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.
Staring through the aperture, Jerry was momentarily blinded by a flash of light as the field was illuminated by two great searchlights. The motors throbbed, clawed furiously as they lost traction, and then whistled as the ships landed.
One was a cabin monoplane. The other was a tiny battle plane.
Then the lights went out. The entire operation consumed not more than two minutes.
Presently there were footsteps. Shuffling footsteps... and low voices. Out of the low conversation his ears picked strange words. Chinese!
Then: “Keep those Chinks quiet!”
Under cover of night, Crouch was running in Chinese.
Frost lay there for ten minutes, thinking. Crouch seemed to have his hand in everything. He heard echoes of automobiles on the highway, the grind of gears coming loud and clear through the stillness; then two men walked back. The office door opened, and a faint glow appeared through the cracks.
He got up and moved closer. He recognized the voices of Crouch and Casey.
“God, I’m glad that’s over.” This was Casey. “Two more trips and then we’re Europe bound.”
“Thompson’s waiting in Mexico City.”
“You wasn’t sap enough to give him the dough, was you?”
Crouch laughed shortly. “Certainly not! Nobody knows where that money is — nobody but I.”
“What do you mean?” Casey asked.
“Well, I moved it.”
“You mean you moved our dough from that train job?” He was incredulous.
“Yes. Remember seeing some guys working on those old asphalt tennis courts behind our hangar at Withers Field?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you thought they were repairing them, didn’t you? So did everybody else. But they were just putting the asphalt over a little hiding place I’d previously fixed up.”
“My God!” Casey ejaculated. “Suppose we wanna get away quick?”
“That’s all right. We can smash that stuff in five minutes. And it was the safest place — believe me.”
“Maybe it was wise. By the way, this wild man we got off the Mid-West ain’t so certain everything’s on the level. He cornered me and asked a lotta questions. I told him if there was anything to say, you’d say it. Might not be wise to stall him. He looks pretty sharp.”
“I don’t intend to. I’m going to talk to him today and he’ll run in the next batch of Chinese. I figure he’s got the nerve to help us pull a sweet one down South pretty soon.”
“Course, you know what you’re doing. But I don’t see the point in hiring him. Never did.”
“Perhaps there wasn’t. But I collect good pilots just like other men collect stamps and books. I like to have them around. But you don’t need to worry about this guy. He’s been in a lot of jams before. You can look at him and tell that.”
“I dunno—”
“Help me get that Moth in.” They moved out on the field.
Captain Jerry Frost came alive. He had them nailed. His suspicions were confirmed. They had done the train job. And unless he missed his guess, those bonds from the air-mail plane were in that cache Crouch spoke of. He moved up in the dark until the two men got into the hangar with their plane. Then he started off on a dog-trot down the road.
At dawn the law forces of the sovereign State of Texas swung into action. They had long been waiting for this moment. The great, ponderous, clumsy law, with its thousands of tentacles, got going. The tide itself was not more relentless. It struck here sometimes, there sometimes, in a circle sometimes — but eventually it straightened out and began to roll. It was inevitable.
The Adjutant-General sat at his desk and manipulated the controls. He was the puppeteer.
Shortly after sunrise, two state planes were in the air. There were six men in each besides the pilot. Six tight-lipped, grim men, who would shoot their way into hell and back again to get their men.
The Rangers were moving up.
In the hangar at Waco, the telephone jangled. Casey answered it.
“Yeah, Casey... all right, Tommy... What’s that? I can’t hear you... wait a minute.” He handed the receiver to Crouch. “The goof is excited. Get an earful.”
Crouch took the instrument. “Hello, Tommy... Yes...” A long wait. Casey moved closer. Something had happened. One look at Crouch’s face told him that. Finally: “Who told you?... Hell!” He slammed the receiver on the hook.
“We’re fools!” He spat the words out. “One of the Mid-West fellows told Tommy this morning that this guy Femrite is a Texas Ranger. Come on!”
“Where?”
“That’s the trouble with you damned Americans,” Crouch cried. “You lose your head in a tight place. We’re going to get that money. Maybe we can make it. He’s waited this long without tipping his hand, maybe he’ll wait a little longer.”
“But what about the others?”
“This is no time to think of them. We can be in Mexico in five hours. Come on!”
They moved quickly to the hangar door, swung it open. They wheeled their tiny, speedy planes out into the starting line. They swung each other’s props, the motors barked into life, and dust and pebbles swept into the backwash and puttered against the side of the hangars.
Crouch was first off. Casey followed. Tails whipped up and wheels bounced lightly on the uneven ground. They zoomed into the air in broad climbing turns. Casey saw Crouch was loading his guns.
They didn’t know it then, but they were to be disappointed. Jerry already was at Withers Field, had been there when Ranger reinforcements arrived. And, of course, a perverse fate decreed they would start at the wrong end of the tennis court.
To see a half dozen apparently intelligent men digging into an asphalt tennis court in the early morning is not a sight calculated to be passed without stopping for a moment. Mechanics stopped, workmen stopped. There was a great textile mill near the field, and a crowd begets a larger crowd.
Jerry was trying to direct the traffic and the Rangers at the same time. Three young men in handcuffs, late of the No. 6 hangar, looked on in undisguised amusement.
Then a shout. Somebody had the pouch. Jerry grabbed it and, with a single movement, slit the side. A handful of currency was extracted. Torn currency.
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s it! Take those men and this pouch into the office. Those other fellows are coming here sooner or later. We’ll make a reception out of it.”
The news swept about the airport like wildfire. The textile mill was all agog. For the first time in many of their lives, they were sitting in the middle of a big event. “The train robbers have been found!” The doorman at the textile mill told the switchboard operator, and the switchboard operator told the secretary. The secretary thought the police ought to know so he telephoned them.
Eagle-eyed news hawks caught the message the moment the desk sergeant finished his yawn and copied it. They flashed their papers. Editors stirred their stumps, called circulation managers, engravers, operators and pressmen. Reporters on the city staff got going, the rewrite man lighted a fresh cigarette off the butt of an old one and rammed copy paper in his mill. He pulled the telephone close. And muttered: “I hope to Gawd this is as big as it looks!”
The word got about Jamestown. Sirens shrieked through the traffic carrying enough police to take Mont Sec. In thirty minutes, the highways leading to Withers Field were choked. Some of them knew what was going to happen, but most of them didn’t. This was the Great American Public.