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.
“Stranger,” he says, “I take it that you’re Race Williams. Last night’s doings got about a bit — shake — my name is Buck Jabine.”
With that he sticks out his fin and the two sons do the same, though there ain’t a yip out of them.
“I hear you ain’t none too friendly with the boys, neither.” I try to make things pleasant.
But he don’t smile; he just looks at me. He’s a chap what takes things seriously.
“Well.” Buck just stroked his chin. “I just wanted to shake hands with you and tell you that I have a place out in the country — about two mile. Any time you want a place to sleep peaceful walk out — the house will be open to you day and night. I don’t take no sides, mind you. Buck Jabine is only interested in his own family — he don’t stand for no interference — but my house is open to you, wide open.”
I thank him and then tell him about the manager’s little note — just in the way of light conversation, you know. I’ve made up my mind to stick at the hotel.
“When they put me out of a bum joint like this, they’ll put me out in a cloud of smoke,” I tell Buck.
“Humph!”
He strokes his chin again; then turns sudden and struts straight into the manager’s office.
I try to get sociable with the sons, but don’t make a go of it. I’m looking for dope on the Klan, but there is nothing doing. Oh, they’re friendly enough, but don’t go in for conversation. They don’t even open up with a grin when I make wise cracks about night shirts and pajamas. They just stare at me. I could see that I’d have a right down sociable time over at their place.
“Yes” and “No” and a few “I don’t reckons” is the best I gather, though once one of them opens up enough to ask me the time. So I guess the old man does the talking for the family; all together, it looks like a closed corporation.
And then Buck trots out of the office and the manager is right on his heels. My, but that manager is all smiles and tells me how it was all a mistake and begs me to stay on. And he means it, too, for behind that smile he looks real worried. Of course I ain’t so stupid but that I know that this Buck Jabine has something to say about it and I sort of pity the manager. He’s between Buck and the Klan and he ain’t got much choice. Still, I think he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t tell if the Klan would get him or not, but Buck — well, one look at Buck was enough; him and that family of his was all business.
“Ain’t you worried about something happening to your house while you’re away?” I ask Buck when he’s leaving.
He just gives me the up and down for a minute and then he draws back his upper lip; I think it was meant for a smile, but I ain’t sure. Then he chirps:
“There ain’t no danger; Sarah’s home and the boys’ women. No, there ain’t no danger.”
With that they all file out and tramp down the center of the street — the same single file. So I see that this is sure one nice little family.
Now, this Klan ain’t as secret as what I had thought. After Buck leaves, Jimmy, the clerk, up and gives me quite an earful. Sometimes them birds have even paraded right down Main Street and more than once they have taken out some citizen and tarred and feathered him. Then they’ll bring the victim back and dump him out of a car right in the center of the Square by the fountain. See’n’ they’ll forget to put his clothes on again would seem like they lacked modesty.
When there were any deaths about the State due to the Klan’s midnight playfulness, why, the Klan would come out in the paper denying it and announcing that they would expel any member who had a hand in it. Which is real generous of them, you’ll admit; open-handed and fair-minded, to be sure. And then Jimmy outs with some real news: there’s a Klan meeting that night. It’s an open secret that they’re taking in new members. So I see it ain’t a falling organization but a growing one and I’d better work fast.
All day long that hotel is watched — there ain’t no doubt about it. Three lads in the front and one out in the back. People what drop in dodge me like they would the plague and the general feeling is that I’m a marked man. Well, they may get me; the thing’s possible; but if they do, the local undertaker is going to have more business than he’s had in years.
Jimmy’s a good scout and when he goes off duty about noontime he sneaks up and has a chat with me. So I take him into my confidence to a certain extent, and I believe if he didn’t have a wife and kid he’d a been with me forty ways from the ace.
But he tells me where the Klan meeting place is and how people don’t dare go near it. Then he tells me that he has a bicycle and after I bit I get his promise to hide it in a barn down the street behind the hotel; the fellow what owns the barn goes by the label of Dugan — enough said!
I watch out pretty carefully all evening and I don’t see more than one chap watching the back of that house — so at nine o’clock I’m ready to pull off my little trick; I’m bent on joining in the festivities of the Klan.
There’s a little partition off the back of the hotel and I get Jimmy to slip me in there unnoticed. Out in the dark of the tiny rear window I can see the solitary figure about ten yards away; it’s a lonely little alley and no one else passes by. So I spring my game. I take my pillowcase, which I’ve made to look like a Klan hood, and, slipping it over my head, I light a candle and stand there in the open window; after a bit I give the Klan Salute — then I beckon the distant figure to me.
As I say, the whole Klan is a child’s game, and that duck comes to me on the run; he most likely thinks that things are arranged for tarring and feathering me. As for me, well — I just club my gun and bat him over the head and he falls pretty — right in a nice dark spot.
Five minutes I wait and then, when there’s nothing doing I step out the window and beat it down the alley. A few minutes later I’m on the bike, speeding out toward the open country and in the direction which Jimmy give me where lays what is known as the Klavern or meeting place.
All I need now is the regulation night shirt and I’ve laid plans to get that. Jimmy has seen the gang going to the meetings and knows the place that they stop their cars and put on the regalia. And what’s more, he’s told me about a lad whose business kept him late in town. It was this cluck that traveled alone in a Ford that I was looking for.
I guess I got to that spot a bit ahead of time. It was just around a bend in the road and very lonely. There was a nice place well back in the bushes where I parked my bike and waited. The night was dark, but I could see fairly well and in the course of twenty minutes about three cars pulled up and the occupants got all rigged out in their ghostly costumes. They’d just slip on the white robe and then crown themselves with the hood. If one party was decorating themselves there the next party would stop farther down the road.
After that I waited near an hour and then my man comes; all alone in a Ford he is and in some hurry. He don’t even get out of the flivver, but tries to do the lightning change right in the car.
Say! I caught him with one arm in and one arm out of the shirt. Surprised! Why, he opened and closed his mouth just like a fish and a pretty far gone fish, too.
“None of your lip,” I tell him when he started to spout about the terrible things that would happen to me. “You know me, kid.”
I tickled his chin with my gat.
“I handled three of your breed last night. Come! Jump out of that night shirt or they’ll bury you in it.”
No laughter in my voice then — when I’m gunning I’m a bad man — none worse!
Enough! He showed good sense and handed over the whole outfit. It didn’t take me more than a couple of minutes to bind him with the rope I had brought; then I tied him to a tree out of view of the road and, jumping into his car, I drove away.