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.
“What?” asked Mort, bewildered.
“Just that,” replied the moll. “Act just as though we’re falling for that bum tip on the Horton Place, but stay away from there. Then, on the next opera night, grab the Hag, so I can get her clothes. I’ll do her whining act and I’ll get the tip-off from your red-headed friend who’s trying to put the finger on you!”
“You can’t do it, kid,” responded Mort, “you can’t impersonate the Hag. There’s no other like her. Look at that fang which hangs down her lip — that mole!” He almost shuddered when he recalled the evil face of the Hag.
“I’ll do it, Mort,” cried the moll, her eyes snapping. “I’m entitled to a chance this time, for I’ve got a score to even and then, maybe—” Her voice caught, but she went on. “Maybe, Mort, you won’t think so badly of me. Does my scheme go?”
“Yes,” he replied. “We’ll stay just about a thousand miles away from that Horton Place and, then—” His eyes gleamed ominously. “Then, if your dope is right, we’ll see how Mr. Blackie Rango likes lead for supper! It’s up to you, kid!”
He squeezed her arm and the girl stepped closer to him, expectantly. But his mind wasn’t on the moll. He was wondering whether he could successfully fight against the power of Blackie Rango. He left her absently, and walked to the front of the speakie. The girl, her face showing her disappointment, walked from the speakie and went to her room. She slept little, for she was laying her plans, not only to thwart Blackie Rango’s plot against the Mitchell mob, but also to satisfy her ancient feud against the brilliant Vi Carroll.
Mort Mitchell and his mob stayed severely away from the country place of the Hortons on the Sound that Monday night. It was well they did, for hidden in the shrubbery a quarter-mile up the private road which led to the estate was a band of a dozen rods in the employ of Blackie Rango, ready to mow them down. And Blackie Rango was a sadly disappointed vice king when he got the word of the failure. He called Vi Carroll on the telephone and told her in no uncertain words that her job was in peril — that she must make good on her next attempt.
So it was a perturbed Vi who rode with friends slowly toward the opera house entrance on the next opera night. She had her instructions from Blackie and they were explicit. She was to tell the Hag to lure the Mitchell mob to an uptown apartment building with an exciting story of unguarded jewels and an absent family and the following Friday night was to be the time for the massacre.
Again, on this occasion, Vi was a guest of the Elberts. She chatted nervously with Elbert and his wife and another guest as their car approached the glittering opera house. But her mind was not on the small talk. She was watching anxiously for the Hag of the Opera — for she simply had to make good now. Morton Mitchell had to be sacrificed. Her eyes wandered through the crowd as the car approached the entrance. God! Would that damnable Hag never appear? At last she saw the tottering, repulsive figure. It hurried to the side of the Elberts’ auto and Vi lowered the window, coins in her hand to cover the few words she must exchange with the repulsive croon.
The Elberts and their guests looked in wonder as Vi leaned nervously from the car window. Why did Vivian pay so much attention to that pest, that wreck of a woman with the revolting face? But Vi was oblivious to them.
“Dolores,”she whispered vehemently, “they’ve got to fall for this; tell them the Donaghan jewels, a half-million dollars worth, will be absolutely unguarded Friday night. The approach is through the areaway beside the apartment. Make them fall for it.”
She peered intently into the wrinkled face before her. She saw the loathsome fang denting the Hag’s lower lip. She shuddered as she looked at that horrible mole on the crone’s right cheek.
“Yes, dearie,” whined the Hag, accepting the coins Vi handed to her. “They’ll go, all right. I’ll fix that. Now, here’s something for Blackie, and tell him it’s a chance of a lifetime. Mrs. Alex Wilson’s pearls, the great Wilson pearls, will be delivered to their country place Thursday night by automobile, a car with only the Wilson butler and one guard in it. The car will get there at seven o’clock in the night — and if Blackie don’t get them he’ll never get another such a chance at them.”
The Hag was creeping alongside the slowly moving car. Vi heard the message leaning from the window. The Elberts and their other guests wondered at the whispering between the glittering Vi and the loathsome Hag. The Hag, however, leaned close to Vi again.
“Tell Blackie it won’t be easy; tell him to have the whole mob, but for God’s sake not to miss this one!”
She fell back into the crowd as Vi turned back to her hosts apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” she said as their car neared the opera entrance, “but the Hag insists upon my hearing her troubles. I’ve tried to help her; to get her off the street in this pitiful begging, but she insists upon haunting the opera.”
Vi accepted the arm of an escort and the Elbert party moved under the marque to the foyer of the opera house, Vi in possession of two things she cherished — belief that she had set the trap for Mort Mitchell’s mob, and information that would make her even more solid with Blackie Rango.
Hardly had the Elbert party disappeared into the interior of the opera house, however, when the Hag of the Opera House, for the first time in a decade, lost all interest in the opera-going crowd. With surprising quickness for one of her age and dumpy figure, she slipped through the crowd on the pavement, and away from the opera. Ignoring her former benefactors who might still be mulcted, she disappeared down a cross street and boarded an automobile which waited there.
“Quick, Sam,” she snapped to the chauffeur, and Needle Sam did his stuff, taking the short cuts to Dapper Dan’s speak. At the garage, she left the car and traversed the secret way to Dan’s furthest back room and entered. Mort Mitchell was waiting there. He jumped from his chair as the Hag entered. It MUST be the Hag, that dumpy, uncouth figure, that revolting fang which dented her lower lip; that mouse-like mole which blemished the right side of her face.
“Hell!” Mort ejaculated, “I thought—”
The dumpy figure of the Hag straightened and a quick hand pulled the dirty shawl from the head. Another quick motion and Carlotta Wynn, the fake Hag of the Opera, pulled from her mouth an odd dental plate to which was attached the fang which protruded from her mouth. Another pull wrenched from her face the “mole,” the imitation such as marked the face of the real Hag. Quickly she wiped the grease paint from her face — and Carlotta, the moll, stood before the mob leader in the Hag’s habiliments. With an expression of disgust, she ripped the Hag’s rags from her body and stood before Mort in her undies.
“Had to get that filth off me before I could think or talk,” she said calmly. She slipped into a suit which she had left in the speakie room, ordered a drink by pressing a button and turned to face Mort, the mob leader and more than that to Carlotta.
“The trap’s set, Mort,” she said quietly. “Blackie Rango’s greed will not let him pass up a chance at the Alex Wilson’s pearls. If you don’t get him and his gorillas Thursday night, you’d better knuckle to Blackie’s orders — for you’ll never again get such a chance.”
Carlotta explained the set-up “tip” she got from Vivian — and her face contorted with hate as she told it.
“You get Blackie and his apes, Mort,” she said, vindictively, “and while you’re doing it, I’ll pay off my score.”
“You’ll lay off that dame,” Mort replied, angrily, “I’m not satisfied that she’s not regular. Hands off — till I give the word!”