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 bruise was blossoming on my jaw and it was sore as a boil. My head was also giving me merry hell. I needed a drink, but it was after two a.m. and the bar was closed. So I talked the night man, a pal of mine, into slipping a shot of brandy into the cup of coffee I ordered, and also got him to lend me his gun. I needed an equalizer in case I ran up against the gorilla again, as I didn’t want to take another dose of the sample he’d given me.
When I left Ricopetti’s I was feeling better, but I was still sore. I walked up to Kearney and over to Jackson through empty and lifeless streets, and Mac went, “Hiss-hiss!” at me from a dark doorway on the corner.
“What gives?” I asked as I joined him in the doorway. “Where is our boy friend you were supposed to be tailing?”
He jabbed a thumb out and down Jackson Street. “He’s down there in that bail-bond office. That’s his hoopie out in front of it. He drove straight here and went in about half an hour ago and I ain’t seen him come out.”
Jackson was a dark and narrow street here and the bail-bond broker’s office was in mid-block at street level, inner light making a glowing square of its shaded first-floor window. Staring at it, trying to make out the letters stenciled on the glass, I stepped out of the doorway and thumbed back my hat.
“Whose office is it?” I asked.
“It’s run by a fat tub of lard named Jonathan Kline,” Mac told me. “He is not a big shot, but I would not be too surprised if he did a little fencing of stolen articles such as hot ice on the side.”
“Oh-oh,” I breathed, thinking of Vogelsang’s fat stooge. I was pretty sure who Mr. Kline would turn out to be.
“Criminy, Beek!” Mac blurted suddenly. “What’s the matter with your puss? You look like you’d happened to an accident.”
Light from the corner street lamp had got under my hat brim. “I did,” I admitted, palming my sore jaw. “You wouldn’t happen to know a big gorilla by the name of Buck Madden, would you?”
Mac knew most of the small-time crooks and chiselers in town by sight, name or reputation anyway. He blinked, scowling thoughtfully. “That moniker sounds familiar.” Then he snapped his fingers. “I think a bruiser by that name used to do some strong-arm work for Art Vogelsang, but I ain’t heard of him for a long time. Why?”
There it was — Art Vogelsang again. Everything seemed to be tying up together. “The guy bopped me,” I muttered, still smarting. “That Nude Ranch gal you think is Hildegarde Ingraham is supposed to be his sister — Louise Madden. I was tailing them and the so-and-so laid for me and then got away. We could find out for sure where they live by greasing someone at the Nude Ranch, but I had to try and play it smart and get my face pushed in for my trouble.” I sighed.
“I don’t know whether fooling around like this is going to get us anything or not; I don’t know just how I happened to get sucked into it in the first place, but now that I’m in I’m going to stay, and find out what’s what. I owe somebody something for this clout on the jaw. I’ve either got to get paid for taking it or else get hunk some other way.”
Little Mac clucked sympathetically. “You and me should of stuck together, boss. Together we ought to be able to take the big heel, huh? Let’s get him, huh? The big bully!”
“Not now,” I said, grinning. “Later, maybe.”
“But what’re we gonna do here?”
“I’ve got a hunch,” I explained. “Moore, that Swinnerton op who was knifed in the Nude Ranch, was on the trail of Hildegarde Ingraham, I think. It sounded to me like the last thing he tried to say was her name, only no one else seemed to get it. Art Vogelsang and his fat stooge were after Daisy May, and you know the kind of guy Vogelsang is. Also, Daisy May was in the Nude Ranch with us just before the killing, then disappeared. All that is either a hell of a lot of coincidence, or else Daisy May is Hildegarde Ingraham.”
Mac’s crooked thin face was screwed up in a scowl of concentration. “But Hildegarde is a brunette.”
“She could have dyed her hair,” I pointed out. “Probably would have if she really wanted to avoid recognition. Anyway, why would a chiseler like Vogelsang be after a gal like Daisy May, unless there was some dough in it? And if I’m wrong we can always go back to the other gal; I’ll admit she intrigues me, pal.”
Mac was thinking it over, mumbling in his beard: “The dick said her name before he kicked off...” He looked up brightly. “Maybe this Daisy May is Hildegarde and she knifed him, huh, because she didn’t want to be caught? Maybe the dick was trying to name his killer!”
“Maybe,” I said. “But whether she’s a murderess or not, there’s still a five-grand reward offered for her, and the thing for us to do now is to find her. At first she was with this kid you followed, who I think is Johnny Foster, and he was looking for her too. He came here, so—”
“So what?” Mac said, puzzled.
“So we’re going to find out what. Something very squirrelly is going on, and there just might be a chance that we could pull that five-grand reward out of the fire yet.”
“Five grand — boy!” He smacked his lips. “What do we do?”
“We pay a call on Mr. Jonathan Kline first and see what goes on. I think Mr. Kline is Vogelsang’s fat pal, but I don’t know just what we’ll be walking into, so let’s sort of take it easy. I’ll go in first and you wait outside. If I get in a jam, I’ll holler or something and you can get help if we need it.”
I nodded back along Kearney past where the Zephyr was parked, toward Portsmouth Square and the gray pile of stone across from it that was the Hall of Justice. “The police station’s only a couple of blocks away, but don’t call a copper unless you have to. We don’t want to have to split that reward with anyone, in case there is a chance of getting it. If we get too many cops in here, they’ll ace us out entirely.”
“I get it, boss,” Mac said. “Are you heeled?”
“Yeah.” I touched the short-barreled police special in my coat pocket that I’d got from my pal in Ricopetti’s. “Wait here until after I’m inside.”
“Take it easy, boss,” little Mac warned pleadingly as I moved off into Jackson.
From the glow that filtered out through the shaded windows, I noticed that the kid’s car was a low Packard convertible and carried Nevada plates. That wasn’t odd, because Nevada is a taxpayer’s haven and plenty of wealthy people maintain their residence there. I moved on and up to the office door, and had my right hand on the gun in my pocket. I put out my other for the door handle, and paused.
Thumping sounds were coming from inside, the scrape of furniture being pushed back, a splintering crash that sounded like a chair hitting the floor. On either side of me the window shades were tightly drawn. There was no crack or slit through which I might see.
Thumping sounds from within continued. I let my hand close on the door handle, thumbed down the latch. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open a little, so that I could see inside.
A railing bisected the room, and behind the railing were Art Vogelsang and the kid I’d tabbed as Johnny Foster, but they didn’t notice me in the doorway. They were busy, completely wrapped up in each other, engaged in a slug fest that was a furious exchange of lefts and rights. They were viciously in earnest, going at it hammer and tongs, and the room was filled with grunting sounds and the thudding impacts of fists against flesh.
Battling back and forth, the kid’s dark hair was hanging down in his eyes and his coat was ripped. Sweat and blood streaked Vogelsang’s sharp face. The kid was boring into him like a buzz-saw, forcing the taller man to give ground. As I watched, the kid brought up his right in a pretty uppercut and Vogelsang’s head jumped and he slammed back against a roll-top desk, started to slide down it to the floor.