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.
“What place?”
“It ain’t nine-thirty. Hey, don’t go to sleep in that there corner.”
“Drive it yourself, if you don’t like my work.”
He pushed the gun at me hard. It hurt. I kicked the coupé out from under him and set him back in his corner, but he kept his gun in a good grip. Somebody called out archly on somebody’s front lawn.
Then I saw a red light winking ahead, and a sedan just passing it, and through the rear window of the sedan two flat caps side by side.
“You’ll get awfully tired of holding that gun,” I told McCord. “You don’t dare use it anyway. You’re copper-soft. There’s nothing so soft as a copper who’s had his badge torn off. Just a big heel. Copper-soft.”
We weren’t near to the sedan, but I wanted his attention. I got it. He slammed me over the head and grabbed the wheel and yanked the brake on. We ground to a stop. I shook my head woozily. By the time I came out of it he was away from me again, in his corner.
“Next time,” he said thinly, for all his huskiness, “I put you to sleep in the rumble. Just try it, bo. Just try it, Now roll — and keep the wisecracks down in your belly.”
I drove ahead, between the hedge that bordered the bridle path and the wide parkway beyond the curbing. The cops in the sedan tooled on gently, drowsing, listening with half an ear to their radio, talking of this and that. I could almost hear them in my mind, the sort of thing they would be saying.
“Besides,” McCord growled. “I don’t need no gun to handle you. I never see the guy I couldn’t handle without no gun.”
“I saw one this morning,” I said. I started to tell him about Steve Skalla.
Another red stoplight showed. The sedan ahead seemed loath to leave it. McCord lit a cigarette with his left hand, bending his head a little.
I kept telling him about Skalla and the bouncer at Shamey’s.
Then I tramped on the throttle.
The little car shot ahead without a quiver. McCord started to swing his gun at me. I yanked the wheel hard to the right and yelled: “Hold tight! It’s a crash!”
We hit the prowl car almost on the left rear fender. It waltzed around on one wheel, apparently, and loud language came out of it. It slewed, rubber screamed, metal made a grinding sound, the left taillight splintered and probably the gas tank bulged.
The little coupé sat back on its heels and quivered like a scared rabbit.
McCord could have cut me in half. His gun muzzle was inches from my ribs. But he wasn’t a hard guy, really. He was just a broken cop who had done time and got himself a cheap job after it and was on an assignment he didn’t understand.
He tore the right-hand door open, and jumped out of the car.
One of the cops was out by this time, on my side. I ducked down under the wheel. A flash beam burned across the top of my hat.
It didn’t work. Steps came near and the flash jumped into my face.
“Come on out of that,” a voice snarled. “What the hell you think this is — a racetrack?”
I got out sheepishly. McCord was crouched somewhere behind the coupé, out of sight.
“Lemme smell of your breath.”
I let him smell my breath.
“Whisky,” he said. “I thought so. Walk, baby. Walk.” He prodded me with the flashlight.
I walked.
The other cop was trying to jerk his sedan loose from the coupé. He was swearing, but he was busy with his own troubles.
“You don’t walk like no drunk,” the cop said. “What’s the matter? No brakes?” The other cop had got the bumpers free and was climbing back under his wheel.
I took my hat off and bent my head. “Just an argument,” I said. “I got hit. It made me woozy for a minute.”
McCord made a mistake. He started running when he heard that. He vaulted across the parkway, jumped the wall and crouched. His footsteps thudded on turf.
That was my cue. “Holdup!” I snapped at the cop who was questioning me. “I was afraid to tell you!”
“Jeeze, the howling—!” he yelled, and tore a gun out of his holster. “Why’n’t you say so?” He jumped for the wall. “Circle the heap! We want that guy!” he yelled at the man in the sedan.
He was over the wall. Grunts. More feet pounding on the turf. A car stopped half a block away and a man started to get out of it but kept his foot on the running board. I could barely see him behind his dimmed headlights.
The cop in the prowl car charged at the hedge that bordered the bridle path, backed furiously, swung around and was off with screaming siren.
I jumped into McCord’s coupé, and jerked the starter.
Distantly there was a shot, then two shots, then a yell. The siren died at a corner and picked up again.
I gave the coupé all it had and left the neighborhood. Far off, to the north, a lonely sound against the hills, a siren kept on wailing.
I ditched the coupé half a block from Wilshire and took a taxi in front of the Beverly Wilshire. I knew I could be traced. That wasn’t important. The important thing was how soon.
From a cocktail bar in Hollywood I called Hiney. He was still on the job and still sour.
“Anything new on Skalla?”
“Listen,” he said nastily, “was you over to talk to that Shamey woman? Where are you?”
“Certainly I was,” I said. “I’m in Chicago.”
“You better come on home. Why was you there?”
“I thought she might know Beulah, of course. She did. Want to raise that bet a little?”
“Can the comedy. She’s dead.”
“Skalla—” I started to say.
“That’s the funny side,” he grunted. “He was there. Some nosy old — next door seen him. Only there ain’t a mark on her. She died natural. I kind of got tied up here, so I didn’t get over to see her.”
“I know how busy you are,” I said in what seemed to me a dead voice.
“Yeah. Well, hell, the doc don’t even know what she died of. Not yet.”
“Fear,” I said. “She’s the one that turned Skalla up eight years ago. Whisky may have helped a little.”
“Is that so?” Hiney said. “Well, well. We got him now anyways. We make him at Girard, headed north in a rent hack. We got the county and state law in on it. If he drops over to the Ridge, we nab him at Castaic. She was the one turned him up, huh? I guess you better come in, Carmady.”
“Not me,” I said. “Beverly Hills wants me for a hit-and-run. I’m a criminal myself now.”
I had a quick snack and some coffee before I took a taxi to Las Flores and Santa Monica and walked up to where I had left my roadster parked.
Nothing was happening around there except that some kid in the back of a car was strumming a ukelele.
I pointed my roadster towards Heather Street.
Heather Street was a gash in the side of a steep flat slope, at the top of Beachwood Drive. It curved around the shoulder enough so that even by daylight you couldn’t have seen much more than half a block of it at one time while you were on it.
The house I wanted was built downward, one of those clinging-vine effects, with a front door below the street level, a patio on the roof, a bedroom or two possibly in the basement, and a garage as easy to drive into as an olive bottle.
The garage was empty, but a big shiny sedan had its two right wheels off the road, on the shoulder of the bank. There were lights in the house.
I drove around the curb, parked, walked back along the smooth, hardly used cement and poked a fountain pen flash into the sedan. It was registered to one David Marineau, 1737 North Flores Avenue, Hollywood, California. That made me go back to my heap and get a gun out of a locked pocket.
I repassed the sedan, stepped down three rough stone steps and looked at the bell beside a narrow door topped by a lancet arch.