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.
“Get up — get up,” gritted Cardigan. “That’s only a smell compared with what’s coming if you don’t come clean. Get up, you dirty little rat!” He reached down, caught Clark, heaved him up and banged him down into another chair.
Clark’s teeth chattered. His hands fidgeted, one with the other. His mouth worked, gasping for breath. His eyes almost popped from his head.
“Now,” came MacBride’s low voice, “who were the two guys that got away?”
“You can’t make me talk now. You can’t!” Clark gripped the sides of his chair, the stringy cords on his neck bulged. “I ain’t talkin’ — not me. I want a lawyer — that’s what. Them’s my rights, gettin’ a lawyer. There!” He stuck out his chin defiantly.
MacBride turned in his chair and looked at Cardigan. Cardigan nodded, his fingers opening and closing.
“Take him into the sweat room, Jack,” said MacBride. “Sweat him.”
Clark stiffened in his chair, and sucked in his nether lip with a sharp intake of breath. He writhed.
“You can’t do that, you can’t!” he screamed. “I got my rights. You can’t beat up a citizen.”
“Citizen, are you?” chuckled Cardigan. “You’re a bum, Clark. You were driving a car with somebody else’s plates. You tried to get away with the other two birds but you weren’t fast enough. My buddy was killed, see? Now you’ll talk. I’ll sweat it out of you, Clark, so help me!”
“You won’t! I ain’t gonna talk. Gawd almighty, I want a lawyer! You can’t stop me from gettin’ one!”
“You’re stopped, Clark,” bit off Cardigan. “Get up and come on along with me.”
Cardigan reached for him. Clark squirmed in his chair, lashed out with his feet. One foot caught Cardigan in the stomach and he doubled momentarily, grimacing but silent. MacBride was out of his seat in a flash, and Clark was jerked to his feet so fast that he lost his breath. He was wild-eyed, straining at the arms that held him, his lips quivering, groans and grunts issuing from his throat.
“You ain’t gonna beat me — you ain’t! You’ll see! I won’t talk! I got my rights. I... I—”
“I’ll take him, Steve,” said Cardigan.
MacBride stepped back and Clark struggled frantically in Cardigan’s grasp as the latter worked him toward the door.
The telephone bell jangled.
“Wait,” said MacBride.
Cardigan paused at the door.
MacBride picked up the phone, muttered something, listened. Then, “What’s that?” His hands knotted around the instrument, his eyes narrowed, his mouth hardened. “Are you sure of that?” He groaned deep in his throat, rocked on his feet. Then, bitterly, “All right!”
He slammed the receiver into the hook and banged the instrument down upon the desk violently. He turned to face Cardigan.
“It’s no use, Jack. A runner for that lousy firm of Cohen, Fraser and Cohen, is downstairs, which means this bum slides out of our hands.”
Cardigan’s face darkened. “How’d they know we had this bird so soon?”
“That’s their business. They work on a big retainer from the head of the gang Clark belongs to.”
There was a knock at the door, and a sergeant and a patrolman came in. The sergeant showed MacBride a writ, and the patrolman marched Clark out of the office. Then the sergeant left, and MacBride and Cardigan were alone.
“Wires being pulled again,” muttered Cardigan. “This guy will never come to trial.”
“Of course not,” nodded MacBride grimly.
“What a fine state of affairs! We nab a guy, and have every chance to make him come across, and then he’s taken out of our hands. What’s the use of a Police Department, anyhow?”
“Clark is one of Cavallo’s boys. No doubt about it. And we can’t do a thing — just sit and curse the whole thing. It’s tough to be on the Force eighteen years — and have to stand for it.”
“I know, Steve, you can’t move. Your wife and kid to think of. But there’s one way to get back at these wops, and the only way. They killed Joe, and they’ve got to pay for it! I’m going to make ’em pay — pound for pound! By God, I am, and the Department and the State’s Attorney and everybody else be damned!”
“Jack, you can’t — alone. You’re a dick and—”
“I’m no longer a dick. I’m single and free and my resignation goes in now! I’m going to fight Cavallo, Steve, at his own game!”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I’m resigning from the Department. I’m going on my own and wipe out Cavallo and every one of his dirty gunmen! Richmond City is going to see one of the biggest gang wars in its history! When they killed Joe Hanley, they killed the wrong man, for my part! I’m going to fall on ’em like a ton of brick!”
“Jack, you can’t do it!”
“Watch me!” chuckled Cardigan, his eyes glittering.
3
Men said Jack Cardigan was reckless and case-hardened — men meaning cops and reporters and Richmond City’s generous sprinkling of gunmen. Something might be added; he was ruthless. As a detective, he’d been hated and feared by more crooks than perhaps any other man in the Department — inspectors, captain, lieutenants and all the rest included. Because he was hard — tough — rough on rats; rats being one of his favorite nicknames applied to a species of human being that shoots in the dark and aims for the back.
For three years Joe Hanley had been his partner, in the Department. In life, they’d been partners for years — and the bond of friendship had been welded firmly and topped off with the marriage of Cardigan’s sister Marion to Joe. It was a far, long cry from that happy, flowered day to the day when Marion and Cardigan rode home from the cemetery, after the burial of Joe. Cardigan held his sister in his arms on the slow journey. There was nothing he could say to comfort her. Pity, condolence, make empty, meaningless words on such a tragic day. So he held her in his arms and let her sob.
His own face was a mask, grim and carven, the eyes dark and close-lidded. Home, he put her into the hands of their mother. No one spoke. Glances, gestures, conveyed far more. For a long while he sat alone, motionless and thoughtful. The funeral was over, but the dread pall of it still lingered. Even the house seemed to take on a personality of mourning — quiet and hollow and reverent.
A week later Cardigan sat in a speakeasy on the outer circle of Richmond City’s theatrical district. He was sipping a dry Martini when Kennedy of the Free Press drifted in and joined him.
“What’s the idea of shaking your job, Cardigan?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Or were you told to resign?”
“Maybe.”
Kennedy chuckled. “Sounds more like it. What you get for bringing in Clark. Lord, that was a joke! His lawyer was a sharp egg. Clark played the dope all through. Bet his lawyer spent nights drilling him how to act. Clark was just a hired chauffeur. How did he know the plates were stolen? He was hired a week before the mess out on Webster Road to drive a car. They gave him a car to drive. The whole thing was a joke, and the presenting attorney gave the defense every possible opening. What are you doing now?”
“Nothing. Taking life easy.”
“Don’t make me laugh!”
“Well, have it your way.”
“Listen, Cardigan,” said Kennedy. “You know a lot. The Free Press would sell its shirt to get some straight dope from you. That’s no boloney. I mean it. I’ve got the whole thing figured out, but what we need is a story where we can omit the ‘alleged’ crap. Man, you can clean up!”