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.
When I got there, Mr. Harvey was waiting for me.
He was a little man in an old suit, his hair touched with gray, and he smoked cigarettes without touching them. The one I saw just hung in his mouth and he handled it wonderfully with his lips. He had a big mole on the right cheek.
“Sure am glad to meet you, Mr. Dill,” John Harvey said. “I guess you don’t know how out-country editors kind of idolize the way you do things. When that Penn murder broke I said to myself, what a break it would be if Daffy Dill could help us out on the New York end.”
“Well, I was helping you,” I said. “I didn’t wire you but I got out on the rounds and I telephoned you this morning and got Woolsey. Then I went up to the station to meet you.”
“You went up to meet me?” he said. “I didn’t see you, and I’d have recognized you from your pictures, I think. I went out the cab way and got right in a cab. I’ve still got my luggage with me here.”
I glanced down and saw he had two bags with him.
“Well,” I said, “I suppose you’ve heard the news.”
“I just arrived. I’ve heard nothing.”
“Martin Penn is dead, shot and killed before your friend Wilbur ever was. Did you know a man named Fenwick Hanes?”
“Of Babylon? Certainly I did. Nasty old coot. Used to hang around with Wilbur and Martin Penn and Maxwell Green. The four of them pulled together quite a while.”
“He’s in New York,” I said. “Dead too.”
Harvey stared at me. “Dead in New York? I saw him in Babylon on Wednesday.”
“At the morgue,” I persisted grimly. “With a tag on his toe.”
“My God,” he said huskily.
“Now listen,” I said, “you’re supposed to go over to Police Headquarters. Lieutenant William Hanley wants to talk with you. He thinks you can give him some dope on the backgrounds of these corpses, and I think you can too. We need help. We’re stymied.” I watched him light a cigarette and he glanced down at the match as he did so, and I said, “The little brown fox jumped over the big high fence.”
“Well,” said Harvey, looking up, “I’ll run down there then and help them out, and then I want to see you again, and get the story on this for my own paper. Will I find you here?”
“You will,” I said, “as soon as you come back.”
“May I leave my things here? I’ll put up at a hotel when I come back. I don’t know New York at all. Never been here before in my life.”
“They’ll be right here,” I said.
As soon as he had left, I telephoned TWA airlines and I said, “Did you have a plane leaving from Babylon, Iowa, yesterday morning at ten a.m.?”
“No,” they said. “But the Des Moines plane left at ten a.m. and Des Moines is only twenty miles from Babylon. If you wanted to fly to New York, you’d run over to Des Moines and get the plane there.”
“When did that ship come in?”
“Three yesterday afternoon.”
“Thanks very much.” I hung up and Dinah came over. I pointed at the grips and I said, “A very careless guy, my hollyhock. For instance, how would you get a TWA tag on your luggage if you’d come east on the Pennsy’s Golden Arrow?”
“Simple, dolt,” she said. “It’s a tag from a previous trip.”
“Could be,” I said, “but ain’t for one reason. Guy says he’s never been to New York before in his life. Tag says Destination N. Y. So?”
“You’ve got something there,” Dinah said. “And you can have it.”
“The little brown fox jumped over the big high fence,” I said.
“Have you gone crazy?” Dinah said. “What has the fox got to do with the high cost of living?”
“Not a thing,” I said. “But when I told John Harvey about the little fox, he didn’t seem to worry about it at all. Never even noticed I said it.”
“Maybe he’s just polite.”
“And on the other hand, maybe the laddy is deaf. He spoke with me all the time, watching my lips carefully. I gave him the fox business when his eyes were off my face, and he never heard it. He’s deaf. He reads the lips. He didn’t come in on the Golden Arrow. He came in on the Sky Chief yesterday, in time to bump off Fenwick Hanes last night at eight bells. And I’ll bet you dough he’s only sticking around to grab off someone else. He knocked off Wilbur Penn himself, and I’ll bet you a fin he was in town two days ago on Tuesday to slip the slug into Martin Penn up in Beeker Place. How? We see now.”
I telephoned the Babylon Gazette again long distance and got hold of Woolsey once more. “This is Daffy Dill again,” I said. “I want some info, my friend, and for it I’ll promise to hand you the biggest scoop your rag ever printed, and you’ll have it on the streets before the Des Moines papers ever see it. Tell me one thing: where was John Harvey on Tuesday? He wasn’t in town, was he?”
“Oh no,” Woolsey said. “John left Sunday afternoon to take a little fishing trip up in Michigan. He likes to go after muskellunge up there. He got back here Wednesday morning.”
“Does a Maxwell Green live in Babylon?”
Woolsey hesitated.
“He used to, but he lives in New York now. Him and Martin Penn are lawyers together, somewhere in New York.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up.
“All right, brainstorm,” Dinah Mason said dryly. “What’s up?”
“Get me a telephone book,” I said, “and we’ll soon see.”
Dinah threw hers over and I looked up Maxwell Green. He was there all right. He lived on West 56th Street and I gave him a ring.
“Hello?” a voice said.
“Maxwell Green?”
“Yes.”
“Of Babylon, Iowa?”
“That’s right,” he said. “Who is this? Harvey?”
“Yes.” I said it on the spur of the moment to see what would come.
“Look here, Harvey,” Maxwell Green said heavily, “I told you I’d see you at eleven-thirty and it’s nearly that now. You said it was important enough for me to remain at home. Now you’d better get here and get here fast with your important matter. I haven’t got all day to waste on you.” He slammed up.
Victim number four. And he didn’t even know it. “Hello, Poppa,” I said a few minutes later. “Is Harvey still there?”
“Still here?” Poppa Hanley said. “He hasn’t been here yet.”
Oh yes, I saw the gag nicely. Never been in New York before. Must have got lost. But meanwhile John Harvey was on his way to 56th Street to kill a man.
“Hanley!” I snapped. “Get over here fast. Pick me up. Bring a rod. We’re going to stop another one! Now make it fast, Poppa, we’ve got no seconds to lose!” I gasped. “No — wait a minute, Poppa. No time. You haven’t time to pick me up. Meet you there!”
I gave him the address, hung up and called Maxwell Green back. “Listen, Mr. Green,” I snapped, “and get it straight the first time. This is Daffy Dill of the New York Chronicle—”
“No statement,” he snapped and hung up.
The damned old fool. I rang him again but he wouldn’t answer.
I got my faithful old grave-scratcher out of the drawer, tore downstairs and grabbed a cab. I waved a bill under the driver’s nose and we went north like a bat out of hell. We took the west side express highway up to 52nd and cut off and then doubled back. We made it damned fast. When we pulled up in front of the building I saw that I had beaten Poppa Hanley there and I went in like a Roman ram.