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.
“That,” she said, “is what you think.”
“It’s what I know,” he said. Then, suddenly serious: “Look here, darling. We’ve not even the vaguest idea of what we’re getting into. It may be as mean and dirty as the district it’s in. I’d be scared stiff if you came along.”
“So I’m to sit here and be scared stiff until you get back?”
“Or else,” he threatened, “we go straight to the police. Although any self-respecting cop would arrest you in that devil’s cape.”
She was angry. He looked at her and saw that she was staring straight ahead, her lips tight-pressed, her chin rigid. He patted her knee and got out, walked away.
Just once, as he went past the warehouse a hundred yards or so distant, he turned his head to look back. The car’s headlights owlishly stared at him. Uneasy about leaving Angel alone too long on a street so dark and unsavory, he quickened his step.
Number 23 was one of a row of tenements, all of which looked alike in the dark. A battered ashcan filled with refuse stood on the concrete stoop beside the door. The door opened when Smith pressed it.
He stepped over the threshold into a black, smelly hall. Stopped there, scowling, and realized that the house had three floors and he had no idea on which level to concentrate.
His flash-light winked, threading a narrow beam through the gloom of the lower hall. A baby carriage stood there. He went past it, past the door of the first-floor tenement, to the stairs. The building was a tomb, cold and damp and dark.
With the light cupped in his hand he climbed slowly, testing each ancient step before trusting it with his weight. The second-floor landing came level with his eyes and he stopped again. The light showed him a small and black cigarette stub lying by a door. He smiled a tight, twisted little smile and knew that the door was his destination.
He stepped beside it, scowled, and snapped out the light. There was no sound anywhere.
The fact that he was unarmed did not greatly worry him. It never had before. The day he began to carry a gun, he told himself, Trouble, Incorporated, would cease to be a hobby. Besides, he had no permit.
He tipped his hat back on his head and loosened his tie. He opened his coat, rubbed a hand over the floor and transferred the dirt thus collected to the front of his shirt, blackening it. For good measure he pulled off two buttons, to make the shirt sag.
He dirtied his face and rumpled his hair, and put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, the lenses of which were clear glass.
Then he seized the doorknob and rattled it, and then he banged on the door and cursed it and began talking to himself.
Results were not long coming. A couch squeaked inside and a voice said sharply, “Who’s there? Who’s out there?”
“It’sh Percy,” Smith slobbered. “Lemme in.”
“Who? Who is it?”
“It’sh Percy! You lemme in or sho help me I’ll busht the door down!”
A key turned in the lock and the door opened. It didn’t open far. Just far enough to frame a short, thick-set man whose swarthy face was all scowl.
“Listen, buddy,” the swarthy man said. “You’re in the wrong place. Beat it.”
“Who’re you?”
“Never mind who I am. It’s the middle of the night, see? And you’re in the wrong alley. Scram!”
“Thish ish where I live,” Smith snorted. “Don’ you tell me I don’ belong here. I know different.”
The dark fellow was in no mood to argue with a drunk. He came a step closer, put his right hand flat against Smith’s chest, and pushed. He slammed the door as Smith staggered away from it.
Smith smiled that tight little smile again and resumed his assault. If he made enough noise, the occupants of the tenement would do one of two things: either slug him or try to reason with him. He didn’t think they would slug him. This was a hideout. They would want to avoid trouble.
And they most certainly would open the door if he hammered on it long enough.
It opened. The swarthy man said savagely, “Listen, buddy, will you for Gawd’s sake go away and leave us get some sleep? Or do I have to get rough with you?”
Smith’s eyes glowered at him out of a slack, stupid face. “You listen to me,” he said. “My name’sh Percy Smith an’ I live here. An’ nobody’sh gonna keep me out!”
Behind the swarthy man an impatient voice said, “Let him in, Max.”
“Oke, buddy.” Max sighed. “Come on in.”
“That’sh better,” Smith said. “That’sh much better.”
He walked in, weaving a little. Max closed the door.
“Now take a good look around, Percy,” Max said, “and you’ll see this ain’t the place you thought it was. You’re drunk and you’re in the wrong house.”
“Who saysh I am?”
“Look around. See for yourself.”
Smith looked around. The room in which he stood was a living-room, furnished with table, chairs and a couch. The swarthy man, Max, had evidently been sleeping on the couch, in his clothes. His clothes were wrinkled and he wore no shoes.
The other man was bigger. He wore gray pajamas which hung loosely from his lank frame, revealing a generous expanse of hairy chest. His hair was in his eyes and he stood with his hands hipped, feet spread wide, just back of the table. A door behind him led to what appeared to be a bedroom.
“I... I guessh I was mistaken,” Smith mumbled apologetically.
“Convinced, are you?”
“I musht’ve got mixed up somehow.”
“Well, if you’re convinced,” Max said, “just scram like a nice guy and don’t make any more noise’n you have to.”
Smith stood where he was. “I... I don’ feel sho good,” he said.
“O.K., O.K.,” the other man said tartly. “Beat it! Be sick outside!”
“I wanna shtay here. I wanna lie down somewheres...”
The two men exchanged glances. The man named Max took his right hand out of his pocket, where it had rested since Smith’s entrance. They stepped forward. “Sure,” Max said. “We’ll help you lay down, buddy. We wouldn’t think of puttin’ a nice guy like you out in the street at this time o’ night. No-o-o. Would we, Vick?”
“Of course not,” Vick said.
They took hold of Smith’s arms. That was their mistake. He had been waiting for it. Waiting to get them both together, both in reach at the same time. Any other way would have been fatal, because undoubtedly both men were armed.
Smith’s heel came down hard, piston-fast, on a shoeless foot that belonged to Max. At the same time he twisted, stabbed an arm out and caught the other man’s wrist. He was suddenly not drunk any more, and before his adversaries were over their amazement, Smith had the situation in hand.
You didn’t need a gun. All you needed was a slight knowledge of the fine art of Oriental wrestling, plus a fair to middling physique and a nickel’s worth of nerve.
Max yelped, bent double at the waist as pain streaked up from his tortured foot. He bent into an upthrust knee that smacked his chin and snapped his teeth together. He staggered against the table, dazed, and had sense enough left to reach gropingly for the pocket where his gun lay. But he was too slow.
Smith had hold of Vick’s wrist. He yanked Vick off balance, stooped, caught the arm above the wrist and pulled it. Not hard. Really not hard at all. But fast.
Vick’s feet left the floor. He lost his breath in an explosive grunt as his big frame looped through space. His hundred and eighty pounds crashed into Max and Max was finished. Vick sprawled to the floor, stunned, and Max fell over him.
Smith waded in. What little fight remained in Vick was dissipated quickly by a hard, clean punch to the button. For his trouble, Smith had nothing to show except a few minor beads of moisture on his face and forehead.