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.
He discovered a portion of the hangar falsely constructed. From the outside it seemed all right, but from the inside it seemed shorter than it should be. He opened a door and stepped into semi-darkness. A ghostly form confronted him. And another.
There is nothing quite so ghostly as to come across an airplane in a poorly lit hangar. Even if you are expecting it, you are half startled. There is something weird about it, even if you are an airman. It strikes at the roots.
Jerry recovered from his shock and opened the door wide.
The light revealed two planes. Two planes so lovely, so trim that his breath came in a swift intake of admiration. Two tiny planes that seemed unreal. Watch fob types. He moved closer. And stopped.
He saw they weren’t so lovely. They were grim. Trench mortars looked like that. They looked like playthings — until they belched. Then they were hideous. On the cowling of each of the planes was mounted a machine-gun, its squat muzzle merging almost indistinguishably into the background.
He was amazed. He hadn’t, in his wildest fancies, anticipated anything like this. He hadn’t seen a plane like this since he had left the Polish front. Not even then. Those things were hayracks compared to this. Before him stood two of the highest products of scientific civilization.
“Good-looking, eh?”
The voice cracked through the hangar like a sputtering electric wire that has found a ground. For a moment Jerry was disconcerted. Only for a moment.
“I’d give a month’s salary to fly one of them!” he breathed.
“Yes?” It was evident Crouch didn’t know whether to be angered or amused. He decided on the latter course. “Maybe you will. They’re patented. I’m trying to sell them to the government. I wouldn’t like for anybody to know I had them.”
Jerry caught the faintest hint of a threat in the words. Of course, it was a lie. It wasn’t even a good lie. He knew that, and he knew that Crouch knew he knew. Crouch must have thought he was several different kinds of a prize fool to swallow that one. But he was just as anxious to repair the damage as his employer.
“Not a word. You can trust me.”
When they went out, Crouch locked the door with a padlock. Jerry looked back over his shoulder and decided the compartment was well hidden. And he decided something else. To dally with this thing was to play with T.N.T. Crouch and his gang were dangerous. One man couldn’t stand in their way. They had too much to protect.
But what had the air circus to do with it? Jerry felt that everybody knew more than he did. The flyers knotted into little clans and got their heads together. He stumbled around stupidly. It made him, for the first time since he had won his wings, terribly self-conscious.
He stopped Casey later in the day. “Say, I guess I stumbled onto a little family secret this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I saw two of the sweetest little battle wagons—”
“Easy, feller.” Casey turned on him and glowered. “Don’t go around popping off your face. They’re inventions. The old man’s a nut. He’s afraid somebody might steal his plans.”
Jerry gestured disdainfully. “Don’t make me laugh. I wasn’t born yesterday. How come I don’t rate some of the secrets.”
“Listen, you! If there are any secrets, the old man’ll let you in on them. In the meantime, keep your trap shut — tight!”
For the second time that day, Jerry was tempted to crown somebody. But that would have spoiled everything. He had been acting; he could continue.
“Now, now; ain’t I one of the outfit? You pulled me away from a good job — for why? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do.”
Casey melted somewhat. Maybe the kid was right. Maybe he ought to rate a few secrets.
“Well,” he said, “I can’t tell you nothing but this: if there hadn’t been something big doing, the old man wouldn’t have wanted you. He’s a pretty good student of human nature — and he figured you’d been in a jam somewhere and wasn’t too particular what you did as long as it was in an airplane. There’s something about an airman that’s written all over his face. He’s like a schoolboy in love. He doesn’t know it’s there, and even if he did he couldn’t do anything about it. You sit tight.”
Jerry made up his mind to sit.
The air circus came off as scheduled. Good advertisement. It packed the field and roads for miles around. The spectacle of fifteen pilots in the air doing all manner of stunts was appealing anywhere — especially in Waco. They hadn’t seen anything like it since the training days of the war.
Crouch’s business acumen was sound. The trade rolled in. There were innumerable hops. Everybody wanted to fly. The young men visioned themselves not as Foncks and Guynemers and Bishops and Lukes, for they belonged to another age. It was Lindbergh now. The old people grinned as they came in contact with the onrushing age. Jerry caught a passenger to Austin one morning. He had gone on a rush call. He had an hour to wait.
He visited the capitol and found the Adjutant-General in another rage. This was getting to be the best thing the Adjutant-General did.
“What’s the big idea?” he bellowed. “We’re wasting time. I’ve had to fight with myself to keep my hands off. From your reports, we’ve got enough on those fellows to get a conviction now.”
“From my reports — yes,” Frost replied. “But my reports wouldn’t convict them because I haven’t got one single fact. It’s pure hunch. But I’m going to nail them to the cross, and it won’t be long. This is the toughest, nerviest outfit I’ve ever run across in my life. They’d stick up the National City Bank in New York with a little encouragement. But something’s in the wind. I need help.”
“Take anybody you want.”
“It isn’t that kind of help. Listen.”
For five minutes he talked, all the while the Adjutant-General nodded and drummed on his desk top. Hardly had Frost left the office when the state official reached for the telephone and placed a call for the commandant at Kelly Field, the army base.
And thus, that night, one of the new A-3 battle planes, carrying six thousand rounds of ammunition and mounting six machine-guns, dropped out of the darkness at Withers Field and was quickly rushed into the hangar of the Mid-West Air Transport Company and covered with a tarpaulin.
Given that impetus, Jerry felt more confident. Nothing was likely to happen at Waco. If anything broke, it would be at Jamestown. And something was going to break — soon.
Riding his hunch, Jerry was sure Crouch and his gang had wrecked the air-mail plane a year before. They had held up the Rio Grande express. God knows what else they had done. Jerry felt it had been plenty.
He had fitted himself up a bunk in one corner of the hangar on a collapsible cot that was hidden away each morning. He didn’t want to jeopardize the confidence Crouch might have in him.
A few nights later, as he lay there and stared into the darkness, and made up his mind to force the play within the next twenty-four hours, he heard the low drone of a motor. He rolled over and strained his ears. It was faint, then louder, then faint again. Then he heard another sound — a drone. There was enough noise to make him think it was a bombing raid.
Jerry looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Of course, it would be an hour like that. Something was up. Something was going to happen. He slipped into his pants and boots, knocked down his cot and shoved it under a fuselage and strapped on his guns. He went to the far corner of the corrugated hangar. There was an opening there wide enough for him to see. If there was anything to see. Right now it was black night.
Louder and louder the drones came. They were directly overhead now. Jerry wondered how Crouch expected to get away with anything like this. It amounted to pure suicide. And then it dawned that perhaps this was the very reason they had held that air circus. Adjacent residents might not be so curious if they heard motors at night. Or could Crouch have been that much of a psychologist?