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.
“Well?” said the Mayor.
“Well!” said MacBride.
And they stood and regarded each other and said not a word for a whole minute.
“Who are you?” asked the Mayor.
“MacBride. A common precinct captain you never saw before. But you know the name, eh?”
“Humph,” grunted the Mayor. “I shall refer you to my secretary. I’m not in the habit of receiving visitors except by appointment.”
MacBride lashed him with windy blue eyes, and a crooked smile tugged at his lips. “Mister Mayor, Spats Sciarvi’s dying. He wants to see you.”
The Mayor blinked and a tremor ran over his short, chunky frame.
“Sciarvi? Who is Sciarvi?”
“Better come along and see.”
“I don’t know him.”
He turned on his heel and strode away.
MacBride put his hand on the knob. “Remember, Mister Mayor, I carried a dying man’s wish. He’s at 109 Ship Street.”
The Mayor stopped, stood still, but did not turn.
MacBride left the room, and as he went out through the front door he ran into Bower. They stopped and stared at each other.
Bower snarled, “Where’s Sciarvi? What did you do with him? He ain’t at Headquarters. He ain’t in none o’ the precincts. He ain’t in the hospitals.”
“Ask the mayor,” said MacBride, and passed on.
He got into a taxi, sank wearily into the cushions, and closed his eyes. Twenty minutes later the taxi jerked to a stop. The driver reached back, opened the door and waited. After a moment he looked around.
“Hey,” he called.
“Um.” MacBride awoke, paid his fare and entered a hallway.
The room he walked into was electrically lighted. Sciarvi lay on a bed, his face drained of color. Kennedy sat on a chair while a doctor was bandaging his leg. Another doctor hovered over Sciarvi.
“MacBride...?” a question was in Sciarvi’s tone.
MacBride shook his head. “Your friend wouldn’t come. Never heard of you.”
Sciarvi stared. “You’re lyin’, MacBride!”
“God’s truth, Sciarvi!”
Their eyes held, and in the captain’s gaze Sciarvi must have read the awful truth.
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Then he glared. “Damn your soul, MacBride, why are you hidin’ me here? Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?”
MacBride said, “You started yelling for a doctor. This was the first M.D. plate I saw.”
“Why the hell didn’t you turn me over to Bower?”
“You’re in my hands, Sciarvi, not Bower’s. I’ve got two doctors here. You wanted your friend, and I went for him. He said he didn’t know you. You’ve gotten a damned sight more than you deserve already. Quit yapping.”
“Cripes, what a break!” groaned Sciarvi, relaxing, closing his eyes.
MacBride sat down, stared at Kennedy’s bandaged leg. Kennedy looked sapped and drawn. But his cynical smile drew a twisted line across his jaw.
“I needed a vacation, Mac,” he drawled.
“Hurt?”
“Hell, yes!” And still he smiled, eyes lazy-lidded, features composed.
The one doctor left Kennedy, and joined the other doctor and the two doctors put their heads together and conversed in undertones. Then they looked at Sciarvi, examined his wound, took his temperature. After which they went back to the window, put their heads together again, and mumbled some more.
The upshot of this was quite natural. One doctor said, “Captain MacBride, we have come to the conclusion that, for the sake of everyone concerned, this man should be removed to the City Hospital.”
“Gawd!” groaned Sciarvi.
“Huh?” said MacBride.
“Gawd!” groaned Sciarvi.
All eyes looked toward him. He glared at the doctors. “City Hospital, eh? Why the hell don’t you come right out and say I’m done for? I know the City Hospital. You saw-bones always send a dyin’ guy there. It’s just a clearin’ house for stiffs. Come on, mister, am I done for?”
The doctor who had spoken before spoke again. “I will tell you frankly — you have one chance in a hundred of living.”
“What odds!” cackled Sciarvi, sinking again. Then a shocked look came into his eyes, and he stared with the fierce concentration of those who are outward bound.
“MacBride!” he choked.
Kennedy drew a pencil and a couple of blank envelopes from his pocket.
MacBride stood at the bedside. “Yes, Sciarvi?”
“The Mayor — the pup! He hired me, at a thousand a month to wage a war of — whaddeya call it? — intimidation? — against the Colonial Trucking. He promised absolute protection in case I got in a jam. For the killing of Saunders — Bannon did it — I got a bonus of fifteen hundred. The Mayor supplied that special kind o’ poison. He got it from the City Chemist. When you got Gertie, I wised him and he started working to nip an indictment in the bud. His right-hand man is Bower. Bower flopped, and two this mornin’ I told the Mayor that if Gertie was planted in the State’s Attorney’s hands, we were done for. He turned white. He was in a hole, and he asked me what idea I had. I told him we could block off Law Street and get rid of Gertie. He said go ahead. We went ahead. Huh — and now the pup says he don’t know me! Ugh... Get a — ugh...”
“Get an ambulance,” said one doctor.
“He wants a priest,” said MacBride, understanding.
“He won’t die for half an hour,” said the doctor. “And if we get him to the hospital—”
“He’ll burn in the chair eventually,” said MacBride.
“That’s not the point,” said the doctor, and took up a telephone.
When he put it down, Kennedy said, “I wrote it down, Mac. I’ve signed as a witness. You sign and then the doctors.”
All signed, and then MacBride stood over Sciarvi. “Want to sign this, Sciarvi?”
“Read it.”
MacBride read it. Sciarvi nodded, took the pen and scrawled his signature.
“Get a... ugh...”
Five minutes later an ambulance clanged to a stop outside. Two men came in with a stretcher, a hospital doctor looked Sciarvi over briefly, and then they carried him out, and the ambulance roared off.
Kennedy hobbled out on MacBride’s arm, and they entered a taxi. Twenty minutes later they drew up before an imposing mansion. Kennedy hobbled out and with MacBride’s assistance climbed the ornate steps.
MacBride rang the bell and a servant opened the door. MacBride brushed him aside and helped Kennedy into the foyer.
The mayor was standing in the open door of his library, and his face was ghastly white. Toward him MacBride walked and Kennedy hobbled, and the mayor backed slowly into the room. MacBride closed the door. Kennedy sat down in a comfortable chair and lit a cigarette. The mayor stood with his hands clasped behind his back — very white, very still, very breathless. MacBride looked around the room, and then walked toward a table. He pointed to the phone.
“May I use it?”
The mayor said nothing. MacBride picked up the instrument and gave a number. A moment later he asked, “That Sciarvi fellow. What about him?” He listened, said, “H’m. Thanks,” and hung up.
Then he drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to the mayor. The mayor read, and moved his neck in his stiff collar, as though something were gagging him. His hand shook. Then he laughed, peculiarly, and scaled the letter on the desk.