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.
MacBride sat down.
“This man,” went on Rossman, striking the picture of Dan Rand, “came into my store at about two o’clock yesterday afternoon. I’m sure. I remember the face. And, Captain” — he dropped his voice significantly — “he wanted to buy a gun.”
MacBride’s face remained expressionless, but his eyes steadied on Rossman’s cherubic face.
Rossman nodded. “So I sold him one. A .32 Colt automatic. And a box of 73-grain, metal case cartridges.” He paused. “You see, Captain, I want no trouble with the police. Usually I don’t sell guns to anybody, but this man had a permit to carry one. He loaded the gun here, and then, after he left, I found he didn’t take the rest of the cartridges.”
MacBride’s eyes glowed. “Thanks, Mr. Rossman. I appreciate this a hell of a lot.” He stood up, shook Rossman’s hand vigorously. “This will help. This will help, Mr. Rossman. Any time you feel you’re in a jam, let me know. I don’t forget.”
Leaving the room, he strode briskly through the shop, a hard windy glitter in his eyes and a firm jut to his jaw. Outside, he found the shabby squad car empty. He sent a sharp glance about the street, took a few steps, swore irritably; and then he saw Cohegan stroll casually out of a fruiterer’s, eating a banana.
“Bert!”
Cohegan reached the car with his mouth full of banana.
MacBride jerked his chin, growled: “In, bozo!” And as they drove off: “Always on the muscle! Always on the make! If it’s not fruit you’re mooching, it’s cigars, or socks, or candy for some jane you know, or liquor!”
Cohegan said soberly: “Where was we headed for now?”
There was a note of vengeance in MacBride’s short laugh. “Back to H.Q., you racketeer!”
Moriarity and Cohen were rolling dice on MacBride’s desk when the skipper breezed into his office. His two aides did not look up. The dice clicked, tumbled; coins rang on the desk.
“Hot-cha!” Cohen exclaimed. “After it’s over, Mory, you can borrow from me — at seven percent.”
“What I found,” MacBride said, rocking on his heels, “was that Dan Rand bought a gun. Bought a .32 Colt auto from a guy named Rossman in Diamond Street. Yesterday afternoon. And loaded it and walked out!”
The dice clicked and Cohen said: “You should never roll the bones, Mory; you were born unlucky.”
“Now why did he buy that gun?” MacBride said impressively. “Why did he buy a gun when he had a perfectly good gun of his own? And how come the gun we found on him was the gun I gave him and not — not, you understand — the gun he bought? What happened to the gun he bought? Boy, oh, boy, if I–Lisyou apes!” he suddenly exploded. He caught up the dice and flung them against the wall.
Cohen whistled, picked up the money and dropped it into his pocket. Moriarity lighted a cigarette and said reasonably:
“It must have disappeared.”
“It means this,” MacBride hammered out, shaking a fist. “It means that I’m no fat-head! It means that maybe all the razzberry you and a lot of other guys shoveled at me is going to be dumped right back at you! It means,” he said, thinning his voice, “that when Dan Rand walked out of his house at noon yesterday he didn’t carry a gun. He went and bought one—”
“And with it,” nodded Cohen, “committed suicide.”
MacBride barked: “No!” He walked around the room and came back and barked again: “No!” He folded his arms. “This is murder. I know what to do about murder, wherever I find it. We’ll see what kind of bullet they’ve taken out of Dan Rand and—”
The phone rang and MacBride scooped it up. “Okey,” he said. He hung up. “Come on down. That was Lewis.”
They went down to the basement. Lewis, the ballistics expert, was wiping off a gun.
He said: “There’s the slug they took out of Rand. I matched it with this gun you gave him. It matches. There it is — a lead slug. Came out of a ninety-eight-grain Smith and Wesson cartridge.” He laid the revolver down. “Suicide, I guess.”
MacBride picked up the slug, studied it closely, then rolled it round and round between thumb and forefinger. His eyes flashed, his lips warped. He tossed the slug back to the desk.
“Murder,” he clipped.
“Suicide suits me,” Lewis said.
But MacBride was striding away. Moriarity and Cohen went along, exchanging hopeless glances. MacBride stopped short, swung about, returned to Lewis’ desk and picked up the gun, thrust it into his pocket. He bore down on Moriarity and Cohen with a hard, preoccupied stare.
“Look at it this way, Cap,” Moriarity said. “Maybe this guy Rossman made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t Rand after all.”
“I’ll bet that’s just what happened!” Cohen said decisively.
MacBride went past them with his hard, fixed stare. He picked up Cohegan in the central room and they went outside and climbed into the car. MacBride sat motionless, staring ahead, while Cohegan started the motor and waited. After a while MacBride relaxed, looked about them as though surprised, then said:
“Okey, Bert. Drive to the Metals Building in Simpson Street.” He leaned back, sighed as the car started. “I’m a sap,” he muttered. “I get all steamed up over nothing.”
The Metals Building was a seven-story brick affair, not new. The elevator was large, old, tarnished, and wheezed on the way up to the fifth floor. MacBride got out, slapped his heels down a linoleum covered corridor floor and stopped before a ground-glass door bearing the inscription: Acme Sporting Enterprises, Inc.
“Yes, sir?” chirped a blonde over a noisy typewriter.
“Mr. Cardiac.” He champed the tip off a cigar. “MacBride’s the name.”
The girl flounced into one of two inner offices; reappeared in a moment and said: “Okey.”
MacBride swung into the inner office, scaled his hat on the desk and flopped down into a leather-upholstered armchair; scowled down at his cigar and then licked a piece of the wrapper back into place.
“What do you think about Rand’s suicide, Cardiac?”
Cardiac said: “Shocked. I was shocked. Sorry as hell to hear of it.”
“Yes, you were!” MacBride chuckled sardonically.
Cardiac was a tall, handsome man, blond and rounded about the head. He had broad, neatly tailored shoulders, a jaw shaped like a spade, big white hands.
“Okey, then. I’m not sorry.” He chuckled.
“That sounds better. With Dan Rand out of the way I suppose things will be easier for you, huh?”
“In what way?”
“Oh... I suppose it’ll be easy for you to get control of the Colosseum. Listen, Cardiac.” MacBride leaned forward. “Dan Rand hated you and you hated him. I’ll tell you why he hated you. He didn’t like your business methods. He kept you and your stable of fighters out of the Colosseum because he didn’t believe in robbing the fight public. He had no use for set-ups. He believed the Ricks-Gowanus thing was a set-up.
“Before that, he crossed you on a number of other deals. He lost money doing it but he was willing to lose money to keep the fight game clean. You tried to stage fights in the old Hessler Arena. He stopped that by proving the place was a fire-trap. The only place big enough to make money in was the Colosseum, and he shut you out of there. You got back at him by talking other sport promoters into taking their jobs elsewhere — the smaller jobs, hockey, bicycle racing, wrestling. The Colosseum became an empty barn. He lost money and kept on losing it but no matter what you did you couldn’t make him change his mind. Dan could always take it.”
“Sure.” Cardiac nodded. “Until finally he was flat broke and did the Dutch.”
MacBride’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “It always surprised me, Cardiac, the way all these small frys suddenly slid away from the Colosseum and pulled their stuff elsewhere. All of them!” He held aloft a rigid forefinger for a taut split-minute, then swung it levelly towards Cardiac. “I hope you’ve kept your nose clean, boy.”