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.
His lips moved. “Parasitic. Humph! That’s what they are, parasites!”
He sighed, creaked back in his swivel chair, and stared absently at the night-dark window. Cold out. The panes rattled. The wind hooted through the alley. More distant, it keened shrilly over housetops, whinnied through the complicated network of radio aerials. Even the poor had radios — bought tubes and what-not and went without shoes.
But graft. Parasitic. Parasites in the Town Hall. Hell, why hadn’t he taken up plumbing, after his father? You could straighten out a bent pipe, plug a leak. But, as a police captain, with a wife and a daughter to support, and three thousand still due on that new bungalow in Grove Manor...
He banged shut Webster’s masterpiece with a low growl, got up and took a turn up and down the room. Straight was MacBride — morally and physically. Square-shouldered, neat, built of whip-cord, hard bone, tough hide. His face was long, rough-chiselled, packed well around cheek and jaw. His mouth was wide and firm, and his eyes were keen, windy — they could lacerate a man to the core.
He ran the Second Police Precinct of Richmond City. His frontiers touched the railroad yards and warehouses, plunged through a squalid tenement district and then suddenly burst into the bright lights of theatres, hotels, nightclubs. It was the largest precinct territorially in Richmond City. It was also the toughest.
Beyond the rooftops, a bell tolled the hour. Midnight. MacBride looked at his watch. Home. He could catch the last street car out to Grove Manor. Stifling a yawn, he walked to a clothes tree and took down his conservative gray coat and his conservative gray hat. He had one arm in his coat when the door opened and Sergeant Flannery, bald as a billiard ball, poked in.
“Just a minute, Cap. Girl outside pestering me—”
“Why pass the buck?” MacBride had his coat on. “I’m going home, Sergeant.”
“But I can’t get rid of her. She wants to see you.”
“Me? Nonsense. You’ll do for a sob case, Flannery. I mind the last sob sister you pawned off on me. Was hard up for a drink, the little tramp. Widowed mother and all that crap. Bah!”
“This one’s different, Cap. Married a little over a year. Left her kid, three months old, home with her old lady. Name of Saunders. Lives over on Haggerty Alley. Damn near bawling. Wants to see you.”
“Well” — MacBride started to put on his hat, but changed his mind and flung it on the desk — “send her in.”
Overcoat partly buttoned, he dropped into the swivel chair and sighed after the manner of a man who has to listen, day in and day out, to tales of woe, of stolen cats, strayed dogs, blackened eyes, and broken promises. Well, another wouldn’t kill him...
The girl came in timidly. She wore no hat, and her coat was a cheap thing, and she looked cold and forlorn and afraid. Pity — MacBride claimed there was not an ounce of it in his makeup — prompted him to say:
“Take that chair by the radiator. Warmer.”
“Thank you.”
Pretty kid. Young, pale, brown-eyed, hatless, and hair like spun copper. A mother. Haggerty Alley. God, what a draughty, drab hole!
“Well?”
“I came to you, Captain, because Jimmy — he’s my husband — because Jimmy always says, ‘MacBride, the gent runs the Second, is one reason why there ain’t more killings in this neighborhood.’ ”
MacBride was on guard. He hated compliments. But, no, this wasn’t salve. Her lower lip was quivering.
“Go on, madam.”
“Well, I feel funny, Mr. MacBride. I feel scared. Jimmy ain’t come home yet. I’ve been reading things in the newspaper about some trouble in the trucking business. Jimmy drives a big truck between Richmond City and Avon-dale — that’s thirty miles. He leaves at one and gets back to the depot at nine and he’s always home at ten. He’s been carting milk from Avon-dale, you know — for the Colonial Trucking Company.”
MacBride’s eyes steadied with interest. He leaned forward. “What makes you afraid, Mrs. Saunders?”
“Well, I was reading the paper only the other night, about this trouble in the trucking business, and Jimmy said, he said, ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if I got bumped off some night.’ You know, Mr. MacBride, only last month one of the drivers was shot at.”
“H’m.” MacBride’s fingers tapped on his knee. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Saunders. Everything’s all right. Truck might have broken down.”
“I phoned the depot, and they said that, too. But the drivers always phone in if they’re broke down. Jimmy ain’t phoned in. The night operator was fresh. He said, ‘How do I know where he is?’ So I hung up.”
“Listen, you go right home,” recommended MacBride. “Don’t worry. They don’t always break down near a telephone. Run home. Want to catch cold chasing around the street? Go on, now. I’ll locate Jimmy for you, and send a man over. Got a baby, eh?”
Her eyes shone. “Yes. A boy. Eyes just like Jimmy’s.”
MacBride felt a lump in his throat, downed it. “Well, chase along. I’ll take care of things.”
“Thank you, Mr. MacBride.”
She passed out quietly; closed the door quietly. Altogether a quiet, reticent girl. He stood looking at the closed door, pictured her in the street, rounding the windy corner, with shoulders hunched in her cheap coat — on into Haggerty Alley, dark, gloomy hole.
Jerking himself out of the reverie, he grabbed up the telephone, asked Information for the number of the night operator at the Colonial Trucking Company’s River Street depot. He tapped his foot, waiting for the connection.
“Hel-lo-o,” yawned a voice.
“Colonial?”
“Yup.”
“That driver Saunders. Heard from him yet?”
“Cuh-ripes!” rasped the voice. “Who else is gonna call about that guy? No, he ain’t showed up, and he ain’t called, and if you wanna know any more, write the president.”
“I’ll come down there and poke you in the jaw!” snapped MacBride.
“Aw, lay off that boloney—”
“Shut up!” cut in MacBride. “Give me the route Saunders takes in from Avondale.”
“Say, who the hell are you?”
“MacBride, Second Precinct.”
“Oh-o!”
“Now that route, wise guy.”
He picked up a pencil, listened, scribbled, said, “Thanks,” and hung up.
Then he took the slip of paper and strode out into the central room. Sergeant Flannery was dozing behind the desk, with a half-eaten apple in his pudgy hand.
“Sergeant!”
Flannery popped awake, took a quick bite at the apple, and almost choked.
“Chew your food,” advised MacBride, “and you’ll live longer. Here, call the booth at Adams Crossing. We’re looking for a Colonial truck, number C-4682, between Avondale and here. Call the booths at Maple Street and Bingham Center. Those guys have bicycles. Tell ’em to start pedaling and ring in if they find any trace. Brunner — you can locate him at the Ragtag Inn. He hangs out there between twelve and one, bumming highballs. Tell him to fork his motorcycle and start hunting.”
He paused, thought. Then, “Where’s Doran and Rigallo?”
“Stepped out about eleven. Down at Jerry’s, shooting pool. Should I flag ’em?”
“No.”
MacBride turned on his heel, entered his office and kicked shut the door. He sat down, bit off the end of a cigar, and lit up. He hoped everything was all right. Poor kid — baby three months old — Haggerty Alley — eyes like Jimmy’s. Bah! He was getting sentimental. Did a man get sentimental at forty?
The door opened. Kennedy, of the Free Press, drifted in. A small, slim man, with a young-old face, and the whimsical, provocative eyes of the wicked and wise.