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.
McCarthy admitted it with: “I’ve been told so before. By better men than you two punks will ever be.”
“Sing high, sing low,” the heavy man said. “But if you do it out loud I’ll smear you all over the town. You guys out here think you know something but you’re made to order.”
The thin man said, “Yeah, tailor-made.”
Wilson turned into the apartment house, first glancing suspiciously up and down the street, and McCarthy said, “Now what?”
“We go in. Just act right.”
McCarthy acted right. He went inside and to the elevator as though expected, and the clerk looked at him casually and turned away. They rode up to 3C and the heavy man said:
“You know, Mike, I don’t blame the guy for going with the gal here. She’s a honey. I don’t blame him for going for her.”
The thin partner said, “Why should you? He’s paying for it, ain’t he?”
“And how!” the heavy man agreed. He said to McCarthy: “Just you knock on his door. When he opens it you just walk in like you owned the place. No funny stuff now.”
The thin man said, “Hey, wait!” and reached over and snapped McCarthy’s heavy gun from its shoulder sling. He stuck this in the waistband of his trousers and said, “O.K. now. Go to it.”
McCarthy knocked. He heard fluttering sounds inside and then a girl’s voice said, “What is it?” McCarthy got a warning gun jabbed in his short ribs and held silent.
The heavy man said, “Electrician, ma’am!”
There was more fluttering and then the door opened. The small and blond and supposedly Mrs. Abott stood framed in it, a black silk negligee wrapped around what appeared to be herself and nothing else. The thin man jammed his gun into McCarthy’s ribs and said:
“In!”
McCarthy went in, accompanied by a small shriek from the blond girl. The heavy man said in an approving voice:
“Now that’s nice, lady. That’s the way to yelp. If you’d made any more noise than that somebody might have heard you and then there’d have been hell to pay for this chump.”
She said, “Who are you? What do you want?”
Wilson’s voice said, from inside: “What is it, darling?”
The girl didn’t answer, just backed into the room where Wilson was, staring at the three men and the two guns that followed her. Wilson jumped to his feet, his face suddenly white, and the heavy man said:
“Don’t have kittens, mister. We’re friends. And I’ll prove it to you.” He said to his partner: “You watch ’em, Mike,” and headed toward the French phone by the window.
Wilson said, “Why, what—” and the heavy man grinned back at him over one shoulder and said:
“Don’t get in a lather, dad. I’m going to call Halstead. I’ll get him to come up and we can sort of talk things over.”
McCarthy said, “You’d better call the cops, Wilson. This has gone far enough.”
Then the thin man hit him on the back of the head with his gun and McCarthy went ahead and on his face. And completely out.
He came back to life in time to hear Halstead say, “This is going to complicate things, Wilson. This man possibly has somebody working with him. This is going to cost money to hush up.”
McCarthy opened his eyes just wide enough to take in the room. He saw Halstead sitting composedly in a chair with the heavy man standing back of it and leaning on it. Wilson was standing in front of him and looking very unhappy. The girl was sitting on a couch, swinging and admiring an arched instep that held a high-heeled bedroom slipper. The thin man was at the window and looking directly at McCarthy. He said:
“Hey! Ain’t it about time Sleeping Beauty woke up? I didn’t rap him hard, Halstead. I just slapped him a little.”
Halstead said to Wilson: “You’re in this too far to back out now, Wilson. If Bowes gets a police guard, which he is very apt to do, there’ll be hell to pay all the way around.”
The thin man said, “We’ll take him and his copper guard if we have to, Halstead. I never liked cops anyway.” He walked over to McCarthy and kicked him in the ribs, and McCarthy took it with a lax body and still half-opened eyes. It took what will power he had to do it but the thin man turned and walked back satisfied and McCarthy thought the effort worth it.
Halstead said, “You didn’t do so well at the hospital, Mike. If that cop had been a better shot, you wouldn’t have done well at all.”
The thin man spat on the rug and the girl flared at him with: “Damn you! Don’t do that. You’re not in a barn now.”
The thin man told her where he was, using good old English words, and the girl glared at him and used language equally strong. Wilson looked even unhappier and Halstead grinned and said to the girclass="underline"
“Shut up, Martha. I’ll handle this. As I say, Wilson, it will cost you money. It cost money to buy Bowes off. If he’d gotten on the stand with his yarn, you’d have been tarred and feathered and chased out of town.”
The girl said, “Yes, Daddy! Think of my reputation. It would have ruined me.”
The thin man, who didn’t seem to think a great deal of the girl, snapped, “Hagh! That’d be a day.”
Halstead said thoughtfully, “There’s only one thing to do. Let Mike and Jerry take the fellow out the back way while he’s still out. If they meet anybody they can pretend he’s drunk and that they’re taking care of him.”
“And then what?” Wilson asked.
Halstead said, “What can we do? He’s wise to the setup. You’re wrecked if we don’t get rid of him for you. That was the reason for taking care of old man Giovanni. Bowes had told him the story and you couldn’t afford to have him telling it around, could you?”
Wilson said miserably, “I... I didn’t know what you were going to do.”
Halstead waved his hand and said, “You’re in it just as deep, whether you knew it or not. And I’ll never think you didn’t know what was going to happen. Now do you pay for us taking this man out or shall we let him stay here with you? Think fast — he won’t be out like that very much longer.”
Then Benny said, from the hallway: “You’re damn right he won’t.”
Benny was behind McCarthy and the shock of hearing Benny’s voice brought his head around. Benny was in the center of the door, crouching a little and holding an iron jack handle in one big hand. Chet Morris crowded up behind him, holding a small gun, and he menaced the room with this and quavered:
“Hands up!”
That started it. The thin man went for the gun he carried under his arm and Benny went for the thin man with the jack handle. The heavy man jerked at his pocket and Morris closed both eyes and pulled the trigger of his little gun three times.
McCarthy was watching the heavy man and lunging to his feet at the same time, but Hal-stead’s head was in his line of vision. He saw a black dot spring out at the side of Halstead’s forehead and saw Halstead put his head down on his knees. And then the heavy man got his gun clear of his pocket and McCarthy hit him at the knees.
The man had a big gun and it drowned out the echo of Morris’s small one when it exploded. But the man was falling backward when this happened and the slug smashed into the ceiling. The heavy man clubbed the gun at McCarthy, who was hanging stubbornly to his knees, and McCarthy took the blow on the shoulder and let go of knees with an arm gone numb. Then he heard a crunching sound about him and heard Benny say:
“Leave him go, Chief. I bopped the—”
McCarthy released the heavy man, who showed no further interest in the affair and whose face was now oddly shaped. He heard a screeching sound from the door and turned and saw the blonde pounding at Chet Morris with her high-heeled slipper and saw Morris fending her away and not doing well at all. The girl was crying out: