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.
“I didn’t ask for this break, Corbett, but I’m taking it. Don’t try anything — so help me, I’ll let you have it!”
“Relax. I’m no hero.”
“You’ve got a gun. Hand it over — butt-first.”
I minded like a little lamb. He took my thirty-eight and thrust it under his belt. Then he turned to his mother.
“I’ll never see you again, Mom.”
She stood there looking at him and trembling. He started for the door. It was touching. I could have kicked the dear old lady’s teeth right down her throat. I didn’t even dare to think of what Keever would have to say when I gave him the lowdown on this deal.
Peterson slammed the door behind him, and I heard him racing down the stairs. I faced his mother.
“Have you a phone?”
She didn’t hear me. I didn’t see any phone and decided there wouldn’t be one. I went downstairs and into the street in time to see Peterson taking two dollars’ worth of rubber off my tires as he rounded a corner. There was a drug store on the corner. I phoned the cops. Then I took a deep breath and called Keever.
Somehow I forgot to mention the part Peterson’s mother had played, and that didn’t help my story. Keever emitted something that sounded like a death rattle; then he roared: “You blundering fool! You’ve made a laughingstock of my office! Get back here, and get back here fast!”
He hung up. That was all that kept me from telling him what he could do with his job. Of course, I could have called him back. I walked out of the booth instead. I knew deep down that this was one time when Keever had a legitimate beef. If I had been in his shoes, I’d have taken them off and thrown them at me.
It was well after eleven, so I hopped a streetcar and got off at Mike’s, my favorite eatery. The place was beginning to fill up. Not until I had squeezed into a wall bench did I discover that the man in the adjoining seat was Shorty Waxman.
“It’s a small world.”
Waxman looked up from his lunch.
“Oh, hello, Ben. What do you mean, it’s a small world?”
“I just left one of your former clients — rather, he just left me, borrowing my car and my gun. Sam Peterson.”
Waxman’s face twitched.
“Oh, yes. I remember Peterson. What’s he been up to?”
“Habitual Criminal Act. Keever just discovered that the Harmon job was his fourth. I went out to pick him up but had a bad case of butter-fingers.”
Waxman suddenly looked as if he needed a blood transfusion. His round little eyes widened until they seemed about to pop from their sockets. He choked on his food.
“Let me out of here, Ben! I just remembered something I forgot to do. Excuse, please!”
He fairly fought his way over me before I could slide out of the seat. At the cashier’s desk he threw down a bill and ran to the phone booths without waiting for his change. He was in a booth for about two minutes; then he raced out again and made his exit. I regarded the lunch he had left. It was virtually all there. I ordered and took my time eating. Waxman had left not only his lunch. He had left food for thought.
Chapter Two
Where There’s a Will There’s a Slaying
It was one o’clock when I walked into the Criminal Courts Building, which housed Keever’s office. I had intended to duck Keever until he cooled off, but curiosity gave me courage. I wanted to find out why news of Peterson’s pick-up and escape had sent Waxman on the run. But I didn’t get to Keever’s office. Pop Martin, the elevator starter, stopped me the moment he spied me.
“Gee, Ben, am I glad to see you! Keever’s had everybody on your trail. You’re to meet him at the Mercury Tower — Waxman’s office.”
“Waxman? What’s with Waxman?”
“Murder. Somebody got him half an hour ago!”
I used a cab. Half a block from the Mercury Tower I had the driver stop. I got out and crossed the street to a crummy-looking coupe on which a patrolman was placing a ticket. It was my coupe. It was in a parking meter stall, and the flag was up.
“Hold it, pal. That’s my car.”
The cop recognized me. He grinned gloatingly.
“It makes no difference to me that you’re from the D.A.’s office, pal. I seen my duty, and I done it.”
“Oh, you did? I suppose you reported finding my car. There’s been a circular out on it for a couple of hours and—”
The ticket was snatched from under the windshield wiper and torn to bits. The cop almost burst into tears. “For the love of Mike, don’t tell anyone about this! It’d break me!”
I regarded him thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take your advice.” I walked on to the Mercury Tower, took a kidding from a couple of patrolmen on guard at the door and paused to scan the list of tenants. My memory had been correct. Jimmie Harmon’s real estate office was in the same building, a couple of floors below Waxman’s.
There was a mob of reporters outside Waxman’s office.
“Give out,” begged Lou Byrd of the Globe. Like the others, he was too desperate to rib me about my stolen car. “That bird-brained boss of yours won’t give us a line, and this case is the hottest thing in years. A lawyer getting bumped is something that happens seldom.”
“Too seldom,” I said, and shrugged my way through them. Waxman’s reception room was deserted save for a patrolman posted at the door, but his private office was so packed that there was hardly room for the corpse.
It was an all-out case. Dain Carrothers, Homicide’s smartest cop, had a whole army at work. They milled over Waxman’s body like a gang of females over a new baby. The body lay on its face in front of the safe, the door of which was closed. The arms were flung out, and there was an ugly slit in the back of the coat. There was no doubt about how the job had been accomplished — Shorty had been done in with a shiv.
“Well, thanks for coming around!”
I turned to face Keever. He spoke from across the room, where he was buttonholing an old guy in an elevator starter’s gold braid. He beckoned me over.
“This is Corwin, the starter. He saw everybody who came into the building. You may be interested to know that he has identified this man as a visitor.”
Keever exhibited a rogue’s gallery set, complete with fingerprints and profile and full-face photos of Sam Peterson. I asked Corwin: “When was he here?”
“He came into the building at about a quarter to twelve. About fifteen minutes after that Mr. Waxman arrived. Then, about twenty minutes passed, and this man left the building.”
Keever looked me up and down. His eyes were accusing slits. “I hope you’re satisfied, Ben. When you let Peterson escape you cost a human life — the life of my colleague and a member of the bar!”
I laughed in Keever’s face, and he reddened, for he knew why I laughed. During Waxman’s lifetime, he had called him every kind of shyster that ever breathed, denouncing him on more than one occasion to the grievance committee of the Bar Association. But now that Shorty had passed out of this world, Keever would probably show up at the Bar Association meeting to read his eulogy. Among lawyers the only good lawyer is a dead one.
“Your theory of this case interests me,” I told Keever. “What if Peterson did show up here? Wasn’t it natural for him to come running to his lawyer? Waxman defended him before — he must have wanted to hire him again.”
“Hire him, my eye! He didn’t want to hire Waxman; he wanted revenge! He guessed that Waxman had spilled the beans about those three raps out West. He was positive it was Waxman, for his own lawyer was the only person he had told. That takes care of the motive angle. And when we nail Peterson, we’ll take care of him!”