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.
While I was thinking these thoughts, I was looking at her, and that was an unmixed pleasure.
“You clean rugs at your place, Mr. Kaprelian?”
“We do. I’ve a man waiting downstairs. I’ll have him come and get that Bokhara.”
She nodded.
“I brought the Sarouk along,” I said, “but it would be too big for the dining room. I can have him put one of your other rugs down in there.”
“Fine,” she said, and studied her drink.
She was still looking thoughtful. She still hadn’t said what was on her mind, I felt sure.
Finally, she said: “I’m not buying any rugs. I’m selling.”
“The market’s not too good,” I said, “but of course, for rugs like those in that room...” I shrugged.
“The market’s as good as the customers,” she said. “I’d like you to sell those rugs for me on commission. I’ll give you the leads.”
“We’ll be glad to try.”
“I want you to sell them, not the firm. You see, the customers will be mainly women.”
I frowned. “I don’t follow you, Miss Lynne.”
“Don’t be modest,” she said, and chuckled. “Oh, Lee, there’s a mirror right down there at the end of the room. You can’t be that blind. No one could be that naive.”
I must have blushed like the village virgin, for my face was hot, my collar tight. In my discomfiture, the fact that she’d known my first name and used it didn’t register right away.
I said: “We do some wholesale business, Miss Lynne. We have a few dealers who sell rugs that way. I don’t think I’d want to be—”
“You’ve sold Henri Ducasse some rugs. Rather, you’ve given them to him on consignment, haven’t you? And he’s paid you after he sold them?”
Ducasse was a Frenchman who specialized in the widow trade. I nodded slowly.
“Do you realize the kind of money he was getting for your merchandise?”
“I’ve heard of a few deals.”
“Well, Henri’s aging. He’s beginning to get that mummified look. He’s not the man he was.”
“And you think his shoes would fit me? You’d like me to become one of those—” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to call him.”
“Call him smart,” she said quietly. “And call him rich. Because he’s both of those.”
What she was asking me wasn’t exactly dishonest, though it might be considered unethical. I looked at her, and realized I’d be spending some time with her, if I accepted the offer.
I said: “I’ll get the man up here to pick up the Bokhara.”
“You haven’t answered me, Lee.”
“I want some time.” I rose.
“Get the man up,” she said. “Take the Bokhara along. Perhaps you’d better wrap up that prayer-rug inside of it. It’s not the kind of piece to show just everybody, is it? It’s too valuable to be advertising indiscriminately.”
I went down and got Selak, and brought him up the back way. I helped him move the furniture in the dining room. Selak couldn’t seem to get his eyes off Miss Lynne. When he first entered, he stared at her. All the time we were working, he continued to glance at her almost hungrily.
I brought the prayer-rug out, and laid it in the center of the so-called Bokhara.
Selak’s attention wasn’t divided any more. He knelt, to feel its velvet texture. In Armenian, he said: “One of the old ones. No rugs like this today. One of the old ones.”
“One of the old ones,” I agreed. “What kind, Selak?”
He started to answer, and then his eyes got crafty. I might be buying this rug. He wasn’t going to build it up in front of the seller. He shrugged, but he couldn’t take the admiration out of his eyes as he looked at it again.
“Kashan,” he said.
Maksoud had lived in Kashan. It was like calling a Rembrandt an Amsterdam.
When he’d shouldered the rugs, and left, Claire said: “Why did he stare at me like that? He gave me the shivers.”
“Selak admires two things,” I told her. “Beauty and quality.”
Her smile was mocking. “In that case, it would be my beauty.”
“Now, you’re being modest,” I said. I wanted to reach out and pull her close. I wanted to do a lot of things that wouldn’t be good business or good manners. “I’ll let you know about — about the deal,” I said.
She put a hand on my arm. “Come back tonight. There’ll be somebody here I want you to meet.”
“I’ve a date,” I said.
“It’ll be worth your while,” she said. “After tonight, you can decide. I think you’ll decide in my favor.”
I could smell her perfume and her face was close as she looked up. I like to think there’s no hay in my hair, but I felt like Selak at the moment.
“All right,” I said. “About eight?”
“About eight.”
The door closed and I was walking down the carpeted hall to the elevator. Her perfume was still with me, but it might have been only in my mind.
In the station wagon, Selak waited. “Keghetsig,” he said, which is as close as I can come to the American spelling. In any event, it means beautiful.
“Beautiful,” I agreed. “Both the rug and the girl.”
He nodded.
I was no child, despite the way Papa treated me. I was no child, but I had a child’s sense of guilt as we drove back to the store.
Papa was busy with a customer as we drove around in back to unload the rugs. Selak kept the Bokhara in the washroom; I brought the smaller rug into the store.
I opened the safe, and then decided to let Papa see the rug first. He would see it eventually, anyway; there was no reason to try to hide it from him. Nor was there any reason I should feel involved in whatever history it might have. It was just that damned unreasonable sense of guilt.
Selak came through from the back, carrying the Sarouk as the customer left.
“So she didn’t want it?” Papa said.
I shook my head.
He started to say something, and then he saw the rug near the safe. He came over to stare at it. He knelt to study, to finger it, to turn it over. He was murmuring in Armenian too low for me to hear.
Then he looked up. “Levon, where did you get this?”
“She had it. The customer. She wants to keep it in our safe.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a rug like this, outside a museum, outside a private collection. Where did she get it, Levon?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He was looking at me sharply. “Who is this woman? You think I wouldn’t know if there was a rug like this in town? How long has she been here? Who is she?”
“You know as much as I do, Papa,” I said. “Her name is Claire Lynne and she lives in the Prospect Towers.” I told him about some of the other rugs I’d seen, the antiques and semi-antiques.
He shook his head, and looked down again at the rug. “Silk warp and weft. Wool pile. Kashan, antique. But these Arabian letters?”
“Why don’t we ask Sarkis,” I suggested. “Sarkis can read Arabic.”
He nodded. “Sarkis can read Arabian. But I don’t want him to know we have this rug. Levon, I don’t want anyone to know we have this rug in the safe. The Marines we should have, to guard this rug.”
Reverently, Papa put the rug away while I went over to get down a couple of books from the shelf above his desk.
In one I read: The Ardebil Carpet was the lifetime work of the greatest of all Persian weavers, Maksoud...
In the other: It is estimated that it took ten weavers more than three years to weave the famed “Ardebil Carpet,” credit for which goes to Maksoud, the weave master, who supervised...
Both books were considered authentic. There was no reason to think he hadn’t woven the one now in our safe. There aren’t more than three or four rugs in the world signed by their creator. If this one was genuine...