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.
A kick from Emil sent Lois bouncing against the wall in a moaning huddle. The man whirled to fire into Tracy’s face, but the columnist’s fist was already whizzing. It caught Emil on the Adam’s apple and paralyzed his throat with pain. He dropped his gun, sprang frantically to recover it. Tracy’s foot kicked it spinning towards the wall, where it rebounded towards Lois.
The dancer was hurt and badly rattled. Swaying there on her knees, she scooped up the gun with her left hand, but to Tracy’s horror, instead of firing at the plunging Emil, she threw the weapon out the open window — and her own after it!
The two men tripped over her and went down in a flailing fury of fists and feet. Tracy fought like a silent, tight-lipped demon, his mind ablaze with a single thought: his own gun! Lying on the living-room floor where he had dropped it!
A smash on the jaw rocked him groggily, but he managed to dig his face desperately against Emil’s neck and get the hold he wanted. He let Emil’s own weight do the trick. A slight bend of the knees, the sudden instant of leverage he had learned on the gym mat from Artie McGovern himself — and the snarling murderer flew over Jerry’s head and landed on the floor with a jarring impact.
Jerry dived out of the kitchen like a lean arrow, but Emil beat him to it.
Emil had ducked back, picked up Tracy’s gun. He fired as Jerry appeared. A long sliver of wood jerked outward from the casing of the doorway. The panting columnist tripped over the unconscious body of Selma and fell in an awkward heap on his hands and knees. He was up in an instant, rigid with fear, his heart pounding inside his dry throat.
He saw Emil leering at him.
Emil was standing quite still, legs planted apart, barely five feet away. Tracy could see the black muzzle of the gun, the tautness of Emil’s knuckles, the pressure of his bent forefinger on the trigger.
In that split second of eternity all fear whipped away from the mind of the doomed columnist. He thought with a kind of hypnotized clarity: “I’m gonna die... He’s gonna kill me...” There was no horror in the thought; only a puzzled incredulity. Not someone else! Jerry Tracy!
The gun exploded. Tracy heard the racketing roar. He was still standing there, glassy-eyed — and unhurt! Maybe it didn’t hurt when you got killed... Then he realized that Emil’s bullet had slanted astonishingly upward, not straight into his own stiffened flesh. There was a ragged hole in the plaster ceiling and Emil was falling limply forward. He landed on his face and lay there, full length on the floor.
Tracy could see the blood gushing sluggishly from Emil’s back. A pair of legs seemed to be walking towards the columnist out of a dream. They were queer legs — blue serge pants that seemed to end in fuzzy nothingness at the hips — until a brisk palm slapped Tracy’s face with stinging emphasis and brought him back to sanity.
He was gaping stupidly at Inspector Fitzgerald. There was a big blue gun in Fitz’ paw and a faint haze of smoke at the muzzle.
“Hey — wake up!” Fitz barked. “You all right?”
“Yeah... I... I guess so.”
“I shot him right through the kidney. Another second, Jerry, and you’d have been cold meat. Why didn’t you duck when I yelled?”
“I didn’t hear you.”
Fitz grinned shakily. “Lord, I let out a yelp like a steamboat whistle! And you just stood there!”
“How... how did you get in?”
“Fire escape. Same way the girl did. We were right behind her, the sergeant and myself. Afraid she’d spoil the whole business. Killan tried to grab her, but she’s as quick as an antelope. Up and in before we could do a thing. Damned glad it worked out that way. Otherwise you’d be deader than hell. I’m not kidding.”
Tracy drew a long, shuddering breath. He still felt very woozy as he turned his head. Lois Malloy was in the living-room doorway, white-lipped, rigid. He saw her gazing fearfully at the body of Emil and the senseless huddle of Selma. The sight of this slim, courageous girl brought reason back to the fuddled columnist. Lois had saved his life! She wasn’t a rotten little coward! He’d been completely wrong about her from the very start!
He walked slowly towards her, laid a hand on her smooth arm.
“Beat it, babe,” he told her gently. “You can’t afford to show in this mess. Leave it for me to handle.”
She shook her head. Her dark eyes never left his for an instant. They were deep, unsmiling, very lovely. “How about you, Jerry? You’re in this thing yourself.”
“I’m okey. Fitz knows about most of it already. Thank God it was Fitz’ bullet that finished Emil. I’m in the clear. So are you, if you beat it right away — before a lot of reporters come smelling around like a pack of hungry hyenas.”
“There’s a fire escape in the rear,” Inspector Fitzgerald suggested dryly. “If you both want to do a quick fade, it’s all right with me. I can use all the credit this case is worth. I’ll tell the news-hounds I broke this case on an anonymous tip... You’ve got about two minutes if you two want to dodge headlines.”
“Thanks, Fitz,” Tracy muttered. “You’re a prince.”
He seized the dancer’s arm, hurried her to the rear of the apartment. The window was still open. He swung her slim weight up in his arms and helped her to the fire-escape platform. In the darkness there was nothing visible except the blank brick wall opposite and the shadowy dimness of a backyard far below.
They stood there for an instant in the darkness — a couple of clear-eyed square shooters. Human to the core, both of them.
“Why did you pretend to be such a rotten little tramp, Lois? You deliberately made me think you were out to frame your own mother.”
She nodded ruefully. “The mule in me, Jerry. I was playing it close for a showdown; letting whoever was in it think it was running all their way. I was trying desperately for a lead, but I was almost ready to call a copper when you barged in. You made me damned mad for one thing. You called me dirt right off the bat. Remember? I won’t take that from anyone.
“For another thing, what you did gave me more time. And I was hurt enough and stubborn enough to want to go on playing it my way without you. Of course I was wrong and rotten. I knew it all the time. Well, that’s me.”
Lois Malloy drew a deep breath.
“It was really Sweetie’s own idea for me to live alone. She wanted me to prove myself — alone. She was always ready to step in, if I... I seemed to be failing.”
“Failing?” Jerry whispered huskily. “I never want to meet anyone finer than you, Lois. You and Sweetie make a grand pair of thoroughbreds.”
He swung her impulsively towards him. His voice was suddenly eager, boyish. “How would you like to drive out to the suburbs — right now? Is it a go? We’ll pick up a birthday cake—”
“And some birthday candles—”
“And we’ll give Sweetie the best damned—”
“Oh, Jerry... Come on — hurry!”
Murder on the Gayway
Dwight V. Babcock
Dwight V(incent) Babcock (1909–1979) was born in Ida Grove, Iowa, but lived in Southern California from childhood. Before becoming a full-time writer, Babcock worked as a banjo player, piano tuner, vice president of a grape juice company, and owner of a service station.
His first stories were sold to pulp magazines, including Black Mask when it was published by Joseph Shaw, who then became Babcock’s agent. He wrote three novels, all of which were about Joe Kirby, as ordinary as his name, and Hannah Van Doren, who was anything but ordinary. A feature writer for crime magazines, she searches for stories, “the gorier the better, and with a sex angle if possible,” and is known as “the Gorgeous Ghoul.” She has the face of an angel but drinks “like a fish.” The three novels about “Homicide Hannah” are A Homicide for Hannah (1941), The Gorgeous Ghoul (1941), and Hannah Says Foul Play (1946).