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 woman, on her feet, flung a Chinese vase. MacBride ducked and the vase crashed through a mirror. She crouched, quivering in every muscle, her breath pumping fiercely from her lungs, eyes wide and storming with anger.
“You — lousy — bum!” she cried.
“Pipe down!”
Fists hammered on the door, feet kicked it. Voices snarled.
The woman laughed hysterically. “The Gang! The Gang! They’ll riddle you! They’ll cut your dirty heart out!”
“Will they?”
MacBride drew his whistle, blew it.
5
Abruptly, the scuffling and pounding stopped. A moment of silence, then retreating footsteps.
MacBride stood with his cap tilted over one ear and a slab of hair down over one eyebrow. His right arm hung down, blood weaving a red tracery on his hand, then dropping to the floor. His hand felt heavy as lead, dragging at wounded muscles. A thought struck him, and he shoved the hand into his coat pocket.
Footfalls sounded again, hammering up the stairs. Cops’ shoes — heavy-soled, thick-heeled. Now they were out in the hall, moving about, whispering hoarsely. MacBride backed against the door, unbolted it, pulled it open.
Rigallo came in. “Hell, Gertie!” he chuckled, sarcastically.
Gertie thumbed her nose and wiggled her fingers.
“You trollop!” snapped Rigallo.
“Pst, Riggy,” said MacBride. “Where’s the look-out?”
“Doran’s got him in the machine.”
“Jake!” He looked into the hall. Six cops out there and two closed doors. They had the doors covered. “Take her downstairs, Riggy.”
“Who’s her boy friend?”
“That’s what we’ll find out. She’s not talkative just now. Grab a dress, sister, and take it along.”
“If you think I’ll spill the boy friend’s name, MacBride, you’re all wet,” she snapped.
“Take her, Riggy.”
Rigallo grabbed a dress from a hanger and flung it at her. It draped across her shoulder. She left it there.
“Get out,” he jerked.
She put one hand on her hip and sauntered leisurely. Rigallo took a quick step, gripped her by the arm and propelled her out not too gently. She cursed and added something relative to his maternity. He trotted her down the stairs.
MacBride joined his cops. “Let’s bust this door.”
Seven guns boomed, and seven shots shattered the doorknob and crashed through the lock. Patrolman Grosskopf, one-time leader of a German mudgutter band, hurled his two hundred and twenty pounds of beef against the door and almost ripped it from its hinges.
MacBride waved his men back and stepped in. The room was empty. His right hand was still in his pocket. His men did not know he was wounded. He came out in the hall and nodded at the other door.
Bang! Seven shots sounded as one.
“Now, Grosskopf.”
Grosskopf catapulted, and the door capitulated.
The room yawned empty. It showed signs of some having made a hasty departure. Bureau drawers were pulled out, a chair was overturned. Glasses, some of them still containing liquor, stood on the table. A chair, also, stood on the table.
“Up there,” said MacBride, pointing to a skylight. “To table, to chair, to roof.”
He led the way up to the roof, and they prowled around, from one roof to another. Wind, fog, and emptiness. They came to a fire-escape in the rear.
“They skipped,” he said. “Come on back.”
Below, in the hall, they found Rigallo and the woman, Doran and the look-out. MacBride looked at the woman but addressed his men. “We’ve got an ace-in-the-hole now. Let’s go.”
They went out into the foggy street, and MacBride said to the look-out, “Thought you tricked me, eh? Ten men in the back room!”
The woman laughed. “Ten! That’s headquarters, Cap, not the barracks. What a joke! There was only three — in the front.”
Rigallo said to the look-out, “Boy Scout, we will entertain you a while at the precinct. I have a nice new piece of rubber hose.”
They piled into the police car. Its motor roared. It turned about and purred up Jockey Street, and at Main Rigallo got out and picked up his flivver, and the two cars proceeded toward the Second.
The prisoners were locked up in separate cells. Then MacBride, alone, went out and walked several blocks and entered a door above which was a small sign bearing the legend, Dr. O. F. Blumm, M.D.
“Oh, hello, Mac.”
“Hello, Doc. Fix this.” He drew his blood-soaked hand from his pocket, and the doctor frowned, murmured, “H’m,” and added, “Take off the coat, shirt.”
The bullet had struck just above the wrist, sliced open three inches of the forearm and lodged in the hard flesh just short of the elbow. MacBride, teeth clamped, his eyes closed, shed streams of sweat while the doctor probed for the bullet and finally removed it. Then MacBride sank back, a little pale, very grim.
“It might have been worse,” remarked the doctor.
“Sure,” said MacBride, and breathed quietly while the wound was cauterized, stitched and bandaged.
“Most men take a little dope for this, Mac.”
“Uh!” grunted MacBride through tight lips.
Through the fog, he returned to the station-house, his hand concealed in his pocket, his wound throbbing.
Kennedy was lounging in the office. “You look yellow around the gills, Mac.”
“Liver,” clipped MacBride, and took a drink.
“Hear you got Gertie Case and Midge Sutler.”
“Urn.”
“How long do you suppose you can hold ’em?”
“Watch me.”
“There’ll be a writ of release here before you know it,” said Kennedy. “How come you didn’t get the gang?”
“Breeze, Kennedy! Dammit, I’m not in the mood!”
Kennedy shrugged and went out.
Alone, MacBride drew out his hand, laid it on the desk. God, how the arm throbbed! He heard a voice outside the door and slipped the hand back into his pocket. The door opened and a big, bloated man, with a moon-face, large fishy eyes, and an air of pompous importance, sailed in.
“Hello, Mac.”
“Hello.”
Captain Bower, plainclothes, a Headquarters “yes man,” and the mayor’s bodyguard. MacBride drew into himself, wary, on guard.
Bower deposited his indecent bulk in an armchair and sent a tobacco shot into the cuspidor. “This latest business, Mac. The Jockey Street fizzle.”
“Fizzle?”
“Well, whatever you like. Anyhow it’s out of your district, and Headquarters is going to handle it. Another thing. We’re also handling the case of Saunders. Of course, there’s nothing to it, and we’ll dispose of it right off.”
MacBride’s jaw hardened. Graft again! Nothing to it! Bah! They knew he was out to riddle their racket. They were cornered, and playing a subtle game. They could not fire him immediately, could not shove him out in the sticks while this thing was hanging fire. But they could take a case out of his hands. Could they?
“It’s my case, Bower,” he snapped. “My men got the clues, did the tailing, and we’ve got Midge Sutter and that Case broad salted.”
“On what charge?”
“Suspicion. That’s enough for any cop.”
“We’ll work it out at Headquarters,” said Bower, very matter-of-fact. “I’ll take the pair along with me, now.”
Color crept into MacBride’s face. “Not before I indict ’em — tomorrow.”
Bower frowned. “Don’t be a goof. What can you indict ’em on?”