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.
Gun Molls and such sister publications as Gangland Detective Stories, Racketeer Stories, Gangster Stories, and others similarly titled did not offer literary prose nor enduring works of fiction. Characterization has no more depth than spray paint, and stylistic nuance is as rare as a humble politician. The villains are utterly odious; they would be loved neither by their mothers nor their dogs. The molls, unless they are working undercover or hopelessly in love with the wrong man, are still more sinister than the thugs with whom they share adventures. Nonetheless, even the worst of these publications offered exactly what their readers demanded: nonstop action, snappy dialogue, blazing guns, automobiles careering around corners with the cops in hot pursuit, and other standard scenes from the cheap B movies of the era and the least of the pulps.
“The Devil’s Bookkeeper” first appeared in the August 1931 issue of Gun Molls.
Clerical Clara kept records for gangdom, and therefore she knew plenty. But even an auditor can be wrong.
Across the roof-top, a dim shadow slipped silently to a barred window, like a dull gray wraith that merged perfectly with the curling fingers of fog drifting in from the lake.
It made no sound in its ghost-like approach, and was visible only when the clouds across the crescent moon allowed a faint ghoulish light to filter for a moment upon the roofs of the sleeping city.
A pale hand attached a small piece of cloth to the glass of the window, on which was smeared a bit of fast drying cement. Then the scratch of a diamond cutting a circle on the glass, a snapping tap as the inner oval fell loose and was withdrawn by the attached piece of cloth.
Came a hissing intake of breath, unmistakably a woman’s, as the still form of a man was revealed lying on a small bed within the darkened room. Again that pale hand in the shimmer of greenish moonlight; two dull clicks from the blue metal in his fist; a convulsive jerk from the figure on the bed, and when the clouds again cleared across the crescent moon, the dirty rooftop was empty and silent.
Detective Sergeant Dan Conley was talking to his chief. His Irish face was twisted into a puzzled frown as he hitched his shoulder holster to a more comfortable position, and took a chair opposite the captain.
“ ‘Mugs’ Brandon was bumped off last night,” he began.
“Where did they get him?” asked Captain Steele.
“In that roof-top apartment of his,” said Conley. “No fingerprints. The gun that did for Mugs cut out a circle of the window with a diamond, and let him have it with a .45. Must have used a silencer!”
“Mugs put up a fight?” asked the captain.
“Never knew what hit him,” said Conley. “Got him while he was asleep!”
“Hell!” blazed the captain. “Get out of here and bring somebody in. The commissioner has been threatening to fire every man in the precinct the next time there was a killing. We got to make a showing!”
“I got a tall hunch about this killing,” said Conley slowly.
“Sez you!” sneered Steele. “What’s the big idea this time?”
“There was one footprint on the roof under that window,” said Conley. “It was made by the rubber-sole from a woman’s shoe!”
“One of Mugs’ old molls,” said Steele. “Check up on those Clancy Street dames he used to play around with. Some hallway baby, maybe!”
“I got a hunch,” said Conley, stubbornly.
“Mind letting me in on it?” asked the captain with heavy sarcasm.
“ ‘Clerical Clara,’ ” said Conley. “It looks like her work!”
The captain looked at the detective for a moment while his heavy face grew red with exasperation. He spat viciously at the brass cuspidor which is a part of every police captain’s office furniture.
“You thimble-wit!” he roared. “Clerical Clara!
You know dam’ well that dame ain’t never been mixed up in this booze racket, and you’ve made us all look like dam’ fools half a dozen times. Now you get out on the East Side, and bring in some of those Clancy Street trollops!”
“Yes, sir!” Detective Sergeant Conley saluted, swung on his heel, and left the room with his great hands clenched to control his rising anger. He stepped into a squad car, jammed in the shifting lever and roared out of the small courtyard with exhaust wide open.
In a neat little office on the fourth floor of a side street building a blonde beauty was carefully sorting a list of accounts receivable, and making figures on a pad with machine-like accuracy.
Her hair was combed straight back in a mannish bob, and the carefully penciled brows were drawn together in a frown of concentration. Her age might have been anything between twenty-five and thirty-five, according to her mood.
Soft and hard by turns; cold and warmly yielding, whichever best suited her purpose and the business at hand. The sign on her door said: “Clara Beaumont, Accountant. Income Taxes and Collections.”
She looked up as the handle of the door turned, and then smiled as she motioned lazily to a chair.
“Hello, Conley,” she drawled. “Can I help you with your income tax?”
“Can the comedy,” said Conley. “You know dam’ well I don’t have any grafts that make me pay taxes.”
“More fool you,” she answered. “What’s on your mind?”
“Mugs Brandon,” said Conley. “When did you last see him?”
“Don’t know the gent,” said the girl. “That is, not personally.”
“He was bumped off last night,” said Conley, watching her carefully. “Some dame did for him.”
“How interesting,” she sneered. “But then, I specialize in income taxes.”
“And collections,” said Conley.
“And I always collect,” said the girl.
“I know that,” said Conley. “You either collect — or else—”
“What do you mean — or else?” The girl shot the question at him viciously.
“Just what I said, and Mugs Brandon never paid anything he could get out of,” said Conley.
He looked critically at her well-shaped legs, and then allowed his eyes to drop to her shoes. He noted that the thin slippers she was wearing were at least two sizes smaller than the print of the rubber-soled shoe he had measured on the roof of Brandon’s apartment.
“You dicks make me sick,” she said with disgust.
“Pardon my asthma,” he said. “I’ll be moving along.”
“Wait a minute.” She watched him with puzzled eyes. “You got nothing on me.”
“That’s what I said,” he agreed. “I’ll be shoving along.”
For ten minutes after he had taken his abrupt departure she sat motionless, trying to figure out what the detective had meant. Then she returned to her accounts. It took brains to swindle the government out of taxes, and she was one of the best in the game.
“Clerical Clara in the flesh!”
She started as the smooth feminine voice addressed her, and looked up to see a quietly dressed girl standing just inside the door. As though reaching for a paper, her hand started to slide inside an open drawer.
“Hold it!”
The order shot out like the snap of a whip, as the stranger moved her hand out from her side, a wicked little automatic clenched in the tiny fist.
“I ain’t on the kill for sugar, but you make a funny pass at me and I’ll fan you a heavy dose of lead poisoning,” she articulated slowly. “You know who I am?”
“I don’t go to cheap shows,” sneered Clara. “But on a bet I’d say you were Chorus, back row!”
For a moment it seemed as though the stranger would turn her rod on her tormentor.