The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
He moved close to the coupe, wiping the grip of the automatic carefully with the handkerchief. He wiped the barrel, too. Lou Rands had tried to frame him with this gun — that meant that a bullet or bullets from it had killed Barney Nasser. Perhaps Rands had murdered Nasser, perhaps not. But he had known that the gangster was dead — and he had tried to frame the Kid.
Joey dropped the weapon from the handkerchief to the coupe seat, beside Nasser’s right hand. The handkerchief he slipped in his pocket. He turned away from the car, glanced at the body of the detective. Then he crossed the street, went down an alley that ran through to Fortieth Street. He was halfway through the alley when he looked back and saw the lights of a car shining on the slush near the spot where the coupe rested. The siren wail died to a low whine.
The Kid smiled twistedly, patted the dead dick’s gun. On Fortieth Street he went towards the river, reached a small, wooden dock and tossed the gun into the water. He kept away from the few lights, found a stone and wrapped Rands’ handkerchief around it. There was a splash as East River water swallowed the fabric. The Kid moved along the river’s edge to Forty-second Street. He walked westward and picked up a cab at First Avenue. The driver looked sleepy and dumb — and that suited Joey Deth. He gave an address in Harlem, on the edge of the Black Belt.
The cab had traveled three blocks before the Kid remembered something. It pulled him up straight in the seat. He swore shakily. Then he sat back and swore softly and more steadily. Until this moment he had forgotten the lunch-wagon and Old Andy. Andy might have seen him with Lou Rands, might have heard them talking. Probably he had. And the police would see the lunch-wagon — they would question Andy. And Andy would talk.
Kid Deth sat on the seat of the cab and swayed with the motion of it. There were several things he didn’t know — and each thing had to do with death. But there was one thing he did know — he was in a tough spot. That had to do with death, too. A hot spot on the electric chair. If Old Andy had seen, heard — and talked—
He sat up straight and lighted a cigarette. His left temple ached, throbbed. He looked through the rear window of the cab and saw only the lights of a big truck, far behind. He closed his little fingers tightly and showed white, even teeth in a smile.
“Like hell — they’ll get me!” he breathed.
2
At one o’clock the Kid kept the date he had spoken about to Lou Rands. He sat at a small table near the piano, in the cellar speakeasy just beyond the Black Belt — and the girl came to him. She was a blonde of around twenty-five, with blue eyes and a face that had once been babyish. Kid Deth reached under the table with his right foot and kicked out a chair for her. She sat down, got her chin resting on cupped palms and leaned towards him.
“Well—” she said in a voice that wasn’t too pleasant — “there’s hell to pay, Kid.”
Joey Deth widened his dead-gray eyes and tried to look puzzled.
“Yeah?” he replied. “What about?”
She made a clicking sound with tongue and lips. Her blue eyes narrowed; she took one hand away from her chin and tapped pointed nails against the wood of the table. She said:
“Someone got that Rands dick. I’m thirsty — how about a beer?”
Joey ordered a beer and watched a dark-skinned man at a table across the room talk to himself as he drank. He sipped his own whiskey and frowned.
“Rands, eh?” he said softly. “Well — he had it comin’.”
The girl nodded. There was an expression in her eyes that Joey didn’t like; he hadn’t been sure of her for weeks now. Since Barney Nasser had stated that he was out to get Joey — the girl had changed. She was more cautious. She was playing safe.
The waiter brought her beer. Kid Deth smiled a little.
“Who got him, Bess?” he asked quietly.
The waiter went away and the girl drank half her beer in one try. Her fingers were shaking a little when she set the glass down on the table.
“You did, Kid,” she said very slowly.
Joey Deth slitted his eyes on hers. He breathed through his nose, was silent for a short time. Then he shook his head.
“Like hell I did,” he said almost pleasantly. “Who says so, Bess?”
She kept her blue eyes steady on his. She downed half of the remaining half glass of beer.
“Barney Nasser’s brother,” she said quietly. “I ran into him at Alma’s flat. He’s sore as hell.”
The Kid drew a deep breath. Barney Nasser’s brother — Gil Nasser. A killer who had been tried three times for murder without a conviction. A gun who hated only a week or so, and then stopped hating because there wasn’t any percentage in hating a dead human.
Joey Deth said slowly: “Gil’s hopped up — he’s talkin’ wild.”
The girl shook her head. “He doesn’t use the bad stuff, and you know it,” she said. “He says Barney Nasser picked you up over near Times Square — you had some talk to get finished. He drove you over between First and the East River, and you didn’t like what he said. You gave him the works. The Rands dick went over on a chance — to talk with a lunch-wagon owner named Andy Poison. Old Andy, he’s called. He spotted you and took you to the car. He had the goods on you, and you gunned him out. Then you slipped the gun beside Barney’s body and made a duck. That’s the way Gil figures.”
Kid Deth shook his head, smiling with his narrow lips.
“It’s no good, Bess,” he said. “I never killed in my life, you know that. I don’t pack a gun.”
She smiled grimly. “Barney Nasser did,” she said. “A .38 automatic. Gil thinks there were those kind of bullets in his lungs — and a flock of them in the dick’s body. He thinks you got Barney — and when Rands grabbed you — you got him.”
Kid Deth stopped smiling. He ordered another whiskey and a beer. When the waiter went away he said:
“They’re framing me, Bess — maybe we’d better try Chi for a look around.”
The girl shook her head. “I’m putting you wise — and I’m quitting, Kid,” she said. “You told Barney you’d lay out of New York — but Brooklyn’s a part of the big town. Maybe you forgot that. From now on — where you are it won’t be too healthy. I’m quitting.”
Kid Deth shrugged. “It’s quiet across the bridges,” he said. “But Barney didn’t want it that way. I went in there first—”
He broke off. The waiter brought the drinks. Joey said:
“Mac — let me know who comes in — before they start the walk, will you?”
The waiter nodded. “Sure, Kid,” he said. “An’ we ain’t seen you tonight.”
Joey Deth nodded. “That’s it, I ain’t been around,” he replied.
The girl chuckled mirthlessly. “You never did have luck with the slot machines, Kid,” she said. “Even at Coney—”
Kid Deth leaned across the table and bared his lips. Bess Grote’s eyes got big and frightened. She didn’t like to see Joey looking at her this way.
“You know too much,” he said in a hard voice. “And you’re pretty anxious to quit. Maybe you know that Charlie Gay has been out of stir for three days — and that it was Barney Nasser who turned him up for the stretch.”
He watched the girl’s lips tremble. She lifted her beer glass and drank.
“Charlie didn’t do for Barney,” she said, as she set the glass down again. “Charlie went — out West — right away.”
Kid Deth shook his head. “Better be careful, Bess,” he said in a hard tone. “I saw Charlie tonight — while I was—”
He checked himself. But the girl had a quick mind. That was one of the things he had liked about her. She was shrewd.