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.
McMain took a deep, sighing breath. “I know, Chuck. Where does Billie fit into the picture?”
VI
The wind now was steady and high, moaning dismally around the building. Rain pounded on the roof in a relentless deluge. Tommy’s little room was like a steam bath and sweat dripped from McMain’s face as he gathered up the gems and pieces of glass. He rolled them tightly in the newspaper and went out, with Dean, to the wardroom. There they met Doc Lucas coming back from the sick bay.
“Would he talk?” McMain asked quickly.
“Yes, he talked. What have you there, Larry?”
“A small fortune in unset gems.”
Doc Lucas showed no surprise. “Cabrillo will be glad to hear you recovered them.”
“Cabrillo? Who the devil’s Cabrillo?”
“Clark’s chauffeur. United States Department of Justice operative.”
McMain blinked. “Department of Justice! Are you sure you don’t mean—”
“I mean Department of Justice. There is more to this than a mere smuggling job. It seems that Benson Clark is the head of a gang of jewel thieves who have been working the coast-to-coast cruise ships operating through the canal. It was their custom to steal the jewels on the night before the ship reached Panama. On that night there is usually a masquerade or some other damned foolishness and the dowagers drag their jimcracks out of the purser’s safe for the occasion.”
“But how did the thieves get the jewels into Panama?” McMain asked.
“They were slipped to one of the crowd of bumboat men that surrounds every ship as soon as she drops anchor in the harbor. Then they were smuggled ashore. With the jewels once in Clark’s hands, the stones were removed from their settings and concealed in bottles of perfume. The perfume was sent to a New York fence through old Pete Adams and the kindly co-operation of various naval officers going back to the States.
“Cabrillo tells me his department has broken up the gang that worked the ships and can pick up the New York fence whenever it pleases. Clark, he says, knew the jig was up, though he didn’t know the fence was being shadowed. He was risking everything to get that one last shipment through.”
“Yeah,” Chuck Dean said, “but that doesn’t explain—”
“Let’s skip that, Chuck, for a while,” McMain broke in. “Doc, how come this Cabrillo got himself shot?”
“Cabrillo realizes now that Clark has been onto him for some time. Tonight, after Cabrillo had driven through the gates with a gun at his back, Clark waited until they had gone a mile or so and then ordered him to stop. As he pulled up at the side of the road, Clark let him have it. By the grace of God, Cabrillo’s head was turned sidewise and, with the odds a million to one against him, he came through alive.”
“But why the devil,” McMain queried, “didn’t Cabrillo yell for help when he had Clark bottled up here on the base? There were three or four sentries within call while he waited outside the wardroom.”
“Cabrillo was under orders to get his man with the gems in his possession. Clark evidently realized the situation, because as soon as Billie came out with the black bottle, he shoved a gun against Cabrillo’s back. And from then on Cabrillo took orders.”
Chuck Dean mused: “And that black bottle, after all, wasn’t the one Clark wanted. Which, of course, is a lot of help to me in gettin’ my sistah out of this mess, Doc! What does this Secret Service fella say about Billie?”
“He didn’t say anything about Billie,” Doc replied. “Incidentally, Cabrillo had me phone his chief, man by the name of Bridges, over in Balboa. The wheels of justice — of the Department of Justice, anyway — are already turning.”
As a matter of fact, the Secret Service man was already on his way over, although McMain and Dean did not know this and spent half the night in impotent fretting.
At one o’clock that morning a plane roared in from Balboa. Ten minutes later the two officers were in the commandant’s office, where they were tersely introduced to Thomas Bridges, chief operative in the Canal Zone for the Department of Justice. The Federal man was about forty, a slight, pink-cheeked little person with graying hair and hard, direct, ice-blue eyes.
The commandant said briefly: “I have gone over the situation with Bridges, McMain, and I want to compliment you on the excellent work you have done so far. From now on, however, you and Dean will take orders from him. The Whipple has steam up and you will go aboard her immediately. She will head east, towards the San Blas coast.”
“We are almost certain,” Bridges explained in his precise, mild voice, “that Clark has headed for the San Blas Islands. He knows that country and it offers his best chance for a getaway, either into Colombia or overland through Darien.”
“Darien!” Chuck Dean exclaimed. “Surely that damnable cowa’d wouldn’t drag a woman into Darien.”
Bridges smiled gently. “That damnable coward, as you call him, is a bold and resourceful young man whose life is at stake.” His smile faded as he added: “And I don’t imagine the young woman will have to be dragged.”
Chuck’s fists clenched and his face went white as he glared at the little Federal operative. “You’re not inferrin’, are you, suh, that my sistah is a member of this ring of thieves?”
“I have found no evidence pointing to that conclusion,” Bridges said, “until tonight.”
Chuck’s jaw set. “And I assure you, suh, that her actions tonight will be honorably explained in due time.”
“I sincerely hope so, Lieutenant Dean.” The Federal man’s blue eyes were coolly skeptical.
The commandant said quickly: “By daylight the Whipple should be off Parvenir, the most westerly of the islands. I doubt if Clark’s yawl, in this storm, can make half that run. You’ll probably intercept him before he gets into the islands. Weather permitting, I shall send out all available planes in the morning. They will have no difficulty in picking up the yawl and they will keep in touch with you and direct you by radio. The rest will be up to you. That will be all.”
“Very good, sir.”
McMain saluted and walked out of the office in silence. He was vaguely aware that Bridges and Chuck Dean had fallen in beside him, but he did not speak.
What if the Thelma reached Parvenir and dodged into the islands before daylight? It was a run of only seventy miles and Clark, getting away about eleven, had seven hours of darkness. The Thelma should be fast with the wind on her beam and Clark would drive her.
He thought of the San Blas Archipelago, that amazing chain of more than four thousand islands and keys stretching along a hundred and fifty miles of coast, all the way from Parvenir to the Gulf of Darien. The Whipple drew too much water to navigate even the deepest of the narrow channels which wound through the group.
And behind that long necklace of green islands, protected by myriad uncharted coral reefs — was Darien!
Not a huge area, Darien. Perhaps fifty miles wide and three times as long. And yet, for its size, one of the wildest, most unexplored, most dangerous sections of the world. A land of high mountain and bottomless swamp, of heat and venomous insects and fever. Not many white men had gone into Darien and come out alive.
McMain thought of these things, and he thought of a girl in a pale green silk dress and high-heeled sandals, plodding through the swamps behind handsome Benson Clark.
VII
It was still dark at six o’clock the following morning when McMain climbed the ladder to the bridge of the Whipple. The destroyer, barely making steerage way, was rolling heavily to a beam sea. A fresh breeze from the northeast sang through the rigging and a steady deluge of rain thrummed the steel decks.