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: “I want him in shape to throw lead fast. Those boys who’ll be waiting for me may not waste much time getting acquainted.” He lit a cigarette and slouched back in the seat.
Lennie came trotting back in about five minutes. His pinched face was alive and eager, and his eyes glowed like hot coals. He slid in beside Blackie and breathed exultantly: “Le’s get goin’. Jeez, is my trigger finger itchin’!”
Shayne drove swiftly south on Flagler past Coral Gables and on to the village of South Miami, then along the Key West highway through the rich truck-farming section with its acres of tomatoes and bean-fields stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see.
By the time they reached the sleepy village of Homestead with its quiet, tree-shadowed streets and its air of serene dignity, he began to feel as though he were the one who had sniffed a bindle instead of Lennie. There was a driving, demanding tension within him. It was always this way when he played a hunch through to the finish. He had planned the best he could and it was up to the gods now. He couldn’t turn back. He didn’t want to, of course. The approach of personal danger keyed him up to a high pitch, and he exulted in the gamble he was taking. Things like this were what made life worth living to Michael Shayne.
He drove decorously through Homestead and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. He stopped at a filling station on the outskirts of the village where the first dirt road turned off the paved highway to the left. He told Blackie and Lennie, “I’ll be just a minute,” and swung out of the car to speak to a smiling old man in faded overalls and a wide straw hat.
“Does the bus stop here, Pop?”
“Sometimes it do. Yep. If there’s passengers to get on or off. ’Tain’t a reg’lar stop.”
“How about yesterday? Any passengers stop here?”
“Yestidy? Yep. The old sailor feller got off here to go a-fishin’.” The old man chuckled. “Right nice old feller, but seemed like he was turned around, sort of. Didn’t know how far ’twas to the Keys. Had him a suitcase, too, full of fishin’ tackle, I reckon. Him an’ I made a deal to rent my tin Lizzie for the day and he drove off fishin’ spry as you please. No luck though. Didn’t have nary a fish when he come back.”
Shayne thanked him and went back to his car. That was the last definite link. He didn’t need it, but it was always good to have added confirmation. He wouldn’t have bothered to stop if he hadn’t had a few minutes to spare.
He got in and turned down the dirt road running straight and level between a wasteland covered with tall Australian pines on either side.
“This is it,” he told the boys in the back seat calmly. “Couple of miles to where I’m supposed to meet these birds, but they might be hiding out along the road waiting for me. You’d both better get down in the back where you can’t be seen.”
“We won’t be no good to you that way,” Blackie protested, “if they’re hid out along the road to pick you off.”
“They’ll just pick all three of us off if you guys are in sight, too,” Shayne argued reasonably. “I don’t think they’ll try anything till we get there, and I want them to think I came alone so they’ll be off guard. Get down and stay down until the shooting starts or until I yell or give you some signal. Then come out like a couple of firecrackers.”
The two gunsels got down in the back. Shayne drove along at a moderate pace, watching his speedometer. It was lonely and quiet on this desolate road leading to the coast. There were no habitations, and no other cars on the road. It was a perfect setting for murder.
Chapter Six
Last Round on the House
A narrower and less-used road turned off to the right at the end of exactly two miles. A wooden arrow that had once been painted white pointed west, and dingy black letters said, LODGE.
Shayne turned westward and slowed his car still more as it bumped along the uneven ruts. Sunlight lay hot and white on the narrow lane between tall pines, and the smell of the sea told him he was approaching close to one of the saltwater inlets.
The car panted over a little rise, and he saw the weathered rock walls of John Grossman’s fishing lodge through the pines on the left. It was a low, sprawling structure, and a pair of ruts turned off abruptly to lead up to it.
Two men stepped into the middle of the lane to block his way when he was fifty feet from the building. This was so exactly what Shayne had expected that he cut his motor and braked to an easy stop with the front bumper almost against the men. He leaned out and asked, “This John Grossman’s place?” then opened the door and stepped out quickly to show he was unarmed and to prevent them from coming to the side of the car, where they might look in the back.
One of the men was very tall and thin, with cadaverous features and deep hollows for eye sockets. He wore a beautifully tailored suit of silk pongee with a tan shirt and shoes and a light tan snap-brimmed felt hat. He had his arms folded across his thin chest with his right hand inside the lapel of his unbuttoned coat close to a bulge just below his left shoulder. His face was darkly sun-tanned and he showed white teeth in a saturnine smile as he stood in the middle of the road without moving.
His companion was a head shorter than Slim. He had a broad, pugnacious face with a flat nose spread over a lot of it. He was hatless and coatless, wearing a shirt with loud yellow stripes, with elastic armbands making tucks in the full sleeves. He stood flat-footed with his hand openly gripping the butt of a revolver thrust down behind the waistband of his trousers.
Shayne stood beside the car and surveyed them coolly. He said: “I don’t think we’ve met formally. I’m Shayne.”
Pug said: “Yeah. We know. This here’s Slim.” He jerked the thumb of his left hand toward his tall companion.
Shayne said: “I thought this was a social call. Where’s Grossman?”
“He sent us out to see you were clean before you come in.” Slim’s lips barely moved to utter the words. He sauntered around the front of the car toward Shayne, keeping his hand inside his coat. His deep-set eyes were cold and glittered like polished agate. His head was thrust forward on a long thin neck.
Shayne took two backward steps. He said: “I’m clean. I came out to talk business. This is a hell of a way to greet a guy.”
Pug moved behind Slim. He was obviously the slower-witted and the less dangerous of the pair. He blinked in the bright sunlight and said: “Why don’t we let ’im have it here?”
Slim said: “We do.” His lips began to smile and Shayne knew he was a man who enjoyed watching his victims die.
Shayne pretended he didn’t hear or didn’t understand the byplay between the two killers. They had both moved to the side of the car now, and were circling slowly toward him.
He said: “I brought along some cold beer. It’s here in the back.” He reached for the handle of the rear door and turned it steadily until the latch was free. He flung himself to the ground, jerking the door wide open as he did so.
Slim’s gun flashed in the sunlight at the same instant that fire blazed from the back seat. Slim staggered back and dropped to one knee, steadying his gun to return the fire.
Shayne lay flat on the ground and saw Pug spun around by the impact of a .45 slug in his thick shoulder. He stayed on his feet and his own gun rained bullets into the tonneau.
Slim fired twice before a bullet smashed the saturnine grin back into his mouth. He crumpled slowly forward onto the sunlighted pine needles and lay very still.