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.
MacBride snapped forward, his eyes keened. “Yes!”
“Why, what’s the matter, Cap?”
“Keep talking. Judith was there. Who with?”
“Oh, hell, I shouldn’t have said anything about it. But I’ve sort of liked Judith—”
“Don’t say like when you mean love. And?”
“Well, she was there, that’s all. Was another girl with her. Never saw the other girl. Kind of — well, brassy type. Chic looking and all that but — brassy. And two fellows. The one with Judith was young and dark — looked like an Italian sheik. The other fellow was older — so was the girl. I didn’t let on I saw them. They had a couple of drinks, then breezed in a big, classy touring car. Don’t bawl Judith out, Cap. I shouldn’t have told you, but — well, it just came out. Judith’s a good girl. I guess I’ve got a nerve to think I ever had a chance — me just a dick. Promise me you won’t say anything to her about it.”
MacBride drew in a deep breath and held it trapped in his lungs for a long moment. Then he let it out, slowly, noiselessly, and followed it with a sigh.
“Ah-r-it’s a rough, tough world, Ted, old timer.”
Kerr attempted to change the subject. “But what about this murder, Cap?”
“It’s going to start something — something big — big! Well, I’ve got my wish — but not in the way I’d expected.” He was thinking of his wish that Duke Manola would face him again for a showdown.
“What wish, Cap?” asked Ted Kerr.
“No matter. Joe Manola was the bird got killed. He’s Duke Manola’s brother, and the Duke can call two dozen gunmen any time he wants to.”
The telephone on the desk jangled. MacBride leaned forward, picking up the receiver and said, “Captain MacBride—”
“Yes, MacBride,” came a voice with a hint of a nasal snarl. “This is your old playmate, Manola.”
“The elder,” supplemented MacBride.
“Be funny,” snapped Duke Manola. “I just heard my kid brother was bumped off out in the sticks. What’s the lay?”
“No lay yet, Duke. When I get the lay I’ll send you an engraved copy of the report, autographed.”
“Crack wise, big boy, crack wise.”
“And—”
“You better snap on it, MacBride. I’m just telling you, get the pup or pups that winged the kid before I do. And don’t get tough, either. Kind of a sock on your jaw, eh? You having to work for the guy gave you a buggy ride out to God’s country!”
“Lay off that, Duke. And don’t you get tough. You keep your hands out of this. And take a tip: Try to play around in this neck of the woods and I’ll flop on you like a ton of brick. I’ll handle this case, and I don’t want any dirty greaseball getting in my light.”
“I may drop in for tea soon, big boy.”
“If I never saw you, Duke, that’d be years too soon. There’s no Welcome sign hanging out here, and there’s no good-luck horseshoe parked over the door. In short, I’m not entertaining.”
“Whistle that, guy, and go to hell!” With that a sharp click indicated that Duke Manola had hung up.
MacBride slammed down the receiver, and Kerr offered, with a half-grin, “You men don’t seem to get along so well.”
“We get along worse every day,” replied MacBride.
Kerr lit a cigarette. “Any clues on that murder, Cap?”
MacBride’s hand was in his pocket, and it clenched the emerald pendant in sweaty fingers.
“No, Ted,” he muttered.
4
Mrs. MacBride was a woman of thirty-eight who still retained much of her youthful charm. The onyx sheen of her hair was not threaded by the slightest wisp of gray. Ordinarily, at breakfast time, she was a bright-eyed, animated woman, with a song on her lips and pleasant banter for her husband; and occasionally, as she passed back and forth from the kitchen, a kiss for the captain’s cheek. Secretly, MacBride cherished this show of affection.
But something in his attitude that morning — or it may have been something in the heart of his wife — tended to eliminate this little by-play. There was a song on her lips, but it was in an unnatural, off-tone key.
When they sat down at the table facing each other, MacBride, without looking up from his morning paper, said, “Judith up yet?”
“Yes. She’ll be right in, Steve.” She went about sprinkling sugar on the grapefruit. “Grove Manor must have gasped this morning when they read the papers about... about—”
“Yes,” nodded MacBride. “Haven’t had a murder here in ten years.”
“You’ll be careful, Steve.”
He glanced up. “Careful, Ann?”
“Well — you never can tell. I’m always worried.”
“Oh, nonsense, Ann. You shouldn’t worry—”
There was a step on the stair, and Judith came in, quietly. Ordinarily she entered at a skip, vivacious, animated. Her hair was jet black, and bobbed short, in the extremely modern manner. Likewise was her mode of dress extremely modern.
“Morning, dad. Morning, ma.” Cheerful the tone, but with a faintly hollow ring.
As she crossed to the table she limped a trifle, but it escaped MacBride’s eyes. His gaze was riveted on the newspaper.
“Morning, Judith,” he said.
When she was seated, he folded his paper and laid it aside.
It seemed that Mrs. MacBride was holding her breath.
Hard on the outside, hard with men who were hard, he had always found it difficult to be hard at home. He wanted to eliminate a lot of preliminary talk. Somehow, he did not want to see a woman of his own crumpling bit by bit under a lightning parry and thrust of words.
He drew his hand from his pocket and laid the emerald pendant on the table.
“Yours, Judith?”
But the girl had already blanched. Mrs. MacBride sat stiff and straight, her hands clenched in her lap, the color draining from her tightly compressed lips.
“It was found,” went on MacBride slowly, clumsily gentle, “beside a wrecked car on Old Stone Road last night.”
“Oh!” breathed Judith, and looked to left and right, as if seeking an avenue of escape.
“Come, now, little girl,” pursued MacBride. “Tell me about it. What happened?”
Judith jerked up from her chair, started for the stairs leading to her room.
“Judith!”
She dragged to a stop and turned.
“Please, Steve!” choked Mrs. MacBride. She got up and put an arm around her daughter.
“Ann, please stay out of this,” recommended MacBride; and to the girl, “Judith, tell me about it. I know you were out in the company of the man who was murdered last night! I’ll have to have an explanation!”
“I... I can’t tell!” came her muffled, panicky voice.
“But you must!” he insisted sternly.
“No... no! I can’t! I won’t! Oh, please!...”
He crossed the room and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Do you realize the significance of this? I don’t say you killed Manola. But you were out with him, and you know what happened on that road. Judith! Out with one of the worst rakes in the city — the brother of Duke Manola, the gang leader and — my enemy! My God, girl, what have you been thinking of? Isn’t Ted Kerr good enough for you? Or does a classy car and a marcelled wop win you?”
She was crying now, but through it all she kept reiterating — “I won’t tell! I won’t tell!”
“Judith, so help me, you will!”
“No... no! I won’t! You can beat me! You — can — beat — me! I won’t tell! Oh-o-o-o!...”
“Steve,” implored Mrs. MacBride, “don’t... please!”