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.
It looked like murder again. I liked that better. He wasn’t the suicide type.
“See any gun?” I asked her.
“No.” Her face was as blank as a pie pan.
“Where’s the Baring girl? What are you supposed to be doing here?”
She bit the end of her left little finger. “I’d better confess,” she said. “I came here to kill them both.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Nobody was here. Of course, after I phoned him and he told me you were not a real cop and there was no murder and you were a blackmailer and just trying to scare me out of the address—” She stopped and sobbed once, hardly more than a sniff, and moved her line of sight to a corner of the ceiling.
Her words had a tumbled arrangement, but she spoke them like a drugstore Indian.
“I came here to kill both of them,” she said. “I don’t deny that.”
“With an empty gun?”
“It wasn’t empty two days ago. I looked. Dave must have emptied it. He must have been afraid.”
“That listens,” I said. “Go on.”
“So I came here. That was the last insult — his sending you to me to get her address. That was more than I would—”
“The story,” I said. “I know how you felt. I’ve read it in the love mags myself.”
“Yes. Well, he said there was something about Miss Baring he had to see her about on account of the studio and it was nothing personal, never had been, never would be—”
“My Gawd,” I said, “I know that too. I know what he’d feed you. We’ve got a dead man lying around here. We’ve got to do something, even if he was just your husband.”
“You—,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s better than the dopey talk. Go on.”
“The door wasn’t shut. I came in. That’s all. Now, I’m going. And you’re not going to stop me. You know where I live, you—.” She called me the same name again.
“We’ll talk to some law first,” I said. I went over and shut the door and turned the key on the inside of it and took it out. Then I went over to the French doors. The woman gave me looks, but I couldn’t hear what her lips were calling me now.
French doors on the far side of the bed opened on the same balcony as the living room. The telephone was in a niche in the wall there, by the bed, where you could yawn and reach out for it in the morning and order a tray of diamond necklaces sent up to try on.
I sat down on the side of the bed and reached for the phone, and a muffled voice came to me through the glass and said: “Hold it, pal! Just hold it!”
Even muffled by the glass it was a deep, soft voice. I had heard it before. It was Skalla’s voice.
I was in line with the lamp. The lamp was right behind me. I dived off the bed on to the floor, clawing at my hip.
A shot roared and glass sprinkled the back of my neck. I couldn’t figure it. Skalla wasn’t on the balcony. I had looked.
I rolled over and started to snake away along the floor away from the French doors, my only chance with the lamp where it was.
Mrs. Marineau did just the right thing — for the other side. She jerked a slipper off and started slamming me with the heel of it. I grabbed for her ankles and we wrestled around and she cut the top of my head to pieces.
I threw her over. It didn’t last long. When I started to get up Skalla was in the room, laughing at me. The .45 still had a home in his fist. The French door and the locked screen outside looked as though a rogue elephant had passed that way.
“Okay,” I said. “I give up.”
“Who’s the twist? She sure likes you, pal.”
I got up on my feet. The woman was over in a corner somewhere. I didn’t even look at her.
“Turn around, pal, while I give you the fan.”
I hadn’t worked my gun loose yet. He got that. I didn’t say anything about the door key, but he took it. So he must have been watching from somewhere. He left me my car keys. He looked at the little empty gun and dropped it back in my pocket.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked.
“Easy. Clumb up the balcony and held on, looking through the grille at you. Cinch to an old circus man. How you been, pal?”
Blood from the top of my head was leaking down my face. I got a handkerchief out and mopped at it. I didn’t answer him.
“Jeeze, you sure was funny on the bed grabbin’ for the phone with the stiff at your back.”
“I was a scream,” I growled. “Take it easy. He’s her husband.”
He looked at her. “She’s his woman?”
I nodded and wished I hadn’t.
“That’s tough. If I’d a known — but I couldn’t help meself. The guy asked for it.”
“You—” I started to say, staring at him. I heard a queer, strained whine behind me, from the woman.
“Who else, pal? Who else? Let’s all go back in that livin’ room. Seems to me they was a bottle of nice-looking hooch there. And you need some stuff on that head.”
“You’re crazy to stick around here,” I growled. “There’s a general pickup out for you. The only way out of this canyon is back down Beachwood or over the hills — on foot.”
Skalla looked at me and said very quietly, “Nobody’s phoned no law from here, pal.”
Skalla watched me while I washed and put some tape on my head in the bathroom. Then we went back to the living room. Mrs. Marineau, curled up on one of the davenports, looked blankly at the unlit fire. She didn’t say anything.
She hadn’t run away because Skalla had her in sight all the time. She acted resigned, indifferent, as if she didn’t care what happened now.
I poured three drinks from the Vat 69 bottle, handed one to the brunette. She held her hand out for the glass, half smiled at me, crumpled off the davenport to the floor with the smile still on her face.
I put the glass down, lifted her and put her back on the davenport with her head low. Skalla stared at her. She was out cold, as white as paper.
Skalla took his drink, sat down on the other davenport and put the .45 beside him. He drank his drink looking at the woman, with a queer expression on his big pale face.
“Tough,” he said. “Tough. But the louse was cheatin’ on her anyways. The hell with him.” He reached for another drink, swallowed it, sat down near her on the other davenport right-angled to the one she lay on.
“So you’re a dick,” he said.
“How’d you guess?”
“Lu Shamey told me about a guy goin’ there. He sounded like you. I been around and looked in your heap outside. I walk silent.”
“Well — what now?” I asked.
He looked more enormous than ever in the room in his sports clothes. The clothes of a smart-aleck kid. I wondered how long it had taken him to get them together. They couldn’t have been ready-made. He was much too big for that.
His feet were spread wide on the apricot rug, he looked down sadly at the white kid explosions on the suede. They were the worst-looking shoes I ever saw.
“What you doin’ here?” he asked gruffly.
“Looking for Beulah. I thought she might need a little help. I had a bet with a city cop I’d find her before he found you. But I haven’t found her yet.”
“You ain’t seen her, huh?”
I shook my head, slowly, very carefully.
He said softly, “Me neither, pal. I been around for hours. She ain’t been home. Only the guy in the bedroom come here. How about the dinge manager up at Shamey’s?”
“That’s what the tag’s for.”
“Yeah. A guy like that. They would. Well, I gotta blow. I’d like to take the stiff, account of Beulah. Can’t leave him around to scare her. But I guess it ain’t any use now. The dinge kill queers that.”
He looked at the woman at his elbow on the other little davenport. Her face was still greenish white, her eyes shut. There was a movement of her breast.