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.
“Wolley,” he said with a fine air of regret, “I’d like to help you. But it wouldn’t be fair to my other clients. You see, if they pay high rates for my services it isn’t right for me to work for nothing. It would offend them.”
Wolley grunted skeptically. “Well,” he said slowly, “I sort of thought of that myself. So I got together with some of the boys and raised a little purse for you.”
Sackler’s eyes gleamed. “A purse? How much?”
“A couple of hundred.”
Sackler looked insulted. The gleam went from his eyes faster than it had come in. I knew quite well he wasn’t going to let that two hundred get away from him. But he was going to indulge in some very fancy haggling first.
“That’s not much money, Wolley,” he said. “Make it five.”
“My God,” said Wolley. “Ten coppers put together don’t make as much money as you do in a year, Rex. Besides, we’re gambling with you. We’ll give you the two hundred free and clear. We ask no guarantees. Even if someone else breaks the Capek case you can keep the dough.”
That didn’t sound so bad. This Capek case was no cinch. Capek was a very odd character. With all the dough he’d piled up I suppose he had a right to be. He’d come to this country, a ragged immigrant boy, about fifty years ago. He’d rolled up his sleeves and gone to work — hard and successfully. Today, he controlled a dozen corporations and half a dozen banks. He was a strong, square-jawed character who possessed a great deal of pride and no friends. Hardly any acquaintances, save for a young guy named Rawson, who had once been his secretary and was now his partner.
Capek had been missing for about two weeks. His household on Long Island and the police suspected kidnaping, although no ransom demand had yet been received. Anyway, it made a good newspaper story and the whole police department was going nuts looking for Capek.
As Wolley’s unprecedented visit attested, they hadn’t had much success.
Sackler was looking at Wolley and there was a shrewd glitter in his eye. I knew quite well what he was thinking. As Sackler’s fees went, two hundred bucks was no fortune. But this was an opportunity to get it for nothing. I knew, moreover, that he was going to accept the deal ultimately, but first he was going to break his neck to have Wolley raise the ante.
“Three hundred,” he said, “and it’s a deal.”
Wolley drummed angrily on the desk with his fingers. He got very little more than three hundred a month. Sackler yawned elaborately and picked up the dice again.
The telephone jangled suddenly. I picked it up. It was for Wolley. I handed him the phone and he talked rapidly into the receiver, listened for a moment and hung up. He turned to Sackler, a wide grin on his face, and all the false affability had vanished from his voice as he spoke.
“Wise guy,” he jeered. “Just a shrewd business genius. Well, you just haggled yourself out of two hundred bucks, my friend. They’ve found Capek.”
Sackler dropped the dice and jerked his head up angrily.
“Where?”
“In the caretaker’s lodge on his own estate. And dead. Apparently a suicide.” But Wolley wasn’t interested in Capek anymore. He reverted to the subject nearest his heart. “But you — you could have had two hundred bucks just for sitting at your desk until that phone call came in. You wouldn’t have had to move a muscle of a brain cell.”
He walked to the doorway, grinning triumphantly, and added: “And it’s breaking your chiseling marble heart.”
The door slammed behind him and he was gone.
Whether or not there were any cracks in Sackler’s cardiac region, I didn’t know. But I was very happy about it all. It wasn’t every day I was granted the privilege of seeing Sackler lose money.
He looked up suddenly, saw my grin and rolled the dice again. Double six came up.
“What do you say, Joey? Just one roll. For a buck.”
I hesitated. Sackler had been rolling craps with a fair degree of regularity this morning. Besides, if the law of averages hadn’t been suspended, I was due. I took a dollar from my pocket and laid it on the desk.
“Just once,” I said. “One fast roll. That’s all. Win, lose or draw.”
“Sure, Joey. Just one.”
Twenty minutes later when the outer door slammed for the second time that day, I was out precisely thirty-three bucks. Sackler snatched up the dice as our caller entered the room.
He was tall, well built, about thirty-five and exceedingly well dressed. He gave out a strong aroma of ready cash and Sackler came to point like a bird dog. I sat down sulkily at my desk and wondered why the hell I’d ever got in that crap game. In four years I’d never won a dime from Rex Sackler at anything.
The stranger nodded his head and said briskly: “Mr. Sackler?”
Sackler admitted his identity.
“I’m Rawson. Harold Rawson.”
Sackler’s face lit up. Wolley’s two hundred was water under the dam now.
“Rawson,” he said quickly. “Karl Capek’s partner?”
“Not anymore,” said Rawson briefly.
“Ah,” said Sackler like a doctor at the death bed, “that suicide. Very unfortunate. Very—”
“It wasn’t suicide,” snapped Rawson.
Sackler’s eyes opened wide. It was neither surprise nor shock, I knew. It was wholehearted satisfaction that here, indeed, was a fee.
“You’re sure of that?”
“Positive,” said Rawson. “I have information which precludes all suicidal possibilities.”
“Ah,” said Sackler again, “and you want me to find out—”
“I want you to find out who killed him.”
Sackler rubbed his hands together and gazed dreamily at his client.
“The fee,” he murmured, “will be twenty-five hundred dollars. In advance. Make the check out to cash, please.”
Rawson sat down. He took a fountain pen and a check book from his pocket. He said, “Quite satisfactory,” and proceeded to write. Sackler watched him happily. Then Rawson spoke again.
“I’m a little short of cash, Sackler. Been out of town on business. Just got back to find this awful tragedy. Can you let me have fifty in cash if I make the check out for that much additional?”
“Of course,” said Sackler, always willing to exchange fifty for twenty-five hundred. “Glad to oblige.”
He counted out five tens and picked up the check. “Now,” he said, “first, what is this information you have that makes you so sure Capek was murdered?”
Rawson stood up. There was a hard coldness in his eyes. “I shall tell you that tonight,” he said. “Can you be at the Capek mansion tonight, at nine o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” said Rawson. He turned and walked to the door. He paused on the threshold and for a moment his brusque businesslike air dropped from him.
“Karl Capek was a great man,” he said, and there was a peculiar huskiness to his voice. “He was my best, my only friend. And by God, I will avenge him!”
He swung around on his heel and marched into the corridor.
Sackler held the check in his hand as if it were a diamond he’d just picked up in the gutter, which it more or less was.
I stood over by the window bathed in envy. Here Sackler had just had twenty-five hundred dollars dropped into his avaricious lap while I was out thirty-three bucks of last week’s salary. If there was any justice in the world it never seemed to get around to this office.
“Joey, my lad,” said Sackler, “run over to the bank with this check. Get it cashed right away.”
That was Sackler all over. Whenever he got a check he rushed it over to the bank, cashed it and sank it in one of his Postal Savings accounts. Nothing short of the revolution was going to get a nickel out of him.