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 roadster gained. MacBride screwed open the windshield, fired, aiming low. He fired again. The touring car suddenly swerved, its rear end bounced. Then it left the road, hurtled down an embankment, whirled over and over, its metal ripping and screeching over stones and stumps.
Kennedy applied his brakes, but the roadster did not stop until it was a hundred yards beyond the still tumbling touring car. MacBride reloaded his gun, shoved the one with the silencer into his pocket, and started back. Kennedy was beside him. As they left the road and ran through the bushes, they saw two figures staggering into the timber beyond.
MacBride shouted and fired his gun, but the figures disappeared in the woods. Kennedy brought up beside the shattered touring car. Four broken, twisted men were linked with the mangled wreckage.
“They’re done for, Mac,” he said.
“You stay here, Kennedy. I’m going after the others.”
“So am I.”
“Kennedy—”
“Let’s go, Mac.” He was off on the run.
MacBride galloped past him, dived into the timber. Somewhere ahead, two men were thrashing fiercely through the thickets. Five minutes later MacBride caught the fleeting glimpse of one. He yelled for the man to stop. The man turned and pumped three shots. Two clattered through the branches. A third banged into a tree behind which MacBride had ducked.
Kennedy, coming up at a trot, raised his automatic and blazed away. MacBride saw the man stop, throw up his arms, and buckle.
“Come on,” said Kennedy.
They plunged ahead, reached the fallen man.
“Bannon!” muttered MacBride. “You finished him, Kennedy.”
“Good.”
Bang!
Kennedy and MacBride flung themselves into a convenient clump of bushes. They lay still, back to back, until they heard the sounds of continued flight up ahead.
“Let’s,” said MacBride, heaving up.
“Sure — let’s.”
MacBride started, hunched way over, darting from tree to tree, bush to bush. He stopped, to listen. Kennedy puffed up behind him.
“Come on,” said MacBride.
“Sorry, Mac...”
MacBride pivoted. Kennedy was sitting on the ground, holding his right leg.
“Hell, Kennedy!”
“Hell, Mac!”
MacBride bent down.
“Go on,” grunted Kennedy. “Get the slob!”
“I’ll get him,” said MacBride, and started off.
Dodging from tree to tree, he finally came to the edge of the timber. Before him lay a wide, marshy field, and the wind rustled in blanched weeds and bushes.
Bang!
MacBride’s hat was shifted an inch, and the bullet struck a tree behind his head. His teeth clicked and he fired three shots into the weeds, then ducked. He crouched, breath bated, and listened.
The weeds crackled, and he heard a groan. Warily he crawled out into the weeds, worming his way over frozen puddles. A groan, and a rasped oath reached his ears. Sounded a bit to the right. He wriggled in that direction. He stopped, waiting. Five, ten minutes passed. Half an hour.
Then, ten yards from him a head appeared above the weeds, then a pair of shoulders. MacBride stood up.
“Drop it, guy!” He leaped as he said it.
With a snarl the man spun, but not completely. MacBride jabbed his gun in the man’s side, and the latter regarded him furiously over one shoulder.
“Hello, Sciarvi.”
Black and blue welts were on Sciarvi’s face. He was hatless, and his overcoat was ripped in several places.
“Where’d I pot you?” asked MacBride, snatching his gun.
“In the guts,” grated Sciarvi.
“Didn’t know you had any.”
“Get me to a doctor. Snap on it, and can the wisecracks. You don’t worry me, MacBride.”
“Get going.” MacBride prodded him. “And lay off the lip, you lousy Dago! You’re the guy I’ve been looking for, Sciarvi, and I’ll see you to the chair!”
“Yeah? Laugh that off, MacBride. I got friends.”
“I’ll get your friends, too.”
“That’s a joke!”
“On you, Wop.”
They passed into the timber, and came upon Kennedy leaning against a tree and smoking a cigarette.
“Sciarvi, eh?” he drawled. “Spats Sciarvi, the kid himself, the Beau Brummell of crookdom, the greasy, damn dago.”
“Yeah?” sneered Sciarvi. “When I get out of the doctor’s care I’ll come around and pay you a visit.”
“Tell me another bed-time story, Sciarvi!”
They moved along, Kennedy limping in the rear. They came upon Bannon, alias Shane, lying face down, quite dead. They walked past, rustled through the bushes, and came out near the wrecked car.
Haifa dozen policemen and a sergeant looked up, and then Bower appeared, red-faced and bellicose.
“Oh,” grumbled MacBride, “the riot squad. What did you do, come around to pick souvenirs?”
“We’ll take the prisoner,” rumbled Bower.
“You’ll take hell!” said MacBride.
“Damn you, MacBride!” roared Bower.
MacBride pulled the gun with the silencer from his pocket, held it in his palm, looked at Bower. “Don’t you think you’d better pipe down?”
Bower closed his mouth abruptly, stood swaying on his feet, his bloodshot face suffused with chagrin.
“Come on, Bower,” snarled Sciarvi, “do your stuff.”
Bower caught his breath, glared at Sciarvi with mixed hatred and fear. Then he stamped his foot and pointed a shaking finger at MacBride.
“You’ll see — you’ll see!” he threatened, but his tone was choked and unconvincing.
MacBride chuckled derisively, turned to the sergeant and said, “There’s a stiff back in the woods. Better get him.”
Then he pushed Sciarvi up the slope toward the road, and Kennedy limped after him. They reached the roadster and Kennedy eased in behind the wheel.
“Your leg,” said MacBride.
“It’s the right one, Mac. I’ll use the handbrake.”
Sciarvi was shoved in and MacBride followed, and the roadster hummed back toward Richmond City.
“Now the big guy,” said Kennedy.
“Now the big guy,” said MacBride.
“Jokes!” cackled Sciarvi.
8
The mayor paced the library of his opulent, fifteen-room mansion. He wore a beaver-brown suit, a starched, striped collar, a maroon tie and diamond stick-pin. He was small, chunky, with a cleft chin, a bulbous nose, and shiny red lips. He wore pince-nez, attached to a black-ribbon, and this, combined with the gray at his temples, gave him a certain distingue air. He was known for a clubable fellow, and a charming after-dinner speaker; and he went in for boosting home trade, sponsoring beauty contests, and having his picture taken while presenting lolly-pops to the half-starved kids of the South Side, bivouack of the bohunks.
He was not his best this morning. There was a hunted look in his usually brilliant eyes, and corrugated lines on his forehead, and he’d lost count of how many times he’d paced the room. He stopped short, to listen. There was a commotion outside the door, a low, angry voice, and the high-pitched, protesting voice of Simmonds, his man.
Perplexed, he started toward the door, and was about to reach for the knob when the door burst open. He froze in his tracks, then elevated chest and chin and clasped his hands behind his back.
MacBride strode in, kicked shut the door with his heel. He was grimy, blood-streaked, and dangerous. A pallor shone beneath his ruddy tan, and dark circles were under his eyes. He was weary and worn and the hand of his wounded arm was resting in his pocket. His coat collar was half up, half down, and his battered fedora, with Sciarvi’s bullet hole in the crown, was jammed down to his eyebrows.