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.
Her chin came down an inch. “Yes.”
“Why did he do it?”
“I... I don’t know,” very dully.
“Seen much of him lately?”
Her hands clenched. “Just once or twice.”
“Know where he lives?”
“Yes!” She spat it at me.
“What’s the matter? I thought you liked Marty.”
“I hate him!” she almost yelled.
“Then you’d like him for the spot,” I said.
She was blank to that. I had to explain it. “I mean, are you willing to tell the police it was Marty?”
Sudden panic flamed in her eyes.
“If I kill the nude photo angle,” I said soothingly.
She giggled.
That gave me a nasty feeling. If she had screeched, or turned white, or even keeled over, that would have been fairly natural. But she just giggled.
I began to hate the sight of her. Just looking at her made me feel dopey.
Her giggles went on, ran around the room like rats. They gradually got hysterical. I got off the desk, took a step towards her, and slapped her face.
“Just like last night,” I said.
The giggling stopped at once and the thumb-chewing started again. She still didn’t mind my slaps apparently. I sat on the end of the desk once more.
“You came here to look for the camera plate — for the birthday suit photo,” I told her.
Her chin went up and down again.
“Too late. I looked for it last night. It was gone then. Probably Marty has it. You’re not kidding me about Marty?”
She shook her head vigorously. She got out of the chair slowly. Her eyes were narrow and sloe-black and as shallow as an oyster shell.
“I’m going now,” she said, as if we had been having a cup of tea.
She went over to the door and was reaching out to open it when a car came up the hill and stopped outside the house. Somebody got out of the car.
She turned and stared at me, horrified.
The door opened casually and a man looked in at us.
IX
He was a hatchet-faced man in a brown suit and a black felt hat. The cuff of his left sleeve was folded under and pinned to the side of his coat with a big black safety-pin.
He took his hat off, closed the door by pushing it with his shoulder, looked at Carmen with a nice smile. He had close-cropped black hair and a bony skull. He fitted his clothes well. He didn’t look tough.
“I’m Guy Slade,” he said. “Excuse the casual entrance. The bell didn’t work. Is Steiner around?”
He hadn’t tried the bell. Carmen looked at him blankly, then at me, then back at Slade. She licked her lips but didn’t say anything.
I said: “Steiner isn’t here, Mister Slade. We don’t know just where he is.”
He nodded and touched his long chin with the brim of his hat.
“You friends of his?”
“We just dropped by for a book,” I said, and gave him back his smile. “The door was half open. We knocked, then stepped inside. Just like you.”
“I see,” Slade said thoughtfully. “Very simple.”
I didn’t say anything. Carmen didn’t say anything. She was staring fixedly at his empty sleeve.
“A book, eh?” Slade went on. The way he said it told me things. He knew about Steiner’s racket, maybe.
I moved over towards the door. “Only you didn’t knock,” I said.
He smiled with faint embarrassment. “That’s right. I ought to have knocked. Sorry.”
“We’ll trot along now,” I said carelessly. I took hold of Carmen’s arm.
“Any message — if Steiner comes back?” Slade asked softly.
“We won’t bother you.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, with too much meaning.
I let go of Carmen’s arm and took a slow step away from her. Slade still had his hat in his hand. He didn’t move. His deep-set eyes twinkled pleasantly.
I opened the door again.
Slade said: “The girl can go. But I’d like to talk to you a little.”
I stared at him, trying to look very blank.
“Kidder, eh?” Slade said nicely.
Carmen made a sudden sound at my side and ran out through the door. In a moment I heard her steps going down the hill. I hadn’t seen her car, but I guessed it was around somewhere.
I began to say: “What the hell—”
“Save it,” Slade interrupted coldly. “There’s something wrong here. I’ll just find out what it is.”
He began to walk around the room carelessly — too carelessly. He was frowning, not paying much attention to me. That made me thoughtful. I took a quick glance out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything but the top of his car above the hedge.
Slade found the potbellied flagon and the two thin purple glasses on the desk. He sniffed at one of them. A disgusted smile wrinkled his thin lips.
“The lousy pimp,” he said tonelessly.
He looked at the books on the desk, touched one or two of them, went on around the back of the desk and was in front of the totem pole thing. He stared at that. Then his eyes went down to the floor, to the thin rug that was over the place where Steiner’s body had been. Slade moved the rug with his foot and suddenly tensed, staring down.
It was a good act — or else Slade had a nose I could have used in my business. I wasn’t sure which — yet, but I was giving it a lot of thought.
He went slowly down to the floor on one knee. The desk partly hid him from me.
I slipped a gun out from under my arm and put both hands behind my body and leaned against the wall.
There was a sharp, swift exclamation, then Slade shot to his feet. His arm flashed up. A long, black Luger slid into it expertly. I didn’t move. Slade held the Luger in long, pale fingers, not pointing it at me, not pointing it at anything in particular.
“Blood,” he said quietly, grimly, his deep-set eyes black and hard now. “Blood on the floor there, under a rug. A lot of blood.”
I grinned at him. “I noticed it,” I said. “It’s old blood. Dried blood.”
He slid sideways into the black chair behind Steiner’s desk and raked the telephone towards him by putting the Luger around it. He frowned at the telephone, then frowned at me.
“I think we’ll have some law,” he said.
“Suits me.”
Slade’s eyes were narrow and as hard as jet. He didn’t like my agreeing with him. The veneer had flaked off him, leaving a well-dressed hard boy with a Luger. Looking as if he could use it.
“Just who the hell are you?” he growled.
“A shamus. The name doesn’t matter. The girl is my client. Steiner’s been riding her with some blackmail dirt. We came to talk to him. He wasn’t here.”
“Just walk in, huh?”
“Correct. So what? Think we gunned Steiner, Mister Slade?”
He smiled slightly, thinly, but said nothing.
“Or do you think Steiner gunned somebody and ran away?” I suggested.
“Steiner didn’t gun anybody,” Slade said. “Steiner didn’t have the guts of a sick cat.”
I said: “You don’t see anybody here, do you? Maybe Steiner had chicken for dinner, and liked to kill his chickens in the parlor.”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get your game.”
I grinned again. “Go ahead and call your friends downtown. Only you won’t like the reaction you’ll get.”
He thought that over without moving a muscle. His lips went back against his teeth.
“Why not?” he asked finally, in a careful voice.
I said: “I know you, Mister Slade. You run the Aladdin Club down on the Palisades. Flash gambling. Soft lights and evening clothes and a buffet supper on the side. You know Steiner well enough to walk into his house without knocking. Steiner’s racket needed a little protection now and then. You could be that.”