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.
“Could you finish that some other time, Fred?” Norma asked.
“Surely.” The man stood up, a slender, dark fellow with good clothes that he wore expertly. Definitely handsome in a rather brittle way, he gave Norma a reserved nod and a perfunctory smile as he withdrew.
“Martin — my husband — uses this as his office while he’s in town,” she explained, leading Casey to a Queen Anne love seat. “That’s Fred Gilbert, his secretary.”
Casey moved a damp polo coat from the chair, tossed it across the seat-back, sat down and studied briefly the woman opposite him. She was still just as attractive. Full-sized and meaty — the show-girl type — with auburn hair and liquid brown eyes. At least thirty, she remained beautifully put together; her jaw was clean and determined, with a rather pointed chin that was firm and smooth.
He had known her first as Norma Lamont, artist’s model. Eight years ago that was. But even then she had been the sort that knew what she wanted and worked to that end. She had tried burlesque for a while, found she had a fair voice to go with her figure, and done a turn in vaudeville. Her first marriage, to her piano player, had not been much of a success from her viewpoint and she had gone West with a musical comedy after her divorce.
It was in Chicago that she met and married Martin Patten. Sure-shot Patten, they called him. Casey didn’t know the man, but he knew of him. A well-known promoter and State Boxing Commissioner, Patten’s name stood high in sporting circles, and his Eastern affiliations included a half interest in Norfolk Park, the local racing plant.
“I’m in trouble, Flash,” Norma Patten said, and Casey, seeing her eyes upon him, knew that she spoke the truth.
A new and unaccustomed nervousness had put a jerkiness into her voice and tight lines around the mouth. She rose abruptly, went into an adjoining room and came back with a half dozen eight by ten photographs.
Standing in front of him she looked at them a moment, then fanned them out and showed them impulsively.
Casey’s jaw went slack and his eyes widened. The photographs were of Norma Lamont in nude, or almost nude, poses. In two of these she grasped a bit of flowing chiffon about her; one showed her with a bath towel, apparently getting out of the tub. They were old, these pictures. Casey saw that her face was younger, knew that they had probably been posed for various advertising clients.
Norma Patten whisked the pictures behind her. Casey stood up. In spite of himself he compared the rounded lines of this woman in her tailored dress with that glimpse of the nude pictures, and thought: Her figure is just as good now as it was then.
He was ashamed of the thought when he saw the trouble in her eyes, the way she tortured her red lower lip between her white even teeth.
“Blackmail?” he asked finally.
She nodded, then whirled and took the pictures into the adjoining room. When she returned she had a thick sheaf of fifty-dollar bills in her hand. She sat down and tapped them nervously against an open palm.
“A man brought the pictures yesterday,” she began hurriedly. “He wants $25,000. Sorenson took them — years ago. I want you to take this ten thousand and see if you can buy the negatives back direct.”
Casey’s former jauntiness of manner and spirit fled and left his thick face somber, his dark eyes brooding.
“Wait a minute. How about your husband?”
“He knows. I had to tell him to get the money. He gave it to me — all of it.”
“Then why doesn’t he—”
“You don’t know him, Flash.” Norma Patten put a hand on his arm. “He doesn’t know where the pictures came from, and I didn’t dare tell him the name of the man who brought these copies. I told him I didn’t know. We’ve been battling about it all day. If Martin knew where to go, well — I’m afraid of what he might do.
“I think he’s planning some way to trap this man when he comes back, and he can’t take the chance. If these pictures were printed, the publicity, the ridicule, would ruin him at home — everywhere. He—”
“Nobody’d dare print those,” Casey argued. “You could sue.”
Norma Patten shook her head wearily, spoke gently.
“No, Flash. Those were advertising studies, mostly. I was young, I needed the money. I had no great background; about all I had was a good figure and a determination to get to the top of the heap in any way I could. To collect on those pictures, I had to sign a release. Every model doing that sort of thing has to sign one — as a protection to the client.
“Well, Sorenson must have kept those negatives and the release. I’ve got to have both — particularly the release. I finally talked Martin into paying. I have the money. But if you go direct, Sorenson might take ten thousand. It would help to save that fifteen, and then I know Martin can’t get mixed up in any trouble.”
“I don’t like it,” Casey said. His brows drew down in a scowl and he rubbed the hinge of his jaw. He had never been intimate with Norma in the old days; she had always aimed a little higher than his prospects seemed to warrant. But he knew her, and had been at parties with her, accepted her as she was.
“Please. For old time’s sake, Flash.” The brown eyes were pleading, the lips parted, waiting breathlessly.
“I’m a chump to try it,” Casey growled, “and a mug if I don’t.” He screwed morose eyes upon her. “Damn it, Norma! Why did you have to think of me?”
“I don’t know anyone I could trust as I do you,” the woman said simply. “And you couldn’t be fooled about the negatives. You will try, won’t you? Just try. It may not work. Sorenson may not have the negatives now. I don’t know. But I’ve got to do something.
“The man, his name is Ambrose, who brought those prints, will call tomorrow and tell me what to do. He says if my husband is in on it, the deal is off. But Martin will try to be in on it and—”
“Okey,” Casey grumbled, and snatched the sheaf of fifty-dollar bills. “But don’t expect a miracle. Sorenson’s a heel and if he’s got the stuff maybe I can persuade him.”
II
The mist had cleared and stars were a hazy counterpane against the dark blue sky. Along the quiet emptiness of Barlow Street two rows of ancient brown stone fronts marched in sedate columns that, under the cover of darkness, gave no inkling that most of them had gone commercial and been converted into small apartments and studios.
Casey parked his roadster in front of number 22 and stared morosely at the dimly lighted vestibule. Still grumbling over the job at hand, yet knowing there was no decent way he could have refused Norma Patten, he stepped to the sidewalk and started up the worn stone steps.
Scanning the vestibule mail boxes, he was about to reach for the inner door when it pulled away from his hand and a man popped through the opening. Without so much as a glance, he rushed past Casey and ran down the steps with coat tails flying. Casey grunted, stepped inside a musty-smelling hall and began to climb the ancient staircase.
Sorenson apparently rented the entire right side of the floor. A small sign directed Casey to enter at the door at the front of the hall, and he knocked here, noticed that light slid from a crack at the bottom and turned the knob.
He went in confidently, hesitated a moment as he noticed the disordered appearance of the office-like interior. Closing the door, he stepped towards the flat-topped desk flanked by barricades of steel filing cabinets, and had nearly reached the desk when he saw Sorenson.
The man was on his back on the floor with his neck cocked forward by his head, which was propped against one of the cabinets. Casey stiffened with his hands flat on the desk top, stared without breathing, then said: