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 squared off and pressed on his flash.
“Good cripes almighty!” exploded one of the men.
“As you are!” barked MacBride.
The man in the lead was carrying a canvas bag. The man was Chuck Devore, and behind him were six others. One of these snapped up his gun and fired. The shot smashed MacBride’s flashlight, tore through his left hand that held it. He cursed and reeled sidewise, and Kerr’s gun boomed close by his ear, and the slug ripped through the gang on the stair.
“Back up!” one of them called to his companions.
MacBride thrust his wounded hand into his pocket and fired at them.
“Come on!” he snapped, and leaped up the staircase.
Kerr passed him on the way up, and let fly with three fast shots. A gangster crumpled near the top, spun around and came crashing down. He reeled off MacBride and pitched over the railing. At the top, a gun spat and a bullet grazed Kerr’s cheek, leaving a hot sting. Then they were on the top floor.
In a close exchange of shots Kennedy gasped and clutched at his left arm, and Donnegan stopped short, his legs sagging. His gun dropped from his hand and he crumpled. MacBride stumbled over him and sprayed the gloom with three shots. A man screamed and another flung out a bitter stream of oaths that died in a groan. MacBride plugged ahead, reeling over prone bodies, himself dazed with the pain of his wounded arm.
He saw a square of the night sky framed in a window, saw it blocked suddenly by a figure that stepped out to a fire-escape. The figure twisted and a slash of gun-fire stabbed the darkness. MacBride’s cap was carried from his head. His own gun belched and the man in the window doubled over and fell back into the hall.
Then he brought up short, looked out and saw, vaguely, a couple of automobiles tearing away into the night. He spun around, expecting another enemy, but a dread pall had descended after that last shot. Kerr limped up to him, panting. Kennedy was swearing softly. MacBride snapped on his own flash and saw them, bloody and torn; Kerr with a gash on his cheek, Kennedy slowly sopping a wound in his arm. The beam picked out dead bodies on the floor. He swayed back and bent over Donnegan, then stood up, wagging his head.
“I’ll never say, ‘Shoot, Donnegan,’ again,” he muttered.
His light swung around and settled on the man he had shot by the window. It was Devore, still gripping the canvas bag. MacBride bent down and opened the bag, and saw a mass of bills — fives, tens, twenties. He gave the bag to Kerr, and moved on toward a door. He threw his light in here and saw a large, square room whose expensive furnishings were in ruin. He espied a light switch and pressed the button, and a big chandelier sprang to life.
“Hot diggity!” exclaimed Kennedy.
Dead men were here, too. But what had caused Kennedy’s exclamation was the gambling layout. There was a roulette wheel. There was a faro table. There were a half dozen card tables, two of them overturned. There were cards and chips spread over the floor. The windows were covered by heavy curtains, and ventilators were in the ceiling.
“My hunch was right,” nodded MacBride, bitterly.
“And look who’s here!” cried Kennedy. “Duke Manola — dead as a doornail. And — oh, boy! — the late Judge Mike Haggerty — late is right. Where,” he yelled, looking around, “oh, where is a telephone? What a scoop!”
There was a shot below, and MacBride whirled. He dived out into the hall, with Kerr at his heels, and went down the stairway on the fly. His flash leaped forth and spotted two figures running for the lower staircase.
“Stop!” he shouted.
His answer was a shot that went wild. But MacBride fired as he ran, and saw one of the figures topple. He kept going, furiously, and collided with the other.
“All right, Cap. You’ve got me.”
His flash shone on the face of a woman.
The man lying dead on the floor was the redhead.
11
“Well,” said MacBride, “who are you?”
“Arline Kane, and what about it?”
“No lip, sister. What are you doing here?”
She laughed — a hard little laugh. “Came in to look around. I heard the fireworks from the road. I found Red tied to a pipe and I shot away the nice little bracelet.”
“You come upstairs,” directed MacBride, and shoved her toward the staircase.
Once in the hidden gambling den, Arline stood with her hands on her hips and looked around with lazy eyes.
“Hell,” she said, “what a fine mess. Real wild West stuff. Jesse James and his boy scouts were pikers alongside these playboys. Well, there’s Duke, the bum. Good thing.”
“What do you mean?” asked MacBride.
She sat down and lit a cigarette. “Don’t know, eh? Well, Duke used to be my boy friend, until he got hot over a little flapper not dry behind the ears yet. Gave me my walking papers. That was after he tried to frame Chuck Devore, and Chuck breezed for a while. But when Chuck came back, I looked him up and we consolidated our grudge against the wop.
“We got one good break. Duke and his kid brother were on the outs. The kid wanted more money, but Duke was nobody’s fool. He told Joe where he got off. I understand they actually came to blows. Well, it was about that time I met Joe, and like a kid he handed me his sob story about Duke landing on him.
“I got him tight one night and he sprung his tongue for a fare-ye-well. Told me about Duke buying this brewery to make and store booze. But some politicians, and Diamond Jack Winslow — laying there, with the busted neck — were behind him. Diamond Jack installed the games here and Haggerty was to get a thirty percent split from Jack on the house winnings. Duke had some money in it, but he was mainly for the booze end. Haggerty promised protection, and Duke, in payment, promised three thousand votes for Haggerty’s party.
“Well, Duke’s kid brother was hard up for money, and Duke would never let him run with the gang. So Chuck and I got the kid one night and put it up to him: He could clean up by raiding this dump, by tipping us off when the games were running high. Then the other night, he got drunk and sore and—”
“Pulled a bone,” put in MacBride, “on Old Stone Road. I know all about that. And then tonight Devore and his rats thought they’d pull a fast one — do what we’d least expect after their first fumble — jump this joint and clean out before we’d caught our breath. Well, they would have fooled me, sister. I didn’t expect them. I came here on a hunch to look around, and found fireworks. And you — you’re the last one.”
“Out of luck again,” she nodded.
“You could make some money,” put in Kennedy, “writing a series of articles for the Evening News on ‘How I Went Wrong.’ ”
“You would say that, ink fingers,” she gave him, derisively. “But I’ll do no writing. And because I’m the last straggler, I’ll take no rap.” She bit off the end of her cigarette and flung the other part away with a defiant gesture. “A pill was in the tip. Always carried one for just a tough break like this.” Her eyes were glazed. “Not lilies, boys... something red... roses.”
A day later MacBride sat at his desk in the station, his cap tipped back, one eye squinted against the smoke from his cigar while he read the Free Press’ account of last night’s holocaust. Sometimes he wagged his head, amazed at remarks which he was alleged to have made.
The city was shocked to the core. Election possibilities had turned more than one somersault during the past twelve hours. Big officials were making charges and counter charges. And MacBride, with his hunch, was mainly responsible for it.