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.
Dizzy’s eyes swept the tables.
There — ah! Dizzy’s fists clenched. The pink nails went white.
At the ringside table sat Spanish Lil, high-bosomed, languorous, drunk.
The shimmer of new steel gleamed out from the slits that were Dizzy’s eyes. They probed at each of the faces that swarmed around Spanish Lil, each one a worthless hanger-on scenting dough. For an instant they paused at a bloated face faintly reminiscent of the Ghost.
Her heart flopped over and beat wildly.
But no! The man’s nose was small and straight, nothing like the Ghost’s colorless, almost transparent hooked beak. His shoulders were square, not round and sloping; his eyes puffed and bleary.
A keen stab of disappointment tore at her throat.
Her eyes passed on.
Everywhere she met hot stares, pleading, offering, suggesting unmentionable things. Her own swept them coldly.
A pie-eyed newspaper reporter slouched over her table and began to talk. Dizzy knew him, but to add authenticity to her changed character she sent him away with a stinging rebuff that made even his calloused sensibilities writhe.
Darkness and the spotlight again. A dusky chorus hurled itself into an abysmal jungle dance. A roar of applause.
Lights.
Dizzy rose and made her way toward the ladies’ room, taking care to pass close to the table where Spanish Lil and her satellites clustered.
The man with the bloated face looked up and caught her eye for an instant as she went past.
On the way back he was waiting for her. When she came abreast of the table he swayed to his feet.
“Dance, kid?” he mumbled thickly.
Something made Dizzy hesitate instead of brushing quickly by him. Misinterpreting it for assent he insinuated his hand under her elbow.
Spanish Lil leaped to her feet.
“Lay off that, you... you—!” she shrilled.
Her eyes burned with anger and liquor as she seized the man’s arm and dragged him away.
“Come on, we’re going home.”
Dizzy eased out of the jam and returned to her table. She sat down watching every move of Spanish Lil and the man with the bloated face as they stumbled toward the door.
Suddenly, with a half-stifled cry, Dizzy sprang upright.
There was no mistaking that shuffling gait, that gangling length of limb. A plastic surgeon could chisel away the hooked beak, booze and coke could bloat the sunken, cadaverous face, a tailor could pad the round sloping shoulders; but nothing could disguise that shuffling, long-legged gait.
It was the Ghost.
Dizzy flung a bill down on the table and plunged after them, fighting her way through the crowd, taking the stairs two at a time.
As she burst through the outer door to the sidewalk faint streaks of dawn were silvering the sky.
Spanish Lil and the Ghost were in the back of a waiting taxi. The driver slammed the door and spurted away.
Dizzy dashed round the corner, wrap trailing — scrambled into the grey roadster without opening the door — clawed the ignition switch — kicked the starter.
The iron brute leaped ahead — swung — backed into the curb — hurtled ahead once more — bumped over the opposite curb — and took the corner into the avenue with a screaming skid.
A red tail-light was just visible in the distance.
Dizzy booted the accelerator to the floor and the sixteen cylinders responded with a lurching burst of speed.
The red light drew rapidly nearer and she eased off the terrific pace.
A slit-lipped grin broke across her face, mirthless, cruel.
She was on the trail of the Ghost at last, the only man who had ever double-crossed her.
“There’s only one person that can put the skids under him,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “And I’m that baby!”
Chapter III
In the District Attorneys Office
It was well into the afternoon before Dizzy finally slid her roadster to the curb before the brown-stone front in the Forties that masked her purple paradise.
A drizzling summer rain fell steadily.
She climbed out and looked the iron-gutted monster over affectionately. It was spattered with mud and one of the rear tires was flat, cut to ribbons. Like its owner it seemed to droop with the fatigue of a sleepless night and almost continuous driving.
As Dizzy turned wearily toward the house a smile of grim satisfaction creased the corners of her mouth.
She knew all that she needed to know — now! It was the Ghost!
Stiffly she plodded up the stairs and let herself into the purple salon. Slamming the door behind her, she crossed to the bedroom leaving a trail of sodden garments in her wake. Her white body disappeared into the bathroom to be followed almost instantly by the hiss of a shower.
She came out in a few minutes, fresh, almost radiant, all traces of her character of the night before completely removed.
It was a 100 per cent Dizzy Malone again who chose a quietly expensive street dress from a wardrobe and drew it on over her head.
When she stepped into the purple salon once more she was as modishly dressed, as cool and collected, as any millionaire broker’s private secretary. And probably infinitely more beautiful. She looked, indeed, as though she had stepped out of the proverbial bandbox.
But then, Dizzy was Dizzy, and just at the moment she was ravenously hungry.
From the refrigerator behind the bar she salvaged half a grapefruit; set a percolator brewing coffee and made toast in a complicated electrical gadget.
When breakfast was ready she disposed of it with neatness and dispatch. Into the second cup of coffee she poured a generous slug of cognac and sipped it leisurely. Then she lit a cigarette.
At last Dizzy Malone was herself again and ready for whatever the day would bring, which, she figured, would be plenty.
And in that she was right, as she usually was, although things did not begin to happen as soon as she expected.
Calmly, at first, she sat smoking cigarettes and waiting while the rain dripped dolefully outside. Then she got up and began pacing the room, smoking with short nervous puffs.
Finally the break came.
An ominous rapping on the door.
Dizzy started, pulled herself together and ground the cigarette into an over-full ash-tray.
“Who is it?” she called.
“Horowitz and Rourke from Headquarters. The D.A. says you should take a walk to see him.”
“Just a second, boys.”
The expected had happened.
Dizzy straightened her hat in front of a mirror and opened the door. Outside were two plainclothes men.
“Hello, Dizzy.”
Dizzy grinned.
Together they descended the stairs and made a dash through the rain for the black sedan with the P.D. shield on its radiator that was parked behind her roadster.
Instantly the police chauffeur was on his way, siren shrieking.
“What’s the big idea of the ride?” the girl asked.
The dicks shrugged.
“We don’t know ourselves.”
And it was obvious to her that they didn’t, although it was evident, too, that they were laboring under an over-dose of suppressed excitement. But they offered nothing and Dizzy asked no questions.
The remainder of the ride to the grim building on Centre Street was accomplished in silence. Once there she was conducted immediately to the office where she had had the futile conference exactly twenty-four hours before.
The district attorney sat at his desk, Tom Louden beside him.