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.
The Club Español was still wide-open. Nita grinned perkily at Tracy. “Hey, hey, muchacho! Where you been?”
He saw that she was looking at him with a peculiar stare.
“You sure gummed the works here tonight,” she said tonelessly. “Garcia’s still tearing his hair. I hear you pulled the señorita out in her B.V.D.s — and damned little of them. The customers raised Cain when they heard her late show was off. I dunno what Garcia told ’em.” Nita grinned cynically. “Maybe he told ’em the señorita busted her bubble. Anyhow, there was a lot of arguing, one drunken brawl that was a honey; and half the customers scrammed out to the opposish down the avenoo. First time I ever saw Garcia cry. Tears like big round hunks of putty. I’m not foolin’.”
“Yeah?” Tracy said inattentively and turned away. Nita’s hand on his wrist pulled him around, restrained him.
“Remember when you first came in tonight, Jerry? There was a mug in a very light-gray topcoat. He scrammed the minute he saw you — and you ups and outs right after him. I wondered.”
“Don’t tell me you tabbed him!” Tracy’s glare was so intent that she pulled back a little, her hand still on his.
“I didn’t tab him the first time — but I did later.”
“He came back here?”
“Yowsuh. I mean, por supuesto, ciertamente,” Nita kidded nervously. “Brought a dame along.”
“A Swede?” Jerry whispered. “A big horse-faced number? Sorta pale and angular?”
“Right. She had on a street coat over a very punkerino and secondhandish evening rag. They both checked their coats. Didn’t stay long; beat it the moment they heard the señorita wasn’t gonna bounce through that ‘Me and My Bubble’ number.”
“Did you dip their pockets, honey?”
“Sure did. Nothing in the dame’s coat but a soiled handkerchief and a few hairpins. In the guy’s pocket — this.”
The slip of paper switched hands with deft invisibility. Tracy cupped it for an instant, read the penciled memo. Two lines: Selma Borquist, 932 West 10th.
Something in the way he crawled into his coat and popped the snap-brim hat askew on his rumpled hair brought a solicitous frown to Nita’s dark eyes.
“You’re not going down there tonight, for Gawd’s sake?”
“I dunno yet.”
“Listen, Jerry. You’re dead on your feet right now. There’s a lump on the back of your dome like a hen’s egg, and that left arm of yours looks like it might hurt like hell. G’wan home to bed. The Swede’ll keep till tomorrow.”
“You’re a sweet kid, Nita.”
“It’s the mother in me.” She grinned, and wondered why the words should make Tracy look so suddenly queer, as though she had said the wrong thing.
“I feel all in,” he admitted. “I think I’ll head straight for home, a stiff drink and a swan dive into the hay. S’long...”
He lurched out to the street and Nita, watching the tired drag of his feet, thought angrily: “He’ll kill himself one of these days with his damned running around. About as big as a bag of popcorn — and more pep to him than a Mack truck... Crazy little runt...”
When Jerry awoke the sun was shining. He picked up his fresh copy of the Daily Planet and saw the expected headline on the front page. There was a photograph of the body, with a squat white arrow above it to help dumb tabloid readers pick it out from the tin cans and debris. No identification yet. Jerry, having carefully cut out all the labels from Clement’s clothing, wasn’t surprised. Twenty-four hours, he thought grimly. After that — Inspector Fitzgerald and the cops.
Butch was behind the wheel of the Lincoln when Jerry appeared on the sidewalk. Off like oiled lightning, down to Times Square.
Butch tossed his plaid cap at a peg and squatted in the outer office with a copy of Variety and the Daily Planet funnies. Jerry sat down at his desk and hooked the dictating machine closer with a tug of his patent-leather toe.
But before he dived into the column he reached for the phone and called Garbo, the very snooty chief operator on the Daily Planet switchboard. He gave her Sweetie Malloy’s suburban number.
“When you get it, say anything you like. I want to know how the woman sounds when she answers. Keep my line in. Verstehen Sie?”
“If you mean do I understand,” Garbo said icily, “the answer is yes, Mr. Tracy, I do.”
He hung on and listened with narrowed eyes to the brief two-way misunderstanding between Garbo and Sweetie Malloy. Garbo lingered a second after she broke the connection. “Satisfactory, Mr. Tracy?”
“Quite.” He grinned. “Hey, Garbo — listen. Why don’tcha like me, keed? You mad because I call you Garbo?”
She sniffed audibly and clicked off. But Tracy was satisfied. The sleeping draught he had slipped Sweetie hadn’t done her any harm. She sounded tired and listless — but she was out of the shadow of the electric chair, and there wasn’t a way she could frame herself again. Call in the cops now, and they’d laugh at her!
He tackled the column with vim. At noon Butch appeared with a mound of Swiss cheese on rye and a pitcher of draught ale. Tracy took the stuff in his stride. When he got busy on an overdue column he was like the Twentieth Century singing along steel rails. At four-thirty a messenger arrived and took the cylinders away. Tracy stretched gratefully. He was done. McCurdy always edited the stuff and trimmed the edges. Nice guy, McCurdy. His youngest brat was named Jerry. On purpose.
Tracy went down to the sidewalk and thought things over, while a steady stream of pedestrians buzzed and bumped past him. Sam, his favorite hackman, was parked at the curb. He gave the Daily Planet’s columnist a wrinkled grin and gestured briefly towards his tin flag; but Jerry shook his head. The subway seemed a better bet for a well-known little guy on an anonymous mission. The small-calibered gun that he had picked up from the bedroom floor in Sweetie Malloy’s suburban cottage was a sagging weight in his pocket.
The dump Jerry was hunting was west, between the gaunt Ninth Avenue El and the river. A mean, red-brick hovel, tucked away in a welter of dust and decay. An incredibly filthy fish store on one side, a secondhand plumbing shop on the other.
Tracy hesitated, rubbed his chin uneasily. “Whoa!” he thought. “You’re galloping too fast, keed!” After all, he was a Broadway columnist, not a policeman. If he didn’t tip the cops — and tip ’em right now — he might get his wise little nose so deep into trouble that it would take him eleven years to convince Headquarters that he was acting not to cover up crime but to expose it!
He stepped into a telephone booth in a cigar store near the corner and called Police Headquarters in a low voice. After a short wait he heard the welcome sound of Inspector Fitzgerald’s deep voice.
“Fitz? Listen—”
“Jerry?” Fitz’ heavy rumble exploded into a pleasant chuckle. “Haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself, you little bozo?”
“Don’t talk!” Jerry snapped. “Listen!” He uttered a sentence or two with curt speed.
Fitz’ voice changed instantly. “Right! I getcha.” A smart cop, Fitz. Never wasted a second asking how or why. He knew Jerry Tracy well enough from past experience to wait until later for complete explanations. Jerry had a habit of handing him a crisis and a solution all in the same breath.
“You and Sergeant Killan get down here as soon as you can,” Tracy said. “In the meantime I’m gonna have a try at the Swedish maid. She might beat it if I waited for you.”