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.
Lennox said: “You wouldn’t pay fifty grand for your grandmother,” and stared at the piece of paper. On it were printed crude letters with a soft pencil. They said:
We’ve got Wayborn. You’ve got fifty grand. Let’s trade. Go to the cops and we drop him into the ocean. More later.
Lennox looked at his boss. “Where’d this come from?”
Spurck threw up his hands, appealing to the ceiling. “He asks me riddles yet. Mein Gott! He asks me riddles.”
Lennox said, roughly: “Cut it. Where’d this come from? Who’s seen it?”
His voice seemed to quiet the little man. Spurck returned to his chair and lit an enormous cigar with care. “No one has seen it,” he said in a surly tone. “I found it on the floor of my car this morning.”
“How long has Wayborn been gone?”
Spurck shrugged. “Yesterday, he was here. Today, he is not. Find him? Yes — but fifty thousand — no. Ten maybe. Not one cent over ten.”
Lennox said: “I suppose you know what this will mean? The picture is half in the can. If we don’t find Wayborn, we shoot it over and Price is three days behind schedule now.”
Spurck’s eyes were narrow. “Why did you let me use Wayborn? That ham — what is it I pay you for?”
Lennox said: “Because I’m a fool”; he said it bitterly. “Because I stick around this mad house and keep things going. Some day, Sol, I’ll quit this lousy outfit cold. I’ll sit back and watch it go to the devil.”
Spurck grinned. He’d heard the threat before, many times. “Find him, Bill.” He reached across and patted Lennox’s shoulder with a fat hand. “Find him, and I take you to Caliente. That’s a promise yet.”
2
Bill Lennox, trouble-shooter for General-Consolidated Studio, walked through the outer office. Trouble-shooter wasn’t his title. In fact, one of the things which Lennox lacked was an official title. Those in Hollywood who didn’t like him called him Spurck’s watch-dog. Ex-reporter, ex — publicity man, he had drifted into his present place through his inability to say yes and his decided ability in saying no.
His searching blue eyes swept about the large waiting-room. A world-famous writer bowed, half fearfully. A director whose last three pictures had hit the box-office paused for a moment to speak to him. Bill grunted and went on. As he walked down the line towards the row of dressing-rooms he was thinking quickly. Wayborn was gone. They needed him for Dangerous Love. No one seemed to know anything about him.
Lennox paused before the door of the third bungalow and knocked. A trim maid opened the door. Her eyes were uncertain when she saw who it was. Bill said: “Tell Miss Meyer that I want to see her.”
The maid’s eyes got more uncertain. “I don’t think—”
His voice rasped. “You aren’t paid to think. Tell Meyer that I want to see her at once.”
Elva Meyer’s eyes were cold, hostile beneath her dark brows as he walked through the door. She was seated before her dressing-table, but there was as yet no greasepaint on her face. “Well?” Her voice was colder than her eyes.
He was staring at her blond hair. “I’m not so hot,” he said, helping himself to a chair. “When did you see Wayborn last?”
The eyes flecked, glowed for an instant. “I told you some time ago that I was perfectly capable of looking after my affairs without your help.”
“Yeah?” He’d found a loose cigarette in his pocket and was rolling it back and forth between his strong fingers so that the tobacco spilled out at both ends. “Well, sweetheart, it so happens that I’m not sticking my schnozzle into your playhouse at the moment. You and Wayborn were at the Grove last night; then you turned up at the Brown Derby about one—”
She pushed back her chair, noisily. “I’m not going to stand this any longer — your jealous spying is driving me insane. I’m going to Mr. Spurck.”
He said, “Nerts! You’ll get damn little sympathy from Sol today, honey. He left it at home, wrapped in moth-balls — but you’re getting ideas under that peroxide-treated mat of yours. I’m not checking on you because I’m still interested. I’m washed up, baby, washed up. You’re not the first chiseling tramp that forgot my first name after I boosted them into lights, and I don’t suppose that you’ll be the last. I always was a sucker for a pretty face with nice hips for a background; but this is strictly business. Dangerous Love should be in the can by the last of the week. It won’t be unless Price can shoot.”
She said: “I’ve been here all morning, waiting.” She said it in the tone of one who does not like to wait.
Lennox grinned. For the first time in days he was enjoying himself. “You’re good, baby.” His voice mocked her. “You’re plenty good. You should be. I found you, trained you, but you aren’t good enough to play love scenes by yourself. Wayborn isn’t around. He’s been snatched.”
She made her eyes wide. “Snatched?” she said, slowly. “You mean—”
His voice rasped with impatience. “Quit acting. You read the papers. You know what snatched means. They want fifty grand and they won’t get it.”
She sank back into her chair as if her legs suddenly refused to support her. “This is terrible. When did it happen?”
His eyes were sardonic. “That’s what I’m asking you, sweetheart. You were with him last night. He hasn’t been seen this morning.”
Her eyes blazed and she made two small white hands into little fists. “You’re lousy, Bill Lennox. You can’t tie me into this.” Her voice threatened to break. “Ralph took me home at one-thirty. I haven’t seen him since.”
His eyes searched her face. “I guess you’re in the clear, kid.” He sounded almost regretful. “Wayborn’s boy says that he came in around two, but that he went out again, without his car.”
She gained assurance at his words. “But what will Spurck do? He’ll have to pay the fifty grand.”
“Will he? You don’t know Sol, sweetheart.”
“But he can’t junk the picture. Why, he’s spent more than that on publicity.”
Lennox shrugged. “We’ll reshoot it if Wayborn doesn’t turn up.” He was on his feet; the girl came out of her chair.
“But he can’t leave Ralph to... to... die. It isn’t human.”
Lennox’s voice grated. “Want to pay the fifty grand yourself?”
She stared at him. “I pay the fifty thousand? Don’t be absurd.”
“There’s your answer,” he told her. “That’s the way Sol feels, and Wayborn isn’t Sol’s boy-friend.”
She said, angrily: “You’re getting nasty again; but Sol will have to pay. I’ll go to the papers, to the police.”
“Do that,” he suggested, “and you and me will be going to one swell funeral; that is — if they find the body.”
3
Nancy Hobbs was eating in Al Levy’s when Lennox came through the door. She nodded to the empty chair, and he sank into it. “Hello, Brat.”
She smiled at him. “You look worried, Bill.”
He ordered before he answered. “And you look swell. Why don’t you go into pictures instead of writing about them?”
She said, “Because I know too much. You have to be dumb to get by, like Elva Meyer.”
He scowled. “Seems I saw an interview in a fan magazine where you said that she was just a home girl—”