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.
“And Duck-Eye’s heeled,” Cellini continued. “With Murph’s gun. By the way, what happened to Jerry Lake? He was supposed to come.”
Turner shrugged. “I’m phoning for the cops.”
“I’ve already done that,” said Cellini. “Let’s hear about that bottle.”
“I do amateur photography as a hobby,” the gambler replied. “I have a laboratory downstairs in the basement and I use the acid to tone the film.”
“Who knows you have a lab?”
“Pretty near everybody, I guess.”
A door opened and the doctor who had come to tend Worden stepped in. The men waited for him to speak.
“He’ll be all right now,” said the doctor. “Placing him under the shower, as you did, helped a lot. Of course, he’ll be blind and scarred the rest of his life, but he’ll live.”
Turner said: “Thank you. Do you mind staying with him?”
“Not at all, though I’ve already given him a hypo to let him sleep for a while.” The doctor left.
Dan Turner said: “I understand how you feel, Smith. I’d like to know myself who rigged up that punch with acid.”
Before Cellini could reply, the door was thrown open and Murph stood on the threshold. It was a Murph with a taped face, puffed, slitted eyes, and swollen, partly open lips.
“Where’s Lake?” he demanded. Then he saw Cellini and his hand made for a pocket.
“I wouldn’t,” snapped Cellini. “Duck-Eye has the drop.”
“I sure have,” Duck-Eye Ryan agreed amiably from the corner.
“That’s O.K. Some other time.” Murph spoke with difficulty and his broken teeth caused him to lisp.
Cellini walked over and removed a gun from Murph’s pocket.
“Do what you want, Smith. I have plenty of time to take care of you.” He turned to the others. “Where’s Lake?”
Bly shrugged and Turner asked: “Where is he supposed to be?”
“He said he was coming right in.” Murph’s voice held a touch of hysteria. “I took the car around to park it and when I come back he wasn’t there.”
“He’s probably out on the grounds some place,” said Turner.
“I tell you he ain’t. I looked.”
“Perhaps he came into the house,” Cellini suggested.
“I was here all the time,” Bly said. “I would have seen him.”
“Maybe he didn’t get this far,” said Cellini. “Let’s look in the front rooms. Lake’s whereabouts interest me, too.”
They left and circled the front rooms and the main hallway. Their search ended in the telephone closet that was located underneath the stairway.
Crumpled underneath the telephone stand was Jerry Lake’s corpse, his head an almost unrecognizable mass of splintered bone. The weapon, a heavy andiron, lay on the floor beside the body.
Detective-Sergeant Ira Haenigson said: “Now we may be able to get someplace.” He had thrown open the doors separating the library and living room and had crowded everyone — servants and guests — inside.
Impressively, Haenigson announced: “There’s a murderer among you. I’ve spent an hour listening to your stories and nothing connects. We may stay here all night but I’m going to find out exactly what happened this afternoon. I want to know where each one of you was when Jerry Lake was murdered and what each one of you was doing while sulphuric acid was being added to a pitcher of punch.”
“What good will that do?” asked Cellini. “Everybody has been drinking all afternoon and most of them haven’t the vaguest idea of what they did — let alone at exactly what time they did it.”
“Maybe you know of a better way to get information than by asking questions, Smith.”
“I don’t need any more information. It’s obvious that someone poured acid into that punch in an effort to blind Worden. Forsythe Worden told me that he was present when Bly’s sister was run over and that he’d be able to identify the driver if he ever saw him again. So obviously, the idea was to fix it so that he’d never be able to identify anything again.”
“Go on,” said Haenigson.
“It all began when Jerry Lake bought the contract of a Seattle fighter with a good record, and booked him to fight here against Bly. When Wheaton came down, Lake found out that he wasn’t much good, so he tried to fix the fight with Bly. Lake was trying somehow to save his investment in Wheaton. Bly agreed to take a dive, but when he found out how bad Wheaton really was, he backed out.”
“So that’s where the sister comes in,” murmured Haenigson.
“That’s right. You caught it. Lake and Wheaton tried to put pressure on Bly to stick to his agreement and take the dive by threatening to hurt the sister. Bly wouldn’t play ball and finally, the day before the fight, they went out to get Jeanette Bly.”
“Who are they?” asked Haenigson.
“We can find out very simply. We’ll bring down Worden and let him identify the person who drove that hit-and-run car. Fortunately his eyes weren’t affected by the acid.”
“I thought—” Haenigson began.
“That will be the fairest way to do it,” interrupted Cellini quickly, “because the person who did that job will probably hang for it.” Cellini called upstairs: “You can bring Worden down now.”
Cellini turned back and waited as the seconds ticked off. In a little while everyone would realize it was a bluff, that Forsythe Worden would not be coming down, that he would never identify anybody.
Ten seconds of utter stillness had elapsed when suddenly Murph leaped to his feet and cried: “I didn’t want to kill her! I swear I didn’t! I just wanted to clip her lightly with the fender! Just to warn Bly! I swear that was all I wanted to do.”
A stream of oaths came from Eddy Bly and he leaped at Murph. Bly’s two hands closed around Murph’s neck and slowly forced him to the floor. Murph’s arms dropped and his face began to whiten. Boggs and Haenigson bore down on Bly but could not tear his hands away from the throat. Boggs produced a blackjack and brought it down sharply on the back of Bly’s head. The fighter sagged to the ground. His hands, however, still clung to Murph’s throat and could be pried off only finger by finger.
The Blond Bomber bent over Eddy Bly’s unconscious form. “You didn’t have to hit him so hard,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry, madam,” replied Haenigson, “but we have courts to try people and we don’t like to have them choked first.”
Most of the guests had already left and Turner said to Cellini: “That was good work.”
“Yes,” agreed Haenigson. “It was a neat way to get the killer to reveal himself.”
“What killer are you talking about?” asked Cellini with irritation. “Murph accidentally killed Bly’s sister when he just wanted to clip her slightly, but he certainly didn’t kill Wheaton or Jerry Lake.”
“That’s so,” considered Ira Haenigson. “I guess he wouldn’t kill his own boss.”
“There’s only one possible answer,” said Cellini. “After the girl was run over, Bly quizzed Forsythe Worden on what the driver of the car looked like and he figured out it must have been Murph, acting on orders from Lake and Wheaton. But Bly didn’t let anyone know he had figured it out. He was crazy about his sister, so he got hold of a gun and decided to take care of matters himself. The one that Bly figured was most guilty was Hank Wheaton. He chopped him down quickly in the ring and later in the corridor he found his chance when Juno left him alone to go to the powder room. Maybe Bly suggested that her slip was showing or something like that to get her out of there. What was it, Juno?”
The Blond Bomber sat on the floor stroking Eddy Bly’s hair. In a low voice she said: “He told me my nose was shiny and to go and fix it.”