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.
Shayne said, “Dr. Livingston?” and Gentry snorted angrily. He was a big man with heavy features and a solid, forthright manner. He was an old friend of Shayne’s and he said scathingly: “I thought I smelled something.”
Shayne stepped aside and nodded toward the body on the floor. “He hasn’t been dead long enough to stink.”
Gentry strode forward and scowled down at the body. A tall, white-haired man hurried in behind the chief. He wore an immaculate white linen suit and his features were sharp and clean. He stopped at the sight of the body and said: “Oh my God, is he—”
Gentry grunted: “Yeah.” He knelt by the dead man and asked Shayne in a tone of casual interest: “Why’d you pull out his fingernails?”
The tall man exclaimed in a choked voice: “Good heavens! Has he been tortured?”
“Who is he?” Shayne asked sharply.
“It’s Captain Samuels,” the white-haired man said. “I knew something must have happened to him, Chief, when he wasn’t here to keep his appointment with me. If only I’d called you earlier...”
“What are you doing here?” Gentry’s eyes bored into Shayne’s.
“I was driving by and saw the lights. I don’t know.” Shayne shrugged. “As you said, something just seemed to smell wrong. I stopped to take a look and that’s what I found.”
“I suppose you can prove all that?” scoffed Gentry.
“Can you disprove it?”
“Maybe not, but you’re holding out plenty. Damn it, Mike, this is murder. What do you know about it?”
“Nothing. I’ve told you how I drove by—”
Will Gentry raised his voice to calclass="underline" “Jones. You and Rafferty bring in the cuffs.”
A voice answered from the front door and feet tramped down the hall. At the same time there was the light click of heels outside and Myrna Hastings came in breathlessly from the rear end of the hall. “You don’t need to cover up for me, Mike,” she cried out. “Go ahead and tell them I asked you to stop here. Oh! It’s Chief Gentry, isn’t it?”
Gentry muttered: “I don’t think—”
“Don’t you remember me?” Myrna laughed. “Timothy Rourke introduced me to you in your office today. I do feature stuff for a New York syndicate. You see, I’m to blame for Mike stopping here tonight. I’d heard about Captain Samuels, about his shipwreck and all years ago, and I thought he might be material for an article. So I asked Mike to stop for a minute tonight and — well, that’s how it was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Gentry growled at Shayne.
“I think he had some idea of protecting me,” Myrna laughed merrily. “You see, I didn’t tell him why I wanted to stop, and then when he found the dead man, well, I guess maybe Mike thought I knew something about it. Wasn’t that it, darling?” She turned to Shayne.
“Something like that,” he said stiffly.
“All right, Jones,” Gentry said to one of the two dicks hovering in the doorway. “Put your bracelets away and go over the house.”
“Now that you’ve got me cleared up,” Shayne suggested, “why not tell me about it?”
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” Gentry admitted. “Mr. Guildford called a while ago and asked me to come out here with him. Seems he had a hunch something had happened to Captain Samuels.”
“I felt sure of it after I had time to think things over,” the white-haired man said. “I had a definite appointment here with the captain for nine tonight and I waited almost half an hour for him.”
Shayne said: “It’s almost eleven now. Why did you wait so long before calling the police?”
“I had a flat tire just as I reached the boulevard driving away,” Guildford explained. “I had it changed at the filling station there and was delayed. I called upon reaching home.”
Shayne said: “Were the lights burning while you waited?”
“No. I’m quite sure they weren’t. The house was dark and apparently empty.”
“What was your appointment for?” Shayne pressed him.
Guildford hesitated. He glanced at Will Gentry. “I don’t mind answering official questions, but what is this man’s connection with the case? And the young lady?”
“None,” Gentry said. “You can beat it, Mike, unless you feel like telling the truth.”
“But we have told the truth,” Myrna asserted, her eyes wide and childlike. “We were just—”
Shayne took her arm tightly. He said, “Come on,” and led her out the door.
Neither of them said anything until they were in Shayne’s car headed back for the boulevard. Then Myrna leaned her head against his shoulder and asked in a small voice: “Are you terribly angry at me, Mike?”
“How did you get in that house?”
“You brought me. I hid in the trunk compartment of your car. Then I slipped in the house while you were searching the body. I was in the rear bedroom all the time, and when I heard you getting the third degree I knew you didn’t want to tell the truth and I thought I’d better stick my oar in. Didn’t I do all right?”
“How did you know the captain’s name, about him being shipwrecked?”
Myrna chuckled. “I found an old log-book by his bed. I had my flashlight and there was a clipping in the book.” She patted a large suede handbag in her lap. “I’ve got the book in here. It made a pretty good story if I did think of it on the spur of the moment — the one I told Inspector Gentry, I mean,” she amended, and chuckled again.
“Why did you hide in the back of my car?” Shayne asked angrily.
“Because you were trying to get rid of me and I wanted to see the famous Shayne in action,” she said. “But I must say you didn’t do much detecting out there.”
Shayne braked suddenly in front of an apartment building on the riverfront.
“I live here,” he told her, and went toward a side entrance.
Myrna Hastings went with him. She said hopefully: “I’m dying to taste whatever is in that bottle you’ve got in your coat pocket.”
She waited quietly behind Shayne in the hallway while he unlocked his apartment door. He went inside and switched on the lights and she followed him into a square living room with windows on the east side. There was a studio couch along one wall, and a door on the right opened into a kitchenette. Another door on the left led into the bath and bedroom.
Shayne tossed his hat on a wall hook and went into the kitchen without a word or glance for Myrna.
He soon came back from the kitchen with two four-ounce wine glasses and two tumblers filled with ice water. He walked past her, ranged the four glasses in a row on the table, and filled the wine glasses nearly to the brim with cognac. He pushed one of the tumblers toward Myrna, and set the smaller glass within easy reach of her hand, then pulled another chair to the table and sat down half-facing her.
It was very quiet in the apartment, very restful. Shayne sighed when he drained the last drop from his glass of Monnet. He frowned at the portion remaining in Myrna’s glass. “Don’t you appreciate good liquor?”
She smiled and told him: “It’s so good I’m making it last.”
Shane lit a cigarette and spun the match away into a corner, then got the purloined clipping and bus ticket stub from his pocket. He laid the stub on the table and read the short clipping aloud. It was an AP dispatch from Atlanta, Georgia.
It stated that John Grossman, suspected prohibition-era racketeer, sentenced to federal prison in 1930 on income tax charges from Miami, Florida, had been released that day on parole. Grossman announced his intention to take a long vacation at his fishing lodge on the Keys.
When Shayne finished reading the clipping aloud, he placed it beside the ticket stub and told Myrna: “Those two items were the only things I found in the dead man’s pockets.”