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.
Firpo Cole entered on the right wings of the band platform, found a meeting chair and sat down. From where he was, he could watch Jugger Callahan fronting the band. Jugger caught sight of Firpo, snapped his fingers to the boys and the music trailed off. He spoke into the mike.
“Ladies and gentlemen, last night one of our beloved hostesses met a tragic end and out of respect to her I’d like everybody to keep thirty seconds of real silence.”
He bowed his head and checked his wrist-watch. Throughout the semi-dark hall, couples waited with their arms twined around each other. Some girl in the back giggled and said: “No.”
The thirty seconds were up. Jugger Callahan’s toes beat a tattoo and he snapped his fingers. “All right, boys. A one-a, a two-a, a three-a, scratch!” The band began Potato Head Blues and the couples started to sway again like puppets whose wires had suddenly been jerked.
Jugger walked over to Firpo. He patted his greased-back hair, obviously pleased that he had done the right thing by Ruth.
“Firpo,” said the band leader, “we already got sixty-two bucks collected. How much can you chip in?”
“For what?”
“Ruth’s funeral, of course,” replied Jugger.
“I’m not interested in Ruth’s funeral. There’s somebody else’s funeral I want to see about.”
“Uh-huh. I get you, Firpo, but you ought to leave that to the cops. You probably never even met the guy who did it.”
Firpo’s bloodshot eyes fixed themselves on the band leader’s face. “I won’t have far to go. That letter opener was stolen from here.”
“Say, that’s right, isn’t it? Ephraim come to me around eleven thirty last night and asked me if I’d taken it so it must have been stolen earlier.”
Firpo’s hands were in his pockets. There was something friendly and comforting about the feel of the automatic. He said: “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Sure, Firpo,” said Jugger, not too heartily. “Sure.”
The band leader returned to his post. The music ground on. Twenty sets, of three melodies each, every hour. Sixty dances in as many minutes with only an occasional break to give the customers a chance to buy more tickets.
The Smiling Troubadours never stopped playing, though every once in a while a musician left the stand. And, as the hours wore on and they became more tired, the music became faster and more frenzied.
Firpo stayed in his chair, watching the band leader. He didn’t intend letting Jugger out of his sight — not till he could trap him some way and prove to himself that here was the murderer of Ruth Bailey.
Simms reached backstage in the course of his investigations. He seemed as much in a fog as ever. He asked Firpo whether Ruth had had any jewelry on her dress when he’d seen the body. Firpo couldn’t remember and the police dick left.
The time went by and Firpo sat unmoving, watching Jugger Callahan with lackluster eyes. He tried to think of the murder of the only person he had ever cared for. What had Ruth said? That she was afraid? Of what?
Suddenly, it hit Firpo Cole like a ton of dynamite. Where was the five hundred dollars that had found its way into Ruth Bailey’s purse and where was the envelope that read This better be enough?
The police hadn’t said anything about the money or envelope so the murderer must have stolen both. There was no reason why the killer shouldn’t have taken the money but the envelope was a different matter. That typewritten sentence on it meant something to the murderer. Someone in the Tango Palace had probably thought that Ruth Bailey was blackmailing him. That very envelope had probably been written on one of the office typewriters.
Firpo frowned and the swollen lips pursed in thought. His job was to find out who had typed that envelope.
At two in the morning, the Smiling Troubadours gradually, almost reluctantly, stopped playing. There seemed to be a kind of weary excitement among them after the long grind. Customers filed out, spotlights went off and hostesses sat down to nurse their feet.
Firpo Cole fell into step beside Jugger Callahan as the band leader talked to friends, visited the washroom and finally went to his office. Jugger did not object. He imagined that Firpo felt lost — that he needed friendship. Firpo was like a dog that had lost its master and was trying to attach itself to someone else.
After Jugger had finished checking the night’s receipts with the business manager, he turned to Firpo. “We’re having a tea party tonight. How about coming along? A couple of reefers might do you good.”
Tea parties were a custom of long standing on every Saturday night at Jugger Callahan’s apartment. Any other time, Firpo Cole would have felt highly honored by the invitation, for these parties were attended only by the elite of the Tango Palace.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Firpo.
Ephraim Tuttle locked up the books, said he’d see them later and went to pay off the girls. Firpo and the band leader left the dance hall. They walked down Main, then turned up Sixth.
“Jugger,” asked Firpo Cole, “can you typewrite?”
“One finger stuff. Why?”
“It’s not important. Is there a file up in the office listing the girls’ addresses?”
“Of course.”
“Then anyone at the Tango could find out where Ruth lived.”
“I guess so, Firpo, but—”
“You could find out, too, couldn’t you?” cut in Firpo.
“What the hell are you getting at?”
“Forget it, Jugger.”
The band leader started to say something but stayed his reply. They turned in to an all-night drugstore. Here, for a fiver, the clerk forgot the narcotic laws and gave Jugger a twelve-ounce bottle of cannabis indica. The band leader then bought a carton of cigarettes and some brown cigarette paper.
They went outside and hailed a taxi.
Chapter Four
Paid in Full
Jugger Callahan’s apartment was large and comfortable. Most of the boys from the band were already there. Mona Leeds and Evelyn Dorn, Ephraim Tuttle’s current doll, were making and serving sandwiches to the guests. Jugger lolled in an overstuffed chair and Firpo sat right beside him watching the preparations.
Monkey Harris and a few of the other boys had sliced open the cigarettes from the carton and emptied the tobacco into a wide, shallow pan. Now they took the bottle of cannabis indica and poured the greenish-brown liquid into the pan. They allowed the tobacco to soak in the poisonous drug for several minutes, then put a match to it — which served both to burn up the excess alcohol and to dry the tobacco. This done, they began to wrap the residue in the brown cigarette paper. They worked diligently and the heap of these homemade marihuana cigarettes grew steadily.
Jugger said to Firpo Cole: “These give a much better kick than the ready made kind.”
“I never tried them,” replied Firpo. “When did you first start?” He wanted to hear Jugger talk — to wait for that mistake, that slip of the tongue which would point the finger of guilt at him.
Jugger Callahan was in an expansive mood. He said: “Back in Chi, in the Capone days. A bunch of us muggle-hounds would get together and play hot music long before the word ‘swing’ was ever invented. Today the high school punks have taken over. They call themselves jitterbugs and if we send good we’re out of this world. They call the clarinet a licorice stick, a trombone a grunt iron, the bass fiddle a doghouse — and most of the time I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
“Yeah,” said Firpo. “Those sure were the good old days, all right, in Chi.”