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.
“The woman wasn’t phoning,” she defended. “She was just a switchboard operator somewhere.”
“Where?”
“How would I know? Wherever Mr. Longstreet phoned from.”
I said: “Did you actually hear Longstreet’s voice at all?”
“Well” — she hesitated — “I thought I heard it in the background asking the operator to hurry up.”
I asked bluntly: “Who paid you to change your story?”
Color warmed the coolness of her cheeks and her brown eyes threw flame at me. “Just what do you mean by that?”
“I read your sworn statement. You told the cops you definitely recognized Longstreet’s voice, and when your questioner remarked that imitation is easy, you said: ‘After four years, an imitation wouldn’t fool me.’ ”
“It was the way the police asked questions,” she insisted. “They put words in your mouth. I am sure it was Mr. Longstreet phoning. I’d be sure even without the voice, because when I plugged in Mr. Carmichael, I told him Mr. Longstreet was phoning.” She ended triumphantly: “If it had been anyone else, Mr. Carmichael would have bawled me out afterward!”
I switched to another subject. “What kind of guy was Carmichael?”
She examined me so appraisingly before answering, I expected some sort of startling disclosure.
But all she said was: “All right. If you like wolves.”
“Married?” I asked.
“No. Bachelor.”
“What’d he look like?”
Her brow puckered thoughtfully. “Tall and lanky. Slightly stooped. Gray hair. Nothing very individual, except the wolf gleam in his eye.”
“How old was he?”
“Forty, forty-five. Somewhere in there.”
“Have any enemies?”
She shook her head. “None I know of.”
“Any arguments recently?”
“Only the one over the phone with Mr. Longstreet.” Some inner thought brought her up short. “Except...” She shook her head in self-impatience. “That wouldn’t count.”
“What wouldn’t?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing to do with the murder.”
I let my eyes harden over. “Listen, sister. If you know something, loosen up fast.”
“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “It would only start gossip.”
I said: “I don’t spread gossip. Let’s have it.”
Reluctantly, she said: “It’s Mrs. Swope. I think she and Carmichael were carrying on.” She paused, then rushed on, apparently wanting to unload it fast once she had started. “The other night I forgot my purse and came back for it after closing. They were in Mr. Carmichael’s office and didn’t hear me come in. I heard him say: ‘It’s got to stop, Isobel. Suppose Marden found out?’ Mrs. Swope said, ‘Suppose he does? I really think he’d be glad.’ Then after a while Mr. Carmichael said: ‘I won’t be party to breaking up a home. Especially that of my own partner. It’s got to stop.’ I heard Mrs. Swope begin to cry, and she said: ‘You’re tired of me, that’s all.’ I left then and didn’t hear any more.”
I said thoughtfully: “The spurned-mistress motive, eh? Worth checking.” Then I had an inspiration. “That switchboard operator you mentioned. Remember her voice?”
The secretary looked doubtful. “You mean could I identify it?”
“I mean do you remember it? How it sounded? Whether you’d ever heard it before?”
Her head moved back and forth slowly. “You don’t remember switchboard operators’ voices. It was just a voice.”
“Could it have been Mrs. Swope?”
Her eyes went wide. “Mrs. Swope! Why ever would she pretend to be a switchboard operator?”
“Maybe she had a code arrangement with Carmichael,” I said. “With her husband in the same office, she’d hardly phone and give her own name.”
She looked doubtful. “But suppose Mr. Longstreet had been here when she called? She’d have felt kind of silly.”
“Who knew Longstreet was gone?” I asked.
She looked less doubtful. “Everyone. He’d been talking about going up to his summer camp for weeks. Mrs. Swope would have known that he left at noon yesterday.” She looked down at the tiny watch on her wrist. “Eight o’clock. Time I got back to work.”
She turned and went back to her desk. I moved back into the reception room just as the outer door opened and Marty O’Brien came in. Marty had been a muscle man back in the days of the now defunct extortion ring, but I hadn’t seen him around in recent years. Probably he had been in jail.
He said: “Hi, Marie. Boss in yet?” And then he saw me.
He didn’t say anything. Just looked.
“Hello, Marty,” I said.
He nodded.
Marie said: “You’re the first one here,” and went on with her typing.
Marty threw me another deadpan look and drifted out again.
“That one of your salesmen?” I asked Marie.
She said: “Our best.”
The door opened again and a smooth-cheeked, middle-aged man entered. In a sleek, pointed-nose and thin-lipped sort of way he was handsome. He wore expensive clothes and rimless eyeglasses with an air of needing both.
His face was all set in a big smile for Marie, but it faded when he saw she had company.
“Good morning, Mr. Swope,” Marie said in a prim, secretarial voice.
Swope doled her out an adulterated version of the original smile and gave me an inquiring glance.
“Manville Moon,” I said, showing him my license card. “Retained by Longstreet.”
His brows knit. “I see.”
He failed to offer his hand, but stood chewing his lip while he thought me over. Finally he seemed to come to a decision.
“Come in,” he said, and preceded me to his office.
When we were seated and he had offered me a cigar, which I politely refused after noting the brand, he leaned back and crossed hands over his stomach.
“I’ve told the police everything I know about this terrible affair,” he said. “But of course I’ll be glad to give any further help I can.”
“Fine. Will you just run over what you told the police?”
He raised his shoulders and let them fall again. “It wasn’t much, I’m afraid. I knew nothing about the two phone calls until Marie told of them when the police were here. I left at four-thirty yesterday, and didn’t know anything had happened until a policeman came to my home about six.”
“Know what Carmichael and Longstreet could have been arguing about over the phone? That is, if it was Longstreet.”
He shook his head. “They always got along. We all did. Why, we grew up together, the three of us. We were playmates in grammar school.” A reminiscent smile spread across his face. “We even chased the same girl. In high school Mrs. Swope went with all three of us before she finally settled on me.”
“Could your wife have been the cause of the argument?”
He frowned. “Of course not! They sometimes joked about both remaining bachelors because of Mrs. Swope, but purely in fun. She hadn’t gone with either of them for five years before our marriage. And we’ve been married twenty-two years.”
I said: “Do you think it actually was Longstreet who phoned yesterday?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Marie is sure of it. And I can think of no reason she would lie.”
“How do you account for his being able to phone at three-thirty and again at five, when he was locked in a cell from three on?”
He shrugged. “I make no attempt to account for it. The police are paid to unravel such questions.” His fingers drummed on the desk top. “I don’t understand how he got in jail in the first place. When he left at noon yesterday, he was intending to drive up for a week at his camp on the river. He’d planned it for weeks, and I know he intended to start at one o’clock. By two-thirty he should have been there, so what was he doing in a bar in town?”