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.
Sarah Watson looked at Eddie Danville, then grinned at Ben Todd.
“Bennie, I wouldn’t have given you credit for that much brains!” she said. “Bennie, meet Eddie — a nice feller, even if he has been in jail, and he’s kind to animals and knows how to cook. Drat it! I let the Sergeant get away without asking him...” Sarah wheeled and charged out of the kitchen door.
Sarah barked a number into the ’phone on her parlor table.
“O’Reilly back yet?” she asked. “Good. O’Reilly? Listen. That dead feller in Chariot’s kitchen. You said you recognized him — that he was called Chinny Downs. Now listen, O’Reilly. Chinny Downs was a gangster. What gang was he mixed up in?”
“I thought of that, too, you old war horse,” boomed O’Reilly’s voice. “But it’s no soap. Chinny was a punk in Big Smiley’s gang, just joined up recent. There are a hundred punks just like him lined up with Smiley...”
“What’s a hundred punks to a bull like you? Get the whole hundred rounded up. Take ’em under the light... Listen, O’Reilly. What about the man you found unconscious in the car with that fool Tarrant woman? Maybe he’d spill something?”
“Maybe he would, if he knew something. He says he don’t, and I believe him. He says Chinny Downs knew something, but Chinny Downs is dead.”
“Somebody made a mistake,” said Sarah. “If Chinny had been allowed to live, he might have talked. Oh, well, sometimes it ain’t good to be too impulsive.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Sergeant. I was just thinking you’ve made some headway, anyway, toward collecting that ten thousand reward. You know the Courtwell murderer is connected somehow with the Smiley mob. Now, you’d really have that ten thousand reward cinched, Sergeant, if you just knew the name of the murderer, even the first name...”
The ’phone clanked in Sarah’s ear. She hung up, smiling grimly.
Sarah Watson stalked back into her kitchen. She found Ben Todd with a gun pointed at Eddie Danville, who stood with his back to the wall.
“Bennie, you’re being childish,” Sarah said.
“I ain’t. This guy is trying to tell me that you put that bullet in Chinny Downs.”
“He’s trying to tell you the truth.”
“Sarah! What the devil? Why—”
“If I hadn’t, Chinny would have put a bullet in Eddie. I didn’t want to see murder done, Bennie, especially when the murderer was liable to be worth ten thousand to you and me.”
Ben Todd sank into his chair, his gun and his mouth both slack. Sarah shoved Eddie Danville into a chair.
“Now, Eddie, tell us,” she asked. “Do you know the Smiley outfit?”
“Do I know it? Smiley’s the guy who framed me into the pen, because I—”
“Never mind what you did to him, Eddie. Whatever it was, he deserved it. Now, when you knew the Smiley mob, Eddie, was there maybe a Jake connected with it — a Tony?”
Eddie Danville jumped to his feet and held on to the edge of the table.
“Jake Benner and Tony Corelli!” he cried. “Why didn’t I think of them before? What a blasted fool I am!”
“Of course,” agreed Sarah. “Sit down, Eddie. You need food. We all need food. We’ve got work to do before morning, bloody work, maybe. We need red meat.”
Sarah Watson stepped out on her front stoop and peered up and down the dark, sleeping block. She made a dash down the steps, across the sidewalk, and into the battered wreck waiting at the curb.
Two young men ran after her, one of them hatless and enveloped in a voluminous yellow raincoat. The car door slammed. The machine snorted away from the curb.
“Sarah, for Pete’s sake, tell us what we’re up against,” Ben Todd pleaded. “If you’re planning to break into Smiley’s roadhouse hangout, we wouldn’t have a chance, the three of us...”
“If we break into Smiley’s roadhouse,” said Sarah, swerving the car around a corner, “we’ll break in because I know we have a chance.”
“Sarah, for Pete’s sake, stop being cryptic...”
Sarah Watson slowed the car, stopped it in front of an all-night drug store.
“Cryptic? What’s that mean?” she asked, then got out of the car and stalked into the drug store.
Sarah Watson stood wedged into a telephone booth, the receiver clamped to her car.
“Hello? This Smiley’s roadhouse? Want to speak to Jake. Jake or Tony.”
Sarah waited. She waited a long time. She heard some one step into the booth next to hers. She put out a tentative hand to pull open her door and peer out. Just then, a voice spoke into her ear.
“Yeah? This is Jake.”
“Tony there, too?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Listen, Jake. Smiley don’t know it yet but Chinny Downs got his today. He got it in Green Street. Yes, Green Street. And the cops found Jim Corker knocked-out in a car with the Tar-rant skirt tied up in the back. They found Jim Corker on Green Street, too. Jim’s down at Headquarters now, sweating. Yes, I said sweating. Now listen, Jake. The feller Chinny Downs was after is sneaking back to-night to Green Street. Never mind who I am, Jake. I’m no fool, and neither are you.”
Sarah hung up, tore open the door and peered into the adjoining booth. A red headed young man peered back at her, through smudged glass, then opened the door and stepped out.
“Dumb-ox!” she cried. “Suppose Eddie’s got nervous and skeedaddled while you’ve been in here, spying on me?”
“Double-crosser,” muttered Ben Todd. “You never had a job yet that you didn’t double-cross somebody. You’ve double-crossed O’Reilly and now you’re going to double-cross Eddie. You old female snake! If Eddie has made a getaway, so much the better for Eddie...”
Sarah did not answer, but stalked out of the drug store. Ben Todd followed. At the curb, Sarah peered into the rear of her car and gave a satisfied grunt. She slid in under the wheel, reached out and yanked Ben Todd in by his long arm.
“Bennie,” she said, “you had one bright flash of intelligence to-night when you stalled off O’Reilly. I suppose I oughtn’t to expect anything more of you. Shut up, now. I’m going to talk to Eddie. Eddie, we’re going back to your crystal gazing den right now...”
“No,” shouted Ben Todd. “We can’t. There’ll be at least one cop on duty there. Maybe two.”
“If there’s three,” said Sarah, “there’s three of us.”
“Eddie,” Ben Todd warned, “you take my advice and get out of this car now, while you can.”
“Be quiet,” commanded Sarah. “Eddie, we’re going back to Green Street because if Jake and Tony are as dumb as I think they are, we’re going to have callers there.”
“Sarah,” apologized Ben Todd, “forgive me. But I still don’t...”
“You ought to apologize,” said Sarah, complacently. “You ought to grovel.”
“I will,” Ben Todd agreed, “if I’m able to, after the cops at Eddie’s place get through with us.”
“Don’t worry about a few paltry policemen,” Sarah insisted. “The thing to worry about now is whether we can beat Jake and Tony to Green Street.”
The old car plunged around a corner and rattled into amazing speed.
“But, Sarah,” Ben Todd asked, “even if you get this Jake and this Tony, how are you going to hang the Courtwell murder on ’em so it sticks? You’ve only got Eddie’s word, and Eddie’s word...”
“Ain’t worth a hoot,” Sarah finished for him. “I know. But there’s no use worrying about more than one thing at one time. You leave things to me, Ben Todd.”
Three figures stole down an odorous alley at the side of a tenement in Green Street and stopped in deep shadows. One figure whispered: