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.
Jockey Street is hell’s own playground. You enter it from the theatrical center, and all is glittering, blatant and intensely alive. But as you bore deeper, riverward, the street lights become further apart, the chop suey joints disappear, and the houses, losing height, likewise lose color.
It was cold that afternoon, and fog smoked in from the river, damp and chill. The din of upper Jockey Street died to a murmur, and on its lower reaches few men were afield. Here or there you heard footsteps, and soon, dimly at first, then clearer, a pedestrian materialized out of the fog, swished by and gradually disappeared again, trailing his footsteps. Up the man-made causeway came the muffled rhythmic tolling of a pierhead fog bell.
Down it rolled a black, inconspicuous touring car, with drawn side-curtains. Nearing a side street, the door to the tonneau opened, and MacBride leaped out. The car rolled on, was swallowed up by the wet gray clouds.
MacBride strode toward a cigar-store. Rigallo came out, smoking a cigarette, looking unconcerned. They fell in step and strolled down the side street, leisurely.
“He hasn’t come out, Riggy?”
“No. Came on the bus to Main and Farmingville. Took a taxi from there. Got off at Main and Jockey. Walked. I left the car there and walked, too. Saw him go in 210. There’s a gray touring car parked outside — powerful boat.”
“I’ll crash the joint.”
“They’ll never open the door. Bet you need signals.”
“Try my way.”
They circumnavigated the block, and came out upon Jockey Street a block nearer the river. Here the police car was parked, the men still hidden inside. MacBride stood on the edge of the curb, spoke to the curtains.
“I’m aiming to get in 210. Two minutes after I leave here you boys get out and surround this block. It may be messy.”
“Okey,” came Doran’s low voice.
MacBride said, “Come on, Rigallo,” and they walked up the street. He explained. “We’ll both climb the steps to the door. I’ll knock. Somebody will come, but if he doesn’t get the proper signals, he won’t open. But he’ll listen. Then you walk down the steps, hard as you can, and walk away. He may open then and peek out. I’ll crash it.”
“What then?”
“Hell knows!” MacBride’s fists clenched. “Just let me get in that dump!”
They reached the four stone steps that led to the door of 210. They mounted them, and MacBride, one hand on the gun in his pocket, knocked with the other.
They waited, looking at each other. Presently they heard the padding of footsteps, then silence. MacBride knocked again, insistently. No, that wasn’t the signal. He nodded to Rigallo. Rigallo nodded back, stamped heavily down the steps and walked off.
MacBride flattened against the doorframe, breath bated, gun half-drawn. The latch clicked. A hinge creaked. The door moved an inch, another inch. A nose appeared. Then two beady eyes, and a pasty, pinched face.
MacBride cannoned against the door, and knocked the look-out sprawling. The door, working on a spring, slammed shut. The captain was bent over the prostrate, speechless form, with the muzzle of his gun screwed into a sunken chest.
“Chirp and I’ll bust you!”
The man writhed under the firm pressure of the gun. His mouth worked, gasping. His eyes popped.
“Cripes!” he moaned.
“Pipe down! Quick, now. What’s the lay? Where’s the gang?”
“Cripes!”
“Spill it!
“Cripes!”
Desperate, MacBride rapped his jaw with the gun barrel.
“Ouch!”
“Then talk!”
“Second floor, door t’ back o’ the hall. Cripes!”
“Open?”
“Uh — yup.”
“How many?”
“Tuh — ten.”
“Get up!”
MacBride hauled the runt to his feet, dragged him to the front door, opened it. Rigallo was on the curb. MacBride motioned to him, and Rigallo skipped up.
“Take this, Riggy!”
Rigallo grabbed the look-out, clapped on manacles. “Should I get the boys?”
“No. I’ll start the ball. There are ten guys upstairs, and I feel ambitious. Besides, if we all crash it, it will be a mix-up and the boys might get hurt. One man can crash a room better than six. I’ll blow when I need you. You hang here, and then blow for the boys.”
“It’s a long chance, Cap!”
“I carry heavy insurance. Don’t let this door close.”
MacBride turned and re-entered the hall. Gun drawn, he went up the stairway, paused at the first landing, listened, and then ascended the next flight. He was wary, alert, dangerous. There were captains on the Force who directed operations from the outside, smoking cigars on street corners, at a safe distance. MacBride was a man who never sent his men into a trap before first examining the trap himself. One reason why his wife lay awake nights, thinking.
Door in the rear. He stood at the stair-head, muscles tense, gun pointing toward the door. He advanced straight, light-footed, primed to go off. He stood before the door, the muzzle of his gun an inch from the panel.
His left hand started out, closed gently, carefully, over the knob. Some said you should turn a knob slow, bit by bit, until you could not turn it any more; then heave and rush. But sometimes you never got that far. A knob might creak. A wandering gaze on the other side might see it turning.
Turn, heave and rush all at once — that was it. MacBride did it. The door whanged open and he crouched on the threshold, poised and deadly.
A woman, alone, looked up from the depths of an overstuffed chair. She had been trimming her fingernails with a steel file, and she sat there, apparently unperturbed, the file, in her right hand, poised over the thumb of her left. She wore a negligee, pink and sheer. Her hair was peroxide treated, bobbed and fuzzy.
MacBride reached back and closed the door. The woman, with a shrug, went on trimming her nails, and said, in an offhand manner,
“Got your nerve, Cap, busting in on a lady.”
“What’s wrong with that sentence, Gertie?”
“Well, rub it in.”
“Get dressed.”
“I’m not going out.”
“No?” He leaned back. “I’m waiting.”
She rose, running her hands down her sides and lodging them on her hips, thumbs forward.
“Suppose I yell?”
“You’ll be the first woman I ever killed.”
“You would?”
“I sure would.”
They stood staring at each other, the lynx and the lion.
“Think I can get dressed with you in the room?”
“I’m not particular. If you’re too modest, put on that fur coat.”
“I’m not modest. Particular, guy.”
“Put on the coat.”
She tilted her chin, cut MacBride with a brassy, withering look. Then she sauntered over to the coat, picked it up and slipped into it. She thrust her hand into a pocket.
“Careful!” warned MacBride.
She laughed, drew out a handkerchief, touched her nose and then shoved the handkerchief back into her pocket. A split second later flame and smoke burst through the fur, and hot lead ran up MacBride’s gun arm. His gun clattered to the floor.
The woman leaped for the switch, threw off the lights. With his left hand MacBride, gritting his teeth with pain, recovered the gun. Another burst of flame slashed through the darkness, and a shot whanged by his ear. He dived, headlong, collided with the woman and knocked her over. Again her gun went off, wildly, and the shot banged through the ceiling.
With his wounded hand MacBride groped for hers — found it, wrenched away her gun, groaned with the pain of it. He heaved up, rushed to the door, shot home the bolt. Then he dived for the light switch, snapped it, and a dazzling radiance flooded the room.