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.
McFee lifted his head. He clawed at his taped lips, raised up in his chair. Art Kline smacked him down again.
“One peep outta you—”
Metz’s agile eyes had been racing around the room. They jumped at Kline. “Cut that!” he said tersely. And then, in a loud voice, “I’m coming. We been in a little game.”
Metz’ eyes lighted on a tier of bookshelves. On the top shelf were some decks of cards and a box of poker chips. Beside the bookshelves stood a card table. Moving fast, Metz grabbed the table with one hand, cards and box of chips with the other. Monty Welch took them away from him.
“Set ’em up,” Metz said.
In the kitchen on the sink were some glasses and a bottle of gin. Metz carried these into the living room. He placed them on the floor beside the card table, which Welch had set up in front of McFee’s chair. McFee stared at Metz ironically. Art Kline stood over him, bewildered. Metz carefully upset the card table, spilling chips and cards. He threw some money on the floor.
Outside, Hurley shouted, “McFee, I told you t’open the door!” and rattled the handle.
“Maybe he’s pulling his pants on,” Roy Cruikshank said patiently.
“Don’t get excited.” Metz spoke irritably. “I’m coming.” He ripped the tape off McFee’s lips. “Tell ’em anything you please — it won’t stick. Not in this town, it won’t. We got all the alibis we need.” To the other two he said, “McFee and Art tangled over a pair of jacks, see? Art laid him out.”
Metz poured gin into a glass. He drank half of it, spilled the remainder on the carpet. He wiped his lips on a handkerchief and opened the door.
“Hello, Pete!” Metz said.
“Oh, it’s you!” Hurley’s bitter button eyes went tight in their sockets. He shoved past Metz, saying, “Where’s McFee?”
Roy Cruikshank tailed him into the living room. Cruikshank was a slouching pink lad in his thirties. He had an egg-shaped stomach, evangelical hands and cynical, indolent eyes.
“Party,” Cruikshank said lazily. “Well, well.”
Hurley’s hostile eyes made their calculations. Art Kline sat on the couch, nursing his jaw. Welch, leaning back in a chair near the table, squeezed five cards in his left hand, lighted a cigarette with his right. McFee’s face was a mess.
“What happened, Handsome?” Hurley muttered.
McFee smiled with bruised lips. “Ask Metz.”
“Art and McFee mixed over a pair of Jacks,” Metz said with annoyed distinctness. “McFee smacked Art. Art laid him out.”
“How long you been playing?”
“Half an hour.”
Hurley flared out, “The superintendent told Roy and me—”
“It don’t matter what the superintendent told you. McFee’s been here half an hour. Coupla days ago, out to the Shawl, McFee said, ‘Joe, why don’t you and the boys drop in for a session some time? If the missus and me are out you’ll find the key under the mat.’ There’s a lad for you! So we dropped in tonight — around two. We played rummy until McFee came.”
Hurley looked at Welch and Kline. “That right?”
“Check.”
“Me, too.” Kline rubbed his jaw. “That guy packs a cannon in his kick.”
Glinting amusement surfaced the dark violence in McFee’s eyes. Hurley put a cigarette in his mouth, jiggled it angrily. Reddening, he said, “You heard these boys, McFee?”
“Sure!” McFee answered. “Gimme a drink, some’dy.”
As Cruikshank handed McFee the glass a faint irritability stirred his cynical indolence. “Sure that’s all, McFee?”
“That’s all right now,” McFee answered deliberately.
But Hurley had a couple of kicks left. To Metz he said vehemently, “I want the how of this Gaiety business.”
“Some’dy phoned the Shawl,” Metz replied cautiously. “Who was it, Art?”
“I dunno.”
Metz waved his hand. “That’s how it is, Pete. Tough, though. Damon was a nice kid. And Melrose is going to be damn good and sore.”
Hurley suddenly became enraged. “You got your gall sitting there telling me—” He became inarticulate, his face a network of purple veins. “By God! This town—”
Metz asked quietly, “What you want to know, Pete?”
Hurley took out a handkerchief, wiped the palm of his hands, put it away. He said huskily, “I wanna know where you boys were between eleven and one.”
“I’ll tell you,” Metz said confidingly. “We were having a little supper in Sam Melrose’s rooms at the Shawl. Art, Monty, Tony, Max Beck, Fred Pope and me. Mabel Leclair put on a shimmy number. She left the Gaiety around eleven. One o’clock, Tony pulled out. He had a date. Art and Monty and me came here.” Metz added lazily, “Anything else, Pete?”
Hurley’s throat sounded dry as he said, “And that Leclair queen didn’t hand Ranee Damon five grand for the Shelldon file; and—”
“Why, Pete!”
“—You birds didn’t walk Damon away with a hole in his chest—”
Metz asked Welch and Kline seriously. “Either you boys got Damon in your pockets?” And then, “Who’s been giving you the run-around, Pete?”
Hurley glared at McFee. The latter said nothing. McFee’s eyes were hot and violent, but he smiled with his lips and Hurley pulled his own eyes back into his head.
“And you ain’t heard Tony Starke bust his neck in a smash on Hawthorne?”
“Gosh, no! How’d it happen?”
Hurley flared out disgustedly, “Mercy Hospital. He’ll live.”
Metz stood up. “We better go buy Tony a bouquet.” He put on his hat. He buttoned his waistcoat. Art Kline got into his coat and shook down his trousers. Monty Welch carefully smoothed down his hair. Metz smiled. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, McFee. We had a hot party.”
As they reached the door Hurley said sourly, “The vice detail raids the Shawl tonight. Slattery and his boys. Midnight.”
“Saturday’s a swell date to knock over a road-house doing our business—”
“We got to make a play, ain’t we? The Mayor’s coming.”
“Ohhh,” said Metz. “Hizoner. Well!”
They went away.
9
Roy Cruikshank wrapped his evangelical hands around glassware and poured himself a drink. He set his hat on the back of his pink head. “Those lads were giving you the works, McFee?”
The latter jeered, “And why didn’t I tell Hurley about it?” He flexed his shoulder muscles, began to walk the floor. “Why didn’t I tell him those pansies tailed Mayo and me in that sedan to Hawthorne Street? Roy, I told Hurley plenty before I left the Gaiety.”
Hurley blew up. “I mighta called the wagon, sure. And Morry Lasker’d have had ’em bailed out before I’d booked ’em at the desk. If it had come to court — which ain’t likely — Metz and his lads’d have brought a sockful of alibis, and Lasker’d have given McFee the haw-haw for his tag-in-the-dark yarn. ‘Y’honor-gen’lemen-the-jury, the witness admits the only light in the theater was that of an electric torch. How could he positively have identified my clients—’ ” Hurley jiggled his cigarette. “The papers’d pan the cops and the D. A. for not making it stick. And me out airing my pants.”
The Tribune man crooned, “Now he’s getting sore.”
“Whatdayou want for two hundred bucks a month? If I can crack the Melrose drag, fine. If I pull a dud I lose my badge. Lookit Frank Ward. Chased Melrose doing seventy and give him a ticket. Frank lost his job — and five kids.” Hurley jerked his hat over his eyes, stood up. “The Chief said to me, ‘Hurley, you’re a good copper. But don’t get too good.’ I ain’t going to.”