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.
“I’d like to hear the rest of this tale.” Sheriff Robley was modest.
“The rest of it you know. Buck stages his act and Gil, as soon as I leave, drives out and torches the place. While you and I are out there digging around, he’s back in town beating in Bradley’s skull. He’d planned to lay in wait for Buck when Buck showed up tonight at the Bennett mansion for his pay. With Buck gone, he figured he’d be safe.” The detective smiled harshly at the businessman. “You know, Bennett, you plan well but you talk too much. You gave yourself away a dozen times. When you attempted to arouse my suspicions against Jarrell you said that he had prospered unnaturally. If anyone in this village has prospered unnaturally it’s you, yourself — garage, drugstore, cotton gin. Last night in your car you invented a divorce that your wife was going to slap on you. This morning you realized that I could chase that down and expose it so you flew to Mrs. Bennett and got her excited about an imaginary dream girl you were supporting in Paducah.”
Bennett drawled: “It’s pleasant listening to you orate — but do you have any proof?”
“Scads,” McGavock answered. “Scads. Your gambling at Chunky’s. A ruse to cover your withdrawals: you were paying blackmail to Cal Bradley!”
Bennett was completely relaxed. “The wildest sort of slander, sir.”
McGavock spoke to Laurel. “That baggy pearl-gray sweater you’ve been wearing all day, is it yours?”
She tried to follow him, gave it up. “No. It’s Gil’s — but I like it. It’s so roomy.”
“Gil Bennett!” McGavock’s voice was tight. “You were wearing that sweater when you dragged the body of Les Hodges into Jarrell’s yard. Wisps of brushed-wool came off on the old man’s corduroy. Jarrell saw the whole thing through his bedroom window but was doubtful as to your identity. He came out with a light and combed the gray hairs off before he covered the body with straw. He has that evidence beneath the tile there in the hearth — a little ball of wool. His testimony will hang you—”
Gil Bennett arose and turned his back on them. He stepped into the little bay window and began kicking out the leaded panes.
Hal Maldron seized him by the elbow, pulled him back. Bennett gave his torso a half twist, shot the lawyer through the shoulder and continued his glass smashing.
Sheriff Robley said calmly: “Bennett, you’re not giving me any choice. I’m going to have to kill you.”
Bennett dropped his pistol, advanced dazedly to the sheriff, who snapped on a pair of handcuffs.
“The satchel?” the sheriff asked.
“Bennett has it,” McGavock announced. “Beneath the floor of his office. When I was in Bennett’s office at the cotton gin I gave the floor special attention, dropped my hat, as a matter of fact, to give it a little closer inspection. The boards had been taken up and renailed. You’ll find your satchel there.”
Laurel Bennett burst out: “I’ll never feel comfy in that old gray sweater again. And I loved it so!”
McGavock said sardonically: “But think, babe. You’re married to a homicidal beast, a notorious public character. That means headlines, and reporters and three-column photos. I’ll bet none of your bridesmaids back in Louisiana have done as well as that!”
The girl threw herself into his arms. “You can always see the bright side to everything!”
Knights of the Open Palm
Carroll John Daly
Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was born in Yonkers, New York, and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His love for the theater led him to jobs as an usher, a projectionist, and an actor before he opened the first movie theater on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
Daly is remembered today as the writer who essentially invented the quintessential genre of American literature, the hard-boiled private-eye story. While there had been private detectives in literature before Daly, including Sherlock Holmes, and there had been dark, violent stories by such writers as Jack London and Joseph Conrad, it was not until Black Mask published “Three-Gun Terry,” about the tough, wisecracking private investigator Terry Mack, in the issue of May 15, 1923, that the style and form coalesced. Daly’s further contribution to the evolution of the genre came when he wrote his second story, this one featuring his best-known character, Race Williams, which he immediately followed with a another story about the same hard-boiled dick, thus creating the first series detective of his kind. While Williams tends to focus on his own massive ego and is preoccupied with guns and other forms of violence, he has a powerful sense of justice and fair play, undoubtedly serving as an inspiration for Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and, later, “Dirty” Harry Callahan.
“Knights of the Open Palm,” the first appearance of Race Williams, was published in the issue of June 1, 1923.
Race Williams, who plays both ends against the middle, runs up against the hooded order and tackles a mystery which leads him into some fast and tragic action. His opinion of the Klan is not very high, but he tells about it in language which is rugged and dramatic, if not absolutely faultless.
Race Williams, private investigator, that’s what the gilt letters spell across the door of my office. It don’t mean nothing, but the police have been looking me over so much lately that I really need a place to receive them. You see I don’t want them coming to my home; not that I’m over particular, but a fellow must draw the line somewheres.
As for my business; I’m what you might call the middleman — just a halfway house between the dicks and the crooks. Oh, there ain’t no doubt that both the cops and the crooks take me for a gun, but I ain’t — not rightly speaking. I do a little honest shooting once in a while — just in the way of business. But my conscience is clear; I never bumped off a guy what didn’t need it. And I can put it over the crooks every time — why, I know more about crooks than what they know about themselves. Yep, Race Williams, Private Investigator, that’s me.
Most of my business I hunt up and the office ain’t much good except as an air of respectability. But sometimes I get a call, one client speaking to another about me. And that’s the lay of it this time.
I was in my office straightening out the mail, and enjoying some of the threatening letters what the boys who lack a sense of humor had sent me, when this Earnest Thompson blows in. And “blows” ain’t no fancy way of putting it neither; this guy actually blows and it’s near five minutes before he quits blowing and opens up.
“Are you afraid of the Ku Klux Klan?”
That’s his first crack out of the box.
“I ain’t afraid of nothing.”
I tell him the truth and then, wanting to be absolutely on the level, I ask:
“Providing there’s enough jack in it.”
He trots out a sigh like my words had lifted a weight from his chest.
“You don’t happen to belong to that... that order?”
I think he was going to call it something else — but from the twitching of his mouth I get the idea that he went in some fear of that same order.
“No,” I says. “I don’t belong to any order.”
Of course I’m like all Americans — a born joiner. It just comes to us like children playing; we want to be in on everything that’s secret and full of fancy names and trick grips. But it wouldn’t work with me; it would be mighty bad in my line. I’d have to take an oath never to harm a brother — not that I wouldn’t keep my oath, but think of the catch in it. I might just be drawing a bead on a lad when I’d spot his button; then I’d have to drop my gun. Of course that ain’t so bad, but that same lad mightn’t be wise that I was one of the crowd and — blooey — he’d blow my roof off. No, I like to play the game alone. And that’s why I ain’t never fallen for the lure of being a joiner.