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.
He was strangely moved, puzzled; but he sat down. Halo Rand chose to stand, resting the fingertips of one hand on a mahogany desk. The other hand toyed with a string of pearls suspended from her neck.
“I may be foolish,” she said, “but I’m afraid. I can’t help it. I’m afraid for Dan. It’s ten o’clock and he hasn’t come home yet.”
MacBride said: “Why are you afraid?”
Her violet eyes were luminous in the dim light. “He came home at noon today. I... I hardly recognized him. He looked — well, crushed. Dreamlike. And that isn’t like Dan. You know that. Well, he walked in quietly, kissed me, though I think he barely saw me, and then went to this room. I was disturbed. I came and knocked on the door and asked what was wrong, and he said nothing was wrong and asked to be left alone. So I didn’t bother him.”
“What do you think was wrong?”
She breathed deeply, said in a hushed voice: “I don’t know. But he was worried. That much I do know. For the past two months, every now and then, he would sit and stare absently — and suddenly ask me what I had said. When I appeared curious, he’d rouse up and be his own self.” She shook her head. “He never was the one to bring his business into the home.”
“Think it’s business?”
She shook her head wearily. “I don’t know. I feel so helpless. That’s why I asked you to come over. I knew you two were old friends. He’s been hit hard in the market, you know. And I guess you know he’s had trouble with the Colosseum. He is in debt heavily — but he hoped to pull out of it.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, he didn’t. He came out of his room after an hour. I don’t think he’d even taken his overcoat off. He came out and stood for a moment at the window. Then he said he was going out. He kissed me good-bye and held my hand for a minute, and then he went out. He said he’d be back at six. Well, he hasn’t come.”
MacBride slapped his knee. “Well, Mrs. Rand, I wouldn’t get all worked up, if I were you. Maybe—”
“Wait,” she said, and opened a desk drawer. “An hour ago I came in here. I don’t know why. I don’t think I expected to find anything. It was just chance. I... I opened this drawer. You remember the gun you gave him two years ago?”
“Yes.”
“It’s gone,” she said. “It’s not in his drawer.”
MacBride stood up, muttered: “H’m.”
“Emma, our maid, straightened this room yesterday. She said she saw the gun in this drawer yesterday. Now it’s gone.” Her eyes stared fixedly across the room. “That’s why I’m afraid,” she said. “That’s why I asked you to come over.”
She slumped a bit where she stood, brushed a hand across her forehead. MacBride’s eyes were thought-fixed on the amber casque of her hair. He remembered the day she had ceased to be the première danseuse of Dubinoff’s Ballet and had become Dan Rand’s wife.
He said: “Just be calm, Mrs. Rand. You’re imagining things. No use taking this thing so hard. I’ll find him. He’ll be okey. I’ll phone you when I find him.” There was a rough note of reassurance in his tone. A smile cracked his lean, spare-boned face. “Just take it easy.”
They went into the living-room and she laughed brokenly. “I suppose I am a little fool. But I kept thinking about his finances. So many men nowadays, when they can’t see their way ahead...” She made a limp, hopeless gesture.
“Not Dan,” MacBride said. “He can take it. He always could take it and come up smiling.”
She nodded. “I know. But lately — he hasn’t been smiling.”
They passed into the foyer and the oldish maid with the gargoyle’s face appeared mysteriously and stood by the door.
The phone rang. The maid left the door and answered it and then said: “It’s for you, Captain.”
He went towards it, saying: “I left word at the office I’d be here.” He picked up the instrument. “Hello... Yeah, Otto.” He listened, and presently his brows bent, a shine appeared in his eyes. His low voice said: “Okey, Otto.” He hung up, put the instrument down, staring hard at it.
Then he raised his bony head and looked at Halo Rand. A corner of his wide mouth twitched.
Kennedy, the eyes and ears of the Richmond City Free Press, slammed into the dusty little office at the base of the pier, ricocheted from door to wall to chair to desk, where he finally sprawled with a relieved sigh and calmly placed the telephone receiver to his ear, using the same hand to prop his head.
“Central 1000.”
An astonished watchman stood spellbound against the wall. “Hey,” he said. “Hey!”
“Now, now,” Kennedy said with wrinklebrowed remonstrance. “Shush, shush. Don’t you see I’m on the telephone?” He rolled over languidly on his back, propped his heels on the edge of the desk, his knees in the air, and held the telephone transmitter above his mouth.
The watchman dried his hands on a soiled towel. “This here is a private office and I’d like to know who the hell give you permission to use that phone!”
Kennedy said into the mouthpiece: “City desk, flower.” He looked sidewise at the watchman. “Pardon me. I’m Kennedy of the Free Press. May I use your phone?”
“Sure — go ahead.”
“Thanks... Hello, Abe,” he said into the transmitter. “Kennedy. Dust out your ears and get a load of this. Daniel Cosgrove Rand, sportsman, fight promoter, owner of the Colosseum; dead, by his own hand, at 9:50 tonight, on River Road, near the foot of Pokomoke Street, in an abandoned warehouse. Shot heard, body found, by Patrolman Henry Pflueger. No witnesses. Got that?... Okey. More later.”
He hung up, turned over on his stomach, put the phone down and pushed himself back off the desk to his feet. He was calm again, a little sallow-faced beneath his battered fedora. His roving, world-weary eyes alighted on a pint flask standing on a shelf above the desk.
“Is that,” he said to the watchman, “something to drink?”
“Nah. Nah. That’s rubbing alcohol.” Kennedy reached up, took down the bottle, uncorked it and smelled it. He took two long swallows, corked the bottle, sighed and replaced the bottle on the shelf.
“Somebody’s been kidding you, my good friend. That’s gin.” He buttoned his flimsy topcoat, said cheerfully: “Thanks for the use of your phone,” and went out.
Winter wind, freighted with river damp, smote him and he shivered beneath his inadequate topcoat. He strode, a scarecrow figure, along the edge of the river wall; saw red and green lights of tugboats moving, heard deep-toned whistles. Up ahead, in front of the abandoned warehouse, the red-tinted lights of an ambulance glowed like swollen eyes. Figures moved in the glare of a spotlight, paced by their elongated shadows. Breath spumed whitely and hard heels struck and scraped on cold cobblestones.
Kennedy said: “I thought I recognized your Harvard accent, skipper.”
“Oh, you, huh?” MacBride said. He had just stepped from a police squad car. He blew his nose loudly into white, crisp linen. His cheeks were reddened by the cold; his eyes flashed like dark coals in the beam of the spotlight. “You always go where I go, huh?”
“Only this time I was here first. You’re slipping, Cap.”
A rotund man appeared in the entrance of the old warehouse. He blinked in the glare of the spotlight, then came forward with a bobbing, cheerful walk, a small black bag swinging in his hand.
“Hello, Doc,” MacBride said.
“Dead, Steve — very dead,” the ambulance doctor said. “In fact, he must have died instantly. Shot in the heart... Well, I must get going.”
MacBride nodded. He set his jaw and suddenly started off in a hard-heeled stride. The sound of his footfalls echoed in the large, bare warehouse. Far beyond, near the head of the wharf, he saw a lantern and several hand torches glowing; they made a wan, lonesome aureole of light around the shapes of several men. He walked through chill, damp air that seeped to his marrow; heard, beneath the floor, the lapping of water among pilings.