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.
She was a dark slender girl of about twenty-two, with the regal high-breasted carriage that speaks of breeding in any language.
“I am Premier Dancer at Brandon’s Club, and you know it,” she said quietly. “And Mugs stopped two slugs last night while he was sound asleep. You are good at figures, so I thought maybe you could figure that one out.”
“Why, you cheap boop boop a doop, I’ll burn you down so quick—”
“Stay put!” snapped the dancer. “I’d like to let you have it right now, but first I want to see you turn yellow like the sneakin’ rat that you are!”
“Put up that rod and give me a break,” begged Clara. “I’ll fan a heat on you so dam’ fast that you will think you are up against a Baby Thompson.”
For a moment it looked as though the stranger would comply with the request. Then she sighed and backed toward the door. Never for an instant did she take her gun from the other.
“Not this time, old sister,” she drawled. “But next time we meet, start doing your stuff with your lead atomizer. I’m giving you a break; that’s more than you ever gave anyone.”
The door slammed behind her with a bang, and for five minutes Clara sat motionless. She knew the ways of gangdom. They might wait five minutes outside to plug you if you got reckless and followed, or then they might beat it right away, and have five minutes start to the good. Either way, you never could tell for sure.
Two days later, Mugs Brandon was put away in style. His casket was the most expensive that money could buy, and three cars loaded with flowers followed the hearse. His friends sent them because they regretted his demise, and his enemies were as profligate in the expenditures, to signify their satisfaction.
Weeping women were at the church; the girls from Clancy Street. But there were two who did not weep, though the eyes of one were dry with a burning hate that glittered like the fires of hell, as they looked across the casket at another woman who was coolly looking down upon the pale chiseled features of the corpse.
Clerical Clara looked up from her inspection, and glanced insolently at the woman on the other side of the bier.
“He looks so natural,” she sighed. “As though he had paid all his debts, and had a clear conscience.”
“Yes,” whispered the other as softly. “He rests content. He knows all his debts will be paid.”
The gangsters in line shoved them along with gentle pressure, and they parted one on each side of the casket, and passed down opposite walls of the little church.
From a nearby pew, Detective Sergeant Con-ley had observed the little by-play between them. As the stranger left the church he was close behind her, and followed until she turned in at the Club Brandon.
“Carmen Ryan!” he whispered to himself. “I heard that she was Brandon’s real moll, but about those Clancy Street dames?”
He sighed heavily as he turned toward Headquarters to make his report to Captain Steele. Sometimes he wished he had listened to the voice of graft. He was not so young any more, and a detective’s pay—
Sergeant Conley could not have told you what prompted him to return to the apartment where Mugs Brandon had been killed, and as he stood in the large living-room with its bizarre furnishings, his eyes strayed to a large desk in one corner beneath a massive floor lamp.
He seated himself in the heavy chair behind the desk, and opened the various drawers with the keys taken from the effects of the slain gangster. In a secret compartment in the rear of the large center drawer, he found a small japanned box, and fitted a tiny key from the ring in his hand.
On top of a small account book were fifty bills of one-thousand-dollar denomination, and in the book were accounts that would incriminate many prominent men. Beneath the book were several pages written in a neat feminine hand. The work of Clerical Clara!
“Jake Cling, $5,000.”
“Soapy Taylor, $5,000.”
“Toad Wilson, $3,000.”
Conley’s eyes grew wide with understanding as he scanned the three cards. The three men had been enemies of Mugs Brandon, and each had been shot and killed in some mysterious way. Soapy had been killed while he slept. His mind pieced the puzzle together as accurately as if he had seen the killings take place.
Clerical Clara had done her work, and had then rendered her bill for the service. Mugs Brandon had refused to pay her, and he had remembered Clara’s boast that she always collected — or else—
So absorbed was he in his thoughts that he failed to hear the slight click of the door as it opened on its well-oiled hinges.
“You find anything, Dick?”
He started to jump to his feet, and then sank back again as he looked into the muzzle of the gun held upon him in the steady hand of Clerical Clara. Her blue eyes were fastened upon the tell-tale slips on the desk before him.
“Hold that pose, please, and keep both hands on the desk where I can see them!”
Keeping him covered, she walked slowly to the desk, and reached for the papers. Before her hand could take them up, another soft voice purred gently over her shoulder.
“As you are, and don’t move! Now drop that gat on the desk!”
As the automatic clattered to the mahogany desk, Carmen Ryan jammed the muzzle of her own rod into the back of her enemy.
“Hands high, and swing around,” she ordered.
As Clara obeyed her blue eyes were filled with venom that shook her frail body like the ague.
“I’ll get you for this, you cheap hussy!” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Like a steel spring the arm of the dancer shot out, and mashed the lips of the killer woman. All the pent-up anger of the past two weeks went into that one blow that made the dancer careless for a moment.
Before Detective Sergeant Conley could interfere, Clara’s right foot shot out, and the automatic flew from the hand of the dancer and went spinning across the room. In the same breath the killer snatched up her own heavy automatic from the desk and swung around on the man and woman with the threat of death in her savage eyes.
“Take those papers out of your pocket and hand them to me!”
As she snapped the words, the detective stiffened. He gazed steadily into the hate-filled eyes before him, and slowly shook his head.
“You have fooled me a dozen times,” he said. “Now I have enough on you to swing you into hell!”
“You must think I’m a fool,” she sneered. “Thirty seconds, and then I start shooting.”
The dancer made a movement, and the eyes of the killer swept toward her for a brief instant as she swung the muzzle of her rod around with the movement of her body. In that split second, Conley threw his body forward and down against the desk.
Even as he fell, Clerical Clara wheeled and threw a slug across the desk which was overturning. He slid to the floor, the desk falling on top of him. As the dancer started forward, Clara faced her with the smoking rod.
“I never miss,” she said quietly. “Another move from you and I’ll burn you down, too.”
Watching the dancer closely, she leaned over and attempted to reach into the breast pocket of the fallen detective, but the heavy desk covered his chest like a shield. The telephone lay where it had fallen, and a series of sharp clicks warned her that some one was listening in.
“Take hold of that desk and help me move it, or I’ll drill you,” she ordered the dancer.
As the girl started to obey, a sharp knock sounded on the hall door. Then a heavy body smashed against the panels. The killer looked quickly about, and backed toward the window. She slid a slender leg over the sill, and climbed onto a fire-escape. There she paused.