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.
“Tough you didn’t get in touch with the insurance people instead of contacting Captain Abel Dokomos, a countryman who had a towing and salvage outfit and no rep to speak of. You needed help to get the Lady Luck. Cap Abel tried to make you cough up the exact location. You got scared and lit out for Bimini. You discovered I was following you, and that scared you back to Miami. You wanted a showdown, and when Cap Abel collared you on the dock as you were coming to see me, you took care of that part of your troubles with a knife. But that left Abel’s lady friend, or whatever she is, and her brother, Blick. They were in the know, too. They tried to grab you last night in the park after you fixed Abel up, and you outran them. Now, that’s a very complete story, or do you think?”
Andopolis was a man who did his thinking with the help of his face, and there was more disgust than anything else on his features.
“You tryin’ to cut in?” he snarled.
“Not trying.”
“Then what—”
“Have.”
The sun was comfortable, but mosquitoes were coming out of the swamp around the road to investigate.
“Yeah,” Andopolis said. “I guess you have, maybe.”
Sail put his shirt on, favoring his chest. “We’ve got to watch the insurance outfit. They paid off on Missus Bill’s stuff. Over a hundred thousand. They’ll have wires out.”
Andopolis got up and held out his hands for the belt to be taken off, and Sail took it off. Andopolis said, “I thought of the insurance when I got Cap Abel. We used to run rum. The Macedonian tramp!”
“There’s shoal-water diving stuff aboard my bugeye,” Sail said.
“You don’t get me in no water! Shark, barracuda, moray, sting rays. Hell of a place. If I hadn’t been afraid, I’d have done the diving myself. I thought of that, believe me.”
“That’s my worry. It’s not too bad, once you get a system.” Sail felt his chest. “I guess maybe these ribs will knit in a while.”
Andopolis looked much better, almost as if he had forgotten his tooth. “It’s your neck. Okay if you say so.”
“Then let’s get going.”
Andopolis was feeling his tooth when he got into the car. Sail had driven no more than half a mile when both front tires let go their air. The car was in the canal beside the road before anything could be done about it.
The car broke its windows going down the canal bank. The canal must have been six feet deep, and its tea-colored water filled the machine at once. Sail had both arms over his middle where the steering wheel had hit. So much air had been knocked out of him, and his middle hurt so, that he had to take something into his lungs, and there was only water. He began to drown.
The water seemed to be rushing around inside the car, although there was room for no more to come in. Sail couldn’t find the door handles. The broken windows he did find were too small to crawl out of, but after exploring three, he got desperate and tried a small one. There was not enough hole. He pushed and worked around with the jagged glass, his head out of the car, the rest of him inside, until strange feelings of something running out of his neck made him know he was cutting his throat.
He pulled his head in, and pummeled the car roof with blows that did not have strength enough to knock him away from what he was hitting. It came to his mind to try the jagged glass again as being better than drowning, but he couldn’t find it, and clawed and felt with growing madness until he began to get fistfuls of air. He sank twice before he clutched a weed on shore, after which the spasms he was having kept him at first from hearing the shots.
Yells were mixed in with the shot sounds. Andopolis was on the canal bank, running madly. Blick and his sister were on the same bank, running after Andopolis, shooting at him, and having, for such short range, bad luck. They were shooting at Andopolis’ legs. All three ran out of sight. Sound alone told Sail when they winged Andopolis and grabbed him.
Sail had some of the water out of his lungs. He swam to a clump of brush which hung down into the water, got under it, and managed to get his coughing stopped by the time Blick and Nola came up hauling Andopolis. Andopolis sobbed at the top of his voice.
“Shoot his other leg off if he acts up, Nola,” Blick yelled. “I’ll get our little fat bud.”
Sail wanted to cough until it was almost worth getting shot just to do so. Red from his neck was spreading through the water under the brush.
“He must be a submarine,” Blick said. He got a stick and poked around. “Hell, Nola, this water is eight feet deep anyhow.”
Andopolis babbled something in Greek.
Blick screamed, “Shut up, or we’ll put bullets into you like we put ’em into your car tires!”
Andopolis went on babbling.
“His leg is pretty bad, Blick,” Nola said.
“Hell, let ’im bleed.”
Air kept coming up from the submerged car. Sail tried to keep his mind off wanting to cough. It seemed that Blick was going to stand for hours on the bank with his bright little pistol.
“He musta drowned,” Blick said. “Get that other leg to workin’, Andopolis. You didn’t know we been on your trail all night and all mornin’, did ya? We didn’t lose it when this Sail got you, either.”
Andopolis whimpered as they hazed him away. Car sound departed.
Captain Chris, wide-eyed and hearty and with no sign of a chill, exclaimed, “Well, well, we began to think something had happened to you.”
Sail looked at him with eyes that appeared drained, then stumbled the other two steps down the companion into the main cabin of Sail and let himself down on the starboard seat. Pads of cotton under gauze made Sail’s neck and wrists three times normal thickness. Tape stuck to his face in four places, and iodine had run out from under one of the pieces and dried.
Young bony Joey looked Sail over and his big grin took the warp out of the corner of his mouth.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said cheerfully. “Somebody beat me to it.”
Sail gave them a look of bile. “This is a private boat, in case you forgot.”
“He’s mussed up and now he’s tough!” Joey said. “Swell!”
“Now, now, let’s keep things on an amiable footing,” Captain Chris murmured.
Sail said, “Drag it!”
Joey popped his palms together, aimed a finger at Sail. “You got told about Lewis finding human blood in that fish mess on the dock last night. But try to alibi the rest. There was wet tracks in this boat. That was all right, maybe, only some of the tracks were salt water and the water spilled on the galley floor was fresh. We got the harbor squad diver down this morning. He found a box on the bottom below this boat with live fish in it. He found a bathing suit with a sinker tied to it. And this morning, a yachtsman beached his dink on the little island by Pier One and found a dead Greek. We sat down with all that and done our arithmetic, and here we are.”
Sail’s face began changing from red and tan to cream and tan, although the bandages took away some of the effect.
Captain Chris said, “Joey, you’d make a lousy gambler, on account of you show your cards.”
Sail said in a low voice, “You’re gonna get your snouts busted if you keep this up!”
Captain Chris looked unconvincingly injured. “I didn’t think we’d have any trouble with you, Mister Sail. I hoped we wouldn’t. You acted like a gentleman last night.”
Sail had been seated. He got up, bending over first to get the center of gravity right. He pointed a thumb at the companion. “Don’t fall overboard on your way out.”
“I bet he thinks we’re leaving!” Joey jeered.
A string of red crawled out from under one of the bandages on Sail’s neck. His face was more cream than any other color. He reached behind himself into the tackle locker and got a gaff hook, a four-foot haft of varnished oak with a bright tempered-steel hook with a needle point. He showed Joey the hook and his front teeth.