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.
“I’ll help you,” Sue offered.
Death Stops Payment
D. L. Champion
D(’arcy) L(yndon) Champion (1902–1968) was borne in Melbourne, Australia, and fought with the British Army in World War II before emigrating to the United States. His first published work was a serialization under the pseudonym G. Wayman Jones, a house name, of Alias Dr. Death in the February to October 1932 issues of Thrilling Detective; it was published in book form later in the same year. In 1933, he created the character of Richard Curtis Van Loan, better known as the Phantom Detective, under another house name, Robert Wallace. He wrote most of the early episodes of the Phantom Detective, the second hero pulp to come out after the Shadow. It ran for 170 issues between 1933 and 1953, the third-longest-running hero pulp, ranking just behind the Shadow and Doc Savage. Under his own name and as Jack D’Arcy, he created several other memorable characters. Mariano Mercado is a hypochondriac detective who appeared in eight novelettes between 1944 and 1948 in Dime Detective. Inspector Allhof, a former New York City policeman who lost his legs while leading a botched raid, is retained by the NYPD because of his brilliance and in spite of his arrogance. Allhof appeared in twenty-nine stories from 1938 to 1945, mainly in Dime Detective; twelve of the tales were collected in Footprints on a Brain: The Inspector Allhof Stories (2001). Perhaps his most popular series featured Rex Sackler, known as the “Parsimonious Prince of Penny Pinchers.” The hilarious series began in Dime Detective, then moved to Black Mask.
“Death Stops Payment,” Champion’s first Black Mask story, was published in the July 1940 issue.
Anything to make a couple of grand — or even a plugged nickel. That was Rex Sackler’s code of life — and death. For he was equally quick to euchre lucre from the living or cash out of a corpse.
Chapter One
After All — What’s Money?
I arrived at the office at ten minutes past nine and received a surly good-morning from Sackler. He glowered at a story of the national debt in the Tribune and I sat down, lit a cigarette and grinned at him. His dyspeptic mood was no stunning surprise to me.
This was Wednesday — pay day. And Rex Sackler parting with money was as gay and light-hearted as Romeo taking his leave of Juliet.
I took the cigarette from my mouth and coughed politely. He lifted his head from the paper and stared at me with his dark sullen eyes. With nice delicacy, I scratched the palm of my left hand with the index finger of my right. Sackler folded the Tribune with great deliberation and sighed the sigh of a sorely tried man.
“Joey,” he said, “you’re a money grubber. A beaten slave of Mammon. Your job, to you, is a matter of dollars. Service, you know nothing of. Loyalty is beyond your limited ken. The noble pleasure of sheer altruism is something your material mind cannot grasp.”
That, coming from Rex Sackler, was uproarious. He had quit the police department because of his theory that a man of his talents could make a fortune as a private detective. To the regret of several people, he had been right. Not only was he competent but he could smell a nickel before it had left the mint. He possessed all the business instincts of a Scotsman, an Armenian trader and a bank vault. He made money hand over fist. He disgorged it with the reluctance of a slot machine.
I put out my cigarette and stood up. “I’m strictly a strong-arm guy,” I told him. “However, I can grasp the simple fact that you owe me some sixty-five slugs for last week’s wages. Do I collect?”
Sackler shook his head and this time his sigh came from the soles of his feet. He put his hand inside his breast pocket and withdrew his wallet as if it had an anchor attached. He counted out some bills with the meticulous care of a near-sighted croupier and laid them on the desk.
I put the money in my pocket. I said, very politely: “Now just what plans have you formulated for taking this away from me?”
He looked at me reproachfully. “Joey,” he said, “your misconstruction of my motives is incredible. Merely because I sometimes gamble with you for pastime, you appear to believe I really care about winning. Crass, Joey. And gauche. After all, what’s money?”
I picked that cue up fast. “Money,” I said, “is what you’ve got socked in every Postal Savings account in the city because you think banks are a wild gamble. Money is what you’d sell your grandmother to the Arab slave-dealers for. Money is what you reluctantly pay me every week, then devise schemes for winning back. Money—”
He wasn’t listening to me. He had taken a pair of dice from his pocket and was caressing them in his hand. There was a little click as he spun them over the desk blotter. I watched them come to rest, revealing a pair of deuces. Then I suddenly caught myself and walked to the window.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You can put those right back in your pocket. You’re not getting a nickel out of me this week, even if you offer a dime for it.”
I stood at the window showing him my back and contemplating the thrumming Madison Avenue traffic. I still heard the gentle click of the dice behind me and the gambling corpuscles in my veins throbbed nervously. Resolutely, I stared through the glass.
I turned only when I heard the door of the outer office slam. Sackler lifted his head like a hyena scenting prey. He adjusted his cuffs and cleared his throat, preparatory to the onslaught on the client’s pocketbook. Inspector Wolley of the Headquarters Squad strode into the room.
Sackler’s phoney smile of welcome faded. He reached for the dice again and said ungraciously: “Oh, it’s you.”
“It sure is,” said Wolley with loud affability. “And how’s business, Rex? How’s every little thing with the sharpest shamus in town?”
That speech coming from Wolley was far, far phonier than Sackler’s smile had been. As a general rule Wolley and Sackler go along like Martin Dies and a liberal thought. Sackler believed Wolley a pompous incompetent, which he was; while Wolley’s heart dripped envy every time he compared Sackler’s income with his own.
“Rex,” said Wolley, “I’d like to ask you a question. To settle a little discussion we were having downtown. Exactly why did you quit the department to go in business on your own hook?”
Sackler took a package of ten-cent cigarettes from his pocket and lighted one. Carefully, he replaced the burnt match in its book. When he answered he did not speak the truth.
“Public service,” he said virtuously. “With my talent it stands to reason I can accomplish more civic good than under the orders of a block-headed police commissioner.”
“Exactly,” boomed Wolley. “That’s just what I said. Now how about lending us a hand on the Capek case?”
Sackler blinked at him. I leaned forward in my chair and said maliciously: “Free, Inspector?”
“Well,” said Wolley as if he were the Chamber of Commerce and I was looking over the factory site, “we’re all working for the public good together. After all, what’s money?”
This magnificent indifference to money on the part of all hands was beginning to overwhelm me. But in spite of all this idealistic chatter, I knew damned well Sackler wouldn’t stir out of his chair to solve a tabloid cross-word puzzle until someone slapped a large bill on the desktop.
He was staring unpleasantly at Wolley. He resented the trap into which the inspector had led him. He took a deep breath and proceeded to squirm out of it.