The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
“Good. Can you get a print of McKenna’s thumb?”
“I guess so.”
“Be careful,” Smith warned, “where you leave your own prints around here.”
“You’re damn right I’ll be careful!”
Finished with the safe, Plouffe knelt beside the dead man. In a moment he rose, handed over a slip of paper. As an afterthought he stooped again and with a handkerchief carefully wiped a smudge of ink from the dead man’s thumb.
“Looks the same to me,” he said, “though I ain’t no expert.”
“So it was McKenna who opened the safe. Probably forced to and then killed so he could never identify the thief. We can go now, Angel. We’ve a job to do. A most important job, and one that may take a long time. We’ve got to find Mrs. Burdick. And her husband.”
Angel twisted her lovely mouth into a scowl. “All we have to go on,” she said, “is that car. The one Plouffe trailed.”
Smith shook his head. “No go. It’s probably right here in McKenna’s garage by now.”
“It is,” Plouffe said. “I seen it when I come back. I was meaning to tell you.”
“Then,” said Angel, “we’re stymied. Unless,” she added, glancing suspiciously at Smith, “that brain of yours is working overtime again. Sometimes that brain amazes me.”
Edgerson did some serious thinking as he drove away from the elaborate home of the slain McKenna. It was high time, he realized, to do some thinking. Up until now this affair had been little more than a pleasant diversion, a relief from the monotony of being president of a greeting card concern. A hobby, like amateur theatrics or peephole photography. Now it was murder.
He scowled at the windshield and mentally fitted together the pieces of the puzzle as he saw them. The pattern was a bit startling. “You know, Angel,” he said, “the safest thing we could do right now would be to go straight to the police, tell them all we know and then go for a nice long ride into the country.”
“Nonsense!” she said scornfully.
He sighed. “We’ll do the next best thing. Plouffe, we’ll leave it to you to phone the police and report McKenna’s death. You can do it from a booth somewhere without leaving a trail.”
“And what’ll you two be doing?” Plouffe demanded.
“Pushing our noses deeper into affairs that don’t concern us.”
“Well,” Plouffe said, “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
Smith stopped the car at a restaurant. “There should be a phone inside,” he said. “Use it, then go home. If we need you again, I’ll call you.”
“I still don’t like it,” Plouffe muttered, but he got out.
“And now,” said Angel, when the car was under way again, “just what do we do?”
“What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “Four-ten. Fine time of night to keep your best girl out.”
“We drive to Warren Avenue now,” Smith declared calmly, “and get out of bed a young man named Timothy Kenson. I don’t believe you know Timmy.”
“Who is he?”
“He works at the office. But for the past several hours he’s been working at the Krashna Tobacco Store, downtown.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” Smith said, “in due time.”
She didn’t like that. She glared at him. “He knows all, sees all, tells nothing.” Smith ignored her and she adjusted her red cape about her angrily.
He drove in silence. The streets were deserted, and it was difficult to realize that on so calm and peaceful a night murder had been done. But Smith’s mind, agile now, was ahead of the murder and groping for the motive.
He knew, or thought he knew, the elaborate steps leading up to McKenna’s death, and the probable aftermath. But the motive still evaded him. Unless, of course, the answer lay at the Glickman Company.
He turned the car into Warren Avenue and stopped. “You wait here,” he told Angel. Climbing the steps of a brown cottage, he put his thumb against the doorbell. In a moment a light winked on and the door opened. A young, red-haired man in wrinkled pajamas blinked at Smith and said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Edgerson.”
“Any luck, Timmy?”
“Sure thing. He came in late this afternoon. I been trying to get you ever since.”
“A tall, dark man, Timmy? With a beard?”
“Nope. He was a little runt. Crummy-looking.”
“Oh. You followed him?”
“Sure thing. He walked down the street a ways and got into a taxicab. So I did like you said. I jumped into another taxicab and told the driver to keep him in sight. He went into a house on Canal Street, down near the river. Wait a minute and I’ll get you the number. I wrote it down.”
He was back in a minute or two with a slip of paper which he thrust into Smith’s hand. “Here it is, Mr. Edgerson. Number 23 Canal. Just a couple of doors down from the McCullen Warehouse, if you know where that is.”
“Timmy,” John Smith said, “you’re a genius!”
“It was easy,” Timmy said.
“It was masterful. Tomorrow you get a raise in pay.”
Smith hurried back to the car, stuffing the slip of paper into his pocket. He said nothing to Angel, but the triumphant smirk on his face gave him away.
“You look,” she said, “as if you just ate the goldfish. What’s up? Where are we going now?”
“To the hideout of the dark foreigner who smokes long black cigarettes.”
“What?”
“It was really quite simple. While you were holding down the fort I visited the only two tobacco stores in the city where a man can buy long black cigarettes. They’re Cuban, you know. I discreetly asked questions. The man in the place on Fernald Street told me he used to carry them because he had a customer who came regularly, twice a week, for a large supply. The customer was Professor Dubitsky, and the fellow had sold no Cuban cigarettes since Dubitsky’s death. But in the second store I had better luck, Angel. The man there informed me that he did carry them. He hadn’t used to, he said, but about three months ago a customer placed a standing order with him, and the customer called twice a week to pick up his supply.”
“The original Sherlock Holmes!” Angel gasped. “And all this time I thought you were just plain Philip Edgerson!”
“I got quite chummy with the man,” Smith informed her, “and enlisted his aid. He agreed to let Timmy work for him. Timmy did so, and when the buyer of the Cuban cigarettes came in, Timmy followed him. That’s all there was to it. Quite simple, you see.”
“You mean Timmy followed Professor Dubitsky?”
“No. Dubitsky himself wouldn’t come out in the open like that. But if we fail to find him at the address to which we’re going, I’ll be a most crestfallen sleuth.”
She gave him a sidelong glance from beneath the red hood and then looked out the car window, noting the sinister section of town into which he was taking her.
“Are you armed, Philip?”
“I don’t own a gun. You know that.”
“Philip,” she said in a manner of confession, “I have one. I borrowed it from my office.”
He frowned. “Keep it,” he said bluntly.
The car had entered the waterfront warehouse district, and at this time of night the streets were black, deserted, ominous. A short-lived downpour had beaten to life sour smells of fish and fruit, and the dampness held those unsavory odors in suspension. You smelled trouble. Danger.
Smith pulled the machine to the curb. “For you, Angel,” he said firmly, “this is as far as the car goes. I may be a willing slave to my hobby, but I drag no hapless woman with me.”
“It’s not your hobby. It’s ours.”
“Nevertheless, you wait here — you and your silly popgun.”