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.
“Maybe two hundred.”
“Cripes!”
“Think it over. Speak to your boss. I’ll see you again in a day or so.”
He left ten minutes later, pretty certain that he had paved the way nicely. To kill the afternoon, he dropped in at a vaudeville theatre, and ate dinner at the hotel. Later he sat in his room smoking a cigar and going over his plan step by step, searching for a loop-hole. He couldn’t see any. Tonight would start the ball rolling. His vengeance would be under way. They’d murdered Joe Hanley. Now they’d pay — pound for pound. It was law of his own making, a hard, raw law — fighting rats on their own ground with their own tactics. Yet he had one advantage; a reasoning, calculating mind, thanks to his service in the Department; strategy first, guns — if it should come to that means — later.
He had a hard crew under him. Pete Fink, a product of the bootleg age — one time in the prize ring, once a sailor. Cardigan knew that he was a tough customer, and he also knew that he could rely on him. The other guns; he relied on Fink to take care of them. He’d arrested Bat Johnson only a year ago for petty larceny. Chip Slade had once felt the rap of his blackjack.
“Hell,” he mused, “if they only knew who was behind Fink!”
5
Eight-thirty came around. Cardigan put on his overcoat and shoved an automatic into his pocket. He took his time. He wandered leisurely out of the hotel, walked a couple of blocks down Main Street and boarded a bus bound for the suburbs. Half an hour later he got off, lit a cigarette and strolled north. He was a little ahead of time, so he went on at ease.
He reached Maple Road, and continued south. Houses were scattered, and fields intervened. Then, squatting dimly in the murk beyond a field of tall grass, the old milk stables, Cardigan paused behind an ancient oak tree and looked at the illuminated dial of his watch. It was nine-thirty-five. His hand slid into his pocket and gripped the butt of his automatic.
He slipped away from the tree, hunched over and weaved his way through tall weeds. His feet slushed through snow. At intervals he paused briefly, to listen. Then he went on, bit by bit, until he reached the old picket fence behind the stables. In this he found a gap and muscled through, and squatted still for a long moment.
From his coat he drew a dark handkerchief and fastened it about his face, just below his eyes. His hat brim he pulled lower.
There was a faint yellow glow shining from a window, and toward this Cardigan crept. A shade had been drawn down to within an inch or two of the bottom of the window. Smoke was drifting from a tin stove chimney. In a moment Cardigan was crouched by the window.
He saw two men sitting in chairs by a little stove. On the stove a kettle was spouting steam. A lantern stood on an empty box nearby. One of the men was asleep. The other was halfheartedly reading a newspaper; Cardigan recognized him, a huge brute of a man called “Dutch” Weber, with a record. The other he placed as Jakie Hart, sometimes called the Creole Kid, a one-time New Orleans wharf rat. A dirty pair, he mused.
Minutes were flying, and so much depended on chance. Cardigan bent down and felt around on the snow. He found a two-foot length of board, and hefted it in his left hand. His right hand still gripped the automatic. Again looking in, he raised the board, set his jaw and crashed the window. The shade snapped up. The man with the paper spun in his chair, clawed at his gun.
But Cardigan had him covered, his head and shoulders thrust through the window.
“Drop that gat, Dutch!” he barked. “You too, Jakie — drop it! Fast, you guys, or you’ll get lead in your pants!”
The Creole Kid blinked bleary eyes. Dutch Weber cursed under his breath, his huge face flushing, murder in his gimlet eyes, his big hands writhing. But he dropped his gun, and the Creole Kid imitated him a moment later.
“Stand up — both of you,” went on Cardigan. “Face the wall! Move out of turn and God help you!”
“You lousy bum!” snarled Weber.
“Can that crap, buddy! About face!” bit off Cardigan.
Sullenly they faced the wall, hands raised.
A moment later Cardigan was in the room. He yanked down the shade, picked up the men’s discarded guns, thrust them into his pocket. And from his pocket he drew two pairs of manacles.
“Back up six paces, Dutch! Stay where you are, Jakie! Never mind looking, Dutch — just back up. Now put your hands behind your back. Don’t get funny, either.” In a flash he had the manacles on Weber. “Get over against the wall again. Move!” He jabbed the muzzle of his gun in Weber’s back. “Now you, Jakie — back up!”
In a moment he had the other pair of bracelets on the Creole Kid, and forced him back against the wall. Then he took a small bottle of chloroform from his pocket and saturated a handkerchief.
“Back up again, Jakie! As you are, Dutch!”
He clamped his arm around the Creole Kid’s neck, forced the handkerchief against his nostrils and into his mouth, held it there, while he still warned Weber to stay where he was. Presently the Creole Kid went limp, relaxed, and Cardigan let him fall to the floor, unconscious.
Then he soaked another handkerchief, approached Weber and planted his gun in the big man’s ribs.
“Not a stir, big boy!”
His left hand shot out, smacked the saturated handkerchief against Weber’s mouth. The big man struggled, but Cardigan reminded him of the gun.
“Damn your soul!” snarled Weber in muffled tones.
“Shut your trap!”
In a short time Weber joined the Creole Kid on the floor, muttering vaguely, his hands twitching slower and slower. Cardigan pocketed his gun, produced a coil of thin, strong wire and bound their ankles. Then he ripped away strips of their shirts and bound the handkerchiefs securely in their mouths. From Weber’s pockets he took a ring of keys.
With his flashlight he started a quick, systematic search of the stables. The large, covered truck was in the main stable. Its tank registered seven gallons of gasoline. Under tarpaulins he saw case upon case of liquor — between two and three hundred. He also saw ten barrels of wine. These he tipped over and sprung the spigots, and the wine gurgled and flowed on the dirt floor.
Chuckling, he hurried into the back room, blew out the lantern and pulled up the shade on the window. He raised his flashlight and blinked it three times. Then he opened the back door, sped into the main stable and unlocked the big sliding doors, but did not open them.
He turned, jumped to a ladder and climbed up to a small loft, drew the ladder up after him. Then he lay flat on his stomach in the pitch gloom, waited and listened. After a few moments he heard a door creak, and then footsteps — saw the reflection of a flashlight in the back room.
“Huh,” muttered a voice, “the Chief sure paved the way. Lookit the way them two babies is tied up!”
“Shut up, Bat. Come on, gang.” That was Fink.
The beam of light jumped into the stable. Figures loomed in. The flash settled on the draining barrels. Someone chuckled.
“What he can’t take he busts,” said a voice. “This Chief knows his termaters, what I mean!”
The beam of light swept around the stable and found the stacked cases of liquor.
“Ba-by!” exclaimed someone, softly.
“Cut the gab!” hissed Fink. “Step to it! There’s the truck! Come on, guys!”
Cardigan watched them spread out. They hauled off the tarpaulins. Two men jumped into the truck. The others leaped to the cases of liquor. They worked swiftly and for the most part silently, passing the cases to the pair in the truck, who stacked them rapidly.