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.
“Little Mother Morris,” said McCarthy, sourly. “Why did he have to tell Wilson I was looking around?”
“He said he didn’t think it made any difference.”
“Well, it probably doesn’t,” McCarthy said, and made a dinner date for eight that evening.
Marge said, “Why not at seven? I’m hungry now.”
“I’ve got to see this Giovanni guy that’s suing Wilson first, hon. It may take me a little time to find him.”
“I see. You be careful, Pat. It worries me about what Chet Morris said.”
McCarthy laughed and said, “You and Chet would make a good pair. You both worry.”
Antonio Giovanni owned a small and messy vegetable store in the center of Italian town and it was there McCarthy found him. Antonio was on the floor and on his & face and he’d apparently been trying to crawl under a long tray-like metal affair that held vegetables beneath a spray-like arrangement. The tray, possibly four feet wide, sloped down toward the front of the store for a display, and Antonio was sprawled partly under this and looking like a large and very dead frog.
Water from the spray had seeped through on him and washed part of the blood around him away, but there was still plenty left. He’d had long sweeping mustaches and one was soaking in blood while the other hung like a brush toward the floor.
McCarthy, without touching anything, knelt and looked — and thought he’d never seen such a pitifully ridiculous corpse. He saw three small, round, and purple holes in the cheek turned toward him, saw another in the part of fat neck in view. He cursed, silently and viciously and stood, and then a voice from behind him said:
“Hey! Where’s Tony?”
McCarthy turned fast. He saw a small and dirty boy of around ten with black curly hair and bigger and blacker eyes than McCarthy thought were possible. He gulped and said:
“Tony isn’t here right now. You run along and come back by and by.”
The boy said, “Ma says for him to come to supper. She says she won’t wait, that it’ll spoil. Where is Tony?”
“He’s out right now.”
The boy said reflectively, “Ma’ll raise hell with him when he comes home. She says all he does is run along and talk to lawyers and that the store ain’t run right any more.”
“Is he your dad?” asked McCarthy, going a little sick. There was no resemblance between the dead man and the boy but he got the answer he dreaded.
“Sure! I’ll go back and tell Ma he ain’t here. If you see him, tell him supper’s ready.”
McCarthy said he’d surely do that and watched the boy swagger out. He decided that Tony had been an indulgent father and that the children had rather taken things into their own hands — basing this on the good nature still showing in the dead man’s face and on knowledge of other decent, kindly, honest Italian people he’d met. He went out of there, head down and deciding he would not be the one that broke the news of Tony’s death to his family.
He called the station and told Shannon what he’d found, and Shannon cursed luridly and asked him to go back and stand guard until he could get a radio car on the scene.
And McCarthy did, praying the youngster wouldn’t be back looking for his father.
Chet Morris was at Marge’s apartment when McCarthy got there. He was again polishing his glasses and his mild, near-sighted eyes peered up at McCarthy as he said:
“I’m sorry, pal! I guess I spoke out of turn to that big, stuffed shirt. How was I to know he’d take it the way he did?”
“You told him I’d talked to you about him? That it?”
“Yeah! I didn’t stop to think a thing about it.” He put his glasses back on and this cleared his vision. He looked McCarthy over and said, in a different tone:
“What’s the matter with you, Pat? You look sick.”
McCarthy said: “I am sick. Marge, honey, how’s about a drink? I thought I could take it but I guess I can’t.”
Marge brought the drink and said anxiously, “What’s the matter, Pat? What’s the matter with you?”
“I want to kill a man. This bird with the ice pick. Him or the man who hired him. That’s all. I didn’t know I could get so crazy mad that I’d be sick.”
Morris asked, “What’s happened?” and McCarthy told them both. Morris started toward the phone, saying: “I’ll telephone it in. With the guy in the hospital getting it the same way, it’s a story. They may not get the connection.”
McCarthy said, with no inflection: “You touch that phone, Chet, and I’ll beat you to a pulp. I’m praying God that nobody will see there is a connection. That other business didn’t rate much of a spread and maybe nobody will add ’em together. I’ll work it my own way, Chet. Let the other boys handle it. You’re off shift.”
Morris said, “If you say so, Pat! But give me a break when the thing smashes.”
“If it smashes,” McCarthy said bitterly. “It’s going to be hell to lay it on that guy. You don’t accuse men like Wilson of having murder done unless you can prove it. And he’s got no motive.”
Marge said: “Chet told me all about it. This Italian man was suing Wilson for damages. If he was dead, he couldn’t sue, could he? That’s why that other man was stabbed, too. They tried to kill him so he couldn’t testify. It stands to reason, Pat.”
McCarthy said wearily, “Oh, use your head, Marge. Giovanni was asking for twenty-five grand, claiming Wilson was driving carelessly. Wilson is very wealthy and what’s twenty-five grand to a man like that? He’d pay it in a second rather than have anybody killed. It ties up some way, but we haven’t caught the angle yet.”
The phone burred and Marge answered it and then said, “It’s for you, Pat. It’s Lieutenant Shannon.” McCarthy took it and said, “Yeah, Shan?” and Shannon blurted out:
“You called the turn on it, Irish! You sure did. I had a man on guard up at the hospital and two guys came in and tried to kill that Bowes guy. One of them even got in the room. That’s the one that got away, down the fire-escape. I should have seen that they put him some place where he was easier watched.”
“What happened?”
“Well, this man, his name’s Dugan, was sitting out in the hall. He admits he was talking to some nurse, or maybe it wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. Two men come up the stairs and walk down to Bowes room and Dugan finally gets wise to himself and asks ’em what they want. One of them pulls a gun and starts using it and Dugan kills him. The other ducked in Bowes’ room and down the fire-escape and Dugan missed him three times hand running. He’s going to put more time in on the range or get off the force and I told him so.”
“Was Bowes hurt?”
“Hell, no! They’ve got him doped up so he won’t roll around and tear himself up any more and he didn’t even know anything happened.”
“Has he talked yet?”
“He can’t. And the doctors wouldn’t let him if he could.”
“Who was the man the cop killed?”
“Some bird named Weeks. Just a hired hand.”
“Did Dugan see the one that got away well enough to identify him?”
“No. He was talking to that nurse, like I said. He wasn’t paying any attention to what he was supposed to be working at. I’m going to see he gets a month’s suspension without pay if I have to resign to get it... You coming down?”
McCarthy said not that evening and then he asked if the man the policeman had killed had happened to have an ice pick on his person, and found he hadn’t. And then he said to Marge and Chet Morris:
“Let’s eat! Chet, why don’t you come with us?”