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.
“The ones in the lodge. They were smashed. There was a stove lid on the floor. I guess that’s what had been used. There was one faucet over the kitchen sink, another in a washroom just off the kitchen.”
Sackler frowned. “And they were smashed?”
“They’d been battered about a hell of a lot. But that might have happened a long while ago.”
Thoughtfully, he crushed his cigar out in a silver ash tray. I took a cigarette from behind my ear and lit it. A moment later Sackler sniffed and said: “That’s a fancy brand for you, isn’t it? What is it, Egyptian?”
“Right,” I told him. “And from the exalted case of Granville S. Colby.”
Sackler grunted. “Must cost a lot of dough.”
“The way he smokes them it does. He’s a chain smoker. Lights one from the butt of the last.”
Sackler stood up. “Well,” he said, “since there’s nothing more to do until Rawson gets here, I guess I’ll go downstairs and bum one from him. Come along, Joey.”
I followed him down the winding staircase. In the living-room Wolley was still holding forth to Crosher and Benjamin. They didn’t appear very interested. Colby’s eardrums must have revolted already. Sackler and I found him alone in the library on the other side of the foyer, with a half-smoked Egyptian cigarette in his hand.
Sackler, who wouldn’t hesitate to ask the President for a match, put the bite on Colby for a smoke. Colby patted his pockets, looked up and said coldly: “My cigarette case is in my overcoat pocket. It’s hanging in the hall closet.”
I took that to mean why in hell didn’t Sackler buy his own butts but that spendthrift said casually, “Don’t get up. I’ll find it,” and walked out into the hall.
I followed along aimlessly; then I turned into the living-room just in time to catch Wolley’s recital of the time he raided the murderer’s nest single-handed. Just then there came the sound of a wounded banshee and the cook ran into the living-room, her mouth wide open and her larynx vibrating like an off-key harp.
Sackler and Colby came racing into the room. We got the cook into a chair and poured a slug of brandy into her. At that she became coherent enough to shriek: “The garage! Mr. Rawson! For heaven’s sake—”
There was more to it than that but we didn’t wait to hear. I was in the lead with Sackler and Wolley on my heels. We rushed out into the bitter night, across the sweeping back lawn to the garage. The door was open and the light was turned on. There was a car inside, its headlights aglow.
At the wheel slumped Rawson. There was a gun in his hand and an ugly hole in his head. He was as dead as hope in Poland. Wolley, Sackler and I did some routine looking around and found nothing.
Behind us, young Crosher said: “My God, this is awful. There’s a murderer in this house.”
“Maybe,” said Colby’s deep bass, “it wasn’t murder.”
Wolley seized on that. “My idea, too,” he said, his voice thickened by the brandy he’d been drinking. “Rawson worshiped Capek. Brooded about his death. Killed himself.”
“The only virtue in that theory,” said Sackler, “is its convenience. Everybody commits suicide so the coppers can go home. Otherwise it stinks.”
Wolley turned on him angrily. “Maybe you got a theory, wise guy.”
“Maybe,” said Sackler. “Has anyone been outside the house tonight?”
“I have,” I reminded him.
“I don’t suspect you, Joey,” he said magnanimously. “Anyone else?”
Individually, everyone denied having left the house since dinnertime. We trooped back to the Capek mansion. Wolley went to the telephone to call headquarters. Colby used his best courtroom persuasion on the cook, assuring her it would be quite safe for her to sleep in her quarters above the garage. Sackler, registering heavy thought, retired again to the second-floor study. I trailed along behind him.
Sackler sat down at the desk and rested his head in his hands. There was utter despair on his face. It was hardly customary for Sackler to take violent death so seriously and I commented upon it.
He looked up at me. “Joey,” he said, and his voice was drenched in gloom, “don’t you see what this does to my check? It may never be good now.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but now that I did I brightened considerably. It would be an edifying spectacle to see Rex Sackler solve a case free.
He looked up again and now there was an odd light in his eyes. He slapped his fist on the desk.
“Joey,” he said, “I think I’ve got something. Go and see that Benjamin guy. Ask him what a writ of replevin is.”
That didn’t sound very sensible to me. But I went downstairs and did it. I came back and reported: “He says he’s a little rusty on it but he believes it’s something like a habeas corpus.”
“Good,” said Sackler. “I thought so.”
I needled him by deliberately misunderstanding. “You mean you think it’s like habeas corpus, too?”
“No, you idiot. I mean that guy’s not a law clerk at all. He’s Benny Bagel. I’ve been trying to place him all night. But now I’m certain.”
“Bagel?” I said. “Benny Bagel? Sounds vaguely familiar, but it still doesn’t click.”
“Forger,” said Sackler, and there was a little tremor of excitement in his tone. “Indicted twice. Never convicted. I’ve seen his picture in the tabloids. Considered the best guy in the field.”
“What’s he doing here as Colby’s law clerk?”
“It’ll take me all night to figure that,” said Sackler. “But at last I’m beginning to see the light. Hey, get me the phone number of that bank Rawson’s check was drawn on. I want to call them early in the morning. Tell Wolley he better stay over tonight, too. Then get the hell out of my sight and let me think.”
I let him think for the rest of the night. In the morning, Wolley, sticking stubbornly to his double suicide theory, was anxious to get back to town. Sackler insisted he stay. I saw little of either Sackler or Colby before lunch. When neither of them appeared then I went up to the study to find Sackler still sitting at the desk.
“Well,” I said, “what have you got?”
He drew a deep breath. “Plenty,” he said. “Do you realize, Joey, that Capek never made a will, never owned a driving license, that Rawson held his complete power-of-attorney in every deal?”
“So,” I said, “what? Maybe Rawson killed him, then got the horrors about it and killed himself.”
Sackler snorted. “That sounds like a Wolley theory,” he said. “You get to the phone, Joey. Call Postal Union. Tell them to send me their most trusted messenger. And tell him to hurry. Then tell Wolley I’ll be right down to solve his case for him.”
“Free?” I asked maliciously. But to my surprise even the mention of his lost dough didn’t get a rise out of him. He smiled benignly.
“By the way,” I said as I went to the door, “where’s Colby? I thought he was with you.”
“Somewhere around,” said Sackler vaguely. “Hurry with that messenger, will you?”
Chapter Three
Madman’s Millions
It was two thirty in the afternoon and Wolley was getting impatient. He paced the broad living-room floor, scowling at Sackler, who sat at his ease before the fire and smoked a cigar he’d cadged from Crosher. Crosher stood by the window twining his fingers about each other like nervous snakes.
Benny Bagel, the forger law clerk, avidly conned a stack of old-fashioned stereopticon views. At last Wolley stopped his pacing. He came to a guardsman’s halt in front of Sackler and spoke his vehement piece.
“Damn it, Sackler. Last night you said you’d have something this morning. This morning’s gone. So’s half the afternoon. Capek was a suicide. Quite obviously he was something of a wack and he killed himself. Can you improve on that theory?”