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.
O’Hanna wasn’t listening to her. He had wheeled at the strained sound of little Doc Raymond’s voice.
“The man is dead.”
Endicott had heard it, too. He loosed his hold of the redhead, and strode over, with consternation spread across his thin features.
“You’re crazy!” the manager protested. “He can’t be dead! It’s just a slight flesh wound in his arm.”
Doc Raymond had slashed the sleeve away from the producer’s arm. O’Hanna went to one knee beside the little medico and said: “It’s a flesh wound, but it isn’t slight. I saw a deer brought in that way last fall. It’s one of those super-velocity jobs; the slug blows to powder when it hits, the shock kills whether it’s a vital place or not. Right, Doc?”
“Technically, it’s hydrostatic pressure,” the physician confirmed. “The impact of such a projectile sets up a pressure wave away from the wound area. The blood literally recoils in the arteries so that it flows backward and halts the heart action.”
Perspiration bathed manager Endicott’s forehead. High-velocity ballistics and hydrostatic physics he savvied as little as he understood the principle of the atomic bomb, but he knew what murder meant to the hotel business. This wasn’t a death that could be hushed up — it had happened in front of too many people. The newspapers weren’t in the habit of hiding Hollywood celebrity slayings in their classified ad pages, either...
Endicott breathed raspily. “Mike, quit standing here gawping at it. Go get that girl! The crazy little fool did this out of sheer, hell-cat spite!”
O’Hanna corrected: “If it was Eva Tarkey, she didn’t do it out of off-the-cuff spite. This job was premeditated murder.” His stare rested glumly on the frightsome mess the wildcat slug had made of Gus Lambert’s arm. This killer was dealing with death by means of lead whipping along at upwards of four thousand foot seconds. It spelled a slayer who was really tooled for destruction!
Yet there might be a catch in it. O’Hanna dug for the catch: “Anybody here know of a gun crank in our midst?”
No cigar. Nothing but headshakes and blank looks all around.
Selena Walther, though, moistened her lips. “I can tell you one thing. That shot came from one of the hotel windows. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
“Which window?” Endicott panted.
“I don’t know, but I heard it come from that direction,” the platinum-top insisted, pointing toward the hotel.
The cameraman chimed in. “She’s right. I heard it behind me, too. That was from the hotel.”
O’Hanna asked hopefully: “You got a picture on that film?”
“No, damn the luck! The camera wasn’t rolling. I was waiting for Farneye to tip me the word.”
He choked up, blushed.
O’Hanna turned to the pinch-faced casting man. “You can tip me the word. Suppose we drift on up to your room and chat.”
Farneye kept a glacial silence as they moved through the crowd, into the lobby. In the elevator they were alone except for the operator, and he fixed a hostile, pince-nez-framed stare on the house dick. “You’re wasting your time hounding me, O’Hanna. You ought to be checking all the rooms on this side, the front of the building.”
“I ought to be hounding the hell out of everybody else, and let you cover up your tracks?”
O’Hanna rejected the plea, scowling. “How do I know? Maybe your little racket started the shooting.”
They came out on the third-floor corridor. “My racket?” Farneye was testy-toned. “What’s that?”
“Don’t stall, chum. I’m hep to the fact that only one of those girls had a chance to win today. I mean your candidate — the blonde with the professional make-up and the press-agent name you cleverly concocted for her — Tra-La Brown.”
Farneye said: “My God, don’t blame me for her. Tra-La Brown was Gus Lambert’s idea exclusively.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. He’s been grooming Tra-La as a possible starlet. Your San Alpa beauty show came along at the opportune moment. By winning it, she could start her career on a wave of favorable publicity.”
O’Hanna gibed: “You mean on the necks of two hundred simon-pure amateurs who never had a chance?”
“You’re right. Of course, nobody but Tra-La had a look-in, with Gus doing the judging. But blame him, not me.” The pinch-faced man pulled up at 318, fitted a key to the door, seemed surprised the door wasn’t locked. He muttered, “That’s funny,” and stepped quickly inside.
The terrorized wail came shrilly: “Harry! Look out! He’s got a gun!”
O’Hanna saw the gun, a moving mass of nickeled metal that seemed to leave a blur as it streaked. The blow was aimed at Farneye’s head. O’Hanna couldn’t stop it. The best he could do was pump out an arm, plant a hand between the casting man’s shoulder blades. He planted it there so hard that Farneye went down on his face, skidded, plowed up a billow of rug in front of him.
The gun missed, finished down around the knees of the lad who had swung it. O’Hanna dived for the weapon, pinned the wrist, and got cuffed around the head by the other’s free fist. He ignored it, closed his own free hand on the elbow above the pinned wrist. The two circled in a slow, straining dance, with O’Hanna pulling at the elbow, twisting on the captive wrist.
They waltzed around once, and then O’Hanna was behind the gunsel, was bending the gun-hand in a high, vicious hammerlock.
He heard the shrill, wailing voice again. This time it screamed: “Stop! You’re breaking Benny’s arm, you big brute!”
Benny was bent over double, the hammerlocked wrist shoved so near the nape of his neck that, as pain-wracked fingers let go, the gun fell over his shoulder in front of him instead of behind. He made one grab for it with the other hand — and O’Hanna’s knee socked into the seat of his pants, sent him plowing on his face, raising another wave in the rug.
The sleuth picked up the gun — a nickeled, 32-caliber revolver that had apparently been fired and never cleaned, from the look of its fouled barrel.
Now the shrill voice said: “I tried to take it away from him myself, but he was too strong for me...”
Staring at Tra-La Brown, O’Hanna could see that she really looked as if there had been an earlier struggle over the gun. Her blond hair was mussed; the make-up from her lips and eyes made smears on her face now. The scarlet wisp of bathing beauty attire had taken a beating, too. She was trying to tug up the bra-top with one hand, trying to tug down the brief panty-skirt with the other.
O’Hanna said: “Everybody explain!”
Tra-La made her pretty lips into a pout. “You can count me out. This is absolutely all Benny’s fault. He’s jealous of me. That’s why he’s acting this way.”
“Who’s Benny? Your husband?”
“I’d die first!” the blonde scorned.
Harry Farneye had struggled to his feet. The pinch-faced man propped himself against a wall, tremblingly tried to fit the pince-nez back on his narrow nose. He didn’t come very close, and anyway, one lens was missing. He said: “The punk’s name is Benny Walsh, and what ails him is professional jealousy. He and Tra-La were in vaudeville up to a few weeks ago, and he’s sore because she’s going on up the ladder of success, and he definitely isn’t.”
“She was slinging hash in a Denver beanery until I gave her a job in my act, and now she’s running out on me.” The youth sat up, gave Tra-La the double-whammy with his hate-filled eyes.
The blonde came back at him. “And what was I doing when I walked out on you? I at least got my three squares a day when I was slinging hash. My God, you can’t expect a girl to go on playing the haylofts when she’s already passed a successful screen-test!”