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.
Moe Baumgart, the insurance agent next door, yelled: “Skeat, for God’s sake!”
“Sorry, Moe!” I bellowed back through the partition. I rolled back Junior’s eyelid. He was faking. I picked him up by the collar, pocketed his gun and opened my office door. Suddenly he was writhing like a crazy wildcat in my grip, clawing for my eyes, my throat, my hair. I threw my right arm around his throat from behind in a stranglehold and coldly put the pressure on, and then I held it.
His eyes popped and he made faint, gargling noises. His face went blue. I let him drop and booted him through the door. I locked it and went to the phone.
“I want a young, intelligent policeman,” I said to the operator. “Room 917, Greenleaf Building, Broadway at Fifty-first Street. There’s no great hurry about it.”
She repeated the address and thanked me, I don’t know why.
“Get into a chair,” I said to the kid. He glared at me from the floor. I picked him up and dumped him into the client’s seat. He wasn’t going to talk, he was saying over and over to himself. I grinned at him.
“They’ll trace you through the A.A.U. welterweight division,” I said.
His eyes widened for a moment; then he looked away from me. He wasn’t going to talk.
He didn’t have to.
“Lots of form,” I said. “Lots of form and no guts.”
“The hell with you,” he said. The movie-gangster chill was gone from his voice.
“They shouldn’t have sent you,” I said. “They should have sent a man.”
He grinned wolfishly. I was glad I had the gun.
“Being a detective is hard on the stomach,” I said. “Every time I meet a punk like you it makes me want to throw up. And you don’t know how many punks like you there are, in the new suits with the new guns they don’t know how to use. ‘Your safety’s on, Junior — take your safety off before you shoot the man!’ And you fell for it!”
He grinned his animal grin again and said slowly: “Someday I’m going to meet you again, buddy—” The words trailed off.
“Merry hell you will. You’re headed up the river right now. And when you get out you won’t be able to fight those good, clean amateur fights for thirty-dollar suits and fifty-dollar watches. The mob won’t even hire you back after the way you fluffed this job.”
“The hell I won’t meet you, buddy.” He grinned tightly. “And the hell I won’t get hired.”
He was beginning to talk, and then the law had to pound on the door.
“Hey!” yelled the law. Bang, bang, bang on the door with the nightstick. “You want a cop in here?”
I unlocked the door. “Hello, Benelli. I asked for a young, intelligent policeman and they send you. What’s the force coming to?”
Benelli grinned. “Is that the emergency?” He indicated Junior and hung his nightstick on his badge.
“Yep. Assault with a deadly weapon. Maybe assault with intent to kill. Here’s his gun.”
Benelli pocketed it and flipped a chain come-along on the kid’s wrist. He twisted it once and the kid shot out of the chair with a yelp.
“Comfortable?” asked Benelli solicitously. He twisted it again and the kid bit his lip.
“Don’t be brutal,” I said.
He didn’t grin. “I know these punks, Timmy. I don’t like them worth a damn. Let’s all go to the precinct.”
I looked at my watch. The kid started and his eyes twitched to my desk. I looked at him and he stared out the window. He wouldn’t meet my eye.
Half a hunch is better than none.
“It’s nine-thirty,” I said to Benelli. “I have a big-deal phone-call coming up. I’ll be there at eleven.”
Benelli took him away.
I sat by the phone and smoked a chain of cigarettes until ten sharp. The phone rang.
I picked up the speaker and said, in the kid’s movie-gangster rasp: “It’s O.K.”
“Did you cool him?” asked a woman’s voice excitedly.
“Between the eyes,” I hissed.
“Maxie’ll be there in five minutes.”
“O.K.,” I rasped, sweating.
“Morgan’s tonight?”
“Uh, sure.”
“See ya.” She hung up and I scrambled for my safe to get out the .38 before mysterious Maxie arrived. I locked the door again. It would be locked.
At ten-five there was a knock.
“Maxie?” I hissed.
“That’s me,” said a pale, thin voice.
I opened the door and Maxie came in. His jaw dropped when he saw himself covered by all that caliber.
“I’m O.K., kid,” he said, surprised. “I’m here for the box.”
He didn’t know me!
“Where’s the, er, stiff?” he asked nervously.
“There—” I waved the gun at the lavatory door and put it away. Maxie could be handled without a gun — he wasn’t much of a man except for his hands. They were big, muscular and manicured. I found out why in a moment. He made a bee-line for my office safe and squatted before it.
I didn’t understand half the things he did — maybe some of it was mumbo-jumbo. Every crook dramatizes himself. But in three minutes the door swung open.
He practically dove in, ignoring me. I keep a little cash in my safe, a small set of burglar tools, my gun and cartridges, and all my case reports. Maxie set the cash aside, whistled over the tools, ignored the bullets and spread the reports on the floor.
While he pawed them I took time out to wonder what the hell was going on, but I couldn’t seem to get anywhere.
Maxie gave up the reports, puzzled. “Have I got it straight, kid?” he asked. “The guy’s name was Anson Charles English and he hired Skeat last Tuesday. He could’ve used a phony name, but Skeat didn’t open any files on Tuesday at all.”
“Who was that dame on the phone?” I asked. “Who is Anson Charles English? Why was Skeat supposed to be killed? Where is Morgan’s?” I took out the pistol again. His jaw dropped again.
“I’m Skeat,” I said. “Your gunsel didn’t keep his left up. You look silly with your mouth open.”
He closed it and gulped faintly.
I said: “You look silly with it closed, too.”
“I won’t talk to you,” he said.
“I’ll bet you want to see your lawyer.”
He looked at the door.
“It’s locked,” I said.
He went over and tried it.
“See?” I told him. “Just you and me.”
“I want to see my lawyer.” He gulped.
“No law here, Maxie. I’m getting sick of cops. They punch you around and then they say the hell with you. You get your suspect talking and they bust in and take him to the precinct. Here’s one I learned from a cop.” I belted him just below the bottom rib on the left side.
He quacked like a duck and his face went gray. He was a little man.
I pounded him in the same spot until his face was like putty and his breath crowed from his throat.
“Lay off — agh!” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Lay off. Where’s the stiff. Oh, the stiff’s in there. Guy named Skeat. Lay off, Skeat. See what I mean?”
“A-a-agh!” He retched as my fist sunk in again.
By ten-thirty I was sweating from both armpits. Don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t hard work to bounce even a little man like a handball.
By ten-forty he was talking. I slammed him whenever he stopped, and he’d begin again like a turned-on radio.
He said Morgan’s was a gambling house in the Village.
He said English was a petty blackmailer who’d put the screws on Morgan for something. He said also that English was the corpse which had been shredded with the beer-bottle.
“Where the hell do I figure?” I asked.