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.
“How’d you find it?” I asked.
“The dough?” He practically smiled. “You’re not the only smart cookie, Willie. After the game broke up, I hung around the house. Norval Avery’s missus and kids were in Florida and he was alone in the house. I waited an hour after all the lights went out and then slipped into the house. The first place I looked was the right place. There was one of those artificial fireplaces, but with real bricks in it, and I knew that sooner or later he’d hide the dough there because sooner or later anybody would. And sure enough there was a loose brick. When I pulled it out there was the dough. While I was counting it, the light went on and I looked around and Norval Avery was in the room.”
I ran my tongue over my lips. I had a pretty good idea what was coming.
“What could I do?” Perry complained shrilly. “I grabbed a book-end from a table and socked him with it before he could yell. It wasn’t such a hard sock, but the book-end was iron or something, and he... ” Perry stopped.
“So you killed him,” I said softly.
“I just wanted to keep him quiet for a few minutes.”
“Murder,” I said softly.
“I guess so.” He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas. “Well, I was almost out of the house with the dough when I remembered that letter upstairs he’d written to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. So I went back for the letter and took it with me.”
I stood up and stuck my hands in my pockets and leaned against the wall. “I can finish it,” I said. “When the body was found, the coppers pulled in everybody who was at that poker game for questioning. But they had to let them all go, including you, because they couldn’t prove anything, especially no motive.”
“That’s what you think,” Perry said. “That letter to the Bureau of Internal Revenue was a copy he’d made for his own lawyer. The other copy he’d mailed out that afternoon. So then they knew that Norval Avery had had more than seventy grand in cash in the house and that it was gone. Then they had the motive for his being knocked off.”
My toes nudged one of the bundles on the floor. “I see,” I said. “When you got your hands on that dough, you couldn’t wait. You started splurging. You went out and bought yourself a lot of clothes. The coppers were shadowing all the suspects to see which one had become suddenly rich. You were the lad.”
Perry nodded unhappily. “They piled on me. Wanted to know where I’d got the dough for all those clothes and why I’d bought so many suits at a time. I said I’d picked up a little in poker, a little on the ponies. You see, I hadn’t spent enough yet for them to prove it wasn’t so. They got a warrant and searched this apartment, but they didn’t rip off the molding. But they’re still watching me. Every time I buy a pack of cigarettes I got a feeling somebody’s watching how much I’m spending.”
“Poor Perry,” I said sympathetically. “The local coppers aren’t bad enough. You got the Federals sniffing at you, too, because tax wasn’t paid on that dough.”
“That’s just about it.” His arms hung dejectedly between his knees. “Now I know what Norval Avery went through with all that dough begging to be spent and him scared to spend it. As soon as I start spending heavy, the coppers will be sure enough to pull me in for murder and go to work on me. I’m not such a brave guy, Willie. I’m not sure I can stand up to their third degree. And the Federals will bring in their lie detectors, and I hear that intelligent, sensitive guys like me are pushovers for those machines. So like Norval Avery I’m being driven nuts by that dough which is no use to me.”
“You don’t have to hang around New York,” I pointed out.
“The Federals are all over the country,” Perry said bitterly. “They never let up on dough they haven’t collected tax on. And if they catch up with me on that, they’ll turn me over to the New York coppers to burn me. Maybe I can jump to South America, but they’ll be watching me if I try to take the dough onto a boat. Anyway, New York is the one place where I’d enjoy spending it. Only I can’t.”
“Which is,” I said, “where I come in.”
“That’s right,” Perry said. “You’re always talking about your brain. It’ll be worth ten per cent — seven grand — if you figure out how I can remain in New York and spend the dough and not have the coppers down on my neck.”
“My brain,” I told him reflectively, “tells me that you’re going to give me the whole seventy grand.”
His head snapped up. “You’re nuts!”
“No, you won’t give it to me,” I corrected myself. “What I’ll have to do is gather up these ten bundles and walk out of here. I don’t think you’ll go yelling to the coppers that I relieved you of seventy grand.”
Perry Pike looked at me and shivered. He was a little guy and I was a big guy. I could take him with one hand.
He stood up. I watched him, but all he did was go as far as the bleached oak desk and lean against it. He looked sick. I felt a little sorry for him. He wasn’t a bad sort of lad.
But there was work to be done. I stooped and came up with a bundle of money in each hand — and looked into the muzzle of a compact .38 automatic pistol.
The gun was in Perry’s hand. “I think you’ll leave that dough where it is, Willie,” he said hoarsely.
I stared at him in surprise. Perry wasn’t a firearms lad any more than I was. I wasn’t even sure that he knew how to use one. His hand wasn’t steady, but he was close enough to hit anything he shot at and too far away for me to take him.
“Perry,” I said pleasantly, “there’s no point getting sore at your closest pal. Didn’t you just trust me enough to confide in me?”
“Yeah, I confided in you,” he said grimly, “on account of you would’ve gone to the library and dug into newspapers and read how last month a guy named Norval Avery was knocked off in Queens and seventy grand missing, and you’d have added it up to me. Now beat it.”
“Perry,” I said, “let’s sit down and talk. For a fifty-fifty split—”
“Beat it,” he said.
I didn’t care for the look in his eyes or the way the gun was pointed right at my heart. I beat it.
I sat in a restaurant eating breakfast and wondering where Perry Pike would stash the dough next. New York was the hardest place in the world to hide anything which had bulk. Especially if you wanted it where you could get your hands on it now and then, you were limited to the tiny area in which you lived hemmed in by dozens or hundreds of other people.
No wonder Norval Avery had given up, and Perry was in the first stages of going nuts with worrying. The fact that he’d got himself a gun proved it.
I gave him about an hour to cool off before I returned to the apartment. For a lad who lived by his brains, I’d been in too much of a hurry to grab off the whole seventy grand. Now I’d have to work at getting Perry’s confidence back, at convincing him that I was his one pal in a cold and hostile world.
When I let myself into the apartment, I saw that Perry had straightened up the living room. The molding was on the wall and the daybed pushed back to where it belonged.
“Perry?” I called.
No answer. I started to feel sick. He’d beat it after all with the dough which had practically been mine, and I’d never again see him or, what was more to the point, it.
I glanced into the kitchen, then into the bathroom, then opened the bedroom door.
I saw something and heard something at the same time. What I saw was Perry lying motionless on the floor between the bed and the dresser. What I heard was a small sound at the side of the door. I was turning toward the sound when the ceiling fell on me.