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.
“I’ll get him! Don’t worry — the day’s comin’ when I’m going to grab that crook!”
So said Gil McEwen as he paced back and forth across the office of Chief of Police Thatcher while bright sunlight streamed into the room — the sunlight of the morning after.
Chief Thatcher sighed and looked worried. His son looked at Gil McEwen solemnly.
“He’s got us all buffaloed, that’s all. A swell detective I am! The way I climbed out of Atwell’s bedroom window, then went chasing an innocent man for blocks, thinking he might be the Moon Man!” In this way Steve Thatcher had explained his absence from the Atwell home immediately following the Moon Man’s escape. “Gil, I guess if he’s ever caught, you’ll have to do it.”
“I will do it,” said McEwen. “That’s my promise. I’m never going to stop until I grab that guy!”
And McEwen, Steve Thatcher knew, meant exactly that.
The chief’s son looked at his watch. Inside its cover was a photograph. It was a portrait of Sue McEwen.
“If you only knew what you almost did!” he addressed the picture in silent thought. “If you only knew!”
Pigeon Blood
Paul Cain
There were a lot of very bad writers who worked for the pulps. For a penny, or sometimes a half-penny, what could you expect? But there were some good ones, too, and even a few great ones. It is possible that Paul Cain (1902–1966) was one of the latter. Sadly, his output was too modest to make a positive judgment.
He wrote about a dozen short stories, seven of which were collected in Seven Slayers (1946), and one novel, Fast One (1933), which Raymond Chandler lavishly praised. The novel was really a collection of five closely connected novellas which ran in Black Mask magazine in 1932, then revised for its hardcover edition. Doubleday must have had meager enthusiasm for it, since it must have had a small print run because it is today one of the rarest and most valuable first editions in the collectors’ market. Perhaps his publisher was right, as it was almost universally blasted by critics as too tough, too violent. Still, sophisticated readers loved it and it remains one of the high spots of the hard-boiled crime genre.
He was just a kid of sixteen when he showed up in Hollywood to write screenplays, at which he had fairly early success as Peter Ruric, a nom de plume for George Sims. When the movies failed to provide enough work (and income), he turned to the pulps and used the name Paul Cain. Nothing new was published during the last thirty years of his life. “Pigeon Blood” was first published in the November 1933 issue of Black Mask; it was collected in Seven Slayers.
The woman was bent far forward over the steering-wheel of the open roadster. Her eyes, narrowed to long black-fringed slits, moved regularly down and up, from the glistening road ahead, to the small rearview mirror above the windshield. The two circles of white light in the mirror grew steadily larger. She pressed the throttle slowly, steadily downward; there was no sound but the roar of the wind and the deep purr of the powerful engine.
There was a sudden sharp crack; a little frosted circle appeared on the windshield. The woman pressed the throttle to the floor. She was pale; her eyes were suddenly large and dark and afraid, her lips were pressed tightly together. The tires screeched on the wet pavement as the car roared around a long, shallow curve. The headlights of the pursuing car grew larger.
The second and third shots were wild, or buried themselves harmlessly in the body of the car; the fourth struck the left rear tire and the car swerved crazily, skidded halfway across the road. Very suddenly there was bright yellow light right ahead, at the side of the road. The woman jammed on the brakes, jerked the wheel hard over; the tires slid, screamed raggedly over the gravel in front of the gas station, the car stopped. The other car went by at seventy-five miles an hour. One last shot thudded into the back of the seat beside the woman and then the other car had disappeared into the darkness.
Two men ran out of the gas station. Another man stood in the doorway. The woman was leaning back straight in the seat and her eyes were very wide; she was breathing hard, unevenly.
One of the men put his hand on her shoulder, asked: “Are you all right, lady?”
She nodded.
The other man asked: “Hold-ups?” He was a short, middle-aged man and his eyes were bright, interested.
The woman opened her bag and took out a cigarette. She said shakily: “I guess so.” She pulled out the dashboard lighter, waited until it glowed red and held it to her cigarette.
The younger man was inspecting the back of the car. He said: “They punctured the tank. It’s a good thing you stopped — you couldn’t have gone much father.”
“Yes — I guess it’s a very good thing I stopped,” she said, mechanically. She took a deep drag of her cigarette.
The other man said: “That’s the third holdup out here this week.”
The woman spoke to the younger man. “Can you get me a cab?”
He said: “Sure.” Then he knelt beside the blown-out tire, said: “Look, Ed — they almost cut it in two.”
The man in the doorway called to her: “You want a cab, lady?”
She smiled, nodded, and the man disappeared into the gas station; he came back to the doorway in a minute, over to the car. “There’ll be a cab here in a little while, lady,” he said.
She thanked him.
“This is one of the worst stretches of road on Long Island — for highwaymen.” He leaned on the door of the car. “Did they try to nudge you off the road — or did they just start shooting?”
“They just started shooting.”
He said: “We got a repair service here — do you want us to fix up your car?”
She nodded. “How long will it take?”
“Couple days. We’ll have to get a new windshield from the branch factory in Queens — an’ take off that tank...”
She took a card out of her bag and gave it to him, said: “Call me up when it’s finished.”
After a little while, a cab came out of the darkness of a side street, turned into the station. The woman got out of the car and went over to the cab, spoke to the driver: “Do you know any short-cuts into Manhattan? Somebody tried to hold me up on the main road a little while ago, and maybe they’re still laying for me. I don’t want any more of it — I want to go home.” She was very emphatic.
The driver was a big red-faced Irishman. He grinned, said: “Lady — I know a million of ’em. You’ll be as safe with me as you’d be in your own home.”
She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell to the three men around her car and got into the cab. After the cab had disappeared around the street, the man to whom she had given the card took it out of his pocket and squinted at it, read aloud: “Mrs. Dale Hanan — Five-eighty Park Avenue.”
The short, middle-aged man bobbed his head knowingly. “Sure,” he said — “I knew she was class. She’s Hanan’s wife — the millionaire. Made his dough in oil — Oklahoma. His chauffeur told me how he got his start — didn’t have a shoestring or a place to put it, so he shot off his big toe and collected ten grand on an accident policy — grubstake on his first well. Bright boy. He’s got a big estate down at Roslyn.”
The man with the card nodded. He said: “That’s swell. We can soak him plenty.” He put the card back into his pocket.
When the cab stopped near the corner of Sixty-third and Park Avenue the woman got out, paid the driver and hurried into the apartment house. In her apartment, she put in a longdistance call to Roslyn, Long Island; when the connection had been made, she said: “Dale — it’s in the open, now. I was followed, driving back to town — shot at — the car was nearly wrecked... I don’t know what to do. Even if I call Crandall, now, and tell him I won’t go through with it — won’t go to the police — he’ll probably have me killed, just to make sure... Yes, I’m going to stay in — I’m scared... All right, dear. ’Bye.”