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.
Kirkwood looked at me with an impersonal and very country-club stare but didn’t bother to say hello. I got the idea without much trouble that, so far as he was concerned, I ranked a lot below guys like caddies and locker-room attendants. He probably spoke to them. It was either that or else he was putting on the swank front to cover up a bad case of the jitters. Some lads are like that.
Apparently they had talked the case pretty well out before I was called in. Kirkwood said curtly to the boss: “You understand that you’re to use only the threat of publicity but that the papers must not get a whisper of it. If you think you’re apt to bungle it...”
The boss starched his voice a little, said, “International knows how to handle a case, Mr. Kirkwood. There isn’t a press agent in the organization.”
“Very well,” Kirkwood said in his down-the-nose manner. “And Miss... er, Jordan is to report to me what has happened immediately afterward.”
He spared the boss half a nod as a good-by, didn’t include Sue or me and beat it.
I said, “He’ll have to take four hot showers to get himself clean after associating with us.”
“I think he’s too handsome for words,” Sue purred.
“Not for some words,” I said.
Tim Harper rumbled, “You don’t have to fall in love with him. All you have to do is work for him. So get going — or are both of you waiting for wheelchairs?”
“Am I supposed to guess what this is all about, boss?”
“Sue can tell you. Beat it — and take this triple atrocity with you.”
I gathered he meant the three apes so I picked them up. They weighed about six pounds. I said, “What’ll I do with ’em?”
“Think something up.”
In the outer office, I told Sue: “I know I don’t catch on very quick but to date this all seems very screwy to me.”
“Never mind, darling,” she said. “Just leave the brain work to me.”
When I put the three apes down on a desk, they tumbled over and the credit line underneath said, “Made in Japan.” I said, “That reminds me. I’ve got an aunt in Japan.”
“The Japanese branch of the family?”
“Have your fun. This is Aunt Frieda and she’s on one of those world tours. She sends me a carved elephant from every place she hits. The score now is sixteen and I never did like elephants. What’s this all about?”
“I’m so hungry, Kerry. I could talk better if you’d take me to dinner.”
“Sure,” I said. “And we’ll make it Dutch.”
Over wienerschnitzel at the Bauerhoff, Sue told me. It seemed Kirkwood was married to the daughter of an old dame, named Helen K. Woodring. I knew about her vaguely: a widow with money, more or less social position, and a yen for chasing around with guys half her age. The daughter was blind, Sue told me.
“A break for her,” I said. “She doesn’t have to look at that smooth slug she’s married to.”
“Perhaps some of us girls like ’em smooth, you old rough diamond, you,” said Sue, surrounding wienerschnitzel in her stride. “Anyway, she married this Paul Kirkwood about five years ago. He came out from the east and nobody knew much about him except that he could make a golf course sit up and beg. He’s a broker now but I gather he still golfs better than he brokes.”
“Even if he was open champ, I still wouldn’t like him.”
“He’s probably all right, I think. But the point is that the Woodring lady has the protégé complex, provided the protégés are young and good-looking. Two years ago she was backing a candidate for Clark Gable’s niche; next it was a young second Caruso and now it’s the founder of a cult, the cult of Man’s Triumph Over Evil.”
“It’ll be a flop. The name’s too long for headlines.”
“I gather it hasn’t cost her much in the shape of money yet,” Sue said, inspecting her beer stein carefully on the theory, maybe, that there was a trap-door in the bottom and she’d find more beer under that. “But I suppose Kirkwood is afraid the cult will operate too heavily on her purse and he’s beating trouble to the punch. Anyway, he hired us to find out about this grand lama of the three apes.”
“That’s where the monkeys came from?”
“They’re the symbol of the cult. I bought the monstrosity when I joined up, so I brought it to the office as evidence for my expense account. How about more Pilsener, Kerry?”
“You can have all you can pay for, sweetheart.”
We had more and Sue drew the rest of the picture. A lady op had been indicated so Harper had requisitioned Sue and she had dropped out to the cult headquarters in a big, old house on top of Mount Washington where you could see all over the city. The grand lama operated under the name of Doctor Sivaja but his real name was Eddie Levy and he was a disbarred lawyer from St. Louis who had done a rap in Atlanta for abusing the mails. Sue had got his prints by dropping her vanity case practically between his ankles so he had to pick it up and the F.B.I. had done the rest.
That evening we were to see him, put the cards under his nose and tell him we’d wise the newspapers to his real identity if he didn’t fold his turban, steal away in the night and lay off gullible old gals like Mrs. Woodring. Only it had to be all bluff because we couldn’t wise the papers and maybe let Mrs. Woodring in for a lot of kidding publicity.
“But I have a hunch,” Sue said. “I’ve a hunch it won’t be as easy as that.”
“Nuts,” I said. “No guy on the make can stand up under the threat of publicity.”
“You haven’t seen him, Kerry. He’s different than the usual faker. He acts as though he really had something.”
“So the great Jordan is beaten before she starts.”
Sue gave me her poor-chap-you’re-so-dumb smile. “No, little man. I merely said it wouldn’t be quite as easy as you, in your naïve fashion, expect. I know something about psychology.”
Sue can get under my skin more easily than any other dame in the world. I said, “You and your psychology. Five bucks says he’ll be traveling inside of forty-eight hours.”
“You’ve made a bet.” Sue grinned.
The waiter brought two checks like I’d told him. I picked mine up and Sue took hers, began to fumble in her purse. Her face got apologetic.
She said, “Kerry, you can’t guess what I’ve done.”
“Yes, I can. You’ve left all your money in your other pants. O.K., give me the check.”
Walking out beside me, she cooed: “Thank you, Kerry, for the lovely dinner.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for the lovely buggy ride.”
Doctor Sivaja — or Eddie Levy — was a dark-faced, young-looking bird, who wore a black turban and conventional tuxedo. He did a nice, quiet, convincing talk that was half religion, half modern psychology. He talked from a dais in what had been the living-room of the old house while a circle of about thirty women and five men, who looked sheepish, as though their wives had dragged them there, listened piously. The symbol of the three apes was everywhere — worked into the hangings, the decorations, the upholstery of the furniture.
After the talk the doc did a little bow and disappeared through black curtains at one side of the room. The audience came out of its trance and began to straggle from the room.
“He draws a nice house,” I told Sue. “The woman in gray is president of a woman’s club, the one behind her knocks out two grand a week writing movies and I think the dame with the long nose and jaw is a socialite from the polo set.”
“Are you sure of her,” Sue wanted to know, “or are you just making that guess because she looks like a horse?”
“Where was la Woodring tonight?”
“Kirkwood promised to keep her home tonight.”