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 doubled his fist and took a crack at the desk. “Just about that, Jake! All right. Get back on the job. Cohen with you?”
“Yeah, Ike’s over there. Patrolmen Gunther and Holstein at one end the street. McClusky and Swanson the other. Things are running smooth so far. Don’t see any o’ Duveen’s guns, or Bonelio’s.”
“That,” said MacBride, “is what itches me. Bonelio ought to be there. He’s Shanz’s friend.”
“He’s not there. None of his guns, either. Tell you who is there, though, cap.”
“Who?”
“Bonelio’s skirt. That little wren he yanked from the burlesque circuit and shoved in his ritzy night-club on Paradise Street. Trixie Meloy. Ask me and I’ll crack she still oughter be back in burlesque, and third rate at that.”
“Who’s she with?”
“Alone. High-hatting everybody. But she sticks close to Shanz.”
“I got it!” clipped MacBride. “She’s waiting for somebody, for Bonelio. Watch her, Jake. It’s ten-thirty now. Bonelio should have been on hand long ago. He shows up at all of the district’s balls and dances. Until he comes anything can happen. Tell the cops to keep their eyes open. Tell Cohen to tend to business and quit trying to date up the gals. I know Ike. On the way out tell the sergeant to see the reserves are ready for a break. First time you pipe a Duveen gun on the scene, run him off. If he cracks wise, bring him over here.
“Remember, Jake, this precinct is just about as safe as a volcano. We’ve heard rumblings for the past month, and God knows when the top’ll blow off. It’s a tough situation. I’m all for the Anderson-Connaught ticket, as you know, but no rat like Duveen is going to get away with anything. He doesn’t give a damn for the Anderson-Connaught combine. He’s sore at the present State’s Attorney and the greaseball Bonelio. Both of them ought to be in the pen, and before this election is over I’ve got a hunch one of them will be — if he doesn’t get bumped off during the rush. On your way, Jake, and good luck.”
Moriarity went out.
Kennedy said, “I’m going over and look around, too, Mac.”
“You smell headlines for tomorrow’s Press, don’t you?”
“Yeah — the city of dreadful night. Hell, man, we ain’t had a good hot story since that Dutch butcher tapped his frau on the knob with a meat ax. Years ago, Mac, old bean!”
“Two weeks ago last night,” mused MacBride. “Ah-r-r, when will this crime wave stop? Wives killing husbands; husbands killing wives! College kids going in for suicide and double death pacts! Men braining little kids! Men willing to kill to get power!”
“That,” said Kennedy, pausing in the doorway, “is what keeps the circulation of the daily tabloids on top. See you later.”
Alone, MacBride stared into space for a long moment, his eyes glazed with thought. Then he sighed bitterly, flung off the mood with a savage little gesture, and continued looking over the collection of police bulletins.
Fifteen minutes dragged by. The dusty-faced clock on the wall ticked them off with hollow monotony.
Then the telephone rang.
MacBride picked up the receiver, said, “Hello.”
“MacBride?”
“Yup.”
“Bedell’s slated to get the works tonight.”
The instrument clicked.
“Hello — hello!” barked MacBride.
There was no use. The man behind the mysterious voice had hung up. MacBride rang the operator, gave his name.
“Trace that call,” he snapped. “Fast!”
2
He pressed one of a series of buttons on his desk. The door opened. Lieutenant Donnelly tramped in wiping the cobwebs of a recent nap from his eyes.
“On your toes, lieutenant!” cracked MacBride. “Just got a blind call that Bedell’s going to get bumped off. You’ll take charge here tonight while I’m on the outside.”
The telephone rang. MacBride reached for it, said, “Yes?” A moment later he hung up, snorted with disappointment. “Call was from a booth in the railroad terminal.”
“Who d’ you suppose it was, captain?” ventured Donnelly.
“How the hell do I know?” MacBride was on his feet, buttoning his coat. He reached for his visored cap, but changed his mind and slapped on a flap-brimmed fedora.
“I’ll be over on Jackson Street,” he told Donnelly crisply. “Bedell’s supposed to pull a campaign speech at eleven. I’ll put the clamps on that. Bedell’s no friend of mine, but I’m damned if any bum is going to kill him in my precinct. If Headquarters wants me, give ’em the dope and tell ’em where I am.”
He strode into the central room and shot brief orders to the desk sergeant. Then he drafted four policemen from the reserve room. They came out buttoning their coats, nightsticks drawn. The lieutenant, the sergeant, the four policemen — all were affected by the vigor, the spirit with which MacBride dived into the middle of things. No captain liked more to get out in the raw and the rough of crime than MacBride. The crack of his voice, the snap of his movement, made him a man whom others were eager to follow. Hard he was, but with the hardness of a man supremely capable of command. He had turned down a Headquarters job on the grounds that it was too soft — that he would stagnate and grow old before his time, grow whiskers and a large waistband.
He led the way out of the station house. His step was firm and resolute, and he carried himself with a definite air of determination. One block west, and two south, and they were at Jackson Street.
The band was playing a fox trot. The block was roped off at either end, and a hundred couples were dancing on the street pavement. On the sidewalks and the short stone flights before the tenement were a hundred-odd onlookers. Strung from pole to pole were rows of colored electric lights. Banners were waving; posters showing likenesses of Alderman Bedell and State’s Attorney Krug emblazoned the houses and the poles. A temporary bandstand had been erected in the middle of the block, and from this, too, the candidates for re-election were expected to speak.
MacBride looked the place over critically. Detective Ike Cohen left a couple of girls to join the captain.
“Something up, Cap?”
“Maybe. See any old familiar faces around?”
“None that’d interest you. Here comes Moriarity.”
At sight of the captain Moriarity frowned quizzically. “Huh?” he asked.
MacBride explained about the telephone call. Gunther and Holstein, the patrolmen stationed at that end of the block, mingled with the four reserves, all wondering what was in the wind.
“Where’s Committeeman Shanz?” MacBride asked.
“I’ll get him,” said Moriarity, and faded into the crowd.
He reappeared in company with Shanz, district committeeman and chairman of the night’s carnival. Shanz was a German-Jew, though he had more of the beer-garden look about him. A short, rotund man, beefy-cheeked and spectacled, with a jovial grin that was only skin deep.
“Well, well, captain,” he boomed, waddling forward with his hand extended, “this is a pleasure.”
MacBride shook and said, “Not so much, Shanz. You’ve got to bust up this picnic.”
Shanz’s grin faded. “How’s this?”
“The ball is over,” explained MacBride. “There’s trouble brewing and it’s liable to boil over any minute.”