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.
When she had dressed, he flung the door to the bathroom wide. I glared at him and tried to flash some sort of encouragement to Polly. I’m afraid that, bound up as I was, I couldn’t have helped much.
Louis Russo grinned unpleasantly. “We’ll have to leave this one. If we took him in the car, it might attract too much attention. We’ll send some one to take care of him soon.” He turned to the girl. “You walk ahead of me. And don’t forget the gun in my pocket!”
When they had gone, I continued my struggle against my bonds. The only result was to make them bite more deeply and painfully into my flesh. Nevertheless, realizing that Russo’s men might arrive at any moment, I didn’t relax my efforts.
My eye lingered on the glass shelf over the wash bowl. One end had been splintered and looked as if it might provide a cutting edge.
Sweating, I edged across the floor, nudged a stool along with me. After half a dozen tries I got onto the stool and worked my wrists up to the jagged edge of the shelf.
My wrists were lacerated and bloody before my hands were free. It was a matter of seconds then to release my ankles.
My muscles still felt cramped and my head was dizzy when I reached the street. A long black sedan was edging in to the curb. Certain that the car was driven by Russo’s men, I kept my head down and hurried my steps to the drugstore on the corner.
I stumbled into a phone booth and dialed police headquarters. My pal, Inspector Daly, wouldn’t be in for a couple of hours. I cursed. But, knowing pretty well what my answer would be, I talked to his relief, Lieutenant Finger. He said, “What? You want us to raid the Little Albania! And the only reason you can give us is your word that a girl is being held prisoner!
“Listen, newshound! Louis Russo’s too smart to be playing with that kind of stuff. Before we tangle with him, we’re going to need a little more to go on. Besides, the police department wasn’t established to build up the circulation of your lousy paper. Better lay off the pipe, and tell your boss the same thing!” He hung up.
It had been about what I’d expected, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Whatever I did, I’d have to do alone — and in a hurry.
I flagged a taxi and gave an address a block away from the Little Albania. The alley that led to the back entrance was deserted. I edged down it and found that the door was locked. There was an open window on the third floor.
The alley was only a few feet wide and the open window gave me an idea. Across from Russo’s place was an abandoned warehouse, most of its windows shattered.
I slid into the warehouse and picked my way up stairs jammed with refuse. On the third floor I found a long plank lying among dust-covered heaps of rusty, outmoded machinery. I dragged the plank to the window and eased it across the alley. It reached the sill on the other side with a foot to spare.
Cautiously, giddy with fear, I worked my weight out on the sagging plank. I had reached the other side when the thing canted sideways. I caught at the open sash as the far end of the plank slipped clear, slapped at me, and crashed thirty feet down to the cobbled court. Weak as water, I half fell over the window sill.
The room I was in was evidently a storeroom. Cases of all sizes, crates, and boxes crowded all but an aisle to a door. I opened it noiselessly and looked into a private banquet room. A thug-like porter was mopping the floor.
I kept back behind the door until he had worked around to where I waited. Then I leaped. Both my hands got him around the throat. He was gasping for breath when I released him a second and swung my Sunday punch to the point of his jaw. He went limp.
I devoted precious minutes to knotting a twisted table-cloth about his wrists and ankles, and gagging him with a napkin. By the time I’d dragged him under a table, I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to bother me for a while.
There was the sound of voices from a door that I took to be Russo’s office. I tried the knob silently and found the door locked. Now I could make out the words. It was Russo speaking. “You can yell your head off, sweetheart. Nobody will hear you. Up here we are very safe.”
I tiptoed toward the front of the place, entered a cloakroom, and followed it through to a door on the other side. I came out on the landing of a stair-case. And, as luck would have it, there was another entrance to Russo’s office! Prayerfully I tried the knob. Thank God, Russo hadn’t thought it necessary to lock this door!
I had it open a fraction of an inch when I froze. Voices came from the banquet room. Hands rattled the door I had found bolted. “You there, boss? We went to the dame’s apartment, and the guy wasn’t there.”
“He wasn’t there?” It was Russo’s unbelieving bellow. “I will be with you in ten minutes. You mugs wait downstairs until I call you.”
Feet shuffled away.
And I made my move. I opened the door wide.
Louis Russo was bending Polly back over a table. The dress she had changed to was now more tattered than the one in which I had first seen her. The gangster ran his tongue over thick lips—
He hadn’t even looked around when I started my charge. But the man was quick. Before I was half way across the floor, he’d whirled and snatched for his shoulder holster. The flame of the gun seared my shoulder as I tackled him. My hand clamped down on his wrist.
For a little while it was touch and go. I threw my weight into bending his arm back in an attempt to get the gun. Russo was plenty husky. The gun exploded again and its lead ploughed a furrow in my ankle.
I redoubled my pressure and heard the crack of a bone. The gun dropped. Russo writhed like an eel. His teeth closed in one of my wrists as he lunged for the gun with his good arm. I kicked it out of his reach, wrenched free, and leaped for it myself.
Coming up with the gun, I found that Russo had been as quick as I. He held Polly in front of him as a shield. “Shoot if you dare!” he gritted. Then, “Tony! Joe! Smash the door down! Come in!”
The door shook as powerful bodies lunged against it. I fired twice as the lock gave way, then snapped the trigger and heard the hammer click on an empty cylinder.
Two guns bored into my kidneys. I was backed against the wall and held in impotence. Once again my hands and wrists were tied expertly.
Russo grinned. “Now leave him here, and you boys go outside until I call you.”
Leering like a madman, Russo waited until his men had left. Then once more he turned to Polly who cringed away from him. His brutal hand reached out and snatched even more of her few remaining garments from her.
A red film of hate and rage blinded me. Bound as I was, I tried to dive for the man. He turned from the girl and began methodically to beat me with his revolver. Blood poured from my lacerated scalp, from my torn face, but still he raised the gun and brought it down. At any moment he could have knocked me out, but that was not his intention. In cold blood he hacked and cut, and I could do nothing but take it.
Eventually he tired of his sport. He slipped a cartridge into the gun. “You’ve been asking for it,” he said. “You’re going to get it!”
I could actually see his finger grow white as it tightened on the trigger.
At that instant Polly Knight came out of her semi-conscious state. Half-naked, she hurled herself in front of Russo. “Stop! Don’t kill him!” she begged.
Russo shoved her away, slapped her face brutally. He brought up the gun again toward me...
A fusillade of shots hammered in from the banquet room. One of Russo’s men lurched over the threshold and fell, blood gushing from his throat.