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 snapped: “I will tell Mrs. Rand nothing of the sort!”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
He pivoted and walked across the living-room, into the foyer; opened the door and went down the corridor to the elevator, his hands in overcoat pockets, his shoulders hunched and a dogged, obstinate look in his windy blue eyes.
Cohegan was asleep at the wheel.
MacBride punched him. “Well, sleeping beauty!...”
The shabby phaeton left a cloud of acrid exhaust smoke in the flagstone courtyard, hummed eastward on Marshall Drive.
After all, Steve,” the Police Commissioner said, “if there was another man in her life, and Dan committed suicide because of this, you can’t — you really can’t convict anyone of murder.”
Pacing the floor grimly, MacBride threw up his hands in a violent gesture. “But it’s murder! I say it’s murder!”
Commissioner Sterns smiled drily. “I know. I know you’ve been going around saying that, but you haven’t shown one shred of evidence that would hold in court. Very likely this pawnbroker made a mistake. Very likely it wasn’t Dan Rand who bought that gun off him. I’m not trying to pigeon-hole anything, Steve. I... well, I just don’t like to see you make a fool of yourself.”
“Oh!” MacBride stopped, glared. “I just should be a strong, silent guy, huh? Well, listen to me, Harry. I’ve noticed that a strong, silent guy is usually that way because he don’t know anything. I’m willing to beef around, talk my head off, make a fool of myself — if it’ll get me anywhere.”
“Trouble with you, Steve,” Sterns said good-naturedly, “is that when a case concerns someone you knew and liked, why, you get all steamed up; you cause yourself a lot of heartache and headache... Just because the gun happens to have an odd smell, you think that—”
“That’s only one of the things, Harry.”
He hammered his heels back to his office, crammed his pipe, lighted it and sat in his swivel-chair and filled the office with smoke. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to believe that Halo Rand had had a hand in it; and when Moriarity and Cohen drifted in, he said:
“Now if Dan Rand wanted to kill himself because his wife was in love with someone else, why would he have sold, or planned to sell, the Colosseum? He left everything to his wife. I asked his lawyers an hour ago. It seems to me that if he felt he was losing his wife to another man, he’d have left his estate to someone else. But he didn’t. He meant, you apes — he meant to leave his wife well-fixed!”
Moriarity and Cohen exchanged subtle winks.
“You, Mory,” MacBride clipped. “You go to the telephone company and find out about a telephone call Jim Cardiac received at 11:30 this morning. Find where it came from.”
Moriarity went out and Cohen said: “Ah, so we’re going to make Jim Cardiac the fall-guy.”
“Razz on, Ike; razz on. Even the Commissioner’s doing it. I’m getting used to it.”
Moriarity returned in half an hour and said: “The call came from Southern 509 — the Apex Laboratories, in the Marks Building, 199 South Endicott Street.”
MacBride grabbed his hat, put on his overcoat and left his office. He ran into Kennedy in the central room, barged past him, went down to the basement and on into the garage. Cohegan was working on the phaeton’s bright work.
“Knock off, Bert.”
The skipper climbed in back, sat down and was joined in a moment by Kennedy.
“I don’t remember asking you to join me, Kennedy.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did.”
“Where to, Cap?” Cohegan said.
“South Endicott Street — 199.”
The phaeton rolled out of the garage.
“How about the woman?” Kennedy said from beneath his hat brim.
“I think she’s okey.”
“She say she was?”
MacBride snorted, made no reply.
Kennedy said: “Where are we going now?”
“Call on Mr. Apex Laboratories... Hey, Cohegan, you color blind? That was a red light you passed through!”
“Oh, was it?”
The phaeton crawled through a midtown traffic jam, turned south past the Empress Theatre, entered South Endicott Street and pulled up before a narrow stone building.
“I’ll be right down,” MacBride said.
Reaching the elevator, he found Kennedy beside him.
“Me and my shadow!” he muttered.
“Think of all the guys who haven’t got shadows. Up!”
They got out at the fourth floor and turned left. The legend Apex Laboratories was in black on the ground-glass panel of a door at the end of the corridor. The door was locked. There was a white card tacked to the wood: Gone for the day. Phone Midland 214 or call at 26 Cypress if urgent.
“Let’s go, skipper.”
MacBride complained: “Listen, Kennedy. Haven’t you got a room of your own, or just some nice quiet place where you can go and sit for a while?”
“Sitting is a vice, skipper. Continuance of the practice leads to a multitude of evils.”
They went down to the lobby, strode out to the phaeton. Cohegan was not in sight, but in a moment he was seen coming across the street with a package in his hands.
“Peanuts?” he offered soberly.
“Idea!” said Kennedy. “It stimulates the liquid appetite.”
They climbed in and MacBride said: “I bet some fine day I manacle Cohegan to that wheel!... Drive to 26 Cypress.”
Kennedy munched hot peanuts. “Translated into English, Steve, what would Mr. Apex Laboratories’ name be?”
“I’ll let him translate it.”
Number 26 Cypress was a large fieldstone house in the West End; there was a broad lawn in front planted with shade trees. A driveway ran past the right side of the house, and on this side was a white porte-cochère. The phaeton was parked in the street. MacBride and Kennedy walked up the driveway and MacBride hammered a knocker on a broad, heavy door.
A vellum-skinned butler opened the door.
MacBride said: “I want to see the head of the Apex Laboratories. My name is MacBride.”
“Have you an appointment?”
“No.”
“Is the call professional?”
“Absolutely.”
“Please step in.”
They entered a high, dim foyer paneled in dark wood.
“Please take a seat,” the butler said. “It won’t be long.”
He padded off down the hall, vanished.
MacBride and Kennedy did not sit down. They heard the low sound of voices somewhere near, behind a closed door. Kennedy roamed around, came back and pointed.
“In there, skipper. That’s the talk-talk room. Mr. Apex Laboratories is probably busy.”
“So am I.”
MacBride went down the large foyer towards the door Kennedy had indicated. It was broad, heavy, and he stood eying it speculatively. Then he knocked. The low sound of voices ceased. After a moment the latch clicked, the door opened noiselessly.
MacBride stared; then his eyes narrowed, his low blunt voice said: “Hello, Dr. Landau.”
“Why — Captain Mac—”
Kennedy chuckled: “You old translator, you!”
“Come on, Kennedy... This is Kennedy, Doctor — of the Free Press—”
“Just a moment, Captain. Please! I am very busy and—”
“I won’t take long.”
Hard-eyed, MacBride elbowed Landau aside and entered a large, sumptuous room. Kennedy trailed amiably behind him. Landau closed the door quietly.
Cardiac was standing on the other side of a tremendous library table. In a large, straight-backed chair sat a youth dressed in tweeds.
“Cardiac,” muttered MacBride.
“Hello, Skipper.”