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.
“All right, Smith,” he said. “Get the crowd away. It’s up here, Flaherty.”
They went up in silence to the top of the hill. Lights poured from the ground-floor windows, sending a flood of illumination across grass and shrubbery. Ragged curtain ends fluttered out through the smashed panes; the stoop to the porch sagged drunkenly, half of it toppled on its side and resting on the earth. The porch itself had been a Colonial affair, tall, white, with slim pillars and a curved portico. Three of the pillars were snapped off in the center, and at the right end a segment of roof hung down like a misshapen curtain.
The car squatted before the house, a foot away from the stoop. In the light it was a twisted and charred mass of grayish metal. The top was blown off, and fragments of glass from its windows littered the ground with little silver shreds of light. At the side nearest Flaherty the metal warped outward in a great hole.
“It’s a morgue job,” said Mike. “You couldn’t identify either of them with a microscope.”
Flaherty bent and looked inside. When he straightened, his face was grayish. “Cripes!” he said.
“Yes,” said Mike. “Messy, hah?”
“Did you see it go up?”
Mike spat and nodded. “We’d just got here,” he said. “I grabbed Smith at the station and we came out in the flivver. I didn’t see anybody in the street. I told Smith to wait and crossed over. Then I saw a little guy in a top hat come down the stoop and get into the car.”
Flaherty scowled at his feet. “Devine,” he said. “I thought the damn’ fool would know enough to stick inside.”
“I heard the starter begin to purr — just for a second. Then I felt the pineapple bust loose. I didn’t see anything — it slammed me back through the bushes like I was a laundry bag. When I got up here it was all over.”
Flaherty lit a cigarette and tossed the match in the grass. For a second the flame scooped his lean, sharp face out of the shadow.
“They might have had it wired to the motor. But then why the hell didn’t it blast out comin’ from the garage? What was the chauffeur doin’? Did he leave the bus at all after bringin’ it out?”
“I don’t know,” Mike answered. “I haven’t had time to talk to the servants. They’re so scared they’re blubberin’. They got an English butler in there you should see, Flaherty. Gawd! He’ll give the laundry a job this week.”
“See what the chauffeur was doin’.” Flaherty said. “You might get a tip questionin’ the people around here. I’m goin’ back for Johnny Greco and the Jigger. This is where the nitro came in, Mike.”
Blocks distant a siren screamed. Flaherty tossed aside his cigarette.
“That’s probably the old man. Devine was a big shot in this burg; he’ll wanta know how come. I’ll leave you get the Congrats, Mike. So-long. I’ll phone you at headquarters later.”
Mike cursed bitterly. “You yella—” he said. “The old man will save some for you. I’ll see to that.”
At the corner Flaherty’s taxi swerved to avoid the police car, then straightened out along Magnolia Avenue. They made good time; it was ten minutes past eleven by Flaherty’s watch when they pulled up before the Esplanade.
The crowd inside was thicker, gayer, noisier. Flaherty sifted through the mob, passed to the anteroom, came back to the dance-floor. The blonde was nowhere in sight. He went out to the gate; to the pimply faced man on duty he said: “Where’d the tall blonde go? That Polack girl-”
The man shrugged. “She left ten minutes ago.”
Flaherty cursed. “Where does she live?” he snapped.
“I’m not runnin’ that kind of place,” pimply face said. Behind the lenses his eyes were small and guarded. “There’s plenty of blondes in there, guy.”
Flaherty yanked him around; he said, hard-eyed: “Where does she live?”
Pimply face licked his lips uncertainly and then shot out his jaw. “What you lookin’ for, guy? Trouble? I told you—”
“Yeh,” said Flaherty. “I heard you the first time. I guess you ain’t got the records. You’re in a spot, fella. You know the regulations on joints like this.”
Pimply face tried to hold his stare and failed. He said sullenly: “Sure I got the records. Wait a minute. I’ll see.”
He went across to the window, spoke to the girl inside, and came back with a small white filing slip in his hand. “Anna Brinski — 213 Ailing-ton Place,” he said, raising his eyes furtively to Flaherty’s. “What’s the trouble? Any—”
Flaherty let his words drift out without answering. He took the stairs three at a step and turned left at the door. Four blocks over, Ailing-ton Place emptied into the avenue: a narrow, darkly lit thoroughfare, with two parallel rows of cheap brownstone tenements leading down. He found 213 by counting off six houses from the corner; the numbers over the door, faded by time and weather, were indistinguishable in the gloom.
In the vestibule he struck a match, passing the flame over the bells. He read near the end: Anna Brinski, Apt. 43. The door swung back at his touch, admitting him to a narrow hall, palely lit.
He went up on his toes, two steps at a time, without sound. A radio moaned harshly in one of the flats, squawked with a sudden inrush of static as he passed; he caught fragments of voices, snores, the lingering thick odor of fried fish.
At the top of the flight a single bulb glowed weakly, shedding a wan light over the apartment doors. There were six on each floor; the one numbered three was in an angle near the front. When he got to the fourth landing Flaherty stopped and listened; he could hear nothing but the high querulous voice of a drunken woman below.
His footsteps patted on the oilcloth, slid off into the darkness with low echoes. He rapped sharply, twice, on the door of 43 — there was no bell.
After a minute of quietness someone said inside: “Who’s there?”
Flaherty said hoarsely: “Anna? Johnny sent me over. He can’t meet you tonight. He’s bein’ tailed.”
She said something short, bitterly. Flaherty grinned. When the door opened a crack he laid his body against it and pushed.
The room inside was brightly lit. There was a day-bed at one end, not yet made up, a messy dressing-table across from it, a tall floor-lamp with a torn shade near the window. The air was drenched with the brassy smell of burnt out cigarettes. Clothes littered the couch, poured over on to the floor; an open suitcase lay on the small center-table.
“So you’re goin’ away,” said Flaherty, leaning against the door. “You shoulda let me know, Anna.”
Her hair was down, stuck with curlers; she was wearing a sleazy dressing-gown. She smiled softly, but her eyes kept the same.
“The cheap bull,” she said. “Where do you think?”
“No fun,” said Flaherty. “I’m asking, Anna.”
He locked the door behind him and went across to the hall at one end that led into the tiny kitchenette and bath. Both were empty.
He grinned coming back. “So Joey Helton squeaked to you after all. We’ll have to mark him up a point.”
She sat down on the couch and picked a cigarette from the heavy bronze smoking-stand at the side. “What do you want?” she said.
“Nothin’ much,” said Flaherty. “Where were you gonna meet Johnny Greco?”
She shrugged. Her gown slipped down and she pulled it up, lazily, with one hand. “I don’t know him — this Johnny.”
Flaherty’s eyes narrowed. “You’re wastin’ your time on that stuff, sister. Where were you to meet him?”