly transparent to Malcom Jarrell. Well, as you say, time will tell. Let’s go.”
The storm hit them a half-block from Jarrell’s cottage. It opened up with a deafening clap and a raging sluice of water. Lightning flayed the black sky. They broke into a lope and, sheltered by the arching maples, managed to make Jarrell’s front porch.
Laurel let them in. She was wearing her jet lace semi-formal with the cameo at her throat. She seemed unnaturally stiff, apprehensive. Bennett brushed past her, towards the study. The girl stayed McGavock with an arresting hand. “I’ve discovered the most horrible thing,” she whispered.
“Another hammer?”
She flared. “You’re impossible!”
McGavock said quietly: “I can make a good guess as to what’s disturbing you. You found the headless bodies of four rattlesnakes, didn’t you? Well, dismiss them from your mind. They’re a plant. I’ve got the heads, I knew the bodies would turn up somewhere.”
“It’s too repulsive! They’re back in the kitchen — in Malcom’s bread box.”
“He’s a naturalist, isn’t he? Maybe he goes for gamy food. They’re quite tasty if you pretend you’re eating crab.”
There was an atmosphere of subdued hostility in the study. The naturalist, his four-lensed spectacles hooked on his monstrous head, was busy sorting and mounting butterflies. He hardly seemed aware of the fact that he had company. Gil Bennett, his cheeks and ears flushed with open antagonism, lolled in the window bay. Behind him, the squall lashed the leaded panes in cracking gusts.
“Where’s the sheriff?” McGavock asked.
“He’ll be here later,” Laurel said.
“That’s just as good,” McGavock commented. “Maybe we can thrash out a little domestic difficulty before he arrives. Are you planning to divorce your husband?”
Jarrell snapped an iridescent azure wing, fretted. “You have no idea how brittle these things are. I’ve ruined three since you people have been here. You distract me. Can’t you go away and come back tomorrow?”
“No, you don’t,” Bennett said firmly. “Not in this downpour. Where’s your southern hospitality, sir?” He addressed McGavock. “You’ve been here a day, now. What have you found out?”
“Plenty,” McGavock answered. A bell in the hall clanged. Sheriff Robley, in a swanky gabardine raincoat, walked in on them. “Where’s Bad-Tooth Maldron?” McGavock demanded.
“I don’t know.” The sheriff was annoyed. “I couldn’t find him. I left messages for him all over town.”
“There are a few things I’d like to run over,” McGavock remarked. “Just to help us get organized. This case breaks itself into two installments: the old hotel murders, thirty years or so ago, and the present situation. You understand, this isn’t what is generally known as a murder chain. It’s just sort of a double outburst. The second, or contemporary, affair dovetails into the older business.”
Sheriff Robley’s calm eyes held him as he spoke. “I’m sure you’re right, Luther. But it’s the current mess that concerns me. Who killed Lester Hodges?”
McGavock ignored him. “Put it this way: why was Hodges killed? Hodges was working for a rascal. The old eccentric was employed to search Fern Springs for the cowhide satchel in which Wainwright carried his seventy grand. This rascal had long suspected that the absconder had been knocked off. He reasoned that the satchel lay hidden beneath the flooring of one of the rooms. He’d been clerk at the time—”
Jarrell said petulantly: “Why the mysterious circumlocution? If Cal Bradley is the rascal you’re talking about, why don’t you say so!”
“Check. Names it is.” McGavock watched the naturalist’s nimble fingers in the lamplight. “Cal Bradley, as room clerk of the old inn, knew who had which room. Find the satchel under a certain floor and he’d know for certain who had slain Wainwright. He hired Lester Hodges to locate this satchel. Hodges did his searching by means of a rat.”
“Did he,” Bennett asked, “find the satchel?”
“No. But he made the killer nervous. This prowling, this attempting to uncover an old crime, got our murderer jumpy. He got him a magnetized hammer and a two-inch roofing nail and knocked off Lester Hodges. Is that clear?”