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.
“God, but you’re bright!” chuckled MacBride.
Somewhere below, glass crashed. Doran reloaded his gun. Rigallo fired a couple of shots through the door.
Footsteps were pounding up the stairway. MacBride jumped into the hall, his gun leveled. Two policemen appeared, guns drawn.
“Take it easy, boys,” called MacBride. “Stay here in the hall. We’ve got some bums bottled up.”
Even as he said this a door further down the hallway burst open and men rushed out. Revolvers blazed, and one of the policemen went down. MacBride fired and Doran joined him. Eight men swept down upon them like an avalanche. Rigallo came hurtling out of the room.
Doran sank under a blackjack. MacBride put two shots through the head of the man who had wielded it. A clubbed revolver skimmed along his skull and thudded on his shoulder. He twisted and clubbed his own gun, and broke a man’s nose. Blood splashed over him.
Somebody reeled, balanced on the balustrade, and then pitched down into the hallway below. Somebody else kicked MacBride in the stomach while he was trying to reload. He doubled and fell to the floor, and another foot cut open his left ear.
Rigallo, holding the doorway of the room wherein the two men were manacled, put a slug in the back of the man who was kicking MacBride’s head. The man fell over the captain and never moved once, until MacBride shoved him over and staggered to his feet.
Two men rushed Rigallo, and one swore in Italian. Rigallo snarled, “As one wop to another, back up!” The man struck with his blackjack. Rigallo dodged and blew out the man’s stomach.
“Cripes!” choked the other.
“Stay back,” warned Rigallo, “or I’ll spill your guts, too.”
Two more policemen rushed up the stairs, met two gangsters at the head, forced them back. Suddenly the shots ceased, and the hallway was strangely quiet. Six men, one of them a policeman, lay on the floor, dead. Three gangsters stood with their backs against the wall, disarmed, breathing thickly, one with a broken and bloody nose.
Rigallo still stood in the doorway. MacBride lifted up Doran, shook him.
“You all right, Tim?”
“Yeah — sure,” mumbled Doran.
“Hold him,” MacBride said to one of the policemen.
Then he turned toward the door, laid his hand on Rigallo’s shoulder. “Riggy, this was a hell of a blow-out!”
“Sloppy,” nodded Rigallo.
MacBride entered the room and looked at the two men manacled to the water-pipe.
“Well, you satisfied?”
The man in the undershirt said nothing. The other said, “No, are you?”
“Not yet.”
MacBride entered the other room. A table was littered with bottles and glasses. He looked around, rubbing his jaw. He crossed and opened another door, looked into a bedroom. It was empty. He backed up, called Rigallo.
“You and Doran hunt for Scoggins. He must be hidden somewhere. Go right to the roof, if you have to.”
They went out, and MacBride sampled a bottle of Three Star Hennessy. It was good stuff, warmed him up. He noticed a closet door, and with the bottle still in his hand, walked over and grasped the knob. He pulled, but the door resisted, yet it was not locked. He dropped the bottle and drew his gun. Someone was in that closet, holding the door shut.
“Come out!” MacBride called.
There was not a murmur.
“Out, or I’ll riddle the door!” said MacBride.
Still no answer.
“I’ll count three,” said MacBride. “Ready. One!” He marked time. “Two!” His gun steadied. “Three!”
His finger tightened on the trigger. He aimed low.
Bang! Bang!
Rigallo and Doran came in, with Scoggins between them.
“Found him, Cap,” said Rigallo.
“Just a minute, Riggy,” said MacBride. “I’ve found something else.”
He waited. He saw the knob move.
“Atta boy!” he called. “Open it or I’ll shoot higher. Ready!”
The door burst open and a wild-eyed man tottered out.
“Well!” exclaimed MacBride. “Greetings, Mr. Braun!”
“G-God!” stuttered Braun.
A new voice penetrated the room — “Is that Braun of the Harbor Towing, Mac?”
MacBride pivoted.
Kennedy of the Free Press was leaning in the doorway, tapping his chin with a pencil.
6
Braun, that short, round, dark, nervous man, seemed to be swallowing hard lumps.
MacBride spoke to a policeman, “Ed, you shove those three bums in the hall into the next room with the other two.”
“Right-o, Cap.”
“Riggy and Tim, you stay in here with me,” went on MacBride. “Kennedy, you can stay here on the condition that you don’t publish anything unless you have my consent.”
“Suits me, Mac.”
MacBride rubbed his hands gingerly. “This will be interesting. Make yourselves at home, men — you, too, Braun, and you there, Scoggins. There’s a bottle and glasses. Let’s get clubby.”
Braun was not in a clubby mood. He was emphatically nervous, and kept biting his thin red lips.
MacBride said, “Now, Scoggins, what happened?”
Scoggins had taken a drink. He wiped his mouth. “Gosh, I was scared. T’ other afternoon me and Alf Nelson met in the lunchroom across from Pier Ten. I said, ‘Hello, Alf.’ And he said, ‘Hello, Gus.’ Then I said, ‘Look here, Alf, we know each other for years. We worked together. What’s the sense o’ bein’ mean? I know you tried to cut me loose t’other night, but I’m willin’ to forget it.’ And Alf said, ‘I been a big bum, Gus.’ And I said, ‘You been a fool, Alf. You never had much brains. You’re lettin’ some big guys talk you into doin’ things. You’ll get in trouble, Alf, if you don’t look out.’ So Alf looked kinda guilty, and he said, ‘Yeah, I been a big bum, Gus. I been wantin’ to get some money ahead, so me and Hilda could get hitched. You and me been friends for years, Gus.’ And I said, ‘We sure have, Alf. And like one friend to another, I’d warn you to look out for them big buys. If you get in Dutch, they ain’t goin’ to help you.’ So he said, ‘I guess you’re right, Gus. I been a dumb-bell.’ I said, ‘You sure have, Alf.’ And he nodded and then said, ‘Gus, come over my barge tomorrer night and have a game of pinochle like old times.’ So I said I would, and I did.
“So I went over. We played for an hour, and then some guy came in, and Alf said, ‘This is a friend, Gus. Call him Pete.’ So I called him Pete and he called me Gus, but I didn’t like him. He wasn’t a waterfront man. Along about ’leven o’clock I figgered I better go, and Pete said, ‘Me, too. I got a motorboat out here. I’ll take you upriver.’ I said, ‘Thanks,’ and we went.
“There was another guy waitin’ in the boat, and when we got out in the river they jumped me. I was knocked out. When I come to I was in a room upstairs. I was sore. I wonder if Alf double-crossed me.”
“Alf is dead,” said MacBride.
Scoggins squinted. “What!”
“Was killed about an hour after you left.”
“Dead!”
“Uhuh.”
“But who did it?”
“I don’t know — yet.” MacBride turned to Braun. “Maybe you know.”
Braun started. His eyes blinked. He moistened his lips. “Captain, I seem in a peculiar position. Unfortunately, circumstances are against me. I believe I’ll not say anything until I’ve thought things out more.”
“Until you’ve seen a lawyer?” sneered MacBride.
“Until he’s seen the Commissioner,” sliced in Kennedy.