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.
Hurley’s cigarette became still. “Mebbe there’ll be a coupla medals in this after all—”
McFee said, “You can always sell ’em for hardware.”
Hurley spread light upon the wet smear Damon’s body had left. Sign indicated that the body had been dragged to the fire exit and out into the alley. There the sign ended.
Inside again, Hurley asked McFee, “Why don’t that red-headed dame come back?”
“I guess she’d had plenty. You’ll find her at the St. Regis.” He added dryly, “Melrose’ll tell you where to find Leclair.”
“I’ll find Leclair.” And then, impressively, “Melrose is aboard Knudson’s yacht.”
Hurley followed the blood drop down the aisle. Here and there on the drab wall were imprints of Damon’s wet, red hands. They leaped at the eye. They implied a frantic striving, a dreadful frustration. The two dicks tailed Hurley, McFee trailed the three of them, chewing the end of his cigarette. They crossed the backstage, shoved into the dressing room.
Hurley looked the automatic over, put it down. He looked at the glasses and gin bottle, at the upset table lamp, at the squashed tube of crimson grease paint.
“Some’dy better change his shoes,” Hurley muttered.
McFee said casually, “Leclair’s shoes looked clean.”
Hurley stared sourly at the picture album around the walls. “Burleycue ain’t what she was. You need a pair of field glasses to see the jittering toothpicks that prance on the boards nowadays.” Turning to one of his men he said, “Harry, go give Littner a bell. Tell him he’d better slide over. Tell him—” Hurley slanted his eyes at McFee. “Tell him we are in a spot.”
Littner was Captain of Detectives.
Hurley chalked crosses on the floor, near the dressing table and close to the couch, to indicate where he and McFee thought Damon and Leclair had stood, when the shot was fired.
Littner and the Chief came first; then Larrabee, the District Attorney, and Atwell, a deputy coroner. Larrabee said it was too bad about Damon. Pretty nearly everybody said it was too bad and something ought to be done. When Larrabee heard about the Grand Jury Shelldon file he went white around the gills, and shut up. Larrabee was half and half about most things. He had Bright’s Disease. That was why he wasn’t going to run again. The camera boys stood up their flashlight set. The fingerprint lads prowled around with their brushes and powders. A flock of dicks were detailed to do this and that. Littner turned the pistol over to Walter Griggs, the ballistic expert. The newshawks came.
The Chief said to Littner, “Melrose is gonna be damn good and sore.”
“He ought to be damn good and glad some’dy else lifted Damon,” Littner muttered.
“You figure he needs an out?”
Littner said cautiously, “Melrose is aboard Knudson’s yacht, isn’t he?”
Littner ought to have been Chief of Police.
After a while, McFee said to Hurley, “I guess I’ll go finish my coffee.”
7
McFee walked up Carter to Third, stood there a minute, rolling a match in his ear. The block between Second and Third was full of police and county cars, but the rest of the town looked empty. It was three-fifteen. McFee had been in the Gaiety about two and a half hours. He saw a coupe parked half a block down Third and walked towards it.
Irene Mayo sat behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. Her eyes were feverish. Her white face was posed above the deep fur of her wrap like a flower in a vase. She said huskily, “I thought you’d come.”
“It takes a while,” McFee answered. He got in beside her. “Thanks for giving the cops a bell.”
“Did they hurt you?” She looked intently at him.
“Some’dy sat on my head.”
The red-headed girl let in the clutch. They made a couple of righthand turns then a left.
McFee said, “Damon sold out, didn’t he, sister?”
“Yes—” The word tore itself from Irene Mayo’s lips. Her knuckles tightened on the wheel. “That blonde woman—”
“Hadn’t it in him, I guess,” McFee muttered.
She said in a brittle voice, “He could have been governor. I had what he needed... I could have given him—” She shivered, pressed her hand to her throat. “I don’t blame Ranee. A man is just so much — no more. But Melrose — Sam Melrose—” She uttered the name as if it poisoned her mouth. “Melrose knew how to break Ranee. And he had Ranee shot because he wasn’t sure—” She stared straight ahead, her eyes as hard as bright new coins. “I’ll make Sam Melrose wish he hadn’t come to this town if it kills me to do it.”
They drove some more.
“Some’dy took Damon’s body away,” McFee said.
“What did you say?”
McFee told her about it. “Damon must have been taken after you got away. There was a five minute interval before the cops came.”
“What do the police think?”
“It isn’t what they think — this is Melrose’s town. They take the position that Melrose didn’t have Damon blinked because it wasn’t his boys carted Damon’s body away. They say that means some’dy else killed Damon.”
“Don’t you see?” Her tone was stinging, vicious. “Those Melrose men had Ranee taken while you were talking to that Leclair woman. When the police came, and they couldn’t take you with them, they pretended Ranee had vanished. They knew you’d tell the police. They knew the police — Melrose’s police! — would use it for an ‘out.’ McFee—” She gripped his arm, her face terribly white, “you must see that! You don’t believe what the police are only pretending to believe?”
They made a right-hand turn.
McFee put a cigarette in his mouth, said quietly, “Sister, you better lemme take the wheel. There’s a car tailing us. They’ll have more power than we have.”
“They can’t run us down.”
“They can do anything in this town. And they will, if they think I got what they want. Slide over.”
The girl said cooly, “Have you got what they want, McFee?”
A pair of white eyes grew large in the rear view mirror, McFee laid one hand on the wheel, slid the other around the girl’s hips. His toe lifted her foot from the gas pedal. McFee said harshly, “Don’t be a fool — this is serious.” She yielded then and glided over his lap.
McFee jumped the car forward. It was a handy little bus, but it didn’t have the steam. McFee made a left hand turn and they hit a through boulevard. The tail car showed its lights again. The lights grew bigger. A milk truck rattled past.
McFee let the coupe out, but the white eyes swelled.
McFee said, “This is your coupe?”
“Ranee’s.”
“Where’s your house?”
“Avalon. Eighteen hundred block. Avalon’s about a mile beyond the next boulevard stop.”
McFee looked at the girl out of slanted eyes. “I got a hunch they’re out to wreck us. I know those birds. If they ride us down, it’ll be as soon as we quit the boulevard.”
Irene Mayo said passionately, “I don’t know what they want, but nothing will make me believe Melrose didn’t have Ranee killed.”
They approached the cross boulevard, doing fifty or so. The neon lights of an all-night filling station blazed on the opposite corner.
“I’d like to stand those lads on their heads,” McFee muttered. He grinned, but his somber eyes were calculating as they looked at the girl. “I got a hunch. How much you good for, sister?”
“As much as you are.”
He laughed a little. “Maybe we could get away, but I doubt it. If we waited somewhere, and phoned for a police bodyguard, they’d jump us before the cops could find us. I don’t know but what we hadn’t better try to stand ’em on their heads.”