The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
5
Who was the man behind the voice? Who was he double-crossing, and why?
MacBride went into the central room, called out four reserves. “Look here, boys,” he said. “I’ve got a tip somebody’s going to try to blow up this place. One of you at each end of the block, the other two in the back. Let no machines come through the street. No people, either. Make ’em detour. Anybody around the back, pick him up. Anybody tries to hand you an argument, get rough. All right, go to it.”
He went back into his office, clasped his hands behind his back and paced the floor.
Twenty minutes later the door opened. Cohen came in with a man. The man was a little disarranged. His natty clothes were dusty and his modish neckwear was askew. His derby had a dent in it, and wrath smoldered in his black eyes.
Slim and lithe he was, olive skinned, with long, trick sideburns that put him in the category familiarly known as “Sheik.”
Cohen’s explanation was simple. “He tried to argue, Cap.”
MacBride rubbed his hands together briskly. The mysterious informant was in his hands. His enormous bluff, recently put into print, that he had a valuable suspect in connection with the murder of Bedell, had worked out admirably.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I’m not telling,” snapped the high-strung stranger, struggling for dignity.
“I want to thank you for those tips,” went on MacBride, “but I want to know more. Now cut out the nonsense.”
“I’m not telling,” reiterated the stranger. “It was a dirty trick, getting me this way. If those guys knew I’d been tipping you off, my life wouldn’t be worth a cent.”
“You tell me your name,” proceeded MacBride, “and I’ll promise to keep your name mum until the whole show is over.”
“That’s out. I don’t want your promise. I didn’t do anything. I’m not a gangster. I was just trying to help you out and keep my name out of it at the same time. It wouldn’t do you any good to hold me. I’ve got no record. I didn’t do anything.”
MacBride told him to sit down, then said, “I’m sorry we had to grab you, buddy, but I’ve got a lot to answer for, and I’ve no intentions of getting tough with you. Just come across.”
The man was losing his dignity rapidly. His black eyes darted about feverishly, his fingers writhed, his breath came in short little gasps. Fear was flickering across his face, not fear of MacBride, but of something or someone else. Mixed with the fear was a hint of anguish.
“Please,” he pleaded, “let me go. My God, if I’d thought it would come to this, that I’d be picked up, have my name spread around, I’d never have tipped you off. Give me a chance, Captain. Let me go. I told you this place is going to be blown up tonight.”
“Who’s going to blow it up?”
“Don’t make me tell that! God, don’t. I guess I’ve been a fool, but I... I— Oh, hell!” He choked on a hoarse sob. “I told you what’s going to happen. Lay for them. Get them when they try to blow you up. You’ll learn everything then.”
“Why have you been tipping me off?”
“I... for many reasons. A grudge, but behind the grudge — something else. It’s been driving me crazy. Haven’t been able to sleep. I was going to kill — but — I didn’t.” He raised his hands and shook them. “I’m lost, Captain, if you keep me, if you let loose who tipped you off. Dear God, give me a break — won’t you?”
He leaned forward, extending his hands, pleading with his dark eyes, his face lined with agony.
MacBride bit him with an unwavering stare. What tragedy was in this fellow’s life? He was sincere, that was certain. Something terrible was gnawing at his soul, making of him a shivering, palsied wreck, pleading eloquently for mercy.
“I don’t want anybody to know I’ve been in this,” he hurried on. “It’s not only my life’s at stake, it’s something else — something bigger and deeper. Don’t make me explain. I can’t. Isn’t it enough I warned you about this — this bombing?”
MacBride looked down at the desk, tapped his fingers meditatively. Then he looked up. “I’ll give you a break,” he said. “I’m going to lock you up for the night. If I get the men I want, you slide out quietly, and my mysterious informant remains a mystery. That’s a promise. If Cohen here can find a Bible, I’ll swear on it.”
“Not a Bible in the whole dump,” said Cohen.
The stranger was on his feet. “You promise, Captain? You will promise me that?”
“I’ve promised,” nodded MacBride.
“Thanks. God, thanks! I’ve heard you were a hard-boiled egg. I... I didn’t expect—”
“Pipe down. Ike,” he said to Cohen, “lock him up and keep your jaw tight about what’s just happened.”
Cohen took the man out, and MacBride leaned back to sigh and light a fresh cigar, musing, “Maybe I ought to get kicked in the pants for making that promise. But I think the guy’s hard-hit.”
Half an hour later he was visited by State’s Attorney Krug. Krug was pompous. “What are the latest developments, Captain?”
“Got some dope this joint is going to be blown up. You better get on your way.”
Krug’s eyes dilated. “Blown up!”
“Right.”
“Then why don’t you clear out?”
“See me clearing out for a lot of bums like that!”
“But this fellow you’ve got — this mystery man. Hadn’t you better get him out of here? Don’t you realize that it is possible they intend blowing up the place so that the man will be exterminated? Dead, he can give no evidence. I say, Captain, you ought to turn him over to me. Consider that I am eager to start a trial. We can use him, put the blame on him temporarily, at least make some headway. Come, now.”
MacBride shook his head. “Nothing doing, Mr. Krug.”
“This,” stormed Krug, indignantly, “is monstrous!”
“If I were you, I’d get out of the neighborhood. Hell knows when these birds will show up. You don’t want to follow in Bedell’s footsteps, do you?”
“Damn my stars, you are impossible!” With that Krug banged out.
The echoes of his departure had barely died when Kennedy wandered in.
“How about some more news, Mac?”
“Thanks for mentioning my name so much in your write-up,” replied MacBride. “When there’s more news, you’ll get it.”
“Meaning there’s none now.”
“How clever you are!”
“Applesauce!”
“On your way, Kennedy.”
“I’m comfortable.”
“You won’t be if you hang around here much longer. Now cut out the boloney, old timer. I’m busy, there’s no news, and you’re in my way.”
Kennedy regarded him whimsically. “When you talk that way, Mac, I know there’s something in the wind. All right, I’ll toddle along.” He coughed behind his hand. “By the way, I intended buying some smokes on the way over, but—”
MacBride hauled out his cigar box, and Kennedy, helping himself to a cigar, sniffed it as he sauntered to the door.
“I wish you’d keep ’em a little moist, Mac,” he ventured.
He was gone before MacBride could throw him a verbal hot-shot.
The captain put on his visored cap, strode into the central room, looked around and then went out into the street. At the corner he paused for a brief chat with the policemen stationed there.
“Everything okay, boys?”
“So far, Cap.”
“Keep a sharp lookout. If it comes, it will come suddenly.”
The men nodded, fingering their nightsticks gingerly. A street light shone on their brass buttons, on their polished shields. Beneath their visors, their faces were tense and alert.