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 kid stood over him, panting, and behind the kid a bulky shape that I hadn’t noticed there rose up from the floor — the fat man, Kline. I stepped inside, heeled the door shut behind me, said:
“Hold it!” The heater was out in my fist, but either I spoke too late or Kline didn’t hear me anyway.
He swung the metal wastebasket he’d brought with him up from the floor. It arced over his head, bonged on the back of the kid’s skull. The kid staggered forward, went to his knees.
“Kline!” I bit out. “Drop it!”
He looked at me, his moon face dull, blubbery lower lip hanging slackly. Sweat glistened under the lights on the dome of his almost totally bald head. There was a threat of blood from one corner of his mouth, and his clothes were dusty from the floor. The kid had evidently got in at least one good punch on him before going to work on Vogelsang. He’d really been cleaning house.
Kline’s eyes glinted, almost hidden in deep folds of flesh. He let the wastebasket drop from his hand to the floor, stood breathing harshly, his bulging torso expanding and contracting. The kid had only been knocked to his knees, catching himself there and holding his head in his hands. His coat sleeves had worked back along his arms and one shirt cuff was stained darkly with blood. His clothing was practically ruined, but he didn’t seem to be marked up much physically.
Now he sobbed, “You—!” and came up swinging, going for Kline. “Where is she?” he gritted.
“Hold it!” I said sharply, moving to the railing. “What goes on?”
He jerked his head around and stared at me as if he hadn’t known I was there before. Behind the railing, a chair and a typewriter table had been knocked to the floor. Vogelsang had his back propped against the desk, was holding his jaw in one hand and looking up from the floor with dazed, glassy eyes. All three men were puffing, and the sound of their breathing was very loud.
“They’ve got the girl!” the kid blurted. “And they won’t tell me where they’ve got her. They’re holding her. They’re keeping her against her will.”
“What girl?” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to mean Hildegarde Ingraham, by any chance?”
His head jerked in a nod. “Yes. They... they’ve kidnaped her.”
“Then,” I said slowly, “Daisy May is really Hildegarde.”
An uncertain light flickered in his eyes, as if he realized he’d spoken out of turn, revealing a confidence, and now regretted it. Then he murmured resignedly, “Well, it’s out now. Yes.”
“Then these mutts must have kidnaped her right out of the Nude Ranch,” I said.
“I don’t know.” His eyes were harried and he spoke heatedly. “But I know they’ve got her.”
I pointed the heater at Kline. “Where is she, fat boy? Give.”
His face was stupidly sullen and he didn’t answer.
“Nuts!” Vogelsang said, and I looked down at him. The glassiness had gone out of his eyes, leaving them blue chips of hard sharpness. His thin, blood-streaked face was sneering. “We should tell you! So you can hijack her and collect that reward. You—! You took her away from us once and now you’re sticking your nose in again.”
“The hell with the reward,” the kid sobbed, quivering. His jaw was set in a rigid white line. “I don’t care about the reward. I want to know where she is. You two aren’t just after the reward. You’re going to try to hold her for ransom or something, at least try to chisel more than the five thousand out of her father. Otherwise you wouldn’t have hidden her somewhere.”
Vogelsang looked up at him with his mouth tight and hard and unveiled hate showing in his cold eyes. Knowing him, I had a hunch the kid was right. Vogelsang would be up to something very crooked, something very tricky, though I didn’t think he’d go so far as to take a chance on a kidnaping rap.
“Listen,” I said. “A private dick was killed in the Nude Ranch at the Fair tonight. He was on Hildegarde’s trail. You two mutts were there; you had to be, because you came back for the gal. Either you tell where she is now, or I’m going to call in some cops.”
Kline’s wet lips sagged at the corners. He looked suddenly sick, gazed questioningly down at Vogelsang. Vogelsang flicked a quick glance at him and then his eyes got very thin and expressionless.
“We don’t know anything about that!” he lipped resentfully. His voice had a thickness to it, as though it hurt him to move his jaw, but he suddenly changed his tone. “Now, be reasonable, for Pete’s sake. We can all get a cut in this reward.”
“I don’t trust you, Vogelsang,” I told him. “You’re trying to ease out from under something. But I’ll be reasonable. You tell us where you’ve got the girl, the kid and I will go get her, I’ll collect the reward and we’ll split it — unless it turns out that one of you two lovely personalities knifed that Swinnerton dick.”
“Hell, we didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Kline said in his deep petulant voice. “What’re you planning to do — frame us?”
“No,” I told him. “But you had to be near there at the time — you had to follow us back to the Fair grounds to get the girl.”
The fat man’s grunt was a surly sound and his eyes receded into their pockets of flesh. Vogelsang was looking thoughtful, a cunning cast to his face.
“O.K.,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t like murder. We don’t want to get mixed up in it, so we’ll tell you. But you better play square with us and see that we get our cut after the reward is paid. You, one-third — we, two-thirds.”
“How about the kid?” I asked.
“I don’t give a damn about the reward,” the kid gritted.
“Sure,” Vogelsang said. “All he wants is the girl. He can have her.”
“He can have her after she’s returned to her father,” I said. “But the split is fifty-fifty. I’ve got a pal working with me. Where is she?”
“She’s out in the Sunset District,” Vogelsang admitted cheerfully, as if we were pals now. “Staying with some friends of mine. It’s the last house on Noriega Street where it runs into the sand dunes going west. We’ll go with you.”
“No, you don’t,” I told him. “You’re staying here.”
I moved through the gate in the railing, lifted my chin at the kid. “See if you can find something to use so we can tie these two mutts up.”
“Hey, what’s the idea?” Vogelsang muttered tightly, trying to get his feet under him so he could stand up.
I let the heater point his way. “Stay where you are. We just want to be sure you’ll be safe and sound while we’re gone. Your friends will be guarding the girl in that house, and I don’t want you to phone and warn them before we get there. I’d have you phone them now and tell them we’re coming and to turn her over to us, only I don’t trust you; you might let something slip over the phone and they’d broom out with the girl before we could get there.”
Kline had been standing, sullen and silent, his moon face set stupidly. For the moment, while speaking to Vogelsang, I’d looked away from him. That was a mistake. Maybe he got the signal from Vogelsang, but if he did I didn’t see it. He moved with sudden abruptness. I sensed it, started to whirl.
The kid yelled, “Look out!”
And from where he was on his haunches on the floor, Vogelsang rocked backward, kicked out and up with one foot. His toe cracked into my right wrist, and at the same instant Kline’s big fist jarred against the side of my neck. It knocked me sideways as the gun flew out of my hand.
The kid dived for it, but Vogelsang fell on it first, rolled, came up and caught the kid on the temple with the revolver. Turning, I took a swing at Kline’s fat face, but was stumbling and off balance and missed. The kid had thudded limply to the floor. Vogelsang flicked the gun up at me and rapped: