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.
“So—” He leered. “A tip was what took you to Sorenson’s place, huh? I knew you were lying and I checked you. They told us at your office you’d come to the Carteret for a date with Norma.” His green eyes narrowed scornfully and he turned to Logan. “Glad you picked him up.”
Casey took a deep breath and anger boiled up inside him.
“He didn’t pick me up,” he grunted. “I called him.”
“Sol Ambrose, the shyster, was knocked off about a half hour ago,” Logan said quietly.
Haley gaped. Judson, a tall, long-jawed veteran, muffled a curse and sucked in his lips. The man in the chair gave no outward reaction at all, but Norma Patten gasped audibly and color drained from her cheeks, leaving them chalky except for the rouge spots.
“Tell them, Flash,” Logan said crisply.
Casey told his story, told it with a smoldering stubbornness when he related how the ten thousand had been taken from his pocket. Norma Patten’s eyes were sharp and accusing when he began to talk, and he avoided them until he finished; then he walked over to her and said thickly:
“I’m sorry, Norma. I guess I should have come back here from Sorenson’s. But I thought I had a chance with Ambrose.”
His voice got thready as memory recalled that moment when he felt the money leave his pocket.
“I did have a chance,” he added sullenly. “Ambrose would’ve talked. That’s why the killer plugged him when he did. He would’ve spilled something and—”
“It doesn’t matter, Flash,” Norma Patten said wearily. “Not now.” She tried to smile, failed and dropped her eyes to the folded hands in her lap.
Judson rubbed his chin thoughtfully, pulling his lower jaw to one side. Haley bobbed his head and his eyes were gloating.
“What time did Ambrose get it?” he asked.
“About ten-thirty, I guess,” Casey said glumly.
“And he took the ten grand, huh? Sure you didn’t misplace it?”
Casey’s eyes smoldered deep and hot beneath narrowed brows, but he said nothing. Haley turned to the man on the chair.
“Where were you at ten-thirty, Patten?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Patten said levelly.
“There’s ways of makin’ guys like you remember,” Haley threatened.
“And there’s ways of putting smart cops in their places.”
“Say, listen, you—” Haley began angrily.
“Pipe down!” Judson snapped. He glanced irritably at Haley and turned back to Patten. There was a worried look on his competent face and he seemed to be choosing his approach.
Casey thought he understood this uncertainty. Patten carried a lot of weight; even here in the East. Sitting there in the chair, apparently unconcerned about his position, he was a slender, gray man with a hard, tight mouth above an angular jaw. His suit was gray, so were his eyes; gray and icy hard. His straight hair and clipped mustache were gray-black.
To Casey it seemed that this man had something in common with his wife; they gave the impression that they got what they wanted out of life. And about Patten there was a quiet confidence, a surface covering for an inner hardness, and an air of one who was accustomed to success and could not be bluffed or pushed around.
Then Casey remembered something else. The hand that had taken the ten thousand dollars — slender, long fingered with a gray sleeve. Suspicion darkened his eyes. Patten had that kind of a hand and sleeve and — so had Les Boyden. The long, supple fingers of a piano player. The color of his suit Casey could not remember.
“Never mind this Ambrose thing now,” Judson said finally. “What I’m interested in is Sorenson. You’ve got no alibi, Patten. Or if you have, you won’t tell it. And that hand” — Judson reached down quickly and lifted Patten’s right hand. From where he stood Casey could see that the knuckles were skinned. Patten smiled and his brows climbed. “What about it?” he asked easily.
“You knew about those pictures,” Judson said. “And you went down to Sorenson’s place to get them. You had a fight with him. Before you got through you plugged him.”
“No!” Norma Patten cried. “He couldn’t have — he didn’t know where to go. I didn’t tell him and—”
“He saw the pictures, didn’t he?” Judson cut in. “He gave you the ten thousand?”
“Yes, but he couldn’t know—”
“Why couldn’t he?” Judson picked one of the photographs from a table, held it up to the light, tossed it back with a shrug. “Sorenson had a small stamp that perforated his pictures. He probably made these some time ago, and stamped them for identification. There’s an S in each picture. If anybody was interested it wouldn’t be hard to find out who S is in the photo studio line.”
Norma Patten’s eyes were wide and she gave her husband a quick enigmatic glance before she looked away.
“You’ve got your wires crossed, Captain,” Patten said. “Mrs. Patten and myself both made mistakes on this thing. For obvious reasons I wanted those negatives and release.” He gave his wife a cold, hard stare and Casey, seeing it, wondered how much he meant by it. “And I gave her the money, foolishly, because I thought I could get to the contact man when he came back. What I should have done was have her tell this guy that he’d have to do business with me.”
He gave Judson a direct look from under his brows. “I can assure you if I had known about the details I wouldn’t have bothered with the photographer; I’d have gone right to this Ambrose lad and—”
“Maybe you did,” Haley cut in.
Judson turned with a grunt of irritation. Haley shrugged and looked away. Patten continued evenly.
“Her mistake was to call this photographer in.” He eyed Casey skeptically and sucked on his lips.
“Because it was my fault in the first place,” Norma Patten said sharply, “and I thought maybe I could save you fifteen thousand.”
“The point is,” Patten added, “that we’re out ten thousand — apparently — and haven’t anything to show for it.” He stood up, tall and straight and impressive in his unruffled manner. “Now if that fact, or anything else you have, leads you to believe that I killed Sorenson, or Ambrose for that matter, go ahead and arrest me. If not—”
He shrugged, waited a moment, his manner indicating that he considered the interview at an end.
“We’re not ready for an arrest — yet,” Judson said irritably. “But maybe we will be when we get through checking up on you.”
“Any time you say, Captain. Just let me know and I’ll be glad to come down to Headquarters — with a lawyer.”
VI
An assignment that took Casey out of town to cover a kidnapping trial kept him busy most of the following day, and it was late afternoon before he returned to the city. A half hour later he trudged down the third-floor corridor at Police Headquarters to Logan’s office and went in without knocking.
Logan was standing with his back to the door, staring out the lone window at the court below. He turned slowly, scowled, then returned to his window gazing without a word.
Casey put down his camera and plate-case and dropped wearily into a straight-backed chair beside the desk. His mood was grouchy and irritable. The work of the day had yielded but one routine picture, and at no time had he been able to shake off the blanket of resentment that had wrapped around him since last night.
His worry was no longer about Norma Patten or her husband, or who had killed Sorenson and Ambrose. Now that the matter was no secret it was, as far as he was concerned, a strictly police case — except for the ten thousand. That, no matter how he looked at it, seemed to be his fault, and he could not forget it.