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.
Morris said, “Don’t think I’m not. I’m sticking close until this thing’s settled. I’m scared, Pat, and I’m not fooling.”
Marge said, “I’m afraid about Pat.”
And McCarthy said, “And I’m afraid the cops will get to the ice-pick guy before I do. I want to be first.”
It took McCarthy the best part of a week to find that Mr. James R. S. Wilson was maintaining a small apartment in a discreet apartment house. And a small blond girl who fitted? the apartment. The small girl’s name was Mrs. Martha Abott, or at least that name was accepted. Her husband was Mr. James Abott, supposedly a traveling man, but his travels only extended from the Wilson brokerage firm or the Wilson house to the apartment.
It took twenty-five dollars of what was left of the five hundred for McCarthy to get details but he thought it money well spent. He said to Marge and to Chet Morris, who was arrayed in something new that shocked the eye:
“The guy’s keeping her all right, but in this day and age that’s no crime. And I’m damned if I can see that he’s doing anything else. I’ve tagged him back and forth, from his house to his office, from there to this apartment, and I haven’t seen him do one thing that would tie him up to any of the rough stuff.
“Of course I can’t tell just who he sees in his office, but he’s too cagy an old turkey to meet some hoodlum there where the help could spot it. I’ve got a boy on the day shift and another one on the night shift to tell me if he meets anybody there at this apartment and they say he doesn’t.”
Morris asked, “Does he know you’re following him?”
“If he does, he hasn’t done anything about it.”
Marge said firmly, “He’s a nasty old man. Or he wouldn’t be doing things like that.”
Morris said, “Did you ever see his wife?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, I did. When I went to see him. I don’t blame him a bit. She’d drive a man to drink.”
McCarthy asked what woman wouldn’t and Marge slapped half-heartedly at him. She said, “What are you going to do now, Pat?”
“Keep after him, of course. He’s bound to make contact with his hired killers before long and I want to see ’em. He’s the only lead to them I’ve got.”
“I wish you’d drop it. After all, it’s none of your business.”
McCarthy said, “You didn’t happen to see old man Giovanni stretched out like I did. You didn’t see this poor kid of his. You didn’t go to the old man’s funeral.”
“Pat! You didn’t go to the funeral!”
Chet Morris said, “Pat and some of the cops, mostly Shannon, and some of the boys on my paper paid for it, Marge. Even Abe Goldstein came in for ten bucks and the guy thinks money is something to hide in a bank. All of them had seen the family the guy left and it seems he’d given Halstead all the money he could raise to prosecute Wilson for running over his oldest boy. He’d mortgaged the shop he had and they took it away from the family before they could even have his funeral.”
Marge said, “Oh, the poor people.”
There was a knock on the door and Marge opened it for Benny. He came in, grinning, and said, “Another thirty-five bucks you owe me, Chief. I’m running you into dough — that’s five of ’em.”
“You always cost me,” McCarthy said sourly.
“But not any more, Chief. It seems that I’m getting amnesia or something like that and the docs say I’m no good any more and that they’re going to get another boy until I get fat again. Jeez, Chief, I lose ten pounds, but it’s seventeen and a half a pound the way I figure it and that buys a lot of groceries.”
“I’d rather pay you than some other mugg.”
“Thanks, Chief, thanks. I like that.”
McCarthy explained, “If I pay you, you don’t have to borrow from me. If I pay somebody else I’m stuck with you again.”
“Jeez, Chief, that ain’t right. Don’t I always kick it back to you?”
“You haven’t yet.”
“Well, I never had it yet. When I’m in the dough I will.”
McCarthy looked at his watch and asked, “You got the hack downstairs?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll ride with you then.”
He said to Marge and Chet Morris: “I’ll start after Wilson some more. He gets out of his office in half an hour; he’s as regular as the old maid putting the cat out. See you some more.”
Marge went to the door with him. She said earnestly, “You be careful, Pat! I’ve got a funny feeling about this.”
“Forget it, kid! He’ll lead me to the right guys sooner or later. He has to — they’ll contact him some time. And then I’ll step in on him and them both.”
Benny said, from where he was waiting in the halclass="underline" “Hey, the guy talked today. When I was doing my stuff with the docs and him. But all he wanted was a priest. He said he wanted to confess.”
“Shannon know this?”
“Sure. But the guy wouldn’t talk to him. He wanted a priest is all, Chief.”
McCarthy said, “I’ll put Wilson to bed, either at his house or at his apartment, and then I’ll see Shannon and we’ll talk to the doctors. If the guy can talk to a priest he can talk to the cops. And he knows things we have to know to get any place.”
“Is he getting along all right?” Marge asked.
“According to the doctors he is.”
He said good-by again and Marge watched him follow Benny down the hall with quick strides. She went inside and said to Chet Morris:
“This has Pat down. I never saw him get upset about anything like that before.”
Morris said slowly, “Well, here was a case of the innocent bystander being the victim. Worse than that. That killing was so senseless, and there was no reason for the attack on Bowes. Twenty-five thousand dollars means little to Wilson — and the death of his oldest boy hit Giovanni pretty hard. From what his wife said, he only wanted the money for his family. And then he gets killed and leaves five kids, none of them over ten. Twenty-five thousand isn’t worth that.”
Marge said, “Maybe Pat’s after the wrong man. Maybe he didn’t do it or have it done.”
Morris shrugged his gaily covered shoulders and said, “Don’t be silly. If it wasn’t Wilson back of it, why should the one witness against him be almost killed? Why should the man making the charge be killed? It doesn’t make too much sense, but he’s the only connecting link between the two happenings.”
“I wonder where the man Bowes got the five one hundred dollar bills.”
Morris said, “I didn’t know he had any,” and Marge told of them. She defended Pat with: “He just took them so he’d have money to care for the man in the hospital. That was all.”
“Sure,” said Morris, with no conviction in his tone.
Marge said, “Poor Pat! I’ve got the oddest feeling about him. I’m really worried.”
“If the cops find out Pat took the five hundred you’ll have something to worry about,” Morris told her.
McCarthy walked a hundred feet behind the sedate-looking James R. S. Wilson. I But Wilson was alone and I McCarthy wasn’t. A thin, very dark man was on one — side of him and a heavy but equally dark man was on the other. The heavy man was saying:
“Go ahead, shamus. You been following him and he didn’t know it and we been following you and you didn’t know it. Now we’re all going to get together and get acquainted.”
The heavy man had a hand in a side coat pocket and the pocket lumped out with more than hand. His thin partner was just as close to McCarthy and his pocket bulged in the same manner. He had a high whiny voice and he said:
“You’re a stupid, shamus! You might’ve known we was keeping watch on him. You’re stupid.”