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.
Then suddenly the cars began parking. In the gleam of the headlights two policemen with drawn nightsticks were shouting hoarsely, waving the people away.
“I guess we get out here,” said Kennedy.
“Looks that way.”
“Come on.”
Cardigan paid the fare and they walked ahead. Kennedy showed his card and Cardigan went through with him. They strode briskly along the edge of the woods.
“Hear it?” asked Kennedy.
Cardigan heard it — the rattle of gun fire. Yes, the farmhouse. Alternate waves of heat and cold passed over him. The shadows in the woods were pitch black. Soon they could see the flash of guns, hear the brittle hammering of a machine-gun, firing in spasmodic bursts.
A figure in plainclothes loomed before them.
“Hello, Mac,” said Kennedy.
“Who’s your friend?” muttered the captain.
“Cardigan.”
“Oh-o!”
Kennedy pushed on. Cardigan stopped and MacBride came closer.
“Well, Jack, you see?”
Cardigan bit his lip. “What are you doing, blowing the place up?”
“Yes. Captain McGurk in charge.”
“How’d it start?”
“Headquarters got a phone call about a lot of shooting going on out here.”
Cardigan growled. “Can’t you get ’em to offer a truce? God, Steve, it’s pure slaughter!”
He was thinking of Pete Fink and the other boys, trapped in the house.
“There’s no use. We came up in the bushes and let go with a machine-gun as a warning. A lot of rifle fire was our answer. This looks like the end.”
“Cripes, Steve, stop it — stop it!” He lunged ahead.
MacBride grabbed him, held him in a grip of steel.
“Easy, Jack. You can’t do a thing. Don’t be a fool. You took the chance and this is the result.”
“Let me go, Steve — let go!”
“No, dammit — no! By God, if you make a move I’ll crack you over the head!”
“You will, will you?”
“So help me!”
Cardigan swore and heaved in MacBride’s grasp. They struggled, weaving about, silent and grim. They crashed deeper into the bushes. Then MacBride struck, and Cardigan groaned and slumped down.
MacBride knelt beside him, white-faced and panting. “Jack, old boy, you hurt much? I didn’t mean to hit so hard... Jack, but you can’t do a thing. It’s the breaks of the racket. God!...” He was rubbing Cardigan’s head.
The battle was still on. Daggers of flame slashed through the dark. Lead drummed against the walls of the house, shattered the windows, pumped into the rooms. Spurts of flame darted from the house. A policeman crumpled. Another heaved up, clutching at his chest, and screamed.
“Oh, God!” groaned MacBride.
Captain McGurk, in charge, swore bitterly. He looked around. “That’s three they got. We’ll have to give ’em the works. Charlie, you got the grenades?”
“Yes, Cap’n.”
“Go to it.”
A machine-gun, silent for a moment, cut loose with a stuttering fusillade that raked every window in sight. Intermittent flashes came from the windows. Lead slugs rattled through the branches and thickets. The breeze of evening carried acrid powder smoke. The men in the bushes moved about warily.
Cardigan lay in a daze, conscious of the shots and the din, but in a vague, dreamy way. He wanted to yell out, and he imagined he was yelling, at the top of his lungs, but actually his lips moved only in a soundless whisper. His head throbbed with pain. MacBride had clipped him not too gently. And the captain was now bent over him, with one arm beneath him, rocking him.
The man called Charlie had worked his way closer, crawling on hands and knees, from tree to tree. Finally he stood up, and his arm swung. A small object wheeled through the dark, smacked on the roof of the house. There was a terrific explosion, and a sheet of ghastly flame billowed outward. Stones and bits of timber sang through space, clattered in the woods. The roof caved in, parts of the walls toppled in a smother of smoke and dust.
Out of the chaos groped a man, with hands upraised. He stumbled, sprawled and hit the earth like a log. He never moved once after that. Another crawled out of the ruins, turned over on his back and lay as still as the first. The policemen advanced out of the woods. Nothing stopped them now. They closed in around the house, entered here and there through torn gaps.
MacBride hauled Cardigan to his feet, put on his hat. “You’ve got to get out of this, Jack,” he muttered.
Cardigan was able to stumble.
“It’s all over,” said MacBride.
He half-dragged him back through the woods to the road, walked him along it.
“Brace up!” he ground out. “I’ll put you in a taxi. Look natural. Keep your hat down, your collar up. Get back to your hotel. Stay there, for God’s sake. It’s all over, you hear? There is no use making a fool of yourself.”
They found a taxi and Cardigan got in. MacBride gripped his hand.
“Good luck, Jack!”
“Thanks, Steve.”
Cardigan rode to his hotel in a sunken mood. He got out, paid his fare, and sagged up to his room. He locked the door and slumped into a chair. He groped for a cigarette and lit it, and stared gloomily into space. He muttered something old — something about plans of mice and men...
“Hell!” he mumbled, and sank lower.
Ten minutes later the telephone rang. He looked at it darkly. He didn’t know whether he should answer it. But he got up, laid his hand on it, then took off the receiver.
“Hello,” he muttered.
“Jack — my room,” said Fink, and that was all.
Cardigan snapped out of his mood, sucked in a hot breath. He slammed down the receiver and dived for his overcoat.
9
He climbed the rickety stairs in the ancient house in Jockey Street. He did not know what to expect. He paused a whole minute before the door until he knocked. Then he rapped. There was the sound of quick steps. Then the door swung open and Fink loomed there, grinning. He pulled Cardigan in, closed the door and locked it.
“Park your hips, Jack,” he rumbled. “Have a drink.”
Cardigan crossed the room, dropped to a chair and slopped liquor into a glass. He held it up. “I need this.” He downed it neat. “Well?”
Fink rubbed his big hand along his thigh vigorously. “Well, Cavallo and his gang oughta be done for. Cripes, it was a great break for us! Well, I picked up Gats all right, and we drove back to the farmhouse. Then I figured maybe one o’ Cavallo’s guns was trailin’ us. I seen a closed coupe follerin’ all the way out, but I didn’t let on. I swung in by the farm and I saw this coupe slow down and then shoot ahead.
“I put Gats in with the boys, and then I went out and hid in the bushes by the road. An hour later I see a big tourin’ car stop down the road and a guy get out. It was Monkey Burns. I run back to the house and plan a trap. I pull down the shades and leave a light lit. Then me and the boys skin out and hide in the bushes with our rifles.
“Little later the bums sneak up. Monkey and Cavallo and Bert Geer and six others. They creep up on the house, and Monkey tries a door. It’s open. He turns to his guns and whispers and they all bunch. Then they crash the door and go in shootin’. Before they know what’s what, Gats busts loose with his gun and gets the last mutt goin’ in. They see they’re trapped and they slam the door.