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.
There was a long silence and then footsteps down the hall. The gray-haired inspector stuck his head through the door. He saw me and whipped out his gun.
I said, “I’m working late, Inspector. Here’s your man.”
“Yeah? You’re my man, brother. Put down that gun.”
I nodded. “Watch him, Inspector. He’s Dude Wallon.” I tossed the gun on the floor.
The inspector’s eyes bugged at the name. He hesitated.
I caught a swift movement from Dude. His hand flashed to his hip pocket and an automatic appeared from nowhere. He grabbed at the redhead and yanked her in front of him. “Outa my way,” he whispered. “Outa my way.”
The inspector’s eyes glinted. Carefully he put away his gun. Wallon moved toward the door, shielding himself behind the girl. My heart sank. If he got away, he’d get me if he had to track me to the end of the world. And as for the redhead — it would be curtains for her.
Wallon’s face relaxed into a grin. “So long, you,” he said to me. “I’ll be seein’ you again.” He stepped into the hall.
There was the roar of a forty-five down the hall and Wallon’s face froze incredulously. Slowly he turned, and suddenly crumpled to the floor. Footsteps hurried down the corridor. It was the big cop I’d slugged in the elevator. He kneeled by the corpse and turned it over. He looked up, his face a mask of horror.
“This isn’t Butler!”
“That’s right, son,” said the inspector. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just as good.”
“Better,” I said. “Much better.”
I turned to the redhead. She was white-faced and shaking like a leaf.
“Now, honey,” I said. “About that drink you wanted. I know a place...”
The Sound of the Shot
Dale Clark
Ronald Kayser (1905–1988), who wrote under the pseudonym Dale Clark, was born in a small town in the Midwest. At various times, he took jobs as a lumberyard worker, reporter, private detective, house-to-house salesman, editor, and creative writing teacher, but remained throughout his life a prolific writer.
In addition to more than a half dozen novels — Focus on Murder (1943), The Narrow Cell (1944), The Red Rods (1946), Mambo to Murder (1955), A Run for the Money (1956), Death Wore Fins (1959), and Country Coffins (1961) — Clark wrote more than four hundred stories for both the pulps and the more prestigious slick magazines such as Collier’s, Liberty, and This Week.
Many of his stories are set in Southern California, where he spent most of his writing life. Although he inevitably created a wide range of characters, an unusually high percentage of them have an interest in contemporary technology. A forest ranger’s station is jammed full of highly technical devices; Doc Judson, a detective-cum-criminalist, speaks frequently of the need for scientific methodology, though it is mainly limited to ballistics; the best-named of Clark’s series characters, Highland Park Price (High Price), has amassed a collection of high-tech toys that seldom work because he is too cheap to buy new ones or reputable brands. In these comical private-eye yarns, High Price gouges his clients, frequently using blackmail.
“The Sound of the Shot” was published in the September 1946 issue.
Manager Endicott was in a spot — his Hollywood beauty contest had turned into a frame-up flesh show. Someone had brought in a murder package, all wrapped up in a special hand-loaded wildcat cartridge. The movie moguls were muttering, the beauties were bothered, and he was sure the paying guests were saying: “Oh yes, San Alpa — what a lovely place to come and get yourself murdered!”
Chapter One
Pin-Ups on Parade
She was a stunning brunette swathed in a form-hugging beach coat, Eva Tarkey. Her eyes were sultry, incensed. She stormed, “I’ve been robbed! Somebody stole the top to my bathing suit! I’m being cheated out of my chance for the movie contract!”
The girl with her was a stunning redhead named Lola Lofting. She was just as angry. She said: “I was robbed worse. I came to get undressed, and somebody had stolen my entire swim-suit — and I’m the one who was practically a cinch to win the movie contract!”
Both girls were standing in the San Alpa resort hotel office, telling their troubles to Endicott, the thin-faced, graying manager of the million-dollar California mountain-top spa.
Endicott reared back in his swivel chair, and made motions like a man fighting bees. “I can’t help it! I can’t be responsible for lost swim-suits. You girls will have to argue that out with Mr. O’Hanna here — he’s the head of the stolen goods department.”
Mike O’Hanna was the house dick. He pointed this out. “I’m hired to be a hotel detective. This pin-up parade happens to be your pet baby.”
This was true. Endicott had dreamed up the bathing beauty contest as a publicity stunt. He figured half the Sunday papers in the land would run rotogravure shots of the lucky lass who got crowned Queen of San Alpa. It would tie in nicely with the management’s advertising campaign to extol the colossal San Alpa golf course, warmed salt-water plunges, and miles of scenic horseback and hiking trails. Eventually, it would lure flocks of well-heeled tourists into the de luxe fifteen-dollar-a-day-on-up hotel rooms.
Moreover, Endicott had foreseen this publicity stunt would cost hardly anything. San Alpa’s clientele included lots of Hollywood film folks who came up for the week-ends, and Endicott had buttonholed Gus Lambert, the Mogul Films producer, and talked him into providing a thirteen-week contract for the winning girl. Endicott had argued astutely that a lot of free publicity in the newspapers and news-reels wouldn’t hurt Mogul Films, either.
Gus Lambert had fallen for it, had even consented to act as judge of the beauty and talent on display. Endicott planned to have an afternoon promenade in swim-suits around the outdoor pool, and then in the evening the contestants could don low-cut gowns and go on as a special attraction instead of the usual Palomar Room floorshow. That way, the management would gain two entertainments for the paying guests.
As for the girls, naturally it wouldn’t be necessary to hire them to try to win a crack at a movie career. Several dozen ambitious lovelies, Endicott had hoped, would be glad to pay their own expenses to San Alpa.
That’s what he had hoped. What he actually got was several hundred of them. From early morning, girls had been unloading out of buses, or chugging up in jalopies, or arriving as hitchhikers. It had been necessary to close off one of the big dining-rooms and convert it into an emergency dressing-room where two hundred contestants could primp, powder and change into their costumes.
But it hadn’t been possible to lock them up in that room until the three p.m. parade started, of course. What happened was, they had parked their overnight cases or suitcases in the dressing-room and then turned themselves loose on the lobby, the grounds and the golf course. Quite a few of them had brought picnic lunches, littering the practically hand-manicured lawns with waxed paper and Dixie cups. Others had just trusted to luck, figuring some of the gold-plated, male paying guests would be glad to buy a girl a lunch.
Endicott had heard complaints about the lunch papers being wind-wafted over the golf course. He had listened to other complaints from the female paying guests — the idea of turning San Alpa over to a flock of painted hussies, common car-hops or worse, making eyes at decent women’s husbands and fiancés and sons in the lobby! There had been complaints about chewing gum parked on the hotel furniture, too.