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.
The waiter brought a beer glass with two ounces of amber fluid in the bottom, took Myrna Hastings’ eighty-five cents, and went away.
Shayne lifted the beer glass to his nose, closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the bouquet, then began to warm the glass with his hands.
“Tim thinks you should let yourself in on some publicity,” the girl continued. “He thinks it’s a shame you don’t ever take the credit for solving so many tough cases.”
Shayne looked at her for an instant, then slowly emptied his glass and set it down. He picked up his cigarettes and hat and said: “Thanks for the drinks. I never give out any stories. Tim Rourke knows that.”
He got up and strode to the rear end of the bar. Joe sidled down to him and Shayne said: “I could use another shot of that stuff. And I’ll pour my own.”
Joe got a clean beer glass and set a tall bottle on the bar before Shayne. He glanced past the detective at the girl sitting alone in the booth, but didn’t say anything.
The label on the bottle read, MONTERREY GRAPE BRANDY — Guaranteed 14 months old.
Shayne pulled out the cork and passed the open neck of the bottle back and forth under his nose. He asked Joe: “Got any more of this same brand?”
“Jeez, I dunno. I’ll see, Mr. Shayne.” He went away and returned presently with a sealed bottle bearing the same label.
Shayne broke the seal and pulled the cork. He grimaced as the smell of raw grape brandy assailed his nostrils. He said angrily: “This isn’t the same stuff.”
“Says so right on the bottle,” Joe argued, and pointed to the label.
“I don’t give a damn what the label says,” Shayne growled. He reached for the first bottle and poured a drink into the empty beer mug. Keeping a firm grip on the bottle with his left hand he drank from the mug, rolling the liquor around his tongue. His gray eyes shone with dreamy contentment as he lingeringly swallowed the brandy, while a frown of curiosity and confusion formed between them.
“Any more of the bar bottles already opened?” he asked Joe.
“I don’t think so. We don’t open ’em but one at a time nowadays. I’ll ask the barkeep.” Plainly mystified by Shayne’s request, Joe went to the front of the bar and held a whispered conference with a bald-headed man wearing a dirty apron that bulged over a pot-belly.
The bartender glanced back at Shayne, waddled toward him. He looked at the two bottles, and asked: “ ’Sa trouble here?”
Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “No trouble. Your bar bottle hasn’t got the same stuff that’s in the sealed one.”
The hulking man looked troubled. “You know how ’tis these days. A label don’t mean nothin’ no more. We’re lucky to stay open at all.”
Shayne said: “I know it’s tough trying to keep a supply.”
“You’re private, huh? Ain’t I seen you ’round?”
Shayne said: “I’m private. This hasn’t anything to do with the law.”
The bartender regarded Shayne for a moment with murky, bulging eyes. “If you got a kick about the drink, it’ll be on the house,” he decided magnanimously.
“I’m not kicking,” Shayne told him earnestly.
“I’d like to buy what’s left in this bottle.” He indicated the partially empty one which he had moved out of the bartender’s reach.
The man shook his head slowly. “No can do. Our license says we gotta sell it by the drink.”
Shayne held the bottle up and squinted through it. “There’s maybe twenty ounces left. It’s worth ten bucks to me.”
The big man continued to shake his head. “You can drink it here. Forty cents a shot.”
“Maybe I could make a deal with the boss.”
“Maybe.” He waddled around the end of the bar and preceded Shayne to an unmarked door to the left of the ladies’ room. Shayne saw Myrna Hastings still sitting in the booth watching him.
The bartender rapped lightly on the door, turned the knob and motioned Shayne inside.
Henry Renaldo was seated at a desk facing the doorway. He was a big flabby man with a florid face. He wore a black derby tilted back on his bullet head, and an open gray vest revealed the sleeves and front of a shirt violently striped with reddish purple. He was eating a frayed black cigar that had spilled ashes down the front of his vest.
The bartender stood in the doorway behind Shayne and said heavily: “This shamus is kickin’ about the service, boss. I figured you might wanna handle it.”
Renaldo’s black eyes took in the brandy bottle dangling from Shayne’s fingers, and they became unguarded for a moment. He wet his lips, said, “O.K., Tiny,” and the bartender went out.
Renaldo leaned over the desk to push out his right hand. “Long time no see, Mike.”
Shayne disregarded the proffered hand. “I didn’t know you were in this racket, Renaldo.”
“Sure. I went legal when prohibition went out.”
Shayne moved forward, set the bottle down with a little thump and said mildly: “This is a new angle on me.”
“How’s that?”
“Pre-war cognac under a cheap domestic label. Monnet, isn’t it?”
“You must be nuts,” Renaldo ejaculated.
“Either you or me,” Shayne agreed. “Forty cents a throw when it’d easily bring a dollar a slug in the original bottle.”
Henry Renaldo was beginning to breathe hard. “What’s it to you, Shayne? Stooging for the Feds?”
Shayne shook his head. He lifted the bottle to his lips, let cognac gurgle down his throat and murmured reverently: “Monnet, Vintage of ’26.”
Henry Renaldo started and fear showed in his eyes. “How’d you...” He paused, taking the frayed cigar carefully from his lips. “Who sent you here?”
“I followed my nose.”
Renaldo shook his head. He said huskily: “I don’t know how you got onto it, but why jump me?” His voice rose passionately. “If I pass it out for cheap stuff, is that a crime?”
Shayne said: “You could make more selling it by the bottle to a guy like me.”
Renaldo spread out his hands. “I gotta stay in business. I gotta have something to sell over the bar. If I can hang on till after the war...”
Comprehension showed on Shayne’s face. “That’s why you’re refilling legal bottles.”
“What other out is there?” Renaldo demanded. “Government inspectors checking my stock.”
“All right, but let me in on it,” Shayne urged. “A case or two for my private stock...”
“I only got a few bottles.”
“But you know where there’s more.”
“Make your own deal,” Renaldo said sullenly.
“Sure. All I want is the tip-off.”
“Who sent you to me?”
“No one,” Shayne insisted. “I dropped in for a drink. And got slugged with Monnet when I ordered cheap brandy.”
“Nuts,” sneered Renaldo. “You couldn’t pull the year on that vintage stuff. I don’t know what the gimmick is...”
A rear door opened and two men came in hastily. They stopped in their tracks and stared at the detective seated on one corner of Renaldo’s desk. One of them was short and squarish, with a swart face and a whiskered mole on his chin. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a canary-yellow sweater that was tight over bulging muscles.
His companion was tall and lean, with a pallid face and the humid eyes of a cokie. He was hatless and wore a tightly belted suit. He thinned his lips against sharp teeth and tilted his head to study Shayne.
Renaldo snarled: “You took long enough. How’d you make out, Blackie?”
“It wasn’t no soap, boss. He ain’t talkin’.”
“Hell, you followed him out of here.”
“Sure we did, boss,” Blackie said earnestly. “Just like you said. To a little shack on the beach on Eighteenth. But he had company when he got there. There was this car parked in front, see? So Lennie an’ me waited. Half an hour, maybe. Then a guy come out an’ drove away, an’ we goes in. But we’re too late. He’s croaked.”