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.
“Take the right-hand side of the street and hit for that car as fast as you can make it,” whispered Mort, “I’ll take the left-hand side — and watch!”
The girl’s gat was hidden under her light coat now and she walked quickly to the car. Mort hopped into the seat beside her just as Needle Sam stepped on it and the big car jumped away from there.
There was cursing a-plenty as the car dashed through side streets where traffic cops would not bother them. For the third time in two weeks Mort Mitchell’s mob had been within an inch of grabbing off some of the softest-looking hauls in their history. And for the third time, just as everything was right for the heist, something had gone wrong. The fall guy was wised up — and Mort and his mob had gotten nothing for their carefully laid plans.
Mort and his mob were being double-crossed and every one of them knew it. After the curses came silence as the minds of the four recalled the mysterious jinx which seemed to have fastened itself upon the mob. Three times — and every one the same. Even as the roaring car sped toward their hideaway the four looked at each other curiously and askance. Suspicion, even between members of the mob against each other, was growing. The same thought came to all. Somebody in the mob — or somebody in a position to know their movements — was a rat!
Mort Mitchell, thinking deeply, was puffing feverishly on his cigarette as the car pulled into the garage in back of “Dapper” Dan’s speakie, where the gang hung out.
“In the back room,” Mort said curtly as they climbed from the car, and the four slipped through the passageway between the garage and the farthest back room of Dan’s. Mort Mitchell was going to find out, and that very night, too, if he could, just who was putting his mob over the jumps of failure. He sat at the end of the table and nodded to Dapper Dan, who appeared at the signal which came with their entrance.
“Send a bottle of rye and some soda, Dan,” said Mort grimly, “and then go out and forget we’re here. Don’t let anybody disturb us, for this ain’t no mass meeting. This is a secret party that may end seriously for somebody!” His dark eyes snapped as he looked into the faces of his mobsters. The bottles were brought and the door snapped shut behind Dapper Dan. Mort poured himself a stiff shot of rye and shoved the bottle down the table to the others. They poured and drank, and Mort, throwing his hat on the nearby desk, faced them again.
Mort didn’t look the part of the mobster any more than Carlotta Wynn looked the role of a moll. He was tall and thin, but of a deceptive thinness which concealed his tremendous strength. His hair was dark brown and his eyes almost black, with a particular snap and keenness. His clothes were of expensive material and conservative cut; clothes such as a broker might select.
The girl could have walked into the Ritz on his arm and seemed perfectly in place. She was of medium height and slender, but sinuous figure. Her features were small and regular, set in skin of marked smoothness and whiteness. The whiteness of her skin was emphasized by her silky black hair and eyebrows and black flashing eyes, which were large, almost round, giving her an appearance of innocence, of surprise.
Needle Sam and Barry Crandall, the other two at the table, however, looked their parts. Sam’s face was fat, with close-set eyes. His suit was flashy, of extreme cut. The first and second fingers of his right hand were stained deeply by the cigarettes he smoked in every waking moment. Sam was a chauffeur par excellence — nothing else. He thought he was a hard rod, but he wasn’t. He just was about the best driver in the city, for he knew every short cut in traffic, he drove like a charioteer and he never had accidents. They didn’t pay in his business.
And Barry Crandall was a rod who had graduated from a lowlier beginning. There had been days when he did not scoff an opportunity to lift a wallet or even bend a lead pipe over an unsuspecting head. Now, however, he was in faster company and was Mort Mitchell’s right hand — and Mort wasn’t a piker.
Mort’s handsome face was turned on the other three.
“Well,” he asked, sarcastically, “who spilled it?”
None answered.
Mort’s expression grew hard and ominous, as he went on:
“One slip-up can happen. Two might happen, but three times means—” He looked intently into the faces of the moll and the two other rods. “Three slips — and each one almost spelling curtains for me — mean a rat!”
The moll’s eyes flashed dangerously.
“Don’t insinuate that I’m a rat, Mort,” she said evenly, but the tiny muscles at the corners of her mouth tightened and her small hands clenched. “I’m no rat and you know it. I’d go to hell for you, and the boys would, too. Maybe you’ve talked too much in your off moments. Remember, you’re mingling in society now!” Her voice was bitter and jealousy showed in the tone of that word “society.”
“Never mind what I’m doing,” retorted Mort, angrily, “I’m not monkey enough to talk where there’s going to be a comeback at me.”
He turned to face the girl squarely.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” he said grimly, “and maybe we can find the leak. You got the tip-off from the Hag, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night ‘Carmen’ was sung at the Metropolitan,” answered the moll. “She was doing her usual stuff, whining around the automobiles near the entrance, with that tooth sticking down on her lower lip and that mole on her cheek sticking out over her coat collar. She slipped me the signal and I watched my chance to step up to her and drop four-bits into her tin-cup.
“ ‘The Vanderpools on Wednesday night, girlie,’ she said in that whine of hers. ‘It’s a pipe. I heard ’em talkin’ as they dropped me a dime from the carriage window. All of ’em will be away Wednesday night, except the old dame, herself, and she’ll be home taking a backgammon lesson from a girl sharp. And the old woman wears her diamonds for dinner every night, even in her home. It’s a pipe, girlie. Tell Mort — an’ I want my cut.’ ”
“Anybody see you getting the info from her?” asked Mort.
“What if they did see me talking to her?” retorted the moll. “Who’d think she was tipping us to a job? I was just an opera-goer to the crowd on the pavement. Everybody talks to her — she’s the Hag of the Opera to everybody. Never misses the carriage door on opera nights. All the society folk know her whining story; she was Dolores, the dancer, she tells them as she begs. Dolores the famous ballet dancer. How she gets away with it with that fang sticking out over her lower lip from her upper jaw and that mole, I don’t know. Figure her as a dancer! But they listen to her and slip her change — and she’s the best lookout and tipster this mob ever had, until now!”
“Yes,” agreed Mort, reluctantly, “but she gave us the bum steer on the Stickney job, too, didn’t she? And she sent us out on Hark Island for that bust in the Longmans’ home that pretty near put me back of the walls.”
“She’s tipped us to plenty. She doesn’t get her cut unless we click.”
“Yes,” responded Mort grimly, “but maybe she’s changed her racket. Anyway...” He paused and looked into the anxious faces before him. “Anyway, either the Hag — or somebody here in this room — tipped off the Vanderpools tonight and we came damned near to dissolving this mob when that roomful of private dicks stepped on our feet. Now, suppose some one of you tries to answer that!”
“She’s playin’ with the Orange mob, maybe,” suggested Barry, “ ‘Blackie’ Rango and his gorillas been knockin’ off some sweet jack without no trouble while we’re sticking our throats out for the knife.”