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.
He found a cigarette and lit it very carefully, his face dark and taut with thought. Finally he said, “That changes things. Or, rather, it accomplishes what I wanted accomplished, although in a different way. Have your agency send its bill to my office.”
“You’re not interested in who killed him or why?”
“There’s no reason why I should be, is there?”
“When I’ve finished,” I told him, “you can figure that out for yourself.” I gave him the scenario from the moment we’d walked into Sivaja’s study until the time I’d picked my chin out of the blue grass, minus all my belongings, including the letters and the three brass apes.
As I wound up, Kirkwood was looking faintly worried and also pretty sore and not a little contemptuous. He said nastily, “You call yourself a private detective and come to me with a story like that?”
“That’s my story,” I said, “and I’m stuck with it. The point is, are those letters important enough to you so that you want ’em back?”
Kirkwood said, still nasty, “After a performance like this, you think you should get them back?”
“They won’t shoot a guy for trying,” he said, “except sometimes. Now if it was the letters that someone was after in particular, it spells blackmail. With Sivaja dead, have you any idea who would have blackmail notions in connection with Mrs. Woodring?”
Kirkwood said he didn’t. But he looked thoughtful.
I said, “How about the butler?”
“Osgood? That’s ridiculous. He’s been with Mrs. Woodring for ten years. If that’s a sample of your thinking—”
“Maybe it isn’t as lousy thinking as it seems,” I said. I was getting a little fed up with his down-the-nose attitude. “It so happens that outside of Miss Jordan, Osgood was the only person I’d informed that I was going to show up here when I did. And it’s sort of plain that whoever took the pot shot at me was waiting for me and that he knew who he was waiting for. Also, Ossie has been prowling around outside just this evening. Of course, he might have passed the word to someone else after I’d talked to him on the phone.”
Kirkwood said, “Ridiculous,” again but he wasn’t so sure of it this time.
I stood up, said, “Whoever got the letters, you want them back. That’s the main idea.”
“And how do you propose to get them back?”
“Whoever has them will want money for them. In order to get money, they have to ask for it. Just as soon as you or Mrs. Woodring receive any communication about them, let me know. We’ll go on from that point.”
Kirkwood agreed to let me know but I wasn’t too certain whether he meant it or was just “yessing” me to get me on my way. He let me out without benefit of butler and I started a six-block hike to Western and Washington, where I figured I could find a cab.
I tried to do a bit of thinking while I hiked but, after all, a guy has to have a few facts to build his guesses on. I didn’t even feel too sure of my guess about Osgood. If he had been with the Woodring dame for ten years, he must have had plenty of chances in that time to blackmail her if he was that kind of a guy. Maybe, at that, it hadn’t been the letters that were wanted when someone let fly the slug at me; maybe it had been the three apes.
Those apes were certainly running through the whole thing, even to the extent of finding counterparts among the people involved. Sivaja had bragged that he spoke no evil and he undoubtedly wouldn’t speak any from now on. And Anne Kirkwood, poor woman, didn’t have to hold her hands over her eyes like the second ape because those blind eyes couldn’t see evil right in front of them.
That was stretching the comparison a little, because very probably neither Kirkwood nor la Woodring were what you could call evil. My guess was that Kirkwood was a gigolo who had married himself into a dough-heavy family; and Mrs. Woodring’s tired coyness was sickening rather than nasty. But, even so, I wouldn’t have wanted either of them before my eyes long at a time.
As for the third ape, the one that couldn’t hear any evil, I felt as though I could match that one, myself. If I’d been holding my fingers in my ears all night, I couldn’t have known any less about what was really going on. That wouldn’t have bothered me too much if I hadn’t been working with Sue Jordan. I knew that sooner or later I’d probably find out what it was all about but when I got to that point, I had a hunch, I’d probably discover Sue sitting there and waiting for me.
At Western I found a Yellow and gave the hacker my address. When we got to the apartment where I park my extra shirt, I said, “Listen, cap, I haven’t got any money on me.”
The hacker stuck a steamboat-jawed face through the door at me and growled, “You’re the second ginzo that’s pulled that one on me tonight. What do I look like, Santa Claus?”
“No,” I said, “although a beard would improve you. But what I’m trying to tell you is that if you’ll come upstairs with me, I’ll find some dough.”
He looked happier and we went inside the lobby. It was dark except for a floor lamp in a corner. Somebody sitting in a chair in another corner got up and started for me. My hand began to go for my gun before I realized I didn’t have any gun and then I started backward, getting tangled up with the cabdriver.
The guy coming toward me said, “Hello, Thorne. I’ve been waiting to see you.”
He came farther into the light and I saw it was Fred Manners. I said, “For cat’s sake, don’t do things to me like that. How do you know I haven’t got a weak ticker? Have you got a buck?”
“Huh?” Manners said. He had a friendly, kiddish-looking face and it was puzzled.
“What I said was, have you got a buck?”
He still seemed as though he was trying to add things up and make sense but he said, “Oh, sure,” and fished a dollar bill out of his pocket. I passed the bill to the cabdriver.
Up in my apartment I found some Teacher’s Highland after knocking over a couple of Aunt Frieda’s elephants that I’d parked wherever I could find room. I cussed the elephants, picked them up and poured a couple of drinks. After I had them poured, Manners said he didn’t use it, so I slid mine down and held the other one ready to follow when reinforcements were needed.
He scratched one pale eyebrow and grinned uncertainly. He said, “I’ll bet you wonder why I showed up here at this hour.”
“If you could find anyone to lay the bet with, you’d win.”
“Well, it’s this way. This little thing tonight does me out of my job as the doc’s body-guard.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But that doesn’t make me the WPA.”
“Sure, I know. I just thought — well, I’ve had some experience and I thought maybe International might have something.”
I said, “It’s a lot too late for kidding. Or do you really expect me to believe you stayed up all night just so you could make out an employment application? What’s on your mind?”
“That’s really it,” he said. He spread his knees, put a hand on each knee and looked at me straight. “At least, that’s mostly it. I knew that in order to get a job with International, you have to have something more than just a wild desire to please. Well, I’ve got something more and it’s too hot to let lie around forever. Your agency would like to solve tonight’s killing, wouldn’t it?”
“Not particularly,” I said. “That’s the police department’s worry. What made you think we’d be interested?”
He laughed at me, said, “Now you’re trying some kidding. After all, you’re working for Kirkwood, aren’t you?”
“What would you know about that?”
“Pal-enty, Thorne, pal-enty. Do you want to hear what I’ve got to tell?”