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.
“You won’t mind, will you, Johnny?” she had said.
Frowning slightly, I answered, “Of course, Darlene, run right along. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
She went down to the Fraziers’ car. When I had nodded my farewell to the last mourner, I turned back into the chapel. It was deserted now, except for the crematory director, who was prowling among the chairs looking for lost articles.
He discreetly tip-toed out, leaving me entirely alone. There was no hush in this chapel, no reverent silence. The dull roar of the hellish flames continued inside the great furnace.
I had come to say a final farewell to you, Rhea. A moment that might bring tears easily to another new widower’s eyes, but it’s possible that, instead, there was a hard shine in mine as I said to you silently, “Again good-by, Rhea, my good and faithful wife — as people think. You’re finally being in fact the bright flame you always yearned to be. It will help you to keep our secrets together, my lovely. Good-by again. And may you go on burning longer than you expected — in hell.”
Night was settling when I drove back along Rendezvous Road. I don’t need to remind you, Rhea, darling, how that road looks when you’re driving it after dark with something better and cozier than just your thoughts for company.
Turning then toward our little home on Laurel Street, I found myself retracing the same course that I had taken every day for years when coming home from the office. In this same car, alone like this, I came exactly this same way every day, with expectations far different from today’s. In pleasantest anticipation, I used to know just what would happen.
I would leave the car in the garage and turn to the kitchen door for your greeting. You had your graceful, playful little way of popping out and piping, “Welcome home, Johnny!” Fresh and crisp in a bright flowered dress, you would throw your arms around my neck and kiss me full on the lips. You always seemed as happy to have me back home as if I’d been away for weeks rather than hours. Every time it was the same delightful routine. But today?
I was driving home in exactly the same way as always before, Rhea, but today you wouldn’t greet me at the kitchen door with your lively, laughing embrace. Today you were back there in the crematory, a bright, hot flame in the furnace.
I missed you sorely as I turned the car into the driveway, Rhea. I almost wished I hadn’t killed you — but only almost. You had destroyed all the goodness in yourself until only ugly sin was left. You deserved all the punishment I gave you, my little evil one. But before then my homecomings had been so pleasant — I felt a pang, thinking there would never be any more of them.
No more glad little greeting of “Welcome home, Johnny!” Your arms no more around me, your lips no more on mine. No more Rhea at all.
It had been such a trying day, seeing you cremated, my darling — I was utterly unprepared for the jolt that hit me next.
As I reached for the knob of the kitchen door it sprang open. Your voice — your voice, Rhea! — sang out in your old gay way, “Welcome home, Johnny!” Even more unnerving, Rhea, you actually appeared there before me — Rhea herself, alive, her eyes sparkling, her lips a happy smile. Rhea wearing her favorite flowered frock! You, Rhea!
Impossible? Yes, because you were back there in the crematory furnace, being devoured in the storming flames. Yet you were here with me, crying out my name. Calling to me as you always did.
A man doesn’t easily admit having been unmanly, Rhea. It isn’t easy for me to confess I fainted on the spot. But I did. Already overstrained, now suddenly overwhelmed, I simply dropped into a pit of blackness.
When the blackness swirled slowly out of my mind, I felt someone tugging at me. It was Darlene, asking breathlessly, “What happened, are you all right?” She helped me up to my knees, then into a chair at the kitchen table. I was still dizzy.
All I could say, when I found my voice, was, “Yes, what... what did happen, Darlene? Did you see?”
Darlene said, “I was in the living room, just sitting there, so tired, waiting for you to come home. Just as you came in the back door, you let out a hoarse kind of cry. I heard you fall. When I got to you, you were down on the floor in a dead faint. That’s all I can tell you about it.”
I looked hard at her — at her pretty face so much like yours, Rhea. She was still pale, except for the vivid spots on her cheeks. She was wearing the same black dress she had worn at the funeral — a simple dress snugly fitting a perfect figure. A figure the exact image of yours, Rhea.
I gazed at Darlene’s image in the mirror, chilled through, and asked softly, “Darlene — are you sure that what you told me is what actually happened?”
She smiled a little and answered, “Aren’t you sure? You couldn’t be fooled by a thing like that — could you, Johnny?”
Chapter Two
She-Devil’s Daughter
After that I began watching Darlene closely, Rhea — with fear in my heart — the dread that had haunted me for years, that our lovely daughter had inherited the evilness of her mother.
You see, Rhea, I could not let myself be deluded into believing that you had supernaturally paid me a visit after death. I knew that could not be so. I was quite confident that you were destroyed as you deserved. Nor could I be such a fool as to imagine your ghost had begun to haunt me. So it came down to this, Rhea — either my senses had tricked me overwhelmingly — or I had reason to watch Darlene.
Watch Darlene! Isn’t it odd, Rhea? Do you remember the time, right after we met, when it was my task to keep a watchful eye on you?
I find myself smiling at this romantic little reminiscence, Rhea. Our meeting was quite a romantic incident, you know. A meeting between a young book peddler and a young girl who was already losing her prettiness and her health, and her job as well, on a merry-go-round of sin — a kid skidding downhill fast. As you confessed yourself afterward, Rhea, you would have soon wound up in the gutter or in the river if I hadn’t saved you from yourself.
That day I had gone down to the old Bijou Theatre. A squalid den, that place. A burlesque showhouse — catering to men’s worst instincts.
When I went near that sinkhole, however, it was for reasons of business and high principle. Oddly, the burlesque people, especially the strippers, whom I usually saw in their dressing rooms between numbers, were ready buyers of the religious books I sold. Perhaps they never read the books but only bought them to salve their aching consciences. I liked to feel, though, that by going down into that vile valley of iniquity and leaving The Word among those misled people, I was doing good missionary work.
Just as I lifted my hand to the stage door, it opened. A girl was pushed out bodily, actually into my arms. Instinctively I held you. That was the first time we saw each other, Rhea — and your first glimpse of sweet salvation.
You huddled close to me, wearing almost nothing. You clung to me, Rhea, for the simple reason that you were almost unable to stand by yourself. You gave me a taunting smile. You were intoxicated — really staggering drunk. You had come to the theatre in that condition and had tried to get ready for the show, along with the other bare-skinned chorus “ponies.” The stage manager, fed up because you had done it too often before, had chosen this moment to fire you out — straight into my arms.
Snarling after you, the stage manager said, “Don’t bother holding her up, Reverend.” They liked to call me that — “Reverend” — because I took my books seriously, and I really considered it a compliment. “Let the no-good little tramp fall on her face right now. It’ll save time. She’s hell-bent on wheels, and the sooner she hits bottom the less trouble she’ll cause.”