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.
Collins came in the back door of his bungalow without making a sound. For a long time, he stood in the darkness of the cluttered kitchen, listening.
When he was sure there was no one but himself in the bungalow, he went on into the front room and closed the curtains and turned on the pink lamp.
Even now, very faintly, he could detect the odor of lilac toilet water that Mrs. Martin had brought with her, like a wistful old-fashioned memory of her own prim person. He sat down in front of the little piano and stayed there, hunched over, grave and motionless, frowning a little.
He had no illusions about his own position. He was involved in a train of events that coiled through the backstreets of Hollywood, touched the studios and the gaudy movie-rich mansions beyond them, and looped back to that ugly, empty little room in the Fortmount Hotel where Tilwitz sat and waited like a spider to see what would fall into his web. Tilwitz could be casual and disarmingly cynical, but he didn’t deceive Collins any. Let something happen — anything to give him a start — and Tilwitz would pounce.
Collins began to play absently, and the tune tinkled through the room with a neat plaintive swing. There was something that prodded deep back in Collins’ mind — something that had to do with secret cynical laughter and Mrs. Della Martin — something...
The telephone rang and jerked him back to reality. He got up and went across to the stand beside the door and lifted the instrument from its cradle.
“Yes?”
“Is this Mr. John Collins?” It was a feminine voice — low and throaty and theatrical — and unmistakably young.
“Yes,” said Collins slowly.
“This is Myra Martin, Mr. Collins.”
“What?” said Collins. “Who?”
“Myra Martin. I want to talk to you — tonight. Can you come to the old Regent Studios at once?”
“Are you—”
“Please come. Now.”
The line hummed emptily, and Collins put the telephone back on its stand. He swept up his hat and started for the back of the house, and then he stopped suddenly and stared at the battered little piano. Now he remembered the tune he had been playing when the telephone rang.
It was “Oh, Susanna.” And now he knew the meaning of the secret little doubt that had pried at his mind, and he knew why Mrs. Della Martin had disappeared and where, and he knew what had happened to Myra Martin and why.
Hollywood had gone away and left the Regent Studios. They were forlorn and alone in a residential area of small houses and small stores north of Santa Monica Boulevard. They dated back before sound — ancient history — and the tall stucco wall that surrounded them was crumbling and streaked with rain mold.
There was one small light, wan and dim, burning over the massive iron gates of the main entrance.
Collins shoved at one of the gates experimentally, and it moved back at once, slick and oiled and quiet.
The sets extended in long rows outward from the hub of the entrance, crumbling and sagging and tattered, holding within themselves the memories of epics long forgotten.
Collins picked one of the streets and walked along it, passing from London to Hong Kong to a Zulu village and back to Deadwood Gulch, Arizona, all in the length of a hundred paces, and then he stopped short and waited while a light flicked once brightly over to his left, flicked again, and then was gone.
Collins moved into the shadow of a tipsy balcony. He moved again, after a moment, slipping between rough-edged boards into the blackness back of the set. He moved without making any noise at all. The grass brushed clammily at his legs, and then he reached another street and drifted quietly across it in the shadow of a medieval tower.
The light flicked once more, very close now, glittering behind the doors of a building that was like an enormous white tombstone. Collins approached very slowly, watching his path for obstructions, and stopped before steps that had probably looked like marble once but were now boards scarcely covered with a rotted remnant of oil cloth.
The big double doors of the building were warped. They hadn’t quite closed. Collins tested one of the board steps, finally rested his weight on it, and tested the next.
He reached the broad, dim stretch of the porch. He could hear the dull mumble of voices. He took two long quick steps and flattened against the wall beside the door.
“...think I’m fooling?” said a voice that was thin and savagely tense.
“You are mad,” answered Derek Van Diesten’s hoarse, slightly accented baritone. “I think you must be insane.”
“Yeah?” The light flicked. “Look over there.”
“Ah!” said Van Diesten in a horrified gasp. “She is... she is—”
“She’s dead,” said the thin voice. “And they’ll prove you killed her, and they’ll hang you. I’ve fixed that. I’ve laid a trail — oh, a very careful one — that’ll bring it home right to your door.”
“You could not— They would not believe—”
“Oh, yes, they will. They’ll find her — where do you think? In your car, and the car will be wrecked. You killed her, and you were fleeing somewhere to hide the body when you skidded and went off the road. You ran away. You won’t be able to prove you didn’t, because I’ll leave you here all night. You’ll have no alibi. And that won’t be all. Oh, no. You see, I’ve prepared them for that find.”
“Those telephone calls,” Van Diesten said numbly. “Those calls to me about her...”
“Yes,” said the thin voice. “Those were from people who think you were living with her.”
“That is not true! I do not even know—”
“But they think you do, and they’ll testify you do. I planted clues that point to you at her boarding house.” The thin voice chuckled in an ugly way. “At a hotel, too. And other places, and with other people. Oh, they’ll find you easy enough, and when they do you’ll be finished.”
Van Diesten’s voice was shaky. “What... what do you want from me?”
“That’s nice,” the thin voice complimented. “I was afraid I was going to have to argue with you. I don’t want anything much — nothing at all from you. I want you to get me a job at a thousand dollars a week at the Mar Grande Studios.”
“I cannot—”
“Yes, you can. You work there, and you’ve got influence. I’ll be a technical expert of some kind or other working in an advisory capacity. It won’t cost you a cent, and you won’t ever hear anything more about murder or Myra Martin.”
There was no sound but Van Diesten’s hoarse breathing, until Collins kicked his heel gently back against the wall. Instantly the light flicked out.
“What?” Van Diesten said in the darkness. “What is—”
“Shut up!” the thin voice snapped. “There’s somebody outside! If you brought someone with you—”
“No, no!” Van Diesten denied. “I didn’t—”
“Stand still! This gun’s against your back, and it’s cocked! If you move — if anybody comes near us—”
After a long time, Van Diesten said in a half-whisper: “There is nobody...”
“Shut up. Don’t move... The door’s open! There’s somebody in this room!”
Collins dived at the sound. His shoulder smashed hard at the beefiness that was Van Diesten, and his fingers clawed and caught a thin wiry body beyond, and then the whole rickety structure swayed and groaned to the crash of their falling bodies.
He still had his grip on the wiry figure. The revolver blazed almost in his face, and the report was like a handclap against his ear drums. And then he got hold of the hand, felt the cramped rigidity of the fingers gripping the revolver butt, and twisted back and down.
The second report was a dull bump, muffled against cloth. The wiry body pulled back with crazed, insensate strength and then went limp and strangely heavy.