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.
“That’s right.”
Canavan had no choice but to believe it. The house dick’s theory was plausible enough, when you came to think about it. The girl could have been taking a run-out on her bill. As a matter of fact, her story about meeting an unknown man at the Cathedral was pretty thin. The only thing was, she herself had certainly not been the one who conked Canavan. Still, she could have had an accomplice. But suppose she had? Where was the percentage? Canavan had paid her bill. He had aided her to get out of jail—
Quite suddenly he snapped his fingers. That was it! He had been instrumental in springing her, but instead of being free she found herself saddled with him. So she had just tolled him along till the psychological moment and then — Swift hands rummaged his pockets. His wallet was gone!
The house dick grinned slyly. “So she rolled you too!”
Spots swam before Canavan’s eyes. He had never been so furious in his life. To cover up he made a great business of pawing through the girl’s effects. Silken underwear, stockings, handkerchiefs, everything bore the subtle perfume she used. He kept seeing her golden-brown hair, and her eyes, and her hands, the hands he had thought so indicative of character. He laughed harshly. “She get any phone calls, or make any?”
“There were a couple incoming,” the house dick said. “Besides the one from Renaldo at the Cathedral. I can get you the numbers of any outgoing calls.” He went to the phone.
The pompous manager plucked nervously at his lower lip, eyeing Canavan worriedly now. He was beginning to see that no matter what happened the hotel was due for a certain amount of notoriety. “See here, Lieutenant, we can forget this if you can.” He appraised the girl’s bags. “We might even refund your eighteen dollars.”
“Keep it,” Canavan said nastily. “I’m going to get this dame if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
The house dick replaced the phone. “Only one outgoing. Kester 5-6943. Want me to look it up?”
“No,” Canavan said. He put on his hat, wincing as the sweatband bit into the lump at the back of his head. “No, thanks, I’ll take care of it.” He picked up the phone and called headquarters and filed a general alarm for Miss Hope Carewe. He was surprised to find that he could describe her so minutely, even down to the little feather in her hat.
Lieutenant Roy Kleinschmidt came on the wire. “Listen, we got a complaint from a undertaker. The old man says we should look into it.” Kleinschmidt was Canavan’s working-partner. “This guy was bopped on the head. Says somebody was trying to steal a corpse or something.”
“The hell with that,” Canavan said. “I’m busy trying to locate somebody I can make into a corpse.” He thought a moment. “Look, Roy, send a couple of print men out to the Wickersham, will you? Tell ’em to see the house dick. I want every piece of baggage covered, just in case this dame has been mugged before.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“And get me the address of this phone, will you?” Canavan repeated the number the house dick had given him. Waiting, he tapped his foot impatiently. He’d show her, by God. Kleinschmidt came back. The number was the Saints of Mercy Hospital. “But look, Bill, I still think we should ought to see this — now — undertaker. This Egbert Weems.”
“You see him,” Canavan said. “My regards to all the stiffs.” He hung up, glared at the grinning house dick and the smugly pompous manager, went out and down to his car.
Ten minutes later Canavan walked into the lobby of the Saints of Mercy Hospital. He had cooled off sufficiently to be quite polite, yet strictly official with the nurse at the information desk. She was a red-head, and at another time Canavan might have been interested. Now she was just a white starched uniform among a lot of others. He showed his badge. “We are trying to check on a Miss Hope Carewe, who apparently called your number some time late this afternoon.”
The red-head too, was quite official. “Do you know the reason for her calling us?”
“No,” Canavan said frankly, “I don’t. Perhaps your records—”
“I’ll see.” The red-head went away to confer with someone behind a glassed-in partition. Canavan watched people come and go through the tall doors. On a bench beside the elevators there was a little guy who looked as though he were about to become a father. He was sweating.
Presently the red-head came back. She had a file-card in her hand. “Miss Carewe must have been calling about her brother.” She wrinkled her nose. “Odd, though. His name is given here as Carroll.”
Canavan felt a pleasurable little tingle at the base of his scalp. He was getting warm. “Fine, that’s just fine. I’ll talk to her brother.”
The nurse shook her head. “I’m afraid you can’t do that, Lieutenant.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s dead. He died at two oh five this afternoon.”
Canavan said a very naughty word indeed and snatched the file-card. There it was, as plain as the nose on your face. Edward Carroll, admitted 1:18 p.m., Tuesday the 26th — that would be yesterday — operated on for ruptured gastric ulcers at 11:00 p.m. Died 2:05 p.m. Wednesday.
Canavan drew a deep breath. “O.K. I’ll take a look at him anyway. And his things.”
The red-head giggled. “You evidently didn’t finish reading the card, Lieutenant. His sister paid his bill, his personal effects were released to her, and his body has been taken to a mortuary.”
Canavan turned the file-card over. The mortician’s name seemed somehow vaguely familiar. Then he got it. Egbert Weems was the undertaker Kleinschmidt had been talking about, the one who had been having trouble with his corpses. Canavan left rather hurriedly.
The Weems Mortuary was, even as the neon sign on the lawn stated, a place of beauty, though the chaste Old English rectory effect was slightly spoiled by an inordinate amount of mercury tubing. Under the blue lights even the grass looked faintly magenta. A tall stained-glass window did its best to maintain an air of dignity despite the encroachments of modern advertising. There was a police car at the curb.
Canavan, still breathing a trifle unevenly, as though he might have run all the way from the Saints of Mercy Hospital, got out and went up the walk and punched the night bell. The door was opened by Big George Kolinski, no less.
Canavan’s jaw dropped. “Well, for crying out loud, what are you doing here?”
Big George’s fat face was wreathed in smiles. “Hel-lo, Lieutenant! I see we can always count on the police — eventually.”
Canavan glared at him. “What do you mean by that crack?”
Kolinski moved his well-tailored shoulders. “Mr. Weems reported the incident at least two hours ago. You boys are just beginning to take an interest.”
“And what’s that to you?”
Again that exasperating shrug. “Mr. Weems is one of our clients — the Morticians’ Protective Association, you know.”
“Another of your rackets?”
“A protective association,” Kolinski said. “Naturally when the police department didn’t function, Mr. Weems called us.” The big diamond on his hand twinkled as he laid a fat finger alongside his nose. “Not me directly, you understand. I am merely a director of the association. But when I heard about it — well, the case was so unusual that I went down to headquarters to see why a taxpayer like Mr. Weems wasn’t getting service. Lieutenant Kleinschmidt was just leaving, so I rode out with him.”
Canavan almost choked. “It’s getting so you can’t even die without running into a racket. What do you do if the undertakers don’t pay up — yodel at the funerals?” He pushed past Kolinski as Lieutenant Roy Kleinschmidt came through a door at the end of the short hall.