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.
“What’s yours, Bower?”
“Cut that boloney.”
“Then cut yours.”
Bower scowled. “You’ll get broke for this. Stop that guy that’s got the dame.”
“I don’t know where he is. What’s more, Bower, I’m off duty. Got nothing to say. You find him — and try stopping him. Your job depends on that, Bower.”
Bower worked his hands. He started to say something but bit his lip instead and stormed out.
A game was being played on the checkerboard of Richmond City’s police stations. Rigallo moved from one to another, doubled back, moved across town, uptown, downtown. Midnight passed, and dawn approached, and still Rigallo kept the lead; and Bower blundered in his wake, fuming and cursing; and the man with the writ, worn to a frazzle by the chase, now tottered at Bower’s heels.
MacBride, weary, haggard, sapped by the pain in his arm, sometimes dizzy, met Rigallo in the Eighth at four a.m. Gertie cursed and protested at such inhuman treatment, but no one paid her any attention.
MacBride and Rigallo formulated plans, and then MacBride took the woman and carried on the game. When Bower caught up with Rigallo, the latter wasted half an hour of the other’s time by stalling, kidding and then finally telling Bower that the woman was probably uptown. Bower saw the trick and bowled off in high heat.
When he caught up with MacBride, he discovered that the woman had again changed hands and was now probably downtown. Bower cursed a sizzling blue streak and was indiscreet enough to call MacBride an untoward name.
With his one good hand, MacBride hung a left hook on Bower’s jaw and draped him over a table. Then he went out into the wet gray dawn, and felt a little better.
At half-past eight he met Rigallo in the Third, joined him and the woman in Rigallo’s flivver.
“Cripes, I’ll never get over this!” rasped Gertie.
“You said something, sister,” nodded MacBride.
“You’re a big bum, MacBride,” she stabbed. “And you’re another, Rigallo.”
Rigallo spat. “Three of a kind, eh?”
“And your mother’s another,” she added.
Rigallo took one hand from the wheel and with the palm of it slapped her face.
She laughed, baring her teeth, brazenly.
A block behind, a taxi was following.
Ahead yawned the entrance to Law Street, and halfway down it loomed the Court.
“Here’s where you get indicted, sister,” said MacBride.
“I’m laughing.”
“You don’t look that way.”
On one side of the entrance to Law Street was a cigar store. On the other corner was a drugstore. As the flivver crossed the square, a man sauntered from the drug-store, and at the same time another sauntered from the cigar-store. They looked across at each other, and both nodded and shoved hands into pockets.
Bang! — bang! Bang — bang!
7
Rigallo stiffened at the wheel. Gertie screamed, clutched her breast. MacBride ducked, and the flivver leaped across the square, slewed over the curb and crashed into the drug-store window.
Pedestrians stopped, horrified, frozen in their tracks. The two well-dressed men who had stood on either corner joined and walked briskly up the street toward a big, gray touring car.
The taxi that had been trailing the flivver stopped, and Kennedy, leaping out, ran across to the demolished flivver. He reached it as MacBride, streaked with blood, burst from the wreckage.
“There’s the car, Mac!” He pointed.
“Where’s another?” clipped MacBride.
Kennedy nodded to the taxi, and they ran over.
“Nossir,” barked the driver, “I ain’t chasin’ them guys.” He climbed out. “You guys go ahead.”
“I’ll drive,” said Kennedy casually.
“Kennedy,” said MacBride, “you stay out of this.”
“What! After tailing you all night! Coming?”
He was beside the wheel, shoving into gear. MacBride clipped an oath and hopped in, and the taxi went howling up the street.
He muttered, “Pups — got — Riggy! Step on it, Kennedy!”
“The broad?”
“Dead.”
“They made sure you wouldn’t indict her.”
“Pups! Watch that turn!”
“Yu-up!”
Kennedy took the turn on two wheels,
knocked over a push-cart full of fruit, and jammed his foot hard down on the gas.
“Applesauce!”
“And crushed pineapple!”
Bang!
A cowl-light disappeared from the taxi.
Bang — bang — bang! went MacBride’s gun.
People scattered into doorways. Moving cars stopped. Heads appeared at windows.
The gray car swung into a wide street set with trolley tracks. It weaved recklessly through traffic, heading for Farmingville Turnpike, where speed would count. It roared past red traffic lights, honking its horn, grazing other cars, swerving and swaying in its mad, reckless flight.
The taxi hurtled after it no less recklessly. MacBride was leaning well out of the seat, twisting his left arm to shoot past the windshield. Kennedy swung the machine through startled traffic with a chilling nonchalance.
MacBride fired, smashed the rear window in the tonneau.
“Lower, Mac. Get a tire,” suggested Kennedy.
“Can’t aim well around this windshield.”
“Bust the windshield.”
MacBride broke it with his gun barrel. He dared not fire again, however. People were in the way, darting across the street in panicky haste. A traffic cop was ahead, having almost been knocked over by the gray touring car. MacBride recognized him — O’Day. He leaned out, and as they whanged by, yelled:
“O’Day — riot squad!”
The gray car reached Farmingville Turnpike, a wide, macadam speedway, and its exhaust, hammered powerfully. The taxi was doing sixty miles an hour and Kennedy had the throttle right down against the floor boards.
“Faster!” barked MacBride.
“Can’t, Mac. This ain’t no Stutz!”
Bang! No shot that time. The rear left had blown, and the taxi skidded, bounced, and dived along like a horse with the blind staggers. Kennedy jammed on his brakes as a big powerful car slewed around him and slid to a stop ten yards ahead. It was a roadster, and out of it jumped Bower.
“Well, MacBride, see what you’ve done!”
“Pipe down, Bower!” clipped MacBride, starting for the roadster. “Come on, Kennedy. This boat looks powerful.”
Bower got in his way. “MacBride, for cripes’ sake, lay off! You’ll get broke, man!” His voice cracked, and he was desperate.
“Out of my way!” snapped MacBride.
Bower tried to grasp him. MacBride uncorked his left and sent Bower sprawling in the bushes. Then he ran toward the roadster and Kennedy hopped in behind the wheel.
“Step on it, Kennedy!”
Kennedy stepped on, and whistled. “Boy, this is my idea of a boat!”
Inside of three minutes he was doing seventy miles an hour. MacBride’s hand dropped to the seat, touched a metal object. He picked it up. It was a pistol fitted with a silencer. Kennedy saw it out of the corner of his eye.
MacBride opened the gun. A shell had been fired.
“Now,” said Kennedy, “you know how we got a flat.”
MacBride swore under his breath.
Soon they saw the gray touring car, and Kennedy hit the gun for seventy-five miles an hour. They were out in the sticks now. Fields, gullies, occasional groves of sparse timber flashed by. Curves were few and far between. The road, for the most part, ran in long, smooth stretches.