The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
Did they think Frost had on his person the valuable black book he got from Flash Singleton in the little episode at Jamestown — the little black book the gangster had carried, giving names and information? He didn’t know. But there was a voice within him — a small, still voice that roused him to the alert. It bred expectancy. Helen Stevens had thought, and said so, that this was theatricality. Frost smiled reflectively. She could think what she damn well pleased. He had no fault to find with his intuition. It had saved him too often.
“Do you think,” she whispered, “any of the gang is here now?”
“No se,” he shrugged. “They’re everywhere.”
“But I thought I’d read that Hell’s Stepsons had broken it up.”
He cast her what was intended to be a rueful grimace, but it hardly was that. “No,” he admitted, “we’ve made only a small dent in it. We’ve caught only the little fish.”
She moved again, this time her body. She placed her hand on Frost’s wrist and swayed her head a little. “I hope,” she said suddenly and, he thought, softly, “you get the big ones!”
Frost felt she was animated by deep sincerity, and as quickly as his suspicions had mounted they disappeared. They might have been dissipated by the touch of her hand, by the proximity of her lovely face, by the faint smile on her lips; but dissipated they most assuredly were. Helen Stevens was a good-looking woman of the type which has been vaguely classified as a man’s woman. It had been a long time since such a creature had been as close to him. He became poignantly and swiftly aware that he had been missing something.
He patted her hand gratefully, sighed like a silly schoolboy and said: “I hope so, too.”
There was a scuffling sound from the front of the house and a man got up unsteadily. After an hour he had become aware that the orchestra was not functioning well.
“Una cancion!” he cried. “Canta!”
“Si, si,” came the chorus.
The musicians on the platform be-stirred themselves and stroked the strings with a little more life than they had previously evidenced. They played a few bars as a vamp and then lifted their voices in a plaintive rendering of La Cucaracha, camp song of that immortal renegade — Villa.
They finished and were rewarded with loud applause. It was to be expected. La Cucaracha is a sort of provincial national air. It brought back flashing memories of the Chihuahua stable cleaner who later flung his defy in the teeth of the government: “Que chico se me hace el mar para hacer un buche de agua... I’ll use the ocean to gargle!”
The lethargy in La Estrellita was falling away.
Frost looked at the table where the three men were sitting. They were, to him, plainly agitated. Their heads bobbed excitedly, and one of them exchanged wise looks with the bartender. After that the bartender moved slowly down the rail with affected nonchalance. Frost pretended to be thoroughly immersed in his drink and his companion. But he was not too immersed in either.
Something was about to occur.
“Remember,” he said aside to the woman, “the window is directly behind you. It looks like trouble is coming. Understand?”
“Perfectly,” she said quietly. She reached for her bag, and opened it in her lap. Her hand slipped inside and closed about the butt of a gun. “Don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” he said. He meant it. The calmness and sureness of her decision relieved him. Again he admired her, found himself wondering what sort of a companion she would be in more agreeable surroundings.
One of the three Mexicans got up. The impression he meant to convey was drunkenness. Frost got no such impression.
He caught the eye of George Stuart and nodded. Stuart nodded likewise.
The Mexican started off between the tables, ostensibly intent on reaching the bar. He never got that far. He purposely stepped out of the way to trip against Frost’s foot, almost falling to the floor. He righted himself and poured out a volume of Spanish; swept the glasses from the table.
Here it was. The big blow-off. Here it was. Frost had been waiting, taut as a bow-string.
He leaped from his chair and put all his power into a short uppercut that landed flush on the Mexican’s chin and sent him reeling ten feet away against a table.
“Beat it!” he said to the woman.
His right hand went to his hip after his gun and his left hand groped for the empty bottle. But he had lost a precious few seconds. He turned to find himself looking down the blue barrels of two pistols held in the hands of the remaining pursuers. It was too late to draw his own weapon.
The career of Jerry Frost might have ended on the spot had it not been for George Stuart. He had come from behind softly, but fast, and brought the butt of his gun down upon the head of one of the Mexicans. It was a terrific blow. The man groaned and fell to the floor. Stuart quickly threw his arms about the other’s shoulders.
Frost availed himself of the lull to take a step backward and look for Helen Stevens. She was missing; and he had no time to speculate on where she was or how she got away. Through the door came five men, as tough looking as any Frost had ever seen. They were rushing forward recklessly, intent on but one purpose. Everybody in the room had risen by now, offering the quintet slight impediment.
Frost swung the beer bottle with all the force he could muster, and it crashed against the head of the man with whom Stuart was wrestling. The Mexican’s cheek bone ripped through the skin as if by magic, and blood poured down his face. He instantly grew limp; and Stuart let him slide to the floor.
An unseen hand pressed the switch and La Estrellita was swept into darkness.
A pistol cracked, light blue and scarlet, and the bullet whistled by Frost’s head. Pandemonium arose. Frost stepped to one side; not a moment too soon. The pistol barked again. From the flash Frost deduced he had been in direct line of fire. If—
There was a stampede towards the door. Frost lashed out in the dark, heard a grunt, and lashed out again. A third time he swung the beer bottle; this time it shattered. Spanish blasphemy ascended. La Estrellita was an inferno. Tables and chairs rattled, glasses crashed, and a loud voice shouted:
“Luz! Luz!”
Someone was calling for lights and it struck Frost that the sensible thing to do now was retreat before the lights went up. So he shouted for Stuart to follow him, ducked quickly, and moved towards the window. His escape was made difficult by the cursing, wedging mob. Everybody was fighting to get outside. Frost lunged with his fists, and a blow banged against his jaw. He reeled, almost fell but came up swinging. Outside he could hear the shrill whistles of the police. The Mexican constabulary was calling, like no other police in the world, for order.
Frost set his teeth and flailed his arms. And every time they went out they struck something. He dived forward and some of the mob went down before the force of his body. He got up and climbed over, carrying others in his mad march to the exit.
He wanted to shout at Stuart again to let him know where he was, but even in that chaos of mind and flesh, Frost realized to cry out now would be to betray himself by his voice. So he fought his way slowly to the window.
He could see it as a rectangle of outside light a few feet ahead and he pushed and struggled and continued to swing. He thrilled to the power in his long arms and his fists... a form loomed in front of him in clear silhouette and he started a blow from the floor. His fist crashed against the blurred vision that was a head; there was a smothered exclamation, and the man went down.