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.
“Well,” Captain Wallis sighed, “you’ll get it sooner or later, so I might as well give it to you now. The man’s skull had been fractured.”
“Uh-huh, I thought you were holding out something like that. Hamlin’s skull couldn’t have been cracked in the fire, could it?”
“Chief Murphy said nothing fell on him and if he had a fractured skull he must have got it before the fire broke out.”
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know how you spotted it, Pinky, but I think you’re on the right track. Another Schwartz.”
“How about Bergstrom? Do you think he’s in on it?”
“If I answered that question I’d be guessing. So let’s pass it.”
“And Mrs. Hamlin?”
“I’ve only talked to her on the phone. She may be a party to the hoax and she may not. Probably not. Schwartz’s wife wasn’t, you know. He planned to contact her after the pay-off and, as the saying goes, tell all. Anyway, I’ve just sent out an all-state teletype with Hamlin’s description. I’ve ordered him held.”
“On what charge, skipper?”
“Murder, my boy. Murder,” Captain Wallis said cheerfully.
I hung up, a bit breathless all of a sudden.
The Captain certainly had been working fast.
Katie came out of the Sun booth. “You’ve been talking to Bodie Wallis, haven’t you?” she said, smiling.
“Bodie did most of the talking. I listened. He’s sent out an all-state teletype to pick up John Hamlin.”
Katie’s laugh told me what she thought of Bodie Wallis. “John Hamlin has already been picked up. In a basket, by a couple of coroner’s deputies.”
“Captain Wallis doesn’t think so.”
“String with Captain Wallis, Pinky, and you’ll sleep in the street,” she said airily.
Spike tumbled out of the telephone booth bellowing:
“Hey, Pink! The office just got a flash from Duke Wayland on the lower beat. Captain Wallis—”
“I know. I was just talking to him.”
“That guy had a fractured skull!” Spike exclaimed excitedly.
“Yeah,” I said.
Katie’s jaw dropped as she looked from Spike to me. “What guy had a fractured skull?” she asked in a small voice.
“The guy they picked up in a basket. The guy you were dumb enough to think was John Hamlin.”
Katie sat down abruptly. Spike and I stood looking at her, gloating a little. It wasn’t often that the Duchess put her money on the wrong number.
“Well, muh frand?” Spike grinned at last.
She shrugged. “It looks bad but it isn’t hopeless. I’m banking on one thing: the integrity of Kurt Bergstrom. I’ve known him for several years and I can’t see him getting mixed up in an insurance hoax involving murder. And I can’t see that meek and mild person, John Hamlin, hitting a man over the head and burning his body.”
“That’s logic for you,” Spike jeered. “Kurt Bergstrom looks too honest to go in for murder. And John Hamlin looks too meek to kill anybody. Forget, for a minute, the looks of those two guys and where are you? Well, I’ll tell you. You’re stringing along with Pinky and me and Captain Wallis.”
“Three,” Katie said sarcastically, “of the most brilliant minds in the city. Well, if you three are brilliant, I’m a low moron. Good night.”
Katie breezed, slamming the door.
Spike chuckled. “Did we get the little lady’s goat, all right. But I’d much rather get John Hamlin.”
“And maybe you think we won’t. Now look.
It’s a ten to one shot the guy never left the city. His best bet was to establish a residence in some quiet apartment house. He’s probably had the apartment for weeks, just like Schwartz did. All right. So what?”
“I’ll bite.”
“We smoke him out.”
“You and me?”
“Don’t be a sap. We got a staff, haven’t we. We got three or four cubs sitting over there in the office wearing out the seats of their pants, haven’t we? Oke! Tomorrow morning early we turn ’em loose, along with anybody else Andy can spare. We contact every hotel and apartment and rooming house in the city.”
“The dicks will be doing just that,” I pointed out.
“What of it? We can put as many men on the job as Bodie Wallis. We got just as good a chance as he has of turning up Hamlin. And if we get a break — well, will Katie’s face be red? Dunt esk!”
We went to work the next morning. It was house-to-house stuff and it was tiring. But we didn’t care. Spike and I felt, the whole Telegram staff felt, that we were on the right track.
As we read John Hamlin’s mind, he never expected any hue and cry. He thought the corpse would be accepted as his, and the pay-off would be a pushover. He’d made only one mistake. He’d hit the poor devil he’d hired to double for him too hard a blow. The body wasn’t wholly consumed, as he’d expected it to be, and the skull fracture showed up in the post mortem. John Hamlin, we reasoned, must have got quite a shock when he read the papers in the morning and learned that every law enforcement officer in the state was looking for him.
It was a long hard day and we found no trace of John Hamlin. Something, however, was in our blood. The thrill of the chase. We felt, Spike and I and the cubs, as though surely we’d locate him in the next apartment house, the next hotel. We kept doggedly at it all day, all the day following, all the day after that.
At five in the afternoon of the third day, dead on my feet, I strolled into the City Hall press room. The reporters on the afternoon papers had gone home and Katie, looking fresh and spruce and more than a little like a million dollars, was all alone.
“You looked dragged out, Pinky,” she smiled. “Where have you been all day?”
“Hunting John Hamlin,” I said, slumping into a chair.
“Why, don’t you read the papers? Hamlin was buried today. I covered the funeral.”
I sighed. “You don’t really think that was Hamlin, do you? I know you’re silly, Duchess, and I know your judgment isn’t very good. But you’re not that silly, are you?”
She looked at me hard for a long minute. Then:
“See here, Pinky Kane. I don’t like that. I don’t like it even a little bit. You can call me almost anything else, but I draw the line at being called silly. I was going to spare you this, but on second thought I won’t. I’ll go out of my way, for once, just to show you how silly you are. Will you meet me at the Drake Hotel at eight tonight?”
“What for?”
“For the pay-off,” Katie said.
The door had opened and Spike Kaylor stood on the threshold. “Where’s the pay-off?” he demanded.
“At the Drake, tonight,” the Duchess told him. “You’re invited.
“Thanks,” Spike grinned. “Will this affair be formal, or shall I—”
“Wear tails, by all means,” Katie shot back, and left the room.
“What’s the kid got on her mind?” Spike asked.
“You can’t prove anything by me.”
“Do you really think she has a hot lead?”
“I wouldn’t put it beyond her.”
“But what is it? She hasn’t found John Hamlin, has she?”
“No. She insists Hamlin is dead and buried.”
“But maybe that’s just to throw us off the track.” Spike eased into a chair. “Pay-off, huh? Pay-off,” he mused. “Pink, there’s something screwy about this picture. If she was ready to crack this story, would she invite us to the party? Not any! She’d tell us something was due to pop and let us stew in our own juices until two o’clock tomorrow morning when the final edition of the Sun comes out.”