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.
Will Gentry strode past him to the center table and stopped to look down on the bottle and two glasses suspiciously. He went to the bedroom door and opened it, stepped inside and turned on the light, then looked in the bathroom. Shayne grinned as Gentry doggedly opened the kitchen door and turned on that light.
The chief came back, shrugged his heavy shoulders and sat down heavily across the table from Shayne. “Where is she, Mike?”
“Who?”
“The Hastings girl.”
“I told her she’d better go home and get some sleep. She was quite upset, you know. Seems she was rather fond of the old sea captain — though she’d known him only a couple of days,” he added quickly.
“She isn’t in her room. Hasn’t been in all evening.”
“How,” asked Shayne, “did you know where to look?”
“I called Tim Rourke. He told me she was stopping at the Crestwood, but she’s not in.”
Shayne said: “You know how these New York dames are. Why come to me?”
“I hoped I’d find her here,” Gentry admitted, “knowing how New York dames are, and knowing you.”
Shayne said: “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Mr. Guildford said: “May I?” He cleared his throat and looked at Gentry.
The chief nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Knowing your reputation, Mr. Shayne,” Guildford said flatly, “I suspect you withheld certain information tonight.”
Shayne said: “That’s illegal. Concealing murder evidence.”
“To hell with that stuff,” Gentry put in impatiently. “What did you and Miss Hastings find before we got there?”
“You know I wouldn’t hold out on you, Will. Unless there were something in it for me. And who could possibly profit by the death of a poor old man like that? He looked to me as though he’d gone hungry for weeks.”
“That’s true,” said Guildford helplessly. “I happen to know he was in dire straits. Our appointment tonight was to discuss a payment long overdue on his mortgaged house.”
“But the poor guy was obviously tortured,” Gentry broke in. “Death resulted from shock due to his poor physical condition. Torture generally means extortion.”
“Which makes us wonder if he harbored some secret worth money to someone,” Guildford explained. “We found none of his private papers but we did find evidence that the house had been burgled.”
“So you think I did it?” Shayne fumed.
“Wait a minute, Mike,” Gentry soothed him. “You see, we found that the bed had been pulled back and there was a sort of hiding place exposed. Mr. Guildford suggested you might have discovered the cache and taken the captain’s papers away to examine privately.”
Shayne snarled: “The hell he did! What’s his interest in it?”
“As Captain Samuels’ attorney and now his executor, I have a natural interest in the affair,” Guildford snapped.
“Come off it, Mike,” Gentry said wearily. “If you’ll tell me what you were doing there I won’t be so sure you’re holding out.”
“I told you. Miss Hastings did.”
“That doesn’t wash, Mike. Rourke told me she didn’t hit town till this afternoon. How could she have met Samuels and learned about the shipwreck story?”
“Ask her?”
“I can’t find her. I’m asking you. Did you get any stuff from the bedroom?”
“I wasn’t in the bedroom.”
“But Miss Hastings was,” Guildford reminded him triumphantly. “And I suggest she found his papers and looked through them while we were in the other room with you and the body. And I further suggest that was how she learned about the shipwreck and her agile mind framed the excuse she gave us for your presence there.”
Shayne stood up and balled his bony hands into fists. “I suggest that you get out of that chair so I can knock you back into it.”
“Lay off, Mike. You’ve got to admit it’s good reasoning.”
Shayne swung on Gentry angrily. “I don’t admit anything. Is a two-bit shyster running your department now?”
Guildford said: “I resent that, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne laughed harshly. “You resent it?”
Gentry said doggedly: “I’m running my department but I don’t mind listening to advice. Are you willing to swear you and Miss Hastings just dropped in on the dead man by accident?”
Shayne said: “Put me on the witness stand if I’m going to be cross-questioned.”
Gentry compressed his lips. He started to say something, then tightened his lips and got up. He and Guildford went out.
Shayne stood by the table until the door closed behind them. Then he strode to the telephone and asked for the Crestwood Hotel.
He frowned across the room and tugged at his left earlobe while he waited. When the hotel answered, he asked for Miss Myrna Hastings. Without hesitation, the clerk said: “Miss Hastings is not in.”
“How the hell do you know she isn’t?” Shayne growled. “You haven’t rung her room.”
“But I saw her go out just a moment ago, sir,” the clerk insisted.
Shayne told him: “You must be mistaken. I happen to know she just went to her room.”
“That’s quite true, sir. She came in and got her key not more than five minutes ago, but she came downstairs almost immediately with two gentlemen, and went out with them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive, sir. I saw them cross the lobby from the elevator to the front door.”
“Wait a minute,” barked Shayne. “Did she go with them willingly?”
“Why, I certainly presumed so. She had her arms linked in theirs and I didn’t notice anything wrong.”
“Can you describe them?”
“No. I’m afraid I didn’t notice—”
“Was one of them short and the other one tall?”
“Why, now that you mention it, I think so. Is something wrong? Do you think—”
Shayne hung up, went into his bedroom and got a short-barreled .38, which he dropped in his coat pocket. Then he went into the kitchen and tried the back door. Myrna had locked it behind her when she slipped out.
He turned out the kitchen light and strode across the living room, crammed his hat down on his bristly red hair and went out.
Ten minutes later Shayne parked in front of Henry Renaldo’s tavern. He shouldered his way through the swinging doors and found half a dozen late tipplers still leaning on the bar. Joe was in the back with a mop bucket, turning chairs up over the tables, and the paunchy bartender was still on duty in front.
Shayne went up to the bar and said: “Give me a shot of cognac, Monnet.”
The bartender shook his head. “We got grape brandy—”
Shayne said: “Monterrey will do.”
The bartender set a bottle and glass in front of the detective, keeping his eyes secretively low-lidded. Shayne poured a drink and lifted it to his nose. He shook his head angrily and said: “This stuff is grape brandy.”
“Sure. Says so right on the bottle.” The bartender’s tone was placating.
Shayne shoved the glass away from him. “I’ll have a talk with Henry.”
“The boss ain’t in,” the bartender told him hastily.
“How about his two ginzos?”
“I dunno.”
Shayne turned and went along the bar to the back. Joe pulled the mop bucket out of his way and turned his head to stare wonderingly at the set look on Shayne’s face.
He knocked on the door of Renaldo’s office and then tried the door. It opened into darkness. He found the light switch and stood on the threshold looking about the empty office. He strode to the rear door through which the two gunsels had entered earlier, and found it barred on the inside. It opened out directly onto the alley.