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.
“Ann, be still! Do you think I enjoy this? How do you think I felt last night when I picked that pendant up by the wreck? God, it’s a wonder the hawkeyed Kennedy didn’t see me! Judith, listen to reason. You’ve got to tell me!”
She spun back, her hands clenched, a storm of terror in her moist eyes — tense, quivering, like a cornered animal, and defiant.
“No... no... never! You can’t make me. Dear God, you can’t!”
She pivoted and clawed her way up the stairs, fled into her room and locked the door.
Half-way up the staircase, MacBride stopped, turned and came down slowly, his face a frozen mask.
“To think, to think!” he groaned.
His wife touched him with her hands, and he took them in his own and looked down into her swimming eyes.
“Ann, I wish you could make me happy, but just now — you can’t. I’m as miserable, as sunk, as you are.”
Years seemed to creep upon him visibly. He picked up the pendant and dropped it into his pocket.
5
At five that evening MacBride was sitting at his desk in the precinct, when Ted Kerr breezed in, closed the door quietly and stood, wiping perspiration from his forehead.
“Well?” asked MacBride.
“I was out there. Kline, the bird that runs the Blue River Inn, acted dumb. He didn’t remember the party of four. Had never seen them before. In short, didn’t know them.”
“Think he’s on the level?”
“No.” Kerr dropped to a chair. “I could see he was walking on soft ground, watching his step. It’s my bet that he knows the two fellows.” He paused. “How — how’s Judith?”
“Still love her?”
“Well, God, Cap, she’s in trouble—”
“Sh! Soft pedal, Ted!”
Kerr spoke in a husky whisper. “I don’t believe she’s done bad. She wouldn’t. Just lost her head. Damn these oily birds with their flashy cars!”
“Listen. If you saw the guy who was with Manola again, would you recognize him?”
“Sure.”
“Then take a trolley to Headquarters and look over the Rogues’ Gallery. Call me up if you have any luck.”
Kerr took his departure, and a little later Kelly entered and said, “Yup, Cap, there’s men out in that brewery where you sent me. I heard some hammerin’ goin’ on like, and the windows on the third floor — that’s the top, you know — them windows was open, they was. Then I seen two cars parked inside the fence, under the sheds where the beer used to be loaded on trucks. Classy cars — one a big sedan, all black — number A2260. The other was a sport roadster, C4002. Nobody was around them.”
On his desk pad MacBride marked down the type and number of the two cars. He dismissed Kelly and then called up the automobile license bureau. The sport roadster, he found, belonged to a man named John A. Winslow. The sedan was owned by Judge Michael Haggerty.
MacBride sat back with a bitter chuckle. “That sounds like ‘Diamond Jack’ Winslow, the race-track kid. H’m. And Mike Haggerty. Cheek and jowl with Duke Manola.”
He lit a cigar and looked up to find Detective-Sergeant O’Dowd, from Headquarters.
“Hello, O’Dowd.”
“Hello, Mac. I just dropped in with a little order from the big cheese. Know that brewery out off Farmingville Turnpike?”
MacBride nodded.
O’Dowd said, “Well, don’t let it worry you, Mac. They’re making some good beer there, and orders are to leave ’em be.”
“I’ve been waiting for those orders,” said MacBride. “So long as they bust the Volstead Act and don’t make any noise, it’s O.K. by me. Anything else, though—”
“Let your conscience be your guide, Mac,” grinned O’Dowd, and left.
The machinery of the underworld and politics, mused MacBride, was getting under way. Kerr called up a little later, and he had information.
“I’m sure it’s the same guy, Cap,” he said. “Chuck Devore. The records show he was arrested two years ago in connection with the shooting of a taxi driver named Max Levy. But he wasn’t indicted.”
“We’re hot, Ted,” shot back MacBride. “Devore is a gangster, and a pretty tough egg. He used to run with Duke Manola. In that killing two years ago we had the hunch that Manola tried to frame Devore to take the rap. Then they broke and Devore drifted. If he’s back in town, there’s a pot of trouble brewing.”
“You mean a gang war?”
“Right. Dog eat dog stuff, and hell’s going to pop or I miss my guess. All right, Ted. Hop a trolley home.”
MacBride slammed down the receiver and sat back rubbing his hands. Devore back in town! But what had he been doing in the company of Duke Manola’s brother? And who was the woman in the case — besides Judith? A chill shot through MacBride. His own daughter mixed up in an underworld feud!
He snapped up to his feet, changed from his uniform coat and cap into a plain blue jacket and a gray fedora. He strode out of his office, told Donnegan to get the car out, and left brief instructions with Sergeant Haley.
Outside, he climbed into the car and said, “Know the Blue River Inn?”
Donnegan said, “Yes.”
“That’s where we’re going. Don’t run right up to it. Park back a distance, out of sight.”
The car shot off through town, hit Old Stone Road and followed it into Farmingville Turnpike. Half an hour later Donnegan pulled up on the side of the road, in the shadow of a deep woods. Up ahead they could see Blue River Inn, picked out in electric light bulbs.
“You wait here, Donnegan,” said MacBride. “I won’t be long.”
The inn was large and rambling, two storied, with many windows. MacBride entered the large, carpeted room that served as a lobby, and the head-waiter, with a menu in his hand, bowed.
“I’m not eating,” clipped MacBride. “Who runs this dump?”
“Sir?”
“Cut out the flowers, buddy. I’m from the precinct.” He flashed his badge. “Snap on it!”
A short, rotund man in dinner clothes came strolling in from the main corridor, and the head-waiter, a little troubled, beckoned to him.
“You the owner?” asked MacBride. “What’s your name?”
“Hinkle, owner and manager. What can I do for you?”
“I’m MacBride, from the precinct. There were two couples in here last night — You!” he suddenly shot at the head-waiter. “Stay here! Now,” he went on, “who were the two men?”
“Of course,” said Hinkle, “there are so many people come here, we cannot recall them. So many are transients.”
“Look here,” pursued MacBride. “One of those men was Joe Manola, who was later killed in a wreck last night. Now who was the other guy — the guy with him?”
Hinkle moistened his lips and his eyes shifted nervously. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. Nor does my head-waiter.”
The girl at the desk trilled, “Mr. Hinkle, telephone.”
Hinkle went over to the desk, and MacBride followed, stood beside him. Hinkle picked up the telephone, and said, “Yes, Hinkle talking.” And then his face blanched, and his lips began to writhe.
MacBride’s gun came out of his pocket, jammed against Hinkle’s adipose paunch. He tore the receiver from Hinkle’s hand and clasped it to his own ear, heard—
“... and get that, Hinkle. Act dumb, all the time, see. And if it gets too hot, call me on the wire. Got that number? Main 1808?”
MacBride’s lips moved silently, forming the words, “Say yes, Hinkle.”
“Yes, yes,” said Hinkle, his face pasty white.
“O.K. then,” was the reply, and the man at the other end hung up.