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.
“Get down off of that fence!” he said.
Well, I got down, taking my time about it.
“Now! If I ever catch you spoiling the scenery of our beautiful town again, lazing around like that, you’ll get no more work around my house! Do you understand?”
I thought a moment, and then said I did.
“The only reason I have you is to keep you out of the poorhouse,” he muttered.
I knew better. I knew the only reason he had me was because I charged ten cents less than a full-grown man; but I wasn’t going to lower myself arguing with him; and I let him go on, and then climbed back on the fence again. I had something I wanted to wonder about, and I can’t think and walk at the same time; I always land up against a lamppost, or in front of a swearing autoist, and forget what I was wondering about.
I wanted to wonder why Horace Sparton had next to the prettiest and sweetest girl in town for a daughter. And then I wondered whether Miriam (that’s she — or her) was going to marry Irene’s older brother, Alfred. I would be tickled stiff if she did, for Al was about the nicest chap I knew, and that’s what most of the girls around thought, too. But I knew Sparton was dead set against it, although he didn’t say much; and the particular thing I wanted to wonder about was why he had been so sweet to Irene, when usually he wouldn’t speak to her if he met her on the street.
You see, Al and Irene lived alone, and they were as poor as Croesus (or was it Diogenes? I get them twisted. One was an awful liar, I know). When Al came back from the war, he got admitted to the bar and has been waiting for trade ever since. That’s what he was in Denver for: to get a job as a lawyer, or a judge, or something like that.
You see (that’s the second time I’ve used that phrase. Wouldn’t the Walrus be sore! But editors don’t know so much as school teachers; if they did they’d get that job, you bet! Nothing to do but ask kids a lot of questions when they’ve got the book right before them! So that’s all right). You see, Old Man Carr was Al’s and Irene’s father, but he was only their stepfather, which isn’t so much.
Old Man Carr had a Past. (That’s what everybody always says in New Paris when they’re telling visitors about our prominent citizens and showing them the Opera and Slaughter and Court Houses and the cemetery and where the Soldiers’ Monument is going to be.) He was put in jail for swindling, and his wife died for shame while he was there. They said she had a kid just before she died, but nobody knew what had happened to it. Then Carr went away, and when he came back next year, he had a new wife and two kids (the kids weren’t his, of course. They were hers — Alfred and Irene Burnet). Then, just after Al came home from the war, his mother died and Old Man Carr kicked the kids out of the house; not because he was sore at them, but just because he wanted to save money. (He’d made a lot during the war.) Everybody said he’d leave them all his money when he died, but meanwhile it was pretty rough sledding; they hardly knew where their next meal was coming from. It came only when Al got some odd work to do, writing funny law things for dry papers.
Well, it was getting pretty dark, so I stopped wondering and got off the fence and went home. I live in a little shack at the edge of the town and do my own cooking, which is usually potatoes and eggs that aren’t Strictly (excepting sometimes on dark nights), and things like that.
In the summer, I usually go to the woods, and sometimes at the end of the week in the winter and spring I go to a little cabin that — but you’ll find out later. I can’t stand big cities and New Paris is big and growing faster every day. She grew from 2,800 to 2,900 between 1910 and 1920, and when the local census was taken in 1922, she had jumped to over 8,000, and I can’t stand that. If I get to wondering too hard on the main street it usually ends in a fight.
Well, I went home and rolled up my sleeves and put on my apron and set my potatoes on to boil, and that was the last I thought about the Burnets — I mean Alfred — for over a week.
The next time I saw him was late one night — or early in the morning, I don’t know which. It was a warm night in early spring, and I had taken my potatoes up to the woods and boiled them there for a change. The sky was clear and starlit, and I was walking down the avenue, where all the big bugs live.
I was passing Old Man Carr’s place, when I saw somebody stealing around the house. When he got to the path he started running.
I was near the bushes and I stood still. He came on, turning to look over his shoulder. Just as he got to the sidewalk, he turned suddenly to the right and bumped into me. I couldn’t help squeaking; for it was Alfred!
You could have knocked me over with a steam-roller!
“Hey, Al!” I said. “What’s the rush all about?”
He stood staring at me a minute. Something was wrong with his face. I think it was pale, but of course you can’t tell when it’s dark, even with stars. Finally he smiled, a little, quivering smile.
“Hello, Jackie boy!”
He always called me that. When I was a little kid he used to give me marbles and say:
“Here, Jackie boy! If you swallow them, I’ll give you some more!”
But now he looked away and when he spoke he almost stuttered.
“You... you scared me!” he said with a little laugh. “What are you hiding in the bushes for?”
Well, up to now I’d been wondering what he was about, but suddenly I found I was on the defensive.
“Aw, I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Well, run along home to bed!” he said. “If a cop sees you, he’ll think you’re up to some mischief.”
“All right, Al,” I replied, relieved to find he wasn’t going to ask any questions. I always feel I’ve done something wrong when people start asking questions, even if I haven’t.
Al started off.
“Not that I think so!” he added over his shoulder.
“Thanks, Al! You’re a good fellow!” I said. “So long!”
“So long!” And we each went in our own directions.
When I was on my way to school next morning, I saw a crowd standing in front of Old Man Carr’s house. I went up to Jim Harley.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Jim looked at me, with that air a fellow has who knows something you don’t know.
“Why,” he said, slowly, “don’t you know?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t waste my time talking to you!”
I knew I could get as fresh as I liked; he was just dying to tell me.
“Why... last night... some time or other... somebody murdered Old Man Carr.”
Well, my heart just stood still. In a big city like New Paris, things like that are always happening. Only a few months before there was an auto accident and a lot of people were almost killed; one man was in the hospital over a week! But I never get used to those things.
“Gee!” I said. “Who did it?”
Jim shook his head.
“We don’t know yet,” he said, “but we’re going to find out!”
Well, we stood and watched the house for a half hour; and then I remembered that the Walrus said she’d fire me out of school if I was late again, so I beat it.
I got there just in time and I waited until I got settled in my seat in the English class, and then I started wondering. Who could have murdered Old Man Carr? There were lots of times when I was working in his garden, and he was standing over me giving directions, that I thought about doing it pretty seriously; but then I remembered my twenty cents an hour and decided to wait until I got another job. I was still wondering about it when I realized that everybody in the room was looking at me and some were giggling.