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.
“Come again.”
The white-whiskered man said: “Selena’s a headstrong brat. She made up her mind she was going to participate in this contest today. I had to prevent it, naturally.”
“Naturally?”
Jeremiah Walther bounced his cane on the floor for emphasis. “Young man, I’ll have you understand our family tree has its roots ’way back in Pilgrim times. We’re descended from God-fearing pioneers, sturdy whaling captains and even a few town councilmen. Our forefathers and foremothers would turn over in their graves at the thought of a Walther girl showing her unclad limbs in this noisome exhibition. It’s down-right degrading to think of a civilized young lady strutting around in front of folks in a next-to-naked condition!”
O’Hanna mused: “Selena doesn’t share your old-fashioned views?”
“No. The only way I could stop her was by destroying her bathing dress, and all the other bathing costumes she might have bought at the last minute.” Abruptly, he tugged at his watch-chain, fished forth a family-heirloom style timepiece. “Speaking of the last minute, reminds me we better get a hurry on or we’re liable to miss the parade. It’s five minutes to starting time, and I’m a mighty slow-walking man.”
The house dick stared. “You’re going to degrade yourself by looking at such a shameful sight?”
Chuckles shook the white-whiskered man. “You’re durned tootin’ I am! Don’t tell Selena I said this, but secretly I’m the black sheep of the family. I ran away from home at the age of eighteen to hunt for diamonds in darkest Africa. The family made up a fable I was a missionary, and that’s what Selena thinks, but actually I’ve seen and done things that’d make your hair curl. I wouldn’t miss these doings if it killed me to go.”
He headed out the chalet door, hobbled down the steps, made off at a mile-an-hour clip. He was going to need all of the five minutes to reach the judging stand that had been built at one end of the outdoor pool, and from the size of the gathering crowd it looked as though he would be lucky to find a chair when he got there.
O’Hanna swung wide of the assemblage, circled a movie-news truck with a cameraman on its top. Gus Lambert, a pale dwarf with a giant Corona-Corona in his mouth, had already mounted the judge’s throne. Manager Endicott was doing a mother hen act on the hotel driveway, trying to shoo two hundred swim-suited sirens into line. “And for heaven’s sake, please, girls, quit chewing gum!” Endicott kept pleading frantically. Midway down the line, O’Hanna noticed Tra-La Brown peel the diaphanous golden wrap from her shoulders, hand it to a pinch-faced man with pince-nez who gave the wrap a shake, folded it neatly into an alligator leather bag at his feet.
O’Hanna had a cold, unhappy hunch about Tra-La Brown, and no time to ponder it. He made for the lobby sport clothes shop, found Baudry watching the proceedings through the shop front window.
“What became of the two girls I left here?” the house dick quizzed.
“They’re gone, Mike. They left as soon as the line started forming.”
It sent O’Hanna outside again. Eva Tarkey and Lola Lofting weren’t in the line. He had not expected any such miracle, but he had to check, and by the time he had made sure, the parade had started around the pool to the judging stand.
O’Hanna thrust his way through the standing onlookers who had been unable to find chairs. He couldn’t spot the brunette or the redhead anywhere in the audience, either. It worried him a little, remembering Eva Tarkey’s threat. But if she really thought she could break up the contest, he reasoned, she’d have to reach the judging stand to do it.
He started that way. Polite applause was dying down as one contestant carrying a card marked 14 quit the stand. It became genuine applause as No. 15 came to pirouette before Gus Lambert’s throne. No. 15 was platinum-haired, sun-tanned, and clad in what looked to O’Hanna dangerously like just a couple of bandanna handkerchiefs. Mixed with the handclapping, the sleuth caught a few whistles of male appreciation.
“The hell!” O’Hanna exclaimed, and leaped for the stand.
The redheaded Lola Lofting must have been hiding under the platform! He couldn’t see any other way she could have instantly scrambled from complete invisibility into the center of the stage.
But there she was, waving her arms at the crowd, trying to drown the handclapping with her high-pitched soprano appeaclass="underline" “Stop it! Hold everything, folks! I want to tell the world I’m getting a raw deal—”
Endicott was on the platform, plunging toward her. Gus Lambert got there first, with one wiry bound down from his throne. Lambert’s was a foghorn voice that dated back to the era when he had directed silent epics via a megaphone.
He brayed, “Shuddup, you!” and grabbed at the redhead.
Crack! They all heard it, and half the crowd looked quickly back toward the hotel. The other half saw Gus Lambert stagger, spin half around, and flop on his face. They jumped up then, and they could see the red wet spot forming on the planks under his arm.
Chapter Two
The Sound of the Shot
Where he stood, on the edge of the judging stand, O’Hanna could see it was an arm wound, and he swung to stare across the crowd. He didn’t see a glimpse of a gun, or of anyone who looked in a hurry to leave. On the platform, things were happening fast. Gus Lambert’s plump, male secretary was up there, and the Mogul news-reel cameraman, with the sound technician, beside the fallen producer.
“He’s out cold!”
“He fainted, all right.”
“Somebody call a doctor.”
Endicott rushed the redhead over to O’Hanna. “I got this one, Mike. All you got to do is find that Tarkey girl. She threatened she’d break up the contest, remember?”
Lola wailed: “I don’t know anything about this, honest! Why, that shot could’ve killed me — just as easy!”
O’Hanna asked: “Where’s Eva?”
“I don’t know that, either. I never saw her before today. You can’t blame me if she was crazy enough to pull this stunt!”
A voice of a newcomer on the platform was authoritative, “Break it up, boys. We’ll carry Mr. Lambert inside. Don’t discuss this with anyone until Lambert himself decides what our line will be.”
O’Hanna swung around, found himself confronting a pinched face with pince-nez panes bridging the narrow nose.
“You represent Mogul Films?” the house dick queried.
Pinched-face admitted it. “I’m Harry Farneye, in charge of casting.”
“I’m Mike O’Hanna, in charge of crimes. Tell your crowd to let Lambert lie until our hotel staff doctor — yeah, here he comes now.” Little Doc Raymond, the San Alpa house physician, was squirming his way up to the platform.
O’Hanna said: “Stick around, Farneye. I’ve got some questions you’d probably rather answer in strict privacy.”
Something hard poked the house dick’s leg. His Irish-gray glance dropped, irritably, and discovered the hard object was a cane. Jeremiah Walther was behind it. Walther quavered: “Young man, you tell Selena to come down from up there! Tell her she’s shaming her own flesh and blood!”
O’Hanna followed the indignantly pointing cane, and it steered him to the other side of the platform and to the platinum-haired No. 15. “You’re Selena Walther?”
“Yes. Why?”
O’Hanna confided. “I’m surprised. I understand your uncle burned your bathing dress to keep you out of this competition. Where’d you dig up this outfit?”
He had made exactly the right guess about her outfit. Selena Walther said: “It’s just a little item I stirred from a few bandanna handkerchiefs. I know Uncle Jerry burned my swim-suit, and once and for all, I’m going to teach him he can’t dictate my life to me! The fact that he’s my long-lost uncle gives him absolutely no right to suddenly appear on the scene and start ordering me—”