The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
“Leave it out,” I suggested.
His brows went up. “You’ll get the truth. I don’t necessarily lie when I’m not holding the locket.”
I glanced at my watch. “Why was Anton Strowlski after you?”
“Anton who?”
“The rod man brought in with us,” I said impatiently. “The only reason you started that brawl was because you saw Anton in the mirror and wanted cops on the scene fast.”
He shook his head. “Never saw him before.”
I looked through the bars at him in vexation, and he gazed back at me blandly. “Why’d you deliberately get yourself thrown in jail?” I asked finally.
He blew out his lips, there was a sound of released suction, and he used a thumb to push his plate back in place. “What makes you think I did that?”
Apparently my bothering to have the cop moved to the end of the hall had been wasted effort. I said: “If you won’t answer questions, I can’t help much.”
He raised tufted eyebrows. “Believe me, if I could tell you a single thing about Carmichael’s murder, I would. But I can’t. If the answer was in me, would I pay you to dig it out?”
From the corner of my eye I saw the guard start toward us. Longstreet looked up at me without a sign of mischievousness in his suddenly serious face.
“Believe me, Mr. Moon, my being in jail has nothing to do with Carmichael’s murder. You still with me?”
“Time’s up,” the guard broke in behind me.
I said: “I’ll play along for a while,” and left him to catch up on his sleep.
When I reached the front desk, Sergeant Danny Blake was just coming on duty. His nose looked like a blue turnip.
“How’s the nose?” I asked.
He grunted something unintelligible.
I said: “What happened to the guy brought in with us? Anton Strowlski.”
Danny thumbed through his log book. “Released on bond at 7:30. I was off then. Go off at 5:00.”
Chapter Three
The Golden Locket
The night before I had gotten to bed at one in the morning and been routed out at four. I felt like falling in bed for a week, but clues have a habit of disappearing unless you follow a murder trail while it is still hot. From the desk sergeant’s directory I learned the Rex Amusement Corporation was in the Bland Building, and took a cab there.
The corporation was on the first floor. It had its own entrance, separate from that to the offices on higher floors. The entrance was centered in a long loading ramp for trucks, presumably used for loading and unloading various types of coin machines. An empty, driverless truck was backed against one end of the ramp.
I found the door unlocked and walked into a huge storage room filled with hundreds of coin devices. Juke boxes, cigarette vendors, pinball games and slot machines stood in orderly rows, arranged so each type was easily accessible. At the far end of the warehouse I saw a door labeled OFFICE.
Pushing open this door, I found myself in a large, but simply furnished reception room containing only an office switchboard, a typing desk, two file cabinets and a few odd chairs. Centering one wall of the room was a glass-paned door bearing the title M. SWOPE, PRESIDENT. Two similar doors, respectively labeled G. W. CARMICHAEL, CUSTOMER SERVICE and W. H. LONGSTREET, SALES MANAGER, opened in the opposite wall. The wall directly across from the reception room entrance was full of windows.
A sleek, brown-eyed blonde with nice accessories was beating the typewriter. She gave me a cool smile which meant: “State your business, please. I’m very busy.”
I came right to the point by flashing the identity card which states I am a private dick and am bonded to twenty thousand dollars.
“We don’t need a private detective,” she said. “The police are doing fine.”
I said: “Maybe you don’t, but you’ve got one. One of your bosses hired me.”
She raised carefully molded eyebrows. “Mr. Swope?”
“Longstreet.” I took the chair she hadn’t offered and stretched out my legs. “What’s your name?”
She thought me over before she finally decided to answer. “Marie Kincaid.”
“You the whole office force?”
“All that works in. We have ten service men and a crew of salesmen.”
“Where are they all?”
“We don’t open till eight.” She raised her eyes to the wall clock and I followed suit. It was ten till.
I asked: “You been here long?”
“About five minutes.”
“I mean have you worked here long?”
“Four years.”
“Know about a locket Longstreet wears?”
She glanced at me quickly, then laughed a tinkly, indulgent laugh. “The swearing locket? That’s what we call it behind his back. He’s a nut on the subject.”
“Is he serious about it, or is it just a gag?”
“Oh, he’s serious. I wouldn’t believe his oath on a Bible, but anything he swears to on the locket is pure truth.”
I got to my feet. “I’ll take a look at the room. It been cleaned up?”
“Not yet,” she said.
Opening the door which bore Carmichael’s name, I went in and looked around. Except for a spot of dried blood on the carpet beneath the desk, there was little to see. I wandered around looking at the floor, the desk top, the window sills and the bookcase without finding any cigarette butts of queer oriental brand, any Egyptian scarabs or any of the other highly informative clues detectives are always running into.
Marie Kincaid came to the door and looked in at me.
“Know where they found the gun?” I asked.
She pointed to the floor near her feet. “Right there.”
“How’d you know?”
She raised her nose. “I saw it. The police brought me over here from home before anything had been moved.”
I estimated the distance from the desk to the gun as about twelve feet, which ruled out suicide, as Inspector Day had said.
“Let’s go over the story you told the cops,” I said. “I understand Longstreet phoned here twice yesterday.”
“That’s right.”
“When did the calls come?”
“The first was at 3:30, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged him in and they had a terrible argument.”
“You listen in?”
Her nose went up again. “I did not! Mr. Carmichael’s door was open.”
“What was the argument about?”
“I don’t know. But Mr. Carmichael swore something awful.”
“Where was Swope at the time?”
“In his office.” She pointed at his door across the reception room.
“Hmm. How about the second call?”
She said: “That came just at five. I had my hat on ready to leave when the phone rang. It was Mr. Longstreet again, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged Mr. Carmichael in and, through the open door, heard him say: ‘All right. Wait ten minutes and come on over. I’ll be here.’ ”
“Then what?”
“I went home. An hour later the police came after me.”
I asked: “How do you account for Longstreet being able to phone when he was locked in a cell from three o’clock on?”
Her nose went up a third time. “I don’t. You’re the detective. You account for it.”
“How do you know it was Longstreet phoning?”
“She said it was.”
“What?”
“She said it was.”
“Who?”
“The switchboard operator. She said: ‘Mr. Longstreet calling Mr. Carmichael.’ ”
I thought this over while I wandered around the room some more. Finally I said: “You told the cops you recognized his voice.”
“I thought I heard it in the background,” she said quickly.
I shook my head. “You told the cops Longstreet himself phoned. You didn’t mention any woman.”