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 hung up, set down the telephone, a thin, hard smile on his face.
“Who was that, Hinkle?”
Hinkle wilted, blubbered, kept shaking his head.
“Chuck Devore, eh?” grinned MacBride, without humor.
“Oh, G-God!” choked Hinkle, gasping for air and reeling backward.
MacBride picked up the telephone and called the precinct. To Sergeant Haley he said, “Send a man out around to the telephone exchange. Tell the operators there to allow no calls incoming or outgoing from” — he looked down at the number on the phone — “Farmingville 664. Also, no calls to be connected, outgoing or incoming, to Main 1808. Until further notice from the station. Also, get me the address of Main 1808, quick, and ring me at Farmingville 664 before the order to shut off. Snap on it, sergeant!”
He hung up, stepped to the door and blew his whistle. When Donnegan came in on the run, MacBride said, “No hurry. Just stay here and keep your eyes on these two men till you get word from the precinct. Don’t let them get out of sight. Go in the dining-room and tell all the guests to clear out.”
There were only a dozen-odd persons in the dining-room, and they made an angry and protesting exodus. When they had gone, MacBride said to Donnegan. “Let no more in. See that no more cars leave.”
The telephone rang, and he picked it up, listened. “All right, sergeant,” he said. “I’ll have to pass there on the way through. Tell Kelly and Kerr to be ready and I’ll pick them up.”
He turned from the telephone, looked at the group of waiters and at Hinkle and his steward. Then he looked at Donnegan. “Keep them salted, Donnegan, right in this room. You, Hinkle, have your sign shut off and all the lights in the house except in this room. You’re temporarily closed for business.”
“It’s an outrage!” choked Hinkle.
“See if I care,” chuckled MacBride; and to Donnegan, “I’ll take the car.”
6
Kelly and Kerr were waiting outside of the precinct when MacBride drew up.
“Hop in, boys. We’re going for maybe a little target practice.”
Kelly shifted his chew and climbed in, and Kerr, eagerness sparking in his eyes, followed. MacBride stepped on the gas and they shot off.
“What’s the lay, Cap?” asked Kelly.
“We’re going to look up Chuck Devore, at a dump in lower Jockey Street. There may be a fight. You boys well heeled?”
They were. And as they drove on, MacBride explained about his pilgrimage to the Blue River Inn.
They made good time into the city. Traffic on Main Street, the artery of theatres and cabarets, held them up.
Presently MacBride turned into Jockey Street and followed it west. Near Main Street, small restaurants, Chinese or Italian, displayed their signs. Further along, it changed to blank-faced brick houses, old and peeling, with here and there a single globe of light marking out a speakeasy. The municipal lighting system was poor, and the way was dark.
MacBride pulled up in the middle of a block and said, “It’s on the next block, but we’ll leave the car here. Come on.”
They got out and continued down Jockey Street with MacBride taking long strides in the lead. There was a noticeable jut to his teak-hard jaw and a windy look in his blue eyes. He was not the man to grow stale from sitting on his spine in a precinct office. The game on the outside still lured him — the somewhat dangerous game of poking into back alleys and underworld hideouts.
He slowed down, but did not stop. “This is the house, boys. Number 40. Don’t stop. All dark except the third floor. Shades drawn there, but you can see the light through the cracks. I know this neighborhood. They have a lookout in the hall, and a man needs a password to get in. A red light dump without the red lights. We’ll see if there’s a way to it from the next street.”
At the next block they turned south, and then east into the next street. Between the houses here they could see the backs of the houses on Jockey Street.
“There it is,” pointed out MacBride. “That three-story place, taller than the others.” He stopped. “Here’s an alley. Come on.”
They swung into a dark, narrow passageway that led between two wooden houses and on into a small yard criss-crossed with clothes-lines. Separating this yard from that of the one belonging to the house in Jockey Street was a high board fence. Behind this, the three paused and looked up. All floors were dark except the third and top-most.
MacBride gripped the top of the fence, heaved up and over, landed in soft earth. Kerr and Kelly followed and they stood hunched closely, whispering. MacBride pointed to the fire-escape.
“Up we go. You boys trail me. Easy!” he warned.
He led the way up the ladders, his gun drawn. Nearing the top story, he went more cautiously, more quietly, and turned once to recommend silence with a finger tapping his lips. At the third floor he stopped, hunched over. The window was open, a half-drawn shade crackling in the draft.
Slowly MacBride raised his head and peered in over the sill. Four men were sitting around a table in shirt-sleeves, their collars open. A bottle and glasses were on the table, and MacBride caught whiffs of cigarette smoke. He saw Chuck Devore in profile. Devore was a tall, smooth-shaven man of thirty, with curly brown hair and a cleft chin. His eyes were deep-set and peculiarly luminous. In repose, his face was not bad to look at — except for the strange, impenetrable eyes. MacBride had never seen the others, but all of them bore the stamp of hard, dangerous living. The most outstanding, besides Devore, was a huge bull of a man with flaming red hair and a heavy jaw.
“It will be a cinch,” Devore was saying. “We can bust in about three a.m. and stick up the works, and you can take it from me, there’ll be no small change. Not with Diamond Jack Winslow in on the show and a lot of big political guns. And they can’t yap. That’s where we’ve got them. They’re playing a crooked game, and if the public got wind of it, Perrone would have about as much chance of getting in the alder-manic show as I would. And Haggerty’d land on his can, too.”
“And won’t Duke Manola get sore!” chuckled the red-head.
“Yes, the lousy bum!” snapped Devore. “Cripes, his kid brother spilled a lot of beans. Wild sheik, that bird was.”
“Yeah — was,” nodded the red-head.
“I feel a draft,” said Devore, and got up, coming toward the window.
He walked into the muzzle of MacBride’s thirty-eight.
“Nice, now, Chuck!” bit off MacBride. “Up high.”
He stepped in through the window, and Kerr was half-way through behind him, his gun covering the startled group at the table.
Then came Kelly, slit-eyed, dangerous.
“What’s the meaning of this, Mac?” snarled Devore.
“Be your age, Chuck,” said MacBride.
No one saw a hand sliding in through a door that led to another room. This hand, slim and white, felt for the light-switch, found it, and pressed the button.
The room was thrown into sudden darkness. Chairs scraped. A door banged.
A dagger of flame slashed through the gloom, and a man screamed, his body hit the floor with a thud.
MacBride found Devore on his hands, and the gangster was trying to twist the captain’s gun arm behind his back.
“No, you don’t, Devore!”
MacBride heaved with him, spun through the darkness, crashed into other struggling figures. He slammed Devore against the wall, and Devore tried to use his knee for a dirty blow. MacBride blocked with his hip and banged Devore’s head to the wall, again and again. Then Devore twisted and dragged out of the jam, but MacBride heaved against him and they crashed to the floor.