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.
The Commissioner looked startled. Kennedy jumped to the running-board, but the car jerked ahead, and he slipped, fell, rolled into the gutter.
Stroble mounted the steps, eyes narrowed. “What do you want, MacBride?”
“Just wanted to see you.”
“Come up to my office.”
As MacBride followed Stroble in, he turned and saw Kennedy standing on the sidewalk, grinning.
In the Commissioner’s office, a tenseness became apparent. Stroble took off his overcoat and sat down.
“Well, MacBride.”
“I thought you were coming over to North Street.”
“I was. But when I reached the street there was a gun-fight going on. I’m too old for gun-fights, MacBride.”
“Braun was killed. He was a friend of yours.”
Stroble sighed. “Poor Charlie. Yes, he was a friend of mine, from school days. What kind of a mess did he get into?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said MacBride. “I caught him with a bad gang. A bird named Pete Redmond, from Chicago, and some other guns.”
“My!” exclaimed Stroble. “That was strange. Charlie shouldn’t have done that.”
“He was sure you could help him,” gritted MacBride.
“Yes, for old times’ sake. Months ago he came to me and said Tate & Tate were riding him. Trade was falling off. He wanted more police protection. Well, I tried to make it easy for him. You’d do the same, MacBride, for an old friend. I didn’t know he’d gone bad.”
MacBride restrained himself with an effort. Deep in his heart he knew that Braun had been double-crossed, yet what could he do? There was no evidence.
Stroble was saying, “It was strange, too, how that other gang popped up. Why do you suppose they committed such wholesale slaughter?”
MacBride blurted out, “It looks to me like a double-cross.”
Stroble blinked. “I say, now, do you really think so?”
“Yes.”
“H’m. That is possible. Poor Charlie! He was a good chap, MacBride, but a bit of a fool. No clue to who did it?”
“No. All the cops ran to North Street when the shooting started. The gang, after they killed Braun, and the others, beat it through to Jackson Street and made a clean getaway. We tried to follow, but I damned near got plastered by a machine-gun. We had to hide.”
“Sensible, MacBride — very sensible. Personally, I believe that in such a situation, you should be careful. Gangs often destroy each other, and take that task off a policeman’s hands. Of course, we must spread an alarm. But poor Charlie! I didn’t think he’d take advantage of me — of a good thing, MacBride.”
“Scoggins, you know, was kidnapped and held by Braun’s gang.”
“Goodness, now why do you suppose they did that?”
MacBride leaned forward, barbed every word — “So that we’d think Scoggins killed Nelson. So that red tape would tie up Tate & Tate a little longer, drive them nearer to bankruptcy, give the Harbor Towing a big lead.”
“Could that be possible!” exclaimed the Commissioner. “And there I was trying to do Charlie a good turn, for old times’ sake! It wasn’t fair of Charlie. Do you think so, MacBride?”
“I don’t know.”
“H’m. Well, run along. I’ve some work to do. File the report on this when you find time. Good luck.”
MacBride almost lost control of himself. His fingernails dug into his palms. A grunt escaped his lips.
The Commissioner looked up. “Eh?”
MacBride snapped, “Good day,” and banged out.
In the street he found Kennedy, and the reporter said, “You look fit to be tied, Mac.”
“I am! I’m stumped!”
“Mac” — Kennedy took his arm and steered him down the street — “Mac, buck up. Before very long you’re either going to get the Big Guy — or he’ll get you.”
“What do you mean, Kennedy?”
“I know things. Come on over to the station-house.”
They tramped into MacBride’s office. Kennedy closed the door and locked it. He rubbed his hands together, smiled his tired, whimsical smile. He slid upon the desk, and tapped the blotter in front of MacBride.
“Get this, Mac, and think it over,” he said. “I’ve been keeping a few things under my hat. Yesterday I made a discovery. Why do you think Stroble was giving the Harbor Towing all the breaks?”
“Braun was a friend of his.”
“Nonsense! Stroble is a big stockholder — silent one, you know — in the Harbor Towing.”
“How do you know?”
“I found out. I went to that lousy brokerage firm of Weber & Baum. They used to handle Stroble’s business, but he broke with them, and they got sore. In confidence Baum told me that Stroble practically owns the Harbor Towing. And look here. The Mayor owns the Atlas Trucking Corporation — under cover — and the one is practically linked with the other.
“I’ve got the whole thing doped out, Mac. Pete Redmond was head of Stroble’s private gang, and Braun had to move as he was told. When they balled things up that way, and when you flopped on their big parade — and I turned up at the right moment — the Commissioner knew that he was cooked.
“You had Braun and Redmond cold. Even Stroble, with all his power, couldn’t get them clear. So what did he do? Wiped them out! Double-crossed them! Got another gang to kill every one of them as you marched down the street.”
“Good God!” groaned MacBride. “I believe you, Kennedy. I’m sure you’re right. But the Mayor — man — the Mayor! You’re sure he’s mixed up in it?”
“I’ll say this, Mac. I’ll bet my shirt that the gang that wiped out Redmond was the Mayor’s own. Stroble went to him, told him the fix he was in. The Mayor knew that if Braun and Redmond were caught, they’d squeal on the Commissioner and that Stroble would yap on the Mayor. So he lent Stroble his gang.”
“But who is the Mayor’s gang?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
“And you think the Mayor is the Big Guy?”
“If he isn’t, I’m all wrong.”
MacBride snorted. “Hell, Kennedy, it’s incredible. I never thought much of him, but—”
“Look here, Mac,” cut in Kennedy. “The Atlas Trucking Corporation has been having hard sledding, too. The Harbor Towing will have to shut up. Tate & Tate will get that concession at Seaboard Basin. But the Colonial Trucking Corporation is a subsidiary of Tate & Tate, and I’ll bet that before long this trade war will be carried toward that end.”
“If it is, Kennedy—”
“You’ll find a hard nut to crack.”
“I’ll crack it or croak.”
Kennedy lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell you, Mac, who was in that limousine I tried to hop.”
Their eyes met, MacBride’s wide and blunt, Kennedy’s narrowed and smiling.
“Who, Kennedy?”
“Don’t you know?”
“You mean, the...”
“Sure,” nodded Kennedy. “The Mayor!”
Graft
Frederick Nebel
1
Police Captain Steve MacBride, elbow on desk, chin on knuckles, looked down along his nose at the open dictionary, and concentrated his gaze on the word “graft.” Now graft is a word of various meanings, and the definitions, as MacBride discovered, were manifold. But the definition that attracted and held his eyes longest, was clean-cut, crisp and acutely to the point:
Acquisition of money, position, etc., by dishonest, unjust, or parasitic means.