The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
“It’s not O.K. with me,” said Vargas. “Just tell us a little more about this matter.”
“She was no good,” Gus said miserably. “She was never no good. Her name ain’t Patricia Fitzgerald. It’s Paula Findley. Her folks died, and I tried to raise her up right, but she wouldn’t never do nothing I said, and then she run away with some fella and — and he didn’t even marry her I don’t think.”
“What fella?” Vargas asked sharply.
Gus shook his head wearily. “I dunno. I never seen him. She said, when she come back, that he’d left her a long time ago. She said she was lookin’ for the fella and that when she found him she was gonna get even with him and make herself a lotta money doin’ it.”
“What was his name?” Vargas inquired.
“I dunno, sir. Seems like he had a lot of names, from what she said. Seems like he wasn’t no good, either.”
“That’s the boy we want,” said Farnham.
Vargas nodded absently. “Yeah. Now listen, Findley—”
“You listen,” Mrs. Tibbet invited. “Mr. Findley is an old man, and he’s sick, and he’s had a great shock. You’re not going to ask him any more questions now. Not one more question, do you understand that? I’m going to take him right down to my apartment and give him a nice hot cup of tea, and I don’t want to see any drunken, dirty, foul-mouthed detectives blundering round there while I’m doing it. You hear me, you two?”
“Oh yes, indeed,” said Vargas.
Chapter Four
Garbage Collection
Bly was ten minutes late to work the next morning, and J. S. Crozier was waiting for him, standing in the open door of his private office with his sallow face set in gleefully vindictive lines.
“Well, Bly, I’m glad to know that you feel you are so necessary here that you can afford to disregard the rules I’ve been at some pains to impress on your mind.”
“I’m sorry,” Bly said tightly. “I was delayed...”
The bulging mat of black hair that made up J. S. Crozier’s toupee had slipped askew over one ear, and he poked at it impatiently. “Yes, yes. I noticed, however, that you entered the building some fifteen minutes ago. I suppose your delay, as you so nicely term it, had something to do with the little lady who works as a typist in the office downstairs.”
“I spoke to her on my way up,” Bly admitted.
“No doubt, no doubt. I notice that you spend quite a little time speaking to her lately. Are you contemplating matrimony, Bly?”
“I think that’s my affair — and hers,” said Bly.
J. S. Crozier raised his eyebrows elaborately. “And mine, Bly, if you are talking to her when you are presumably working for me. Or are you?”
“Yes,” said Bly.
“Thank you for telling me. I was wondering. If I may presume to advise you, Bly, I would say that it would be best for you to secure a position of a little more permanence before you take any rash steps. Pm not at all satisfied with your work, Bly. You’re inclined to dawdle and find any excuse to keep from working. Aren’t you, Bly?”
“I try to do my best,” Bly answered.
“Yes,” said J. S. Crozier. “Try. A good word. It is misfits and idlers like you who fill our relief rolls and burden the taxpayers. You haven’t got any get-up-and-go about you, Bly. You’ll never amount to anything. I feel sorry for your pretty friend downstairs if she marries you. I suppose you were so engrossed in her last night that you forgot all about the slight matter of the money Gus Findley owes me?”
Bly had to swallow and then swallow again before he could steady his voice. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk to him about it. There was a murder at my apartment house last night and—”
“A murder!” said J. S. Crozier. “Now what kind of a fantastic fairy tale is this? I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that someone murdered Gus Findley!”
“I didn’t say so,” Bly said, keeping a tight grip on his temper. “But the police were questioning him about the murdered girl and the other tenants—”
“I see,” said J. S. Crozier. “Very interesting. Do you suppose you might possibly, by the exercise of some great ingenuity, get to see him tonight? I’m growing impatient with you and your excuses, Bly.”
“I’ll see him tonight.”
“You’d better,” said J. S. Crozier grimly. “Now I have a call for you to make, Bly. The party’s name is Perkins. He lives in the Marigold Apartments on Halley. Judging from that hovel that you live in, you wouldn’t know, but the Marigold is an expensive residence. This party called and wants to borrow five hundred dollars with his furniture as security. The furniture should be worth three or four times that. You go over and check up on it. Tell Perkins, if you find things satisfactory, that he can take a taxi and come back here with you, and I’ll have the money for him.”
“All right,” said Bly.
J. S. Crozier pointed a blunt forefinger. “Don’t make any mistake about the value of that furniture, Bly. And check up on the title. Do you understand? Have I made it perfectly clear to your limited intelligence, or do you want me to write it down?”
“I understand,” said Bly thickly.
“All right. And don’t you take a taxi, getting there. You take a street-car. I’ve noticed these delusions of grandeur in you. You seem to think you’re too fine and sensitive a person to hold such a menial position as this, but just remember that if you had any brains you’d have a better one. Get out, Bly. And don’t stall around with your lady friend on the second floor as you go, either.”
The Marigold Apartments was an immense terraced gray-stone building that filled a. whole block. Even without J. S. Crozier’s word for it, Bly would have been immediately aware that it was an expensive residence. The doorman, after one look at Bly, was superciliously insolent and the glittering chrome-and-black-marble expanse of the lobby made Bly painfully aware of his own shabby clothes and cracked shoes.
Mr. Perkins, it seemed, lived on the fifth floor in a triplex de luxe apartment. The desk clerk — as supercilious as the doorman, but even more expertly insolent — made very sure Bly was expected before he would allow him to go up.
The elevator boy acted as though Bly’s appearance was a personal affront to him. He deliberately stopped the elevator a foot below the floor and let Bly step up, and he stayed there ostentatiously watching until he made sure Bly was going to the apartment where he was expected.
The doorbell of Mr. Perkins’ apartment was a black marble knob. Bly tried pushing it without effect, finally pulled it and heard chimes ring inside on a soft rising scale. The door opened instantly and a voice said: “Won’t you come in, please, Mr. Bly?”
Bly stepped into a long low room with a far wall that was one solid expanse of windows, facing out on a private flagged terrace that looked bright and clean in the sunlight.
“Shut the door, if you please, Mr. Bly.”
Bly pushed the door shut behind him, trying to place the man who was speaking to him. He was a short, pudgy man with an air that was benignly pleasant. He had silver-white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. Suddenly Bly realized he was the same man he had seen in Doc’s Hamburger Shack the night before when he had gone in to order the hamburgers for Patricia Fitzgerald. He realized that and, in the same second, without quite knowing why, he felt a little cold tingle along the back of his neck.
The pudgy man had small pink hands. He put the right one in his coat pocket now and brought it out holding a flat automatic. He was still smiling.
“Sit down in that chair. The one beside the telephone, if you please.”