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.
The writing was decidedly different and Marge agreed that this was so. She said, “What difference does it make?”
“Probably none. Maybe the blonde wrote her name and number for him.”
“She wouldn’t have gone into details about the Scotch if she had, Pat.”
McCarthy shrugged and looked at more cards. One was of Ira A. Halstead, Attorney-at-Law, and this was new and unsoiled. Another, equally new, was that of James R. S. Wilson. And then there were two more bar cards, which McCarthy discarded after looking them over for more telephone numbers and descriptions of girls. He studied the lawyer’s card and that of Wilson and said:
“This Wilson is a big shot broker. Very strict church member and the rest of that stuff. And this lawyer Halstead has something to do with him, but I can’t remember just what.”
“Why not ask him?”
McCarthy said, “Maybe he wouldn’t tell me. I’ll get a guy from a newspaper and ask him.”
Chet Morris was the newspaper man McCarthy picked for an information bureau. He was short, fat, and almost bald, and he had a notorious passion for checked and wildly patterned suits. McCarthy opened up with:
“Hi, Chet! That’s new, ain’t it?”
Morris looked down at the plaid affairs that made him look even more roly-poly than ever and said, “It’s half paid for, anyway.”
“It looks good.”
Abe Goldstein, who worked the police beat for a rival paper, snickered and said: “It looks good, hell! It looks just gorgeous. Just too simply gorgeous.”
Morris managed a sickly grin for McCarthy. He gave Goldstein a cold and haughty look and said, “Yah! Well, it cost me sixty bucks, anyway.”
The unimpressed Goldstein said that the tailor had certainly seen Mr. Morris coming from a distance and recognized him as the chump he was. He also said his brother-in-law, who was in that business, could duplicate the plaid job for not a cent over thirty-five dollars but that the said brother-in-law ran a quality store and would not have a piece of goods with a pattern like that in the shop. Morris gave up the argument and said hastily to McCarthy, sniffing the press room:
“You want to see me, Pat? Let’s go outside. I got to get fresh air, every so often around here.”
Goldstein’s voice followed him out with: “That’s quite a breeze you got on your back, Chet, and you can’t get an argument against it from the next five guys you meet.”
“What d’ya know about Mr. James R. S. Wilson? A big shot, as I remember about him,” McCarthy asked.
Morris took off horn-rimmed glasses and started a polishing job. He said, “Right. A very big shot. Chairman of the Community Chest drive last year. Selectman of the Trinity Church. President of Wilson, Marks and Linehan, Investment Brokers. A very big shot to be sure.”
“What about a lawyer named Ira A. Halstead?”
“Another big shot. A different kind. He’s the people’s friend, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t, Chet.”
“Well, he takes damage cases against railroads and such. On contingency, of course. Some people might call it a form of blackmail but as long as it’s a big company that’s stuck, who cares? The jury always goes for the poor devil who’s suing the heartless corporation, don’t they? So that makes him the people’s friend, because he doesn’t ask for a retainer when he takes that kind of a case.”
“What does he get?”
Morris put his glasses back on and wiped his bald spot with the handkerchief he’d used to polish them with. “Well, usually half the damages the jury gives the victim. Less expenses, of course. But he gets big damages for his clients and very often there’s a few bucks left over for them. A very few though, I’d say.”
“A nice guy, I can see.”
“Not in trouble with him, are you, Pat?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
Morris’s round, good-natured face showed worry. “He’s got connections, if you know what I mean. We lay off him in the sheet. If that means anything.”
“It does, Chet. Thanks a lot.”
“Is that what you wanted to know?”
McCarthy said, “Yeah. It made me remember something. It made me remember that Hal-stead is the lawyer for some guy that’s suing Wilson over a car accident. I remembered it when you said he took damage cases.”
“Wilson is the sort of bird he likes to tackle,” Morris agreed. “I don’t keep up with things on this damn police beat. It’s all I can do to keep up with the cops.”
“And Goldstein,” McCarthy suggested. “Abe can take the hide off a man’s back with that tongue of his.”
Morris said sadly, “Worse than that! He just about took this suit off my back a minute ago and the thing is brand new.”
“I still say it looks good,” said McCarthy, and left.
McCarthy went from the police press room to the paper Morris honored with his services. There he looked over the clippings on the car accident James R. S. Wilson was involved in, and he looked these over thoughtfully. He finally grumbled:
“My stabbed man can be either William Bowes or he can be Antonio Giovanni. And he didn’t look Italian.”
He left the newspaper morgue for a drugstore phone booth and telephoned the hospital. He said, “I’m McCarthy. What about the man who was stabbed in my office building?”
He held the phone, far from patiently, for ten long minutes before he got the doctor in charge of the case. The doctor said:
“He’s doing as well as might be expected, Mr. McCarthy. The police are here now, waiting for the man to recover enough to make a statement. This in spite of my telling them the man will be in no shape to talk for at least twenty-four hours.”
“They don’t know who he is yet?”
“Apparently not. That fact seems to worry them, I might say.”
McCarthy said, disagreeably, “It always worries the police when a man is stabbed. They’re paid to worry about such things.” He consulted the phone book and got Ira A. Halstead’s address and telephone number and studied the phone thoughtfully for a moment. Finally he grumbled:
“Might as well go; he wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, anyway.”
And then went hunting for a cab.
Halstead’s law offices looked stately and dignified but Halstead looked like a boy barely out of college — like a boy who’d majored in athletics. He shrugged his bulky shoulders, lifted calm brown eyes from McCarthy’s card, and said: “My secretary told me it was about one of my clients, Mr. McCarthy. Will you explain?”
“I’m trying to identify a man,” McCarthy explained. “He had nothing in his pockets but your card and I thought possibly you might be a help. He’s a man of about forty and he weighs around one fifty. He’s got sandy hair and eyebrows and when I last saw him he needed a shave. In fact, he’d needed one for the last couple of days. He wears a brown suit and hat and white shoes. The shoes needed cleaning. He has a scar along his jawbone, not very long but still noticeable. Can you think who that might be?”
Halstead studied the problem and then shook his head. “I don’t recall any client who that describes. You say he had my card in his pocket?”
“And that’s all he had,” McCarthy lied, leaving out all mention of Wilson’s card and the five new hundred dollar bills.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. McCarthy.”
“It wouldn’t be Antonio Giovanni, would it?”
Halstead laughed. “Antonio Giovanni is at least fifty. He isn’t over five feet tall and he must weigh at least two hundred pounds. He talks broken English, very broken English. He’s been in this country thirty years or more but he acts like an immigrant to this day.”