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.
“Those Catrini” was published in the February 1933 issue.
Jules Tremaine promises to be a notable addition to the Black Mask character group. Himself, his mission, are both a little mysterious. He walks boldly where one without courage would scarcely venture. He appears at odds with an established order of ruthless political power and of wealth drawn from such sordid source. At times he is as soft-spoken and sympathetic as a woman; at others, he is dynamite unleashed.
Jules Tremaine stood erectly on the curb of Mulberry Street, facing a row of dirty red tenements, and plucked three preliminary chords from his black guitar. He began to sing M’appari.
Before and behind him carnival crowds pushed and gabbled. To each side stood a pushcart odorous with high stacks of clams. It was the festa of Santo Gennaro and the September night was soft. Women leaned from windows shouting at children who scrambled in the street under the arches of blue and red and yellow lights.
Jules threw back his head and his full voice soared. Before him a girl stopped. She was fifteen. Her breasts pressed roundly against the flamboyant pink of her dress. Her eyes were dark and liquid and they regarded the street singer somberly.
Jules sent the last note of the aria vaulting above the babble of the street, plucked an ultimate vibrant chord and bowed to her, a vital figure of a man just over five feet five and dapper in a modeled suit of dark gray. He swept off a black felt hat.
“Ah, bella mia,” he said, laughter behind his eyes. “You have tonight the face of a very, very tired madonna.”
The girl’s lips parted slightly, showing white teeth.
“Every time I try to sit down the floorwalker gets nasty,” she explained.
Jules clapped his hat back on his head and made a wringing motion with his two hands. His voice threatened. “If I ever get my hands on that floorwalker, I’ll...”
His wide teeth flashed beneath the black of his small mustache. Angela’s lips curved. She threw back her head so that her throat was a sweet white line and laughed three contralto bell notes.
“That is better,” said Jules. “Now what is it that makes these dark shadows under your pretty eyes?”
The girl’s smile diminished but still quivered at her mouth corners. She nodded her head gravely.
“I’m worried, Mr. Tremaine,” she said.
Jules pursed his lips. When he did that the militant points of his mustache moved forward slightly. His blue eyes stared beyond the girl into the dingy bricks of a tenement front.
“I suppose it’s that lazy Antonio again,” he said, his syllables short.
Angela clasped her hands and watched her long, tapered fingers as she moved them slowly.
“What’s your brother up to now?” Jules demanded.
The girl drew a deep breath so that her breasts strained against the sleazy silk. Her eyes remained stubbornly on her hands.
“He has not done anything, Mr. Tremaine,” she protested. “It is those Catrini. They say they will do something because Tony drives his beer truck into their part of town...”
Her words accelerated. She unclasped her hands and gestured with them. Her wide eyes, dark and frightened, met Tremaine’s directly.
“—if Antonio works he must drive where his boss tells him. If he does not work we cannot eat. Ah, those Catrini...”
She raised her right hand with the thumb uppermost, the fingers spread, and clicked the nail of the thumb on her upper teeth with an outward gesture. For the moment her eyes were bright and narrow.
“I know those Catrini,” said Jules softly.
The girl’s body lost its tension and became supplicant. Her hands, palms upward, the slim, tapering fingers bent outward, pleaded with Tremaine. There was a pucker between the black, straight brows, between the dark, questioning eyes.
“What can I do?” she asked. “What can I do!”
Tremaine looked down at his guitar and plucked the G string, turned a white ivory peg, cocked his head to the side and touched the string again. He looked up at the girl.
“Go home, Angela,” he said. “I will sing three more songs, then come to talk with you and Antonio.”
Angela spun on her heel, whirling out the thin silk of her skirt. A boy with a laughing mouth showered confetti over her and she threw back her head and laughed and snatched at the colored snow with quick hands. Three white pieces of paper and a star-shaped pink one settled on her black hair. She turned and looked gravely into Tremaine’s round blue eyes.
“I know you will make everything all right,” she said. “I am so happy I could dance.”
She spun completely around on her heel and walked with little skipping steps three doors down the street. She waved to Jules before she went into the darkness of the tenement.
Those Catrini! Jules Tremaine looked down at his guitar and his lips smiled with little mirth. His fingers touched the strings soundlessly, then twanged a chord and two more and he threw back his head and began to sing La donna e mobile. His fingers were lean and white. They had squared ends.
Behind him in a vacant lot across the street, a fireworks cannon made a muffled concussion. Children screamed and squirmed between the pushcarts, hurrying to get nearer. A whirling spark soared, hesitated and burst into a jagged splotch of yellow fire. Spider legs of light spanned out from it and at their ends bombs burst in dazzling streaks of white. The explosions tortured the ear drums.
Jules shrugged and stopped singing. He drew the black guitar down under his arm and up on his back so that it hung suspended from his shoulder by a crimson braided cord. He looked over the crowd and laden pushcarts and moved slowly down the street, a short man but with power in the square set of his shoulders, the erect poised arrogance of the head.
The pyrotechnic display faded momentarily; there was another muffled concussion, then clear and high a girl’s scream tore the night. Jules whirled, staring up at the third-floor windows where Angela and her brother had rooms. A succession of deadened explosions that were not fireworks beat on the air, then every sound was drowned in the ripping burst of more bombs.
On the walk where Jules stood people no longer stared at the colored fire in the sky. They faced the door of the tenement where that scream had sounded. A handful of children gathered silently. A fat man with wide red silk bands holding up too long sleeves waded through them. He entered the door. He staggered back, fell down the one step and sprawled supine. His feet jerked up and his heels thumped on the pavement.
Three men boiled out of the doorway. They had guns in their hands. Two raced down the street and separated. The third ran past Jules. He was a short and broad man. As he lifted and flung down his feet heavily Jules saw that the right shoulder was twisted so that it was at least three inches higher than the left. The man whirled about the corner.