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.
Cellini tried more questions and the answers became progressively less satisfactory. Dan Turner finished his drink and left. Cellini stayed at his desk, stabbing at the blotter with a letter opener. There was no place from which to start, no definite lead from which to work. That was the trouble. The only sure thing was that Duck-Eye could get his two hundred dollars now. He’d first have to know exactly how it would be spent — if he gave it to him.
After a while, Cellini locked the office and went down to his car. None of the bookie joints, gambling places or so-called poker clubs he visited seemed to know or care about who had won or lost on the Bly-Wheaton fight. The back numbers of newspapers, found in a library, revealed only that an eighteen-year-old girl named Jeanette Bly had been run over by a hit-and-run driver near the corner of Wilshire and La Brea. She had died a few hours later in the hospital.
It was nearing six when Cellini Smith entered the Main Street Gymnasium and not many of the boys were around. Someone was sweating over a rowing machine and Duck-Eye Ryan was earning a few cents by sparring with a fighter Cellini didn’t recognize. Candido Pastor, one of the better welters, idly skipped rope in one corner. An old man, called Cyclops because of an eye lost in the bare-knuckles days, wandered about under the impression he was tidying the place.
Duck-Eye broke off when he sighted Cellini and hurried over. The big, grooved face wrinkled into a grin.
“I got big news, Cellini.”
“What is it?”
“It was a mistake. You know. About what I told you.”
“You mean you don’t need the two hundred?”
“Uh-huh.” The grin spread from one mangled ear to the other.
Cellini’s mouth was open for a speech about flowers and bees and social conduct when he decided to postpone it until a more convenient time. Instead, he said: “Climb into your clothes. We’re going to a wrestling match.”
Duck-Eye lumbered off and Cellini wandered over to Candido Pastor. “Fighting soon, Candy?”
“How’ya, Smith? Next week.” His words came brokenly, timed with the steady slap of the rope against the floor.
“What did you think of the Bly-Wheaton brawl last night?”
“Bly has a mean right but I’d like to see him go a few rounds against someone good.”
“I thought it was supposed to be a fix, Candy.”
The boxer’s eyes swept the large loft-like room. The hopping feet didn’t miss a beat. “You working on Wheaton’s killing, Smith?”
“Something like that, Candy. What about the fix?”
“The fight game’s funny,” Candido Pastor observed. “You get a guy like Jerry Lake against you and you never get on a decent card again — no matter how good you are.” He dropped the rope and moved over to a punching bag.
Cellini didn’t feel like shouting to be heard over the rhythmic pounding of the leather and he accepted the not too subtle hint. Besides, he had gained an important item of information. He crossed the room to where the old man was hauling weights into a corner.
“Candy tells me you know about the fix that Jerry Lake made on last night’s fight.”
Cyclops snorted indignantly through his chew of tobacco. “Candy didn’t tell you nothing like that, Mr. Smith.”
“That’s right. But you do know about the fix.”
“Not at these prices, I don’t,” retorted the old man.
“At what prices do you think you can start remembering?”
The one eye measured Cellini as if trying to divine the contents of his wallet. “Ten bucks is a nice, even figure,” he finally said, and added hastily: “Prices are high in everything.”
Cellini took the tenner from his wallet but did not give it to Cyclops. “We’ll see if it’s worth it,” he said.
The old man spat tobacco juice on the floor and spread it around with the sole of a shoe. “It’s just a few things I picked up around here, Mr. Smith, and I ain’t one to talk.”
“I’m like Mr. Anthony. You can tell me anything. What gives with Lake?”
“Well, he wanted Wheaton to win.”
“Why? Was he betting dough on him?”
“Not too much. I heard tell he was building him up.”
“I don’t get it. What has Lake got to do with that?”
“He owns Hank Wheaton. Not since Wheaton was killed, I guess, but he owned him before.”
“So Jerry Lake was Hank Wheaton’s manager,” said Cellini softly. “You’re doing fine, Cyclops. Now tell me why a smart boy like Lake would try to build up a second-rater like Wheaton.”
“Wheaton’s record fooled Lake,” stated the old man, “so he got him down here from Seattle thinking he had something good.”
“And when he found out otherwise,” Cellini said, “he decided to fix the fight and save Wheaton’s pretty record for a big killing later on.”
“A big killing!” chortled Cyclops. “That’s a good crack, Mr. Smith. He sure got himself a big killing.”
“You ought to see me with my trained seals sometime. Now tell me about the fix, Cyclops.”
“That there’s kind of funny because I heard they would go fast for the first nine rounds and then Bly would dive in the tenth.”
“What’s funny about it?”
“It didn’t happen, did it?”
“That’s what I want to know. Why didn’t it?”
“The kind of scum you get nowadays, Mr. Smith, it’s even hard to arrange an honest fix.” The old man started laughing. “A big killing! That was sure funny, Mr. Smith.”
Cellini added another five to the ten and headed for the locker room and the comparatively brighter company of Duck-Eye Ryan.
The matches were already under way when Cellini Smith and Duck-Eye Ryan arrived at the arena. The place was only half-filled but the spectators made up for this deficiency by roaring their approval and providing a continuous stream of comments on the goings-on in the ring.
As Cellini and Duck-Eye leaned over the railing in back of the grandstand to watch, they found those goings-on very strange indeed. Four female wrestlers and a referee crowded the ring. The girls were apparently paired into two teams and they tossed each other around with a zest and gusto that somehow reminded Cellini of a jitterbug jamboree.
“Gee! Four of ’em!” was Duck-Eye’s critical comment.
Despite the recent murder of her husband, Prunella Wheaton was meeting her professional obligations tonight. Her role was that of the villainess, for, to the delight of all, she confined her tactics to biting, kicking and gouging of eyes.
A red-head leaped across the ring and delivered a right-hand bar smash to Prunella’s mid-section. Prunella replied by grabbing a handful of hair and swinging her opponent against a ring post. The red-head stood up and felt her hair. “You, you dirty thing, you,” she sputtered, enraged over the ruin of an expensive permanent. The red-head jumped for Prunella and they tumbled to the mat. Prunella managed to get a choke hold on the other’s neck.
The crowd yelled to the referee: “Choke, choke...Watch the ugly one, Sam.”
Sam bent over to check the hold. Another girl jumped to the wrestler’s aid, knocking Sam over, and then the fourth one came in on top of them. Sam crawled out of the tangle of arms and legs and pulled them apart. Prunella grabbed the red-head around the neck while her partner did the same with the fourth one. Then, in a moment of inspiration, they ran forward, bumping the two heads together. The match was over.
Cellini turned to find Murph next to him, leaning against the railing. Cellini produced a thin smile and used it by way of greeting.