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.
“The only thing that flowed freer than money,” continued the band leader reminiscently, “was blood. We used to have classy apartments and buy a lot of jewelry for our women.”
Firpo suddenly reached into his pocket and held the brooch out. “You mean like this thing you bought for Mona?”
Jugger Callahan didn’t bite. “I bought that for Mona? What you getting at, Firpo?”
“Haven’t you ever seen it before?” asked Firpo Cole.
“No... yes, I think Ruth Bailey wore something like that.”
Firpo frowned. Jugger was too old a hand to be caught that crudely. He said: “This is a star sapphire. It’s pretty valuable.”
Evelyn Dorn was hovering over them with a sandwich tray. Her doe eyes bulged. “Geeze! A star sapphire.” She took it and examined it reverently. “That’s what I always wanted to get — a star sapphire.” She sighed. “But I guess I ain’t got what it takes. Nobody’s given me any — not even one yet.”
“I’d still like to know what you were getting at, Firpo,” said the band leader.
Firpo retrieved the brooch. “Let’s drop it.”
Evelyn Dorn suddenly snapped her fingers. “Hell, Firpo, I forgot to tell you!”
“What?”
“That gangster — that Rocco Pace is on the warpath after you. You better watch out.”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Jugger.
“That’s all right,” said Firpo. “It’s nothing to worry about. I just stole Rocco’s gun.”
Jugger Callahan looked at him queerly but made no comment. Evelyn Dorn wandered off. Firpo leaned back and closed his eyes. An idea was stirring within him.
Turnip Billings, who played tenor horn, called out: “All finished, boys. Jugger Callahan and his Twelve Shtoonks will now get high.”
He tossed a few reefers to Firpo Cole and Jugger Callahan.
Jugger Callahan was a breather and it was not long before a quiet contentment seemed to come over him. After a while, he fixed glazed eyes on Firpo and said: “You’re not running after me because you like my mustache. You think I killed Ruth Bailey.”
Firpo Cole, who was bluffing his smoke, nodded.
“What’ll you do about it?”
“When I make sure, I’ll kill you.” Firpo’s voice was dispassionate but as certain of itself as a pile driver.
Jugger Callahan laughed. His good humor was not even ruffled. “You two-bit grifter, you talk big. How come you think I killed your Ruth Bailey?”
“She was in love with you, Jugger — really in love — the way a bum like you couldn’t understand.”
“I liked Ruth, but that’s all, Firpo. I never two-timed on Mona.”
“I know,” replied Firpo. “I would of made you marry Ruth if you had.”
The band leader laughed again. “Pickpocket to marriage broker. That’s good. But you haven’t told me how you think I come to kill Ruth.”
They were talking in low tones. The others around them still laughed and shouted boisterously. The drug had not yet begun to take effect.
Firpo said: “I figure it this way. You put a lot of insurance on the old Tango Palace and then faked a fire by soaking the drapes and everything else in oil and gasoline.”
“You better keep those ideas to yourself,” said Jugger Callahan a little more seriously.
“I don’t have to. An insurance dick thinks that. He found what used to be oil cans in the ruins. You also forgot that stone I showed you on your desk, because Ruth had to go back to the Palace that night and she saw it there. You must have been fixing for the fire about that time and you probably saw her take it.”
“So now you’re calling Ruth Bailey a crook.”
Firpo’s hands began to tremble and he waited a few moments before replying. “She took it because she knew you bought it for Mona and she was jealous. She started wearing it every day after that, Jugger, just to get Mona’s goat but you thought it was her way of saying that she knew you started that fire.”
“Not so fast, Firpo. I lost over twelve hundred dollars in cold cash during the fire and you don’t think I’d be crazy enough to leave it up there if I burned the place down.”
“I know that angle too, Jugger, but there’s no proof you left the dough to burn and that it isn’t in your pocket right now.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the band leader uttered softly. “And what do you think I did after the fire?”
“Ruth was wearing that thing and you thought she was blackmailing you so you tried to buy her off. You slipped five hundred bucks into her purse with a note saying that it better be enough. But she kept wearing the brooch and you thought she wanted more sugar so you stole Tuttle’s letter opener, figuring that anyone at the Palace could be blamed. Then you killed her with it. It had a sharp point. It must have been easy.”
“That’s a lot of shtush, Firpo, and you know it. You’re just excited about the killing. When you have a good night’s sleep you’ll decide you couldn’t prove a thing.”
“That’s the only reason you’re still alive, Jugger.”
Ephraim Tuttle had come in and walked over to them in time to hear the last sentence. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Firpo’s puking about some kind of star sapphire and that I killed Ruth Bailey,” responded Jugger.
“Oh, he’s just weed-wacky,” pronounced the business manager. “I don’t know why the hell we let him louse up the place around here.” He walked away.
The doorbell to the apartment rang. Mona Leeds came in from the kitchen and said: “See who it is, Firpo.” He went through the vestibule. It was Rocco Pace standing at the door.
“I thought I’d find you here,” said the racketeer.
“Do you want to come in?”
“That ain’t what I’m here for. I get a plenty good jag with dago-red.”
“Then what did you want?” asked Firpo.
“Why’d you hook my gat?”
“I want to borrow it for a while, Rocco.”
Rocco Pace gave a vague smile. “You liked that jane a lot, didn’t you, Firpo?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And you have to go gunning with my rod.”
“I’ll give it back to you after, Rocco.”
“Let’s have it now.”
“I said I want to keep it for a while.”
Rocco Pace’s voice was silken. “You know better than to give me any backtalk, Firpo. Let’s have it.”
Firpo Cole hesitated a moment, then surrendered. “O.K.,” he said bleakly and handed the automatic to the racketeer.
Rocco Pace whipped a polka-dotted handkerchief out of his breast pocket and carefully wiped the gun. Then he returned it to Firpo. “You ought to know better than to sport a rod with my prints on it.” He started off, then paused. “I don’t know if it’ll help you, Firpo, but one of the guys up at the Tango Palace has been plunging pretty heavily with a bookie I know. It’s practically bankrupted him. You can have it for what it’s worth.”
“Who is it?”
“I blowed my whistle plenty. It ought to satisfy you.”
“Thanks, Rocco. You’re white.”
“Think nothing of it,” said the racketeer breezily.
Firpo Cole returned to the living-room.
The tea party was in full session. All the lights were out but for a small, red bulb in a floor lamp. Firpo could distinguish the figures as they moved only to lift the reefers to their mouth for short, quick puffs. Mona Leeds reclined next to Jugger, in the easy chair that Firpo had vacated.
An expensive phonograph was playing repeats of a swing record as slowly as it was able. The record was Armstrong’s version of Knockin’ a Jug and in one corner Monkey Harris was beating an accompaniment on a tom-tom. His slim, yellowed fingers beat rapidly. The test of a good musician, on these occasions, was the number of beats and variations the player could get in, between two chords — and Monkey Harris was rated highly.