The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
Lippy nodded. “Sorry I got you into this, Pete. I—”
I looked at the poor old guy standing there with his wife, scared and miserable.
“Forget it.”
As I left the apartment I heard sirens screaming in the night. A streetcar was passing, almost empty, and I swung myself on. I got off on Bush Street and registered at the Perry Hotel. I went to my room and flopped on the bed.
I couldn’t sleep. I lit a cigarette and watched a flashing neon sign play on the ceiling. On and off, on and off. The shadow of the fire escape began to look like a gallows. I swung my feet over the side of the bed.
The redhead had been lying. About what, I didn’t know. But she had been lying, and she was the missing link. Lippy hadn’t killed the blonde; the redhead probably hadn’t either, but she knew who had. I looked at my watch. It was one a.m.
The 411 Club was still crowded. The last show was almost over and the redhead was singing. She saw me and faltered on a note. When the song was over and the applause had stopped, she walked swiftly through the cigarette smoke to my table.
“I thought you’d gone.”
“I liked your performance so much in the first show that I decided I’d catch the second one.”
“Yeah.” She sat down again. I was surprised, and wary, but I ordered her a drink. She sipped it carefully, watching me with the clear, green eyes.
“I get off after the show,” she said finally. “Sometimes this job bores me so much that I feel as if I have to go out afterwards.”
Well, I’ll be damned, I thought. Little Red Riding Hood asking the wolf in.
“Is that so?”
“I guess when you’re off duty you like to go out too?”
“Sometimes.”
She looked into my face suddenly. There was fear in her eyes, and an almost pathetic hope.
“Will you take me somewhere after the show?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Someplace for a drink. Anywhere we can have a good time.”
I thought of the cops crowding the town, working overtime. Looking for me. The redhead was frightened of something, and I wanted to know what it was, but it was no time to start painting the town red.
“No,” I said. “Not tonight. What’s frightening you?”
She looked up and laughed. “Frightening me? Don’t be silly. I might ask you the same thing. Or don’t you like redheads?”
“I like redheads, when they come clean with me. Not when they hide things.”
She laughed nervously. “Well, this makes the first time in a long while that I’ve asked for a date and been turned down.” She stood up, smiling, but the fear was still in her eyes. “Drop in some day when you’re not working on a case — then I can turn you down.”
She was off to the dressing room and I was alone. I wondered what had frightened her. Conscience? Maybe she couldn’t bear to be alone. And yet, the strangler had been a man — a woman wouldn’t have had the strength. And the handkerchief in the blonde’s hand — it had been not a woman’s but a man’s handkerchief.
The handkerchief. It had been clean, freshly ironed. Not a handkerchief that had come out of a hip pocket. A handkerchief that had come out of a breast pocket.
I ordered another drink.
Who wears a handkerchief in his breast pocket, nowadays? Flashy dressers. Dudes.
Dudes. Dude Wallon? But Wallon was dead. At least, the paper had said he was dead. But was he? Who had identified him? The blonde had gone East with him. Had she identified the body? A guy like that, permanently erased from the police files, can start all over again. He can take care of all the people who have anything on him and begin a whole new life. From scratch.
Two people who had something on Dude were the blonde and Lippy. The Reno murder. And where would Dude go if he came back West, if he returned from the grave? To a girl who had been in love with him — the redhead. He could hide away with her and take care of his old friends, one at a time. The blonde was gone, and somebody had taken a shot at Lippy. With Lippy dead the books would be closed and Dude could breathe freely.
Except for the redhead.
The redhead had been frightened. She hadn’t wanted to go home. She’d been trying to tell me something all the time, thinking I was a cop. And I hadn’t listened.
I shoved my chair away from the table and started for the stage. A waiter barred my way. He said, “No visitors backstage.” I gave him a ten and he stepped aside.
I walked through the wings and down the corridor. I found a door with a star on it and the name Flame Doreen scrawled beneath it in chalk. I knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door and looked in. The room was a mess, but there was no one there.
I moved further down the hall and heard voices. I knocked on another door and opened it. There was a moment of silence. The room was filled with the girls from the chorus, in various stages of undress. A luscious young blonde looked at me blandly.
“Show’s over, mister. Don’t you knock?”
“I have to find out Miss Doreen’s address.”
The girls looked at me coldly. I pulled out my wallet and flashed the deputy’s badge. The blonde shrugged.
“What’s she done now? She lives at the Manchester Arms, on Wright Street.”
“Thanks. And sorry.” I walked swiftly out the back door and grabbed a taxi.
The Manchester Arms was a cheap apartment with all the trimmings. I asked the doorman for Miss Doreen’s apartment and he winked at me sympathetically.
“It’s 3A, brother, but you’re a little late. There’s a guy been up there all day, and he’s still there.”
“Personal friend of mine,” I said, walking into the elevator.
I got off at the third floor and wandered down the hall, looking at the door numbers. When I came to 3A I stopped. Voices murmured inside. I put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear a word. I slipped the Police Special out of my pocket and lifted my hand to ring. Then I heard it — a low, desperate cry: “Dude — no!”
It was all I needed. I backed against the far wall and launched myself against the door. It was a cheap lock; it snapped easily. I crashed the door open and went on through.
A big guy, handsome, with a bronzed, hard face and curly blond hair, was leaning over a chair. His face was turned my way, frozen in fear and surprise. His hand flashed toward his coat. As he straightened I glimpsed the redhead lying sprawled on the chair.
“Hold it,” I said. He hesitated. I stepped toward him and relieved him of a gun from a shoulder holster. The girl on the chair moaned and her eyelids flickered.
“Not this time, brother,” I said. “The legal limit on murder is one a day.”
He spit out a curse. I didn’t like the way he did it so I let him have it, backhanded across the mouth. “You don’t make out as well with men as you do with women, do you, Dude?”
He watched me, his eyes glittering. The redhead sat up, holding her throat.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “That’s why I didn’t want to come back. I knew it...”
“Call the cops, honey,” I said. “Tell ’em it’s Butler. Quick, before I lose control of this gun.”
I motioned toward Wallon with the gun. “I wish I had time to work you over, Wallon. I’m afraid the cops are gonna be kind of inhibited. But you’re going to get the gas chamber anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Try and prove something, buddy. Try it.”
“Where’s your handkerchief?” I asked. He looked at his breast pocket and turned white. I said: “You should have checked that before you left the blonde. I assume it has laundry marks on it — it shouldn’t be very hard to prove.”