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.
“Watch your step, Jerry!”
“You sound like a subway guard,” Jerry kidded lightly; but there was a hard line to his lips as he hung up. He was aware that he had reached the point where a single misstep might lower his dapper little body into a graveyard for keeps. He had never thought much about the next world, but he knew he liked Broadway!
He went back to the red-brick tenement and sauntered inconspicuously into the shabby, dirt-littered vestibule.
Jerry glanced at the scraps of paper stuck askew under a row of bell buttons. Most of the name-plates were empty. Borquist was under the last button. Top floor.
He climbed the stairs through pitch darkness, except for the faint flicker of light on the first and third landings. He could barely see the gun in his hand when he rang the bell, after a long, careful listen.
There was no answer to his ring. He waited for thirty seconds, then banged noisily on the wood with a clenched fist.
“Gas man! Gas man, lady!”
The door opened a mere crack, but Jerry was all set. He recognized the scared face of Selma. His foot blocked the door; his shoulder sent it flying open.
Selma backed into the frowsy living-room and Jerry closed the door and held the woman motionless with his gun.
“Up with the pretty arms, keed!”
“What... what’s the idea?”
“I came to borrow a cup of sugar,” he told her pleasantly.
There was no sound except the rickety roar of an El train slogging past in the growing darkness. Tracy forced the woman ahead of him. He searched every inch of the apartment — bedroom, kitchen, closets. There was no sign of any lurking boy friend. Smiling coldly, Jerry marched Lois Malloy’s ex-maid back to the living-room. Selma’s knees were knocking with fright.
“Why did you kill Phil Clement?”
“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t!”
“Who did?”
“Lois killed him. All I did, Mister, was to try and help that little devil of a dancer cover up. Her old lady butted in and gummed the works. She said she’d smear me with the murder if I didn’t help her. So we packed the stiff in a trunk and the old dame took it out. That’s all I did, I swear!”
“How much blackmail did you ask when you called up the dancer yesterday afternoon?”
No answer.
“Who suggested putting the bee on Lois? Your boy friend?”
“I... I got no boy friend.”
“What’s the use of lying to me?” Tracy snapped. “The guy was in the car with you out on Locust Avenue. You both beat it out there to stop Sweetie Malloy from crabbing your blackmail act. But you were late getting there — and I got there first. Good old Doctor Rolfe!”
“I dunno what you’re talking about.” She faltered.
“No?” Tracy’s smile was knifelike. “I gave you a break by stealing the corpse myself. You tried to hijack me and get hold of the stiff again, but my Chrysler was too fast for that lousy can you were driving. So the boyfriend hunts me up at the Club Español and does his best to rub me out of the racket. He brought you back to the club later to proposition Lois for quick dough, but I foxed him again by kidnaping her in her cellophane panties... For a virgin with no male acquaintances, you sure manage to get around, Selma.”
Her bony face got suddenly triumphant.
“Drop that rod!” a voice rasped behind the columnist.
Tracy became very still. He let the gun fall to the floor.
“Take it easy, Emil!” Selma croaked, her eyes glassy with fear. “Don’t shoot the guy in my flat, for God’s sake!”
“Turn around, stupid,” the voice ordered.
Tracy turned. Death was shining at him out of Emil’s fishy eyes. Greed, ruthlessness, murder... No mistaking the gloating satisfaction in those eyes.
“You killed Phil Clement,” Jerry breathed. “Not Selma. Not Lois. You.”
“Sure I killed him. So what?”
“Shut up, you damn’ fool!” Selma hissed.
Emil’s chuckle was not pleasant. “This guy is so close to bein’ dead that it don’t matter much what I say. I killed Clement, and I’m gonna kill you. How d’yuh like that, Mr. Jerry Tracy? The smart guy! The wise little cluck from Broadway! Too smart to look in the dumbwaiter shaft before shootin’ off his rat mouth!”
Tracy forced himself to smile. “I guess you’re a pretty smart guy at that, Emil,” he said in a slow, persuasive voice.
“You’re damned right I am.”
“How did you work the murder job? You sure made a monkey out of me. Fooled me completely.”
Emil kept the gun steadily aimed, but he smirked with pleased vanity.
“A cinch,” he sneered. “Brains done it. Selma fixed up a fake love note that got Clement into the dancer’s apartment. He fell for it like a sap. He was nuts about the señorita.”
“Be careful, Emil,” the maid said faintly. “This guy is smart. He’s trying to pump you.”
“This guy is gonna be dead in about two minutes.” His grin widened. “All right, smart guy. I was in the apartment and fixed him and got out again. What more do you want?”
“Yeah — but why kill the guy?”
“Plenty reasons to do it, kid,” Emil said cockily, “and if you want more, the stunt was for Selma to accuse this dizzy dancer of the murder the minute she saw the body in her bedroom and yell for the cops.”
“But the old lady gummed that scheme,” Tracy suggested tonelessly.
“Yeah. The old lady was too tough for Selma to handle. She stuck the body in a trunk and scrammed with it. Can you imagine that?”
“I can’t imagine it,” Tracy said faintly. He eyed the killer and allowed his tensed muscles to relax. A leap forward to wrest the gun from the watchful Emil would be sheer suicide. His own gun was on the floor. Sweat gathered in tiny beads on Tracy’s pale forehead. He knew Fitz could never make it in time. He felt a sick horror at the pit of his stomach.
Emil’s smile hardened. He gestured briefly towards his pale girlfriend. “C’mere, Selma.”
She moved stiffly. She looked uneasy, frightened.
“Take this rod and—” His hand swung suddenly sidewise and the weapon crashed with horrible impact against Selma’s skull. She crumpled to the floor without a sound.
“What’s the idea of that?” Jerry whispered thickly.
“The idea, stupid, is to git rid of people I don’t need no more. You first and then Selma. Nice?”
“You can’t get away with it.”
“No? Git moving! Through that hall. Into the kitchen... Right! Now git over by the window. Sit down on the sill.”
The window sash was already raised. Tracy, obeying the menace of the leveled gun, sat down. He snaked his eyes outward and downward for an instant — and knew he was doomed. The window faced a narrow, five-story airshaft. There was a blank brick wall opposite. There were windows all the way down below the kitchen; but Tracy, remembering the empty name-plates in the vestibule, felt a sick shudder.
“Tough, ain’t it?” Emil said. “We gotta wait for an El train to settle you — but Selma’ll be easy. She’ll go down like a bag of laundry.” He grinned with ghastly humor. “You kin hold on to the window-sill if you like, while you’re waitin’.”
The dusk outside had deepened to chilly darkness. Away off in the darkness Jerry could hear a faint rumbling. It grew rapidly to the metallic clatter of a speeding El train.
“So long, stupid,” Emil said.
As the roar of the passing train became a clamor that shook the ancient tenement, the killer’s fingers tightened.
A woman screamed shrilly. A bullet whizzed past Emil and shattered the glass above Tracy’s bent head.
A wave of hot, incredulous joy swept through the columnist’s body as he recognized the face of the woman with the gun. He dived headlong from the sill as the startled murderer whirled. For an instant all three of them were inextricably tangled on the kitchen floor: Tracy, Emil — and Lois Malloy.