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.
“Come and get it,” I said.
“Don’t fool with me, Lee. Bring it over.”
Claire said: “Give it to him, Lee. You aren’t involved in this. Don’t get involved with him.” Her voice was high.
In Herro’s hand, the gun lifted. In Herro’s eyes, I saw death. He would kill.
Then Claire was up, standing in front of me shielding me, facing the gun. “George, you’ll get the check. Don’t—”
That’s when Selak walked in.
I’d left the door unlocked hoping Waldorf might break in on something incriminating. But I was glad to see anybody, including Selak.
He looked like a drowned grizzly bear. His face was black with beard, his rough hair matted, his dull eyes glaring. The gun, you see, was pointing at his Claire.
The sound that came from his big throat was nothing that could be called human, a rough, threatening grunt.
Herro turned to face him as I rose, to get away from behind Claire. Herro’s gun was pointing at Selak, and Herro talked to him in broken Armenian.
Selak kept coming — and the gun jumped in Herro’s hand.
Selak trembled as the slug hit him, but he kept coming. I was almost to Herro, now; I grabbed his wrist and twisted it as Selak closed.
The gun fell to the floor, but Selak’s big arm sent me sprawling.
Then Selak had lifted George off his feet by the throat and one leg, and he lifted him high.
I heard Claire scream as Selak headed for the terrace doors, still carrying the struggling Herro high above his head.
I was up as Selak smashed through the doors, kicking them open. I was up and scrambling after him...
I was out on the terrace and shouting at Selak as he stood there on the edge and now Herro was screaming.
I reached Selak, grabbed him blindly by the neck from behind — just as he tossed George Herro over the edge...
Waldorf came five minutes later. I’d called the ambulance by that time for Selak. Somebody had called the police.
I told Waldorf all about it, and Claire told him her part, not sparing herself. Selak died, in the hospital, while we were still talking.
When we’d finished, Waldorf said: “I’ll do what I can, but you can count on five years, anyway, Miss Lynne.”
Papa says I’m foolish. He says all young men have experiences of one kind or another, and the thing to do is to forget them. He says there’s no sense in writing to her every week, up there, and going up, once a month. Papa says five years is a long time for a young man to wait, an awful long time.
As though I don’t know it.
A Taste for Cognac
Brett Halliday
Brett Halliday was one of the pseudonyms of the prolific Davis Dresser (1904–1977). Born in Chicago, he spent his childhood in Texas, where he ran away from home at the age of fourteen to join the army until his true age was discovered when he was sixteen. He returned to school and received a civil engineering certificate but, when work was hard to come by during the Great Depression, began to write, turning out scores of mystery, Western, romance, adventure, and sex stories for the pulps. His first novel, Mum’s the Word for Murder (1938), was published under the pseudonym Asa Baker, as was his second, The Kissed Corpse (1939). He also wrote as Matthew Blood, Peter Shelley, Anthony Scott, Hal Debrett, and many other pseudonyms.
It was with the character Michael Shayne, however, that Dresser found success. Based on a character he had met while working in Mexico on an oil tanker, the big redheaded private eye was one of the most popular detectives of the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, with more than sixty novels, numerous short stories and novelettes, a magazine named for him, a radio series (starring Jeff Chandler), a television series (starring Richard Denning), and a dozen movies in the 1940s, the first seven of which starred Lloyd Nolan, while the final five saw Hugh Beaumont portraying a tough but humorous Shayne. One Shayne vehicle, Time to Kill (1942), was based on a Raymond Chandler novel, The High Window, with Philip Marlowe displaced by Shayne.
“A Taste for Cognac” was published in the November 1944 issue.
“You’re horning in on things that don’t concern you,” the voice over the phone cautioned Mike Shayne. An unnecessary and futile warning, since the red-haired private shamus was always concerned with murder and lovely maidens in distress — particularly when his experienced nostrils sniffed a case of rare pre-war Monnet cognac as the payoff!
Chapter One
Monnet ’26
Michael Shayne hesitated inside the swinging doors, looked down the row of men at the bar and then strolled past the wooden booths lining the wall, glancing in each one as he went by.
Timothy Rourke wasn’t at the bar and he wasn’t in any of the booths. Shayne frowned and turned impatiently toward the swinging doors.
A voice called, “Mr. Shayne?” when he reached the third booth from the end.
He stopped and looked down at the girl alone in the booth. She was about twenty, smartly dressed, with coppery hair parted in the middle and lying in smooth waves on either side of her head. She didn’t wear any make-up and her small face had a pinched look. Her eyes were brown and shone with alert intelligence. Her left hand clasped a glass half-filled with dead beer as she smiled at Shayne.
The Miami detective took off his hat and stood flat-footed looking down at her. Lights above the bar behind him cast shadows on his gaunt cheeks. He lifted his left eyebrow and asked: “Do I know you?”
“You’re going to.” The girl tilted her head sideways and looked wistful. “I’ll buy a drink.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Shayne slid into the bench opposite her.
A waiter hurried over and the girl said, “Cognac,” happily, watching Shayne for approval.
The detective said: “Make it into a sidecar, Joe.” The waiter nodded and went away.
“But Tim said cognac was your password,” the girl protested. “That you never drank anything else.”
“Tim?” Shayne arched a bushy red brow.
“Tim Rourke. He thought you might tell me about some of your cases. I do feature stuff for a New York syndicate. Tim couldn’t make it tonight. He’s been promising to introduce me to you, so I came on to meet you here instead. I’m Myrna Hastings.”
Shayne said bitterly: “When you order cognac these days you get lousy grape brandy. California ’44. It’s drinkable mixed into a sidecar. This damned war...”
“It’s a shame your drinking habits have been upset by the war. Tragic, in fact.” Myrna Hastings took a sip of her flat beer and made a little grimace.
Shayne lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on the table between them. Joe brought his sidecar and he watched Myrna take a dollar bill from her purse and lay it on the table. Shayne lifted the slender cocktail glass to his lips and said: “Thanks.” He drank half of the mixture and his gray eyes became speculative. Holding it close to his nose, he inhaled deeply and a frown rumpled his forehead.
Joe was standing at the table when Shayne drained his glass. “I’ve changed my mind, Joe. Bring me a straight cognac — a double shot in a beer glass.”
Joe grinned slyly and went away.
Sixty cents in change from Myrna’s dollar bill lay on the table. She poked at the silver and asked dubiously: “Will that be enough for a double shot?”
“It’ll be eighty cents,” Shayne replied.
She smiled and took a quarter from her purse. “Tim says you’ve always avoided publicity, but it’ll be a wonderful break for me if I can write up a few of your best cases.”