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.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah! I said framed. My man went stir-bugs up there in the Big House, and no wonder. Baldy Ross, his partner, and a straight-shooting guy, gets lit out in Chi with a cokie that’s a rat. A copper gets bumped off and the rat turns state’s evidence to save his stinking hide. Baldy swings because my man’s in stir and can’t spring him.”
Her pink fists clenched.
“The cokie that shot the copper’s dead now — they put him on the spot for the rat he was.”
The girl’s grey eyes narrowed.
“Then what happens? Well, if there’s one guy the Ghost’s crazy about, it’s his kid brother. The Kid’s a wild one but my man can hold him. He keeps him outa the racket, sends him to college. While the Ghost’s in the ‘Can’ some wise yegg gets the Kid coked up and they pull a job. A watchman gets knocked off. You got nothing on the Kid but circumstantial evidence, but you send him up the river and he fries, across the court from where the Ghost is raving in a strait-jacket.
“The Ghost’s already a little nuts from the bullets he gets in his head when that German ace shoots him down in France — but he’s a genius just the same. He comes outa the Big House completely bugs. What they did to Baldy and the Kid turns him into a mad killer.
“I been waiting for him, not touching our stake. I figure if I can get him to Europe I can nurse that killer streak outa him.
“Then what happens? That black-haired flossie, Spanish Lil gets her hooks into him and he takes the stake I’d helped him make, and lams it with her. She takes him for the wad and the Ghost is flat, and more bugs than ever.”
“Well, what of it, Dizzy?” the D.A. cut in impatiently, shooting a hurried look at his watch.
“Just this, big boy. The Ghost taught me all he knows. He taught me how to fly, among other things, and how to work rackets the flatties never heard of. And I can spot the Ghost’s technique through a flock of stone walls. Just about now he’s got two things on his mind — dough and revenge.
“Listen! Someone will pay handsome to get this D.A. from Chi back. And don’t forget — he prosecuted Baldey Ross — he’s the guy that swung Baldy!”
She paused a moment to let her words sink in.
“This is the Ghost’s work all right. You’ll never find him but I think I can. And I can spring this bozo Burke for you, and get the guy that double-crossed me. But I want to do it legal. All I ask is a plane, a fast one, with a machine-gun on it, and your say-so to go ahead.”
The district attorney’s laugh grated through the silence of the room.
“For once I think you’re really dizzy,” he said.
His sarcasm cut the girl like the flick of a whip. Her face went white.
“Then you won’t—”
“Take it easy for a minute, Dizzy, and let me talk,” the big man interrupted not unkindly. The beaten look in the girl’s eyes touched him in spite of himself. “In the first place the Ghost is still in Europe. I’d have been tipped off the moment he stepped off a boat.”
“I think you’re wrong there, big boy, but — go on.”
The man took another surreptitious glance at his watch.
“It won’t be long now, Dizzy, so I don’t mind telling you a few things,” he went on. “We’ve got this Burke business on ice.”
He took an envelope from his pocket and drew out a soiled sheet of paper.
“Here is the ransom letter. For once we outsmarted the newspaper boys. They know it exists but they don’t know what it says. Listen!”
He read:
“UNLESS HALF A MILLION DOLLARS IS FORTHCOMING BURKE WILL NEVER BE SEEN ALIVE AGAIN. FOLLOW THESE DIRECTIONS. THE MONEY, IN GRAND NOTES, IS TO BE TIED SECURELY IN A MARKET BASKET PAINTED WHITE. PLACE MONEY AND BASKET IN THE EXACT CENTER OF VAN CORTLANDT PARK PARADE GROUND AT 7:30 P.M. TODAY AND CLEAR A SPACE FOR A QUARTER OF A MILE AROUND IT. IF THERE IS A PERSON WITHIN THAT AREA BURKE WILL BE PUT ON THE SPOT AT ONCE. THE MONEY WILL BE CALLED FOR AT 7:55 AND BURKE WILL BE DELIVERED A T THE CITY HALL ALIVE AT 8:00 IF DIRECTIONS ARE FOLLOWED IMPLICITLY. ONE FALSE MOVE QUEERS THE GAME.”
Mitchell looked up and grinned.
“We followed the directions all right, but there’s a cordon of police around the park that a midget louse couldn’t get through. They wait for a flash from us and make the pinch, exactly at the moment Burke is being returned to City Hall. Furthermore, the money in the basket is phoney and there’s a ring of plainclothesmen for five blocks each way around City Hall. Whoever made way with Burke won’t stand a show. We’ll nab them for sure.”
“Clever, all right,” Dizzy admitted, “but you can’t outsmart the Ghost. He’s a genius, I tell you, a crazy genius. And there’s only one person can put the skids under him, and I’m that baby.”
“Okay, okay, Dizzy,” the man replied genially, “but whoever pulled this Burke coup is going to get it in the neck in a few minutes.”
The girl hunched her shoulders.
“Somebody’ll get it in the neck, all right,” she said cryptically. “And don’t forget I told you to keep your eyes off the ground.”
Her remark went unheeded, however, for a rap sounded on the door and the next instant it was flung open admitting the slick, dark head of Tom Louden, the D.A.’s shrewd young assistant.
“Seven forty-five, Chief,” he reminded Mitchell. “ ’Most time for the show to start.”
“All right, Tom. Is the car ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Come on, Dizzy. You offered to help us so we’ll let you in on the pay-off.”
The girl followed them to a low, black police car that waited at the curb in front of the Tombs. She took her place in the back seat between Mitchell and the assistant D.A. without a word.
A sign from the district attorney and the car purred down Centre Street.
Mitchell rubbed his hands with keen anticipation. A suspicion of doubt drew Louden’s lips down in a faint frown. Dizzy’s face was a blank.
The car swung into Chambers Street and stopped opposite the rear entrance to City Hall. They were out and hurrying around the grimy, outmoded building.
The plaza in front wore a peculiarly deserted appearance. Walks and benches were empty. The statue of Civic Virtue thrust its marble chest upward, unwatched by newsboy or tattered bench-warmer.
Broadway and Park Row were still literally sprinkled with homeward-bound workers, but they shunned the plaza as though it bore a curse. An atmosphere of tense expectancy hung over it, brooding, sinister, almost palpable in the gathering summer dusk.
Dizzy found herself on the broad steps before City Hall in the midst of a group of grim, tight-lipped men.
The district attorney held his watch in his hand.
“Seven fifty-five,” he muttered. “Five minutes to go.”
The familiar sounds of traffic came to them in a muted murmur as though muffled by the wall of silence that ringed them in.
“Fifty-seven.”
Bodies tautened.
“Fifty-nine.”
Keen eyes swept the approaches to the plaza — right hands flicked furtively to bulging pockets.
Dizzy’s shoulders slumped forward in a nonchalant slouch, her eyes rose in slow boredom toward the darkening heavens.
A low rumble impinged upon the silence, like the growl of distant thunder. Into it burst the first booming note of the clock in the tower.