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.
“Not if I can help it. The rugs I’m going to sell are worth anything I can get, Papa. Nobody has to be ashamed of asking big money for rugs like those.”
“But you will sell to women?”
“Some of them, I suppose.”
“You’ve told Berjouhi this?”
“No,” I said impatiently. “I’m not married to her, Papa. We’re not even engaged.”
“So? All right. But you haven’t told me about everybody, Levon. You haven’t told me about Mr. Egan.”
I stared at him. “Egan? What about him?”
“I remembered this morning who I sold that Bokhara to, Levon. It was Mr. Egan. Twenty years ago I sold him that rug for his study.”
I remembered Claire saying: “It would involve someone I don’t want involved.” I said: “I didn’t know Mr. Egan was involved, Papa. And maybe he isn’t. He might have sold that rug years ago.”
Papa nodded. “Maybe. But I am going to ask around, Levon. Next time the Pinochle Club meets, I’m going to ask the dealers.”
I thought of Herro saying: “They were bought through the years by a man of breeding and taste and discernment.” Mr. Egan was a man who could fit that description. Mr. Egan had a wife who controlled the purse strings. But I couldn’t see him as an accomplice to anything questionable.
A little later, Papa went out to deliver a rug and I was alone in the store. I phoned Claire.
I told her about the little man who’d been in.
“He’s after it,” she said, “and that’s why he came to the store. He must have seen you take the other rug yesterday. He wants it pretty badly, Lee. He means to get it, one way or another. Our job is to see that he pays for it.”
“It will be a pleasure,” I said. “Anything lined up?”
“Yes. This afternoon. I’ve a customer I wanted you to show that Feraghan to.”
“Good-looking customer?”
“She’s lovely. She’s well over sixty — or I wouldn’t let you even talk to her, smarty. I’m changing the strategy, Lee. I think Herro will handle all the trade under sixty.”
“We’ll talk about that when I see you,” I told her. “And I’ll probably see you about one-thirty. Will that be all right?”
“I’ll be waiting,” she said.
When I turned from the phone, there was a man standing near the doorway just inside the store. He was a big man in a worn brown suit. He had a broad, pugnacious face and he didn’t look like a customer.
“Mr. Kaprelian?” he asked.
I nodded. “Lee Kaprelian. My father is out, just now.”
He displayed a shield in his wallet. “Sergeant Waldorf,” he said, “out of Homicide, Mr. Kaprelian. I’m checking on an Henri Ducasse.”
My breath was a little short. I said: “I read about him in the paper yesterday.”
He nodded. “Knew him, did you?”
“He’s handled some rugs for us. Or not exactly that. We’ve let him have some rugs on consignment and if he sold them, he’d pay us our price.”
Waldorf seemed to be studying me. “Your price. But his price could be about anything, couldn’t it?”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “This is a strange business, Sergeant.”
“I’m beginning to find that out. And I’ve heard of buyer’s strikes, too. But I can’t quite see murder as a means of combating inflation, can you?”
“It would depend upon the customer,” I said, and managed to smile. “Is that your theory, Sergeant?”
“No. But it’s Vartanian’s and Bogosian’s and Herro’s. They all told me about Dykstra. There seems to be a rug dealer’s agreement that Ducasse tried to stick Dykstra and Dykstra bumped him.”
I breathed easier. This was a routine check. I said: “I’ve heard that, too. I don’t know much about Dykstra. My dad sold him a few pieces during the war, but I was in the army then, so I never met him.”
He lighted a cigarette and watched the smoke for a moment. “And there’s another gent walking through this case, too. Little guy in a derby hat. He’s been hanging around all the dealers, but he didn’t leave any name, with any of them. Seen him?”
“About a half an hour ago,” I said. “But he didn’t stay long. Papa found out he was a Turk. You almost had another homicide on your hands, Sergeant.”
He smiled. “He doesn’t like Turks, huh?”
“He came to this country to get away from them,” I said. “He spent his boyhood in Armenia.”
“What do you think he was after? This little gent with the black derby, I mean.”
I hesitated. I said: “He was very much interested in a rug we have in the safe. He wanted to buy it.”
Now, there was interest in the sergeant’s eyes. He looked at me steadily. “Price?”
“No — it wasn’t ours to sell. We’re just holding it for a customer.”
“Valuable rug?”
“Very.”
“Who’s the customer?”
Again, I hesitated. “I don’t like to say, Sergeant. I don’t like to involve our customers in this kind of investigation.”
“He won’t be involved,” the sergeant said, “unless he should be.”
For the third time, I hesitated. But I’d opened the door to this line of questioning; it was too late to shut it. I said: “It’s a woman. A Miss Claire Lynne, who lives on the top floor of the Prospect Towers.”
He put it down in a notebook he had. Then: “I suppose I’d better look at the rug. Not that it will mean anything to me. But I might have to identify it later.”
I opened the safe and brought it out.
He studied it for seconds, some awe in his eyes. He nodded and I put it away.
“Anything else that might help, Mr. Kaprelian?”
I thought of the Bokhara. I said: “That’s all, Sergeant.”
“O.K. I think I’ll check this Miss Lynne before I go up against Dykstra. I’ll need all the ammunition I can get before I hit him.” He looked at me closely a moment. “Thanks.”
I nodded, saying nothing.
I watched him leave the store and climb into a car out at the curb. There was another detective behind the wheel of the car. When it pulled away, I went to the phone.
Claire answered almost immediately.
I said, “A detective was here, checking on Henri Ducasse. I told him about the rug, Claire.”
A silence. Then in a low voice: “Which rug, Lee?”
“The one in the safe. He’s on his way up to see you, now.”
Something like relief in her voice. “O.K. I’m glad you called. Don’t forget — one-thirty.”
I went back to repairing the Serapi. Which rug, Lee... It would involve someone I don’t want involved, Lee... I remembered who I sold that Bokhara to, Levon. It was Mr. Egan... But his wife, you know. His wife has the money, and...
Mr. Egan had been described as a man of breeding and taste and discernment, if Herro had been talking about him. Maybe, all the rugs were Mr. Egan’s. That St. Louis story was too glib; one of the finest collections in the world was in St. Louis, and Herro would think of that town if he was looking for a fast answer.
The clock above the safe read twelve o’clock, and I went back into the rear shop.
“Time to eat, Selak,” I said.
He didn’t look at me today. He didn’t smile as he had yesterday. He nodded, sulkily, and turned off the rotary-brush machine. I’d never expected to see Selak jealous of me.
When I went back into the store again, I heard the machine start. Evidently, he didn’t have any appetite, today. Or maybe he didn’t want to leave a rug half done and full of soap.
About twelve-thirty, Papa came in, and I told him about the deal I had for the afternoon.
He looked unhappy. “You’re working on commission on this, Levon?”
“That’s right. We’ll split the commission, Papa.”