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.
And now this — this stolen swim-suit business...
Endicott had taken about all he could take. He glared at O’Hanna, said: “O.K., it was my idea, but you don’t have to rub it in! You’ll have to attend to these minor details, Mike. This thing’s due to start in fifteen minutes, and I have to see Gus Lambert, I have to—”
The redheaded Lola Lofting cut in: “Yeah, and what about me? What happens if my swim-suit isn’t found in the next fifteen minutes?”
Endicott shrugged. “You’ll have to drop out of the contest, that’s all. You certainly can’t take your place in the parade without a bathing suit on.”
“That’s what you think.” Her voice was deadly.
Endicott was appalled. “Why, you wouldn’t dare — you couldn’t — Mike, you gotta stop her!”
Eva Tarkey tossed her brunet head. “Maybe she won’t dare, but I’m telling you — there’ll be no beauty contest today unless I’m in it.”
O’Hanna’s Irish-gray eyes hardened a trifle. In the swank, snooty elegance of San Alpa, an old-style hard-hatted lobby cop would have been as out of place as muskets in a modernized army. O’Hanna wore casual flannels like any paying guest, and could have passed as a vacationing playboy — until trouble started.
He said: “Let’s drop the melodrama, you’re not being screen-tested for a B picture yet. Suppose you just tell me what happened, and I’ll go to work on it.”
“How do we know what happened?” the redhead griped. “We left our stuff in the dressing-room, and when we came back it was gone — swiped, so we couldn’t enter the contest.”
The brunette’s dark eyes gleamed. “And, big boy, I meant what I said. I paid bus fare all the way down from San Francisco, and either I’m in the parade — or the whole damn thing is coming to a quick, sudden stop.”
This time he ignored the threat, used the opening instead. “You’re from San Francisco, too?” O’Hanna asked the redhead.
Lola Lofting denied it. “No, I’m a Diego girl.”
“You two’d never met before? So it probably wasn’t a case of somebody trying to get even with the pair of you,” O’Hanna mused. “Well, come on.”
He led them down the side of the lobby, into the service hallway where foodstuffs from the kitchen streamed to the dining-rooms and the Palomar Bar. The Palomar was on the left, this dining-room to the right. O’Hanna raised knuckles to knock, but Eva Tarkey was in no mood to stand on ceremony. She went right ahead, shoved the door open, was greeted by alarmed squeals.
A soprano shrilled, “Oooh, a man!” and started a chorus of squeals, of frantic whisking of beach wraps and dressing gowns around tanned, trim figures.
Eva Tarkey said scornfully: “Can the comedy. I told you I’d call a cop, and it’s going to go hard with whichever one of you tramps pulled this stunt.”
“Which is your bag?” O’Hanna asked.
“Right here.” She aimed a kick at a scuffed suitcase, one that looked as if it had been kicked around plenty.
“Unlock it.”
“I lost the key years ago.” She stooped, unstrapped the suitcase, hinged open the top. “It’s a bra-top that matches this,” holding up cream-tinted bathing briefs.
“And your bag?” O’Hanna turned to Lola Lofting.
“It’s the next one, right here. I had it locked.”
The redhead’s was an overnight case, and O’Hanna ignored the need for a key. He tried, and all he needed was his thumbs to spring the lid free.
Straightening, he peered around the room. “Any of the rest of you missing anything?”
Nobody was. It seemed to be just these two bags, and they had been near the door, one unlocked and the other as good as unlocked. So it almost looked like sneak thievery, except, naturally, a sneak thief wouldn’t have wanted a swim-suit and a half.
“Well” — O’Hanna shrugged — “come on, we’ll see what we can do about it.”
It would probably break Endicott’s economical heart, but he marched the pair across the lobby, this time to the sport clothes shop — one of the classier Wilshire Boulevard establishments in Los Angeles found it profitable to run a branch shop here. O’Hanna hailed the manager: “Here, Baudry, fix ’em up and charge it to the house.”
Baudry’s eyes lit up behind their spectacles. “Yes? And what will it be?”
He heard what it would be, and his eyes dulled, his hands dropped. “Mr. O’Hanna, I’m sorry. I haven’t a single swim-suit in stock. A Mr. Walther came in this morning and bought every last bathing suit from the shelves.”
O’Hanna thought and said: “You girls wait here.”
He headed to the lobby desk, asked: “Who the devil’s this guy Walther?”
The desk clerk was owl-eyed. He exhaled. “She’s beautiful, she’s gorgeous, she’s damned near almost divine, ain’t she?” He hadn’t seen O’Hanna, hadn’t even heard the house dick’s voice.
O’Hanna’s Irish-gray glance shifted, followed the owl-eyed stare. Something blond had just stepped from the San Alpa elevator. For a moment she paused, almost as though she was going to dive into a pool. She was dressed for it, with just a golden cloud of diaphanous wrap that drifted away from her shoulders. The rest was vivid, scarlet swim-suit and a pearly complexion.
O’Hanna said: “Quit drooling, man!”
The clerk snapped out of it, colored. “That’s Tra-La Brown, Mike, and I bet everybody drools when she walks up on the judge’s stand today. If she doesn’t win, there’s something fishy about this contest, I’d say.”
“There’s plenty fishy about it already. Including a guy named Walther getting a corner on the swim-suit market.”
The clerk seemed shocked to hear it. “You can’t mean Jeremiah Walther? Why, he’s a paragon of respectability.”
“Where’ll I find him?”
The clerk said in one of the chalets. A-10, San Alpa followed the California style and had private guest cottages scattered about the landscaped grounds. Jeremiah Walther had to be a paragon of high finance to afford A-10, since it rented for twice the room rate of the costliest suite in the main building. O’Hanna wondered, sometimes, how Endicott got away with it. After all, the chalets under their imitation Swiss roofs were only glorified tourist cabins.
He climbed the steps to this one, punched the bell. The man who answered was obviously that paragon of respectability, Jeremiah Walther. The old boy wore his white, silky whiskers in the mutton-chop fashion of the Gay Nineties. He was bald-headed down to a half-circle of white fuzz at ear level. He wore a hearing aid plugged into his left ear, eyeglasses with gold rims. A gold watch-chain sported its massive links across his black broadcloth vestfront.
He had hobbled to the door with the aid of a gold-headed cane. Leaning on the cane, he blinked waterily at O’Hanna, quavered his reply to the detective’s question.
“Yes, young man, I bought those bathing dresses. I put them in the fireplace.”
O’Hanna was fascinated. He wasn’t old enough to remember, but he had an idea “bathing dresses” had gone out with bustles. He asked: “You mean you burned them?”
Jeremiah Walther aimed his cane at the front room fireplace. “That I did, and it wasn’t much of a fire they made.”
The sleuth went in, peered at close range. There remained a few smoldering rags, mostly where the Lastex-threaded fabrics had melted down.
He marveled: “I’ll be damned if you didn’t. Now would you please tell me why?”
With creaking-joint care, Jeremiah Walther lowered himself into a chair: “I had to protect my niece,” he disclosed. “I’m Selena’s only living male relative, so it was my bounden duty to act.”