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.
Bly leaned back in his chair, sighing, and nodded once at Johanssen. “All right. What now?”
Johanssen’s eyes had lost their frosty glint. “This Gus — he is an honest man?”
Bly nodded weakly. “Yes.”
“Tell him to open the sack and the envelope.”
“Gus,” Bly said into the telephone, “inside the sack you’ll find an envelope. Take it out and open it.”
“Sure, Mr. Bly. Wait.” Paper crackled distantly and then Gus’s voice suddenly yammered frantically. “Mr. Bly! It’s money! It’s thousands — millions! Mr. Bly! Mr. Bly!”
“Take it easy, Gus,” Bly said. “It was put in there by mistake. I’m going to let you talk to the man who owns the money. He’ll tell you what to do.”
“I don’t want so much money here! I’m gonna call a cop! I’m afraid—”
“Here’s Mr. Johanssen. Talk to him.”
Johanssen took the telephone. Gus was still shouting at the other end of the line, and Johanssen nodded several times, beginning to smile a little more broadly, finally managed to get a word in.
“Yes, Gus. Yes, yes. It is my money. No. Don’t call a policeman. Just keep it for me.” The receiver fairly crackled at that last and Johanssen held it away from his ear, wincing. “No, no. No one will rob you. All right. Lock yourself in. Yes, I will knock three times and then twice. Yes, I will bring a writing from Mr. Bly. All right. Yes. Just be calm.”
He hung up the receiver and nodded at Bly. “That is a good man.” The flat automatic had disappeared.
Bly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Yes. Gus is a swell old gent. He has a tough time.”
“And you have had a tough time,” said Johanssen. “Yes. I am very sorry, Mr. Bly. I beg your pardon. Can I do something for you to show I am sorry, please?”
“No,” Bly said. “No. It’s all right.”
Johanssen watched him. “Mr. Bly, I am very anxious to find the man who was in that apartment. You may still have the reward if you will tell me anything that will lead me to him.”
Bly shook his head wearily. “I don’t know anything.”
“Think,” Johanssen urged. “Something small, perhaps. Some little thing you may have noticed. Some impression.”
“No,” said Bly woodenly.
Johanssen shrugged. “So it will be, then. But please let me do something to show I am sorry for this today.”
“No,” said Bly in an absent tone. “If you want to do something for somebody, give Gus a couple of hundred out of the five thousand so he can get free of that shark I work for.”
“I will do that. Surely.”
“I’ve got to go,” Bly said. “I’m — in a hurry.”
“Surely,” said Johanssen, opening the door. “I am so sorry, Mr. Bly. Please forgive me.”
Chapter Five
The Black Mitten
Bly took a taxi back to the office. All the way there he leaned forward on the seat, pushing forward unconsciously trying to hurry the taxi’s progress. When it stopped at the curb in front of the office building he was out of it before the driver had time to open the door. He flung a crumpled bill over his shoulder and raced up the steep stairs, past the second floor and Janet’s office, up to the third floor and down the corridor.
The hammer of his feet must have warned J. S. Crozier, because he was just coming out of his private office when Bly burst through the front door. Bly closed the door behind him and leaned against it, panting.
“Well,” said J. S. Crozier, “you’re back in a hurry, Bly. And I don’t see any customer. Have you some more excuses to offer this time?”
Bly was smiling. He could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his lips, but it was like a separate thing, no part of him or what he was thinking.
J. S. Crozier noticed the smile. “Bly, what on earth is the matter with you? You’ve got the queerest expression—”
“I feel fine,” Bly said. “Oh, very fine. Because I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
“Bly! What do you mean? What are you talking—”
Bly stepped away from the door. “You’ve had a lot of fun with me, haven’t you? You’ve bullied and insulted and humiliated me every chance you got. You knew I had to take it. You knew I had a brother in college who was dependent on me and my job. You knew I wanted to get ahead, but that I couldn’t unless I had more training. You knew when I came here that I was taking courses in a night school, and you deliberately gave me work that kept me late so I couldn’t finish those courses.”
“Bly,” said J. S. Crozier, “are you mad? You can’t—”
“Oh, yes I can. I can tell you now. You’ve had your fun, and now you’re going to pay for it. You’re going to pay pretty heavily and you’re going to know I’m the one who made you pay.”
“You’re being insulting,” J. S. Crozier snapped. “You’re fired, Bly. If you don’t leave at once I’ll call the police.”
“Oh, no,” said Bly. “You won’t call the police, because that’s what I’m going to do. How does it feel to be a murderer, Mr. Crozier?”
“Eh?” said J. S. Crozier. The color washed out of his cheeks and left the lines on them looking like faint indelible pencil marks. “Wh-what did you say?”
“Murderer.”
“You — you’re crazy! Raving—”
“Murderer,” said Bly. “You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”
“Bly! You’re a maniac! You’re drunk! I won’t have you—”
“You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald and I’m the one who knows you did it. I’m the one who will get up on the stand and swear you did it. I’m the one — Bly, the poor devil it was so much fun for you to bully because you knew I couldn’t strike back at you. Was the fun worth it, Mr. Crozier?”
J. S. Crozier’s mouth opened, fish-like, and closed again before he could find words. “Bly! Bly! Now you can’t make mad accusations like that. You’re insane, Bly! You... you’re sick.”
“No. I happened to remember a couple of small things. When I came to Patricia Fitzgerald’s door last night and she opened it, she was wearing what I thought was a black fur mitten. It wasn’t. It was that wig of yours — your toupee. She had it wrapped around her right hand. She had been laughing at how you looked without it, or perhaps she had been trying it on herself.”
“You lie!” J. S. Crozier shouted, putting his hand up over the bulging toupee protectively. “You lie!”
“No. I saw it. I’ll swear I saw it. And another thing. Just a little while ago, when you were speaking about the Marigold Apartments and how luxurious they were, you said, ‘Judging from that hovel you live in...’ You knew where I lived, but you’d never been in my apartment — until last night. You were then. You broke in the window after you murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”
Under the toupee the veins on J. S. Crozier’s forehead stood out like purple cords. “You’re a liar and a fool!” He laughed chokingly. “You think that evidence is enough to base a charge of murder on? Bah! Get out! Go to the police! They’ll laugh at you! I’m laughing at you!” His whole body shook with insane raging mirth.
The door opened quietly and Johanssen stepped inside the office. “May I laugh, too, please?” he asked softly.
J. S. Crozier’s breath hissed through his teeth. He seemed to shrink inside his clothes. The toupee had slipped down over his forehead and it fell now and lay on the floor like an immense hairy spider. J. S. Crozier’s own hair was a blond, close-clipped stubble.
Johanssen smiled and nodded at Bly. “You should never play poker, Mr. Bly. Your face gives you away. I knew you had remembered something, so I followed you here. It is nice to meet you again, Mr.... ah... Crozier.”