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.
“Michael!” Rourke drawled the name disapprovingly. “Such language in a newspaper office. Did he get his littlum face scratched?”
“It’s all your damned fault for sicking that female onto me.”
“My fault? My God, don’t tell me a female did that to you!”
“How well do you know Myrna Hastings?” Shayne demanded.
“Not as well as I’d like to. Or, is she that sort of girl? Maybe I don’t want to—”
Shayne said wearily: “Cut it, Tim. I’m up to my neck in murder and God knows what-all. What do you know about the gal?”
“Not much.” Rourke instantly sobered. “She brought a note from a friend of mine on the Telegram. I took her around and introduced her to a few places this afternoon. She found you at Renaldo’s, huh?”
“She found me all right,” Shayne said grimly.
“What’s doing, Mike? I wondered when Will Gentry called me about her tonight, but—”
“Do you know if she’s known in Miami?”
“I don’t think so. Said it was her first trip.”
“Has anyone else called you for her address, Tim?”
“Only Gentry. Is it a story, Mike?”
Shayne’s gray eyes brooded across the room for a long moment. He and the reporter had been friends for a long time and he had given Rourke a lot of headlines in the past. He indicated the typewriter and asked: “Busy on something?”
“Nothing I can’t give the go-by.”
Shayne said: “I could use some help in your morgue.”
Rourke led the way back to a large filing room guarded by an elderly woman rocking silently while she knitted. “I’m interested in John Grossman,” Shayne told him.
“The bootleg king?” Rourke stopped between a double row of filing cases. “He’s back in town on parole.”
“When did he get back?”
“Three or four days ago. I tried to interview him but he had nothing to say for publication. All he wanted was to go down to his lodge on the Keys and soak up some Florida sunshine.”
Shayne said: “I want to go back to his arrest by the Federals — June 1930.”
“We’ve got a private file on him. It won’t be hard to find it.” Rourke checked a card index and went to a file at the back of the room. He brought back a bulging manila envelope and emptied it out in front of Shayne. He started pawing through it, muttering: “Here’s the trial. It was a honey. With Leland and Parker representing him and not missing a legal trick. And here you are — June 17, 1930. Federal agents nabbed him at Homestead on his way in from the lodge.” He spread out a large clipping.
“I remember it now.” He chuckled. “They had the income tax case all set but had been holding off, hoping they could hang a real charge on him. They thought he used his lodge to receive contraband shipments from Cuba and they raided it several times but never found any evidence. This time they thought they had him for sure, with a red-hot tip that he was expecting a boatload of French stuff, and they kept a revenue cutter patrolling that section of coastline day and night for a week. Here’s the story on that.” He turned back to a clipping dated June 16, captioned, CUTTER SINKS BOOTLEG CARGO.
“I covered that story. I rode the cutter three nights and nothing happened, and after I was pulled off, on the night of the 15th, they encountered a motor craft creeping along without lights just off the inlet leading to Grossman’s lodge. They tried to make a run for the open sea, and bingo! The revenue boat cut loose with everything she had. There was a heavy sea running, the aftermath of a hurricane that blew hell out of things the day before, and they never found a trace of the boat, cargo or crew. After that fiasco they gave up and decided they might as well take Grossman on the income tax charge.”
“Wait a minute,” Shayne said. “How bad was that hurricane?”
“Plenty bad. That’s really the reason I missed the fun. The cutter had to run for anchorage on the 13th, and she couldn’t put out again until the 15th on account of the storm.”
“Then that strip of coast wasn’t being patrolled the two nights before the sinking,” Shayne mused.
“Nope. Except by the elements.”
“Then that rum-runner might have been slipping out after discharging cargo, instead of being headed in.”
Rourke frowned at the red-headed detective. “If the captain was crazy enough to try and hit that inlet while the hurricane was blowing everything to hell.”
Shayne said gravely: “I think I know the captain who was crazy enough to do just that — and succeeded.”
Rourke studied him quizzically. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
Shayne nodded. “It adds up. Tim, I’m willing to bet there was a boatload of 1926 Monnet unloaded at Grossman’s lodge while the hurricane was raging. And it’s still there someplace. Grossman was arrested on the 17th, before he had a chance to get rid of any of it, and he left it there while he was doing time in Atlanta.”
Timothy Rourke whistled shrilly. “It’d be worth as much now as it was during prohibition.”
“More, with the country full of people earning more money than ever before in their lives.”
“If your hunch is right...”
“It has to be right. How long do you think a man could stay alive floating around the ocean in a life-preserver?”
“Couple of days at the most.”
“That’s my hunch, too. From the 15th to the 17th might not be impossible. But the hurricane struck on the 13th and the 14th. Take a look at your front page for June 17 and you’ll see what I mean.”
Rourke hurriedly brought out the News for June 17. On the front page, next to the story of Grossman’s arrest, was the story of the sensational rescue of Captain Samuels, which Shayne had already read in his apartment. Rourke put his finger on the picture and exclaimed: “I remember that now. I interviewed the captain and thought it miraculous he had stayed alive that long. Captain Thomas Anthony Samuels. Why, damn it, Mike, he’s the old coot who was found murdered tonight.”
Shayne nodded soberly. “After selling a case of Monnet for a hundred bucks earlier in the evening.”
“He was the only survivor of his ship,” Rourke recalled excitedly. “Then he and Grossman must have been the only ones who knew the stuff was out there.”
“And now Grossman is the only one left,” Shayne said flatly. “Keep this stuff under your hat, Tim. When it’s ready to break it’ll be your baby.” He turned and hurried out.
Chapter Five
Murder Setting
Shayne didn’t reach his apartment again until after three. He took a nightcap and went to bed, fell immediately into deep and dreamless sleep.
The ringing of his telephone awakened him. He started to yawn and pain clawed at his facial muscles. He got into a bathrobe and lurched to the telephone. It was a little after eight o’clock.
He lifted the receiver and said: “Shayne.”
A thick voice replied: “This is John Grossman.”
Shayne said: “I expected you to call sooner.”
There was a brief silence as though his caller were taken aback by his reply. Then: “Well, I’m calling you now.”
Shayne said: “That’s quite evident.”
“You’re horning in on things that don’t concern you.”
“Cognac always concerns me.”
“I’m wondering how much you found out from the captain before he died last night,” Grossman went on.
Shayne said: “Nuts. You killed him and you know exactly how much talking he didn’t do.”
“You can’t prove I was near his place last night,” he was told gruffly.
“I think I can. If you just called up to play ring-around-the-rosy, we’re both wasting our time.”