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.
“Hold it, Martindel!”
Duke Martindel froze immobile. He rasped the one word: “Egan—” and made a run for it.
A gun belched in his face. His head exploded and he went down — cold.
Chapter Three
French Leave
Daybreak filtering through the grimy little window of the headquarters’ interrogation room, fell in wan splashes on the weary features of Duke Martindel. With clothing disheveled, his shirt front stiff with dried blood and a turban of bandages crowning the upper portion of his head, he sprawled in a hard-backed chair in the center of the battered room. There were four other men present, but Martindel’s eyes were focused unwaveringly on the tall, gaunt figure that stood before him, silhouetted by the tiny window.
Inspector Egan was a thinnish man whose gauntness was deceptive. Like a puma, his muscles were so evenly divided over his frame as to be unnoticeable. His face was long and narrow and the features sharp, fox-like, and his salt-and-pepper brows, when he frowned, formed a straight unbroken line across the upper part of his face. This tended to thrust his colorless eyes into a pocket of shadow and give to them a metallic luster that was disconcertingly impersonal. No man on the department had ever seen him smile. He was shrewd and intuitive; he seemed to smell a situation before it was possible to know by any other means. Few men liked him personally, but he had the knack of winning the respect and blind obedience of his men. It was rumored that he was the real power behind the city government, but such rumors were always whispered furtively, for Wyatt Egan was not the type of man to oppose unless one was prepared to prove his accusation.
“Talk?” he asked Martindel.
Duke shrugged. “Sure. I didn’t kill Chris Foy.”
Egan tugged at his nose. It seemed to lengthen in his hand. “It was a two-man job — who was your partner.”
“I didn’t have a partner, Egan; I didn’t need one.”
“That your story?”
“Part of it.”
“What’s the rest of it?”
“I didn’t crack that vault.”
One of the other cops laughed. Egan rocked on his heels meditatively. When he spoke, his voice was low, controlled as though he were holding himself back.
“You killed Chris Foy, Martindel, then tried to put one over on Henderson. Don’t forget, we found fifty thousand bucks in the turtle-back of your roadster. How do you explain that?”
Duke shook his head. “I’m not going to try,” he said wearily.
“You had ten thousand dollars in your pocket,” Egan went on. “You know where that came from, don’t you?”
“Sure, but you don’t.”
“Wrong,” corrected Egan drily. “We checked the serial numbers of those bills and found they were part of the loot stolen from the Seaside National Bank last month. Talk yourself out of that one.”
Duke Martindel swore softly and covered his chagrin by gingerly patting the bandage around his head. From the neck up he was just one big ache; a slug from Egan’s gun had creased his skull and come, literally, within a hair’s-breadth of killing him. And now, with throbbing head, he found the predicament almost too much for him. The evidence was damning — he could not dispute that fact.
He tried to reason it out in his mind. Although satisfied that Sam Skuro and Gus Nuene had deliberately framed him for the burglary and the murder of the watchman, Foy, he could see no point in explaining the matter to Inspector Egan. In the first place, he had been caught red-handed and would be, in any case, considered an accomplice of Skuro and Nuene. As such, his testimony would be worthless in court and he would be regarded equally guilty with the other pair. Then, too, the police were perfectly satisfied that Skuro and Nuene were the murderers of Wash-burn; they neither would be, nor could be, induced to change that theory.
A sharp commotion in the corridor outside broke in on his musing. Egan scowled and started across the floor when the door swung open and a woman darted into the room. Her eyes settled for an instant on the group, then with a little cry, she ran to the prisoner and threw her arms around him.
“Duke! Are you hurt, darling?” she whimpered.
Martindel jumped to his feet. “Phyllis!” Then he grinned ruefully. “No, Phyl, Egan shot me in the head where it couldn’t do any damage.” He cast a glance over his shoulder where the inspector was growling at a desk sergeant.
The latter was fuming embarrassedly. “I couldn’t stop her, Inspector!” he apologized. “She walked right past me an’ headed for this room.”
Egan swung around. “You’ll have to get out, Mrs. Martindel,” he snapped.
Phyllis Martindel drew herself up to her full five feet. “I will not!” she retorted.
“The hell she does, Egan,” put in Duke. “She’s my attorney, in case you don’t know.”
Phyllis slapped a folded document on the table. “Here is a writ for Duke’s release.”
Egan pushed it away from him. “You keep a supply of those damn things all filled out?”
The girl gave him an icy stare. “I think you will find it in perfect order.”
Egan picked it up. Without unfolding it, he turned to Martindel. “Duke, I happen to know that you had two visitors earlier this morning: Sam Skuro and Gus Nuene. We want those two. Where are they?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” Duke told him.
Egan tugged at his nose. “We know definitely that they came to see you. After they left, you went out. Now I want to know what business they had with you that prompted that. You’re in a bad spot, Duke, so you better talk. In any case, I can take you before a magistrate, put you under oath and either force you to talk or put you in the position of an accomplice, because the only excuse you could give for not talking is that it might tend to incriminate you.”
Martindel grinned maliciously. “I’m only a dumb private dick, Egan; I work for my lawyer. Skuro and Nuene came up to see her because she’s their attorney as well as mine. They didn’t tell me a damn thing.”
The inspector’s eyes retreated into a deeper socket of shadow. “I’ll make her talk,” he growled.
Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t think you will!” she challenged him testily. “If you know anything about legal procedure at all, you know that an attorney cannot be forced to testify to any conversation with a client. That is a privileged communication, you murdering old crook!”
Egan sniffed; it was the nearest he ever came to laughter. “You make a fine pair — a shyster mouthpiece in skirts and a crooked, double-crossing, gum-shoe. That’s like marrying a jackal and a skunk.”
Duke smiled thinly. “You’re well up on zoology, Egan, but then, that’s natural. Now, how about this writ?”
Inspector Egan turned slowly and walked over to the window where he stood straddle-legged, his hands behind him, staring into the street below. Finally, after a moody silence that lasted for nearly five minutes, he swung around and shook the crumpled writ at the Martindels.
“You win this round,” he growled. “I’m not ready to tip my hand yet. This case has a lot of angles and if I resisted this writ, I’d have to go into court and show my evidence right now.
When I’m ready, I’ll have you picked up, Duke, but in the meantime, don’t either of you try to leave town. You can beat it now.”
Phyllis sniffed disdainfully and proffered a pack of cigarettes to her husband. Duke came slowly to his feet, paused with irritating nonchalance to light his smoke, then with a cynical grin for the somber-faced coppers, he turned and limped out of the room.