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.
“She was carrying her trunk on her shoulder at the time, I suppose?”
“No, she wasn’t. She didn’t have no trunk. Just a couple of big suitcases and an overnight bag.”
“Did she have those on her shoulder?”
“No. I guess the fella carried ’em for her.”
“Ah, yes,” said Collins. “The fella. What was his name again?”
“I dunno. And I dunno what he looks like, neither! I never saw him! I don’t know nothin’ about him!”
Collins reached out and took hold of the spiked ends of Alfred Peters’ mustache. “Find out something. And make it fast.”
“You leggo— Ow! I don’t want no trouble! I got a business here! I got to live—”
Collins’ face was close to his. “Got to live? No, friend. Not necessarily.”
“Aaah!” said Alfred Peters in a horrified gasp. “You wouldn’t— Ow! Ow-ow! All right, all right! Leggo! I’ll tell you—”
Collins stepped back. “Go ahead.”
Alfred Peters tugged at his mustache tenderly. “You ain’t got any right at all... All right! I’m gonna tell you! It was just like I said. Now, wait! Only I heard a couple things when she was talkin’ on the telephone. I wouldn’t listen when any of my guests is talkin’, but the telephone is right there by the desk—”
“Sure,” said Collins.
“Well, it is. And she was always talkin’, to this fella over it. She never spoke his name. She was always awful careful about that. At least, when I was around. But she sure put out a lot of love talk. She acted like she was dippy about this bird, what I mean. And it was all of a sudden, too. She never made no calls or got any before, and then she was on the phone all the time.”
“Did the guy come around to see her?”
“I think so, but I never saw him. Honest! She’d get all dressed up, and then she’d wait here in the hall until just two minutes to seven. Then she’d go out and walk over toward Sunset.”
“And then?”
Alfred Peters shrugged his skinny shoulders. “I dunno.”
“Yes, you do. You followed her.”
“Well, once,” Alfred Peters admitted. “I was lookin’ out for her own best interests. And what did I get for it? I got a slap in the face, that’s what! She waited for me in a dark place down the street and stepped right out and slapped me in the face and told me to mind my own damned business.”
“So you didn’t. What did you try next?”
“Well, I got a pencil and a little pad there below the telephone for the convenience of my guests, and one time when she was talking she wrote a number down and tore off the page she wrote it on.”
“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”
“No,” said Alfred Peters. “I took off the next page and blew some lead pencil scrapings across it, and then I could see the number she wrote.”
“Which was?”
“Blakely 7-6222.”
“Right on the tip of your tongue, eh?” Collins remarked. “Whose is it?”
Alfred Peters sighed mournfully. “I called it, and a fella answered and said: ‘This is Derek Van Diesten’s house.’ ”
“Who is he?”
Alfred Peters stared with his mouth open. “Don’t you know? He’s the big hot-shot Dutch director from Rotterdam. Hitler chased him out, and he come over here a year ago. He’s one of the biggest guns in Hollywood. I sure figured on keepin’ that under my hat. I figured on callin’ him up someday and tellin’ him who I was and all the experience in pictures I’ve had. Then I figured I’d say, just sort of casual, ‘How’s Myra?’ ”
“And then what?” Collins asked persistently.
Alfred Peters looked pained at such stupidity. “Why, he’d give me a job, of course. Lots of ’em.”
“Why would he?”
“Well, he wouldn’t want no scandal. Of course, I wouldn’t tell anybody, but he wouldn’t want to take no chances that I’d blab what happened.”
“What did?”
“Huh!” said Alfred Peters. “It’s easy for a smart guy to figure out, all right!” He looked around and then lowered his voice. “Why, Myra went away to live with him, that’s what! She’s livin’ with him right now someplace under some other name! Sure! I know I’m right! You can’t fool me!”
“You know,” Collins said slowly, “I don’t believe I’d call him up and say anything to him, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
Collins took a long sudden step closer to him. “Because he might send somebody like me around to shut your big blabber mouth — permanently.”
“Aaah!” Alfred Peters moaned, and his face was a queer greenish color. He made little noises in his throat, and his eyes bulged wider and wider, and then words mumbled out of his stiff lips. “Wait, wait, wait! I never — I didn’t — I was jokin’! I wouldn’t — I don’t know nothin’! Honest, honest! I was just — Aaah!”
The telephone rang, and he jumped as though he had been stabbed through the heart.
“Answer it,” Collins ordered. “If they want someone else, tell them the party isn’t here. If they want you, tell them you’re sick. You probably will be, pretty quick.”
Alfred Peters fumbled the receiver off the hook with a shaking hand. “Huh-hello?... Wh-what did you say?... A big, wide, ugly fella that plays the piano? I dunno who—”
Collins slapped him to one side and jerked the receiver out of his hand.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
“Hello.” The voice was low and muffled and hard to understand. “Hello, John Collins. I’m a friend of yours. I just wanted to give you a word of warning. Don’t look any further for Myra Martin.”
“Why not?” Collins said.
“Because if you do, you might find her. I don’t think you’d like it where she is. It’s cold and rather damp and very dark. You’d better stick to piano playing. Good-bye, John Collins.”
There was a soft click, and then the line hummed emptily. Collins slammed the receiver back on its hook, spun around and grabbed Alfred Peters by the front of his soiled shirt.
“Where’s the nearest public telephone? Where is it? Quick!”
“Wh-why, over a block west on Sunset there’s a little d-drugstore—”
Collins let go of him and ran out of the hall and across the front porch and vaulted over the rickety railing.
The drugstore was narrow and dingy and cluttered, heavy with the suggestive smell of patent medicines. The clerk was a little bald man in a blue smock, and he was hunched down with his chin resting on his hands, staring wearily at the smeared black headlines of the newspaper that was spread out on the prescription counter.
“What?” he said, looking up in a timidly surprised way. “Oh. Good evening, sir. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Collins indicated the telephone booth against the wall. “Did somebody just use that?”
“The telephone? Yes, sir. A man just put in a call.”
“What did he look like?”
“Look like?” the clerk repeated vaguely. “Just — just sort of like anybody else, I think. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“How tall was he?”
“I don’t know — about medium.”
“Was he cross-eyed and did he have a green beard?” Collins asked patiently.
“Green beard? Oh, no. He didn’t have any beard. He might have been cross-eyed, though. He was wearing dark glasses.”
There was a sudden whip-like crack outside. In the same split-second a fat brown bottle on the shelf in back of the clerk burst like a bomb and threw shredded glass splinters in a glistening spray.
Collins dropped instantly into a crouch, below the level of the counter. In the street a motor blasted and then wound itself up into a high fading scream in second gear. The sound died away, and Collins straightened up slowly in time to see the clerk coming up in reluctant jerks on the other side of the counter. The clerk’s face was as white as paper.