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.
“Mister Moon,” he corrected. His eyes darted back at me and down again.
I said to Marie: “What’s the name of the outfit over you?”
“Riverside Seed Company.”
“How do you get there?”
“You have to go outside and use the main building entrance.”
A visit to the Riverside Seed Company got me nothing that I hadn’t already learned from Warren Day. The Rex Amusement Corporation closed at five, but the seed company stayed open an hour later. At about five-thirty the whole office force had been startled by what my informant described as a “terrific blam,” and one of the clerks said: “That’s a shot!”
Nearly everyone in the office, about twelve people, had gone to investigate. They found the entrance to the place downstairs unlocked, entered in a group and found the body. No one had seen the murderer leave.
The Drake Hotel is as expensive as the Jefferson, but in a quieter, more snobbish way. While not exclusively an apartment hotel, it caters to permanent residents and makes no effort to attract the tourist trade through decorative cocktail lounges and elaborate dance floors. The only entertainment facility offered its guests is a small, clean dining room which closes at eight nightly.
At the desk I asked for Howard Tattersall’s room number.
“Suite four-seventeen,” the room clerk said. “I’ll ring to see if he’s in.”
I said: “Never mind. He’s expecting me.”
The elevator surged upward like the smooth stroke of a piston and eased to a cushioned halt. Silent doors parted in the middle, disappearing into the walls, and when I stepped out into the deeply carpeted hall, they slid soundlessly together again.
The silence was almost reverent. As I started down the hall the leather straps of my false leg squeaked and I felt guiltily self-conscious — as though violating the sanctity of a cathedral.
The man who answered my knock at the door of suite four-seventeen was of medium height and beginning to put on weight. Dark hair, parted in the middle, was brushed straight back from a wide, short forehead. Heavy black brows surmounted a strong nose and hard but wide lips clamped around a short briar. He wore a lounging robe.
“Mr. Tattersall?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’m Manville Moon. Your office told me I’d find you home today.”
Removing his pipe from his mouth with his right hand, which conveniently prevented him from offering a handshake, he said: “If it’s business, I’m sorry, but this is my day off.”
“It’s business about a murder,” I said. “May I come in?”
“Are you police?” he asked sharply.
“Private.” I watched his face for a minute, saw no invitation there, and said: “I’m coming in.”
He stepped back, swung the door wide and let me go past him into the room. It was a large room, much better furnished than my walkup parlor. Doors on either side of it leading to other rooms made it at least a three-unit apartment. I wondered how many hundred more a month he paid than I did for my three-room flat.
I tried an easy chair, liked it and settled back with a cigar in my mouth. The lawyer remained standing, frowning down at me while I applied flame to the cigar end.
“You’ve heard of George Carmichael’s death,” I said finally, making it a statement instead of a question.
“On the radio,” he said shortly. “I don’t get a morning paper.”
“Used to work for him, didn’t you?”
He looked displeased and faintly insulted. “I was retained by his firm as legal counsel. They weren’t my only account.”
“Why’d they drop you?”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” he said testily. “Mind telling me what you want?”
“Not at all. Know Willard Longstreet?”
“Of course. One of the company directors. Sales manager, I believe he calls himself. He also happens to be a neighbor of mine. Lives down the hall.”
“Yes, I know. Longstreet retained me to solve the crime. You wouldn’t have heard it on the radio, but he’s the prime suspect. Matter of fact, he’s in jail.”
His eyes showed mild surprise, but no particular concern. “So?”
“His gun was found at the murder scene. Longstreet claims it was kidnapped from his room.”
“So?”
“So you and Carmichael had a falling-out. So you live within crawling distance of Longstreet’s door. So where were you yesterday about five-thirty in the afternoon?”
His eyes narrowed. “Pardon me a moment.”
Abruptly he did an about-face and passed through one of the doors into another room. I heard the click of a phone being raised, got out of my chair quietly and circled toward the door. As I reached it and got my ear near the jamb, I heard him say, “Right away,” and drop the phone back in its cradle.
Circling back to my chair, I settled in it again and was drawing slowly on my cigar when he reentered the room. I looked up and got a surprise.
A sardonic smile lifting the edges of his wide mouth, he leaned in the doorway and accurately pointed an army automatic at my cigar.
I removed the cigar, but the muzzle failed to follow it, which led me to believe my head was the actual target. I waited for him to speak, but he seemed perfectly content to continue leaning and pointing.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked finally. “Raise my arms, bark like a dog, or just go home?”
“Just sit,” he said. “And keep your mouth shut.”
So for twenty minutes I sat and kept my mouth shut. When my cigar became a stub, I set it carefully on the ash stand next to my chair, moving my hand slowly because I could see the automatic’s hammer was back and the safety off. At the end of twenty minutes a key turned in the outer door’s lock.
Anton Strowlski came through the door, nodded to Tattersall and turned his brittle eyes on me.
“Mister Moon, isn’t it?” he asked with heavy sarcasm, deeply underlining the “Mister.”
I didn’t feel called on to reply.
“Stand up,” he said.
I rose slowly, turned my back and raised my arms without waiting for the order. Anton’s hand snaked under my armpit from behind, removed my P-38, then carefully patted my pockets.
“Turn around,” he commanded.
Facing my host again, I dropped my arms. Anton drew a short, dainty automatic from his side pocket, a twin of the one he had lost to the police, removed his smart snap-brim hat and dropped it over the gun.
“Only a .32,” he said pleasantly. “But I use dum-dums. It makes a hole like a saucer.” The mock-pleasantness left his voice and his lips drew thin. “We’re going out now, and if you make a move I don’t like, you get it.”
He waved me toward the door, then followed, keeping a pace distance between us. Tattersall stayed home, presumably not caring to participate in murder on his day off, but just before the door shut behind us he said: “It’s been very pleasant, Mr. Moon. Do come again.”
I said: “If I can’t make it, drop in on me. I’ll be in the river.” It wasn’t good, but it was the best I could do with that hat-covered little gun aimed at my back.
Our trip down was uneventful. Just two well-dressed men, one of the modern school who wears his hat in elevators, the other with his politely draped over his fist. It stayed there even after we left the elevator, clear across the lobby, down the steps and into the waiting Buick coach at the curb.
Anton and I shared the roomy back seat. Our bullet-headed chauffeur was a stranger. Getting in, I caught a quick glimpse of his knuckle-bent profile and knew I had never seen him before. As we pulled away, I started to memorize the back of his head, on the remote chance that I’d ever get an opportunity to look for it.
It was an interesting head. The neck was a weal of creased muscle that bulged out beyond the flattened rear of his skull, and the ears were mere blobs of broken gristle bunched into shapelessness.