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.
The red-headed girl laughed provocatively. Melrose bent towards her. She pushed him away, her fingers on his lips. They talked a while, Melrose leaning attentively over the girl. McFee heard her slightly hysterical laugh and Melrose’s bleak chuckle, but Dutch Louie and His Pals drowned out their conversation.
The room had three doors. One led into the hall, another opened into a small washroom, the third gave entrance from the business office. A red carpet covered the floor. An ornate flat-topped desk stood in one corner, a chair behind it, a cloak tree beside it. On the desk was a wire letter basket.
Melrose got up and went into the business office, closing the door behind him. Irene Mayo came sharply forward onto her feet. She stared at the closed door, an obsessed look on her face. She ran swiftly towards the ornate desk, bent over the wire basket. McFee saw a flat manila envelope in her hand, and muttered, “Swell!”
Someone behind him said, “We got you covered, McFee.”
13
McFee turned slowly, his palms tight against his thighs. Three men in dinner jackets stood on the other side of the shrubbery, guns in their hands. One of them was Art Kline. An ascetic-looking man with disillusioned eyes and a plume of gray hair on his white forehead had addressed McFee. This was Fred Pope, who ran the Red Jacket, a Melrose enterprise.
Their faces gleamed a little. Their shirt fronts stood up like slabs of stone.
Fred Pope said, “Sam wants to talk to you, McFee.”
“I had a notion he might.”
“Come outta that.”
McFee stepped into the triangular huddle the three men had made of their bodies. They took his gun away from him.
“Straight ahead,” Pope said. “No monkey business.”
A private door gave them access to the business office. There were comfortable chairs, a couple of mahogany desks, safe, telephone, and a filing cabinet. A desk lamp was lighted. The hall door opened and Sam Melrose entered, a cobwebby bottle in his hands.
When he saw McFee the lines that corded his forehead tightened until they looked like wires embedded in his skull. He set the bottle down, came towards McFee with quiet, quick steps. Fred Pope laughed, dropped into a chair. Kline and the other man laid their backs against the outer wall.
An electric clock on the filing cabinet indicated seven minutes of twelve.
Sam Melrose said, “McFee, I want that Grand Jury Shelldon file.”
“Don’t be a sap.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got it already, Sam.”
“McFee, you been handing my boys that line ever since they ran you down in the Gaiety this morning. I’m damn good and sick of it.” Melrose’s flat-surfaced eyes distended coldly. “But I’ll give you a break. You shoved your nose into my business — got what I paid money for. All right — come through with that file and we quit even. You walk outta here. You go home. You forget everything you figured on remembering. And you let my business alone after this. When I get this town like I want it I’ll throw some sugar your way. Where you put that file?”
McFee smiled, felt for a cigarette, put it in his mouth. He flipped a match at it. Anger puffed across Melrose’s eyes, subsided. The two hard-faced men started forward, but fell back at Melrose’s gesture.
The clock showed four minutes of twelve.
McFee said, “Lemme see, there’s a murder tied up with that Shelldon blow-off, isn’t there, Sam?”
“I can beat it.”
“What’s the idea, then?”
“It looks bad, election coming on. I want it outta the way.”
“Wait a minute, Sam. You got Leclair to make a deal with Damon. Damon is dead. His mother is dead. And the old lady didn’t turn on the gas—” McFee paused, considered the other indulgently. “Can you beat all that, Sam?”
Melrose cut in harshly, “My boys didn’t rub out Damon and his mother.”
“Well, you oughta know. If that Shelldon file don’t turn up at the wrong time, maybe the tax-payers’ll believe you. It’s funny what taxpayers’ll believe. But the Damon-O’Day murders and the Shelldon racket’d make a bad combination.” McFee laughed. “That Shelldon file’s getting pretty important, Sam.”
Melrose said, “Ten grand, McFee?”
“I haven’t got it.”
“Listen, mister—” The lines that corded Melrose’s frontal bone deepened again. “I dunno what you playing for, but if it’s to put the bell on me you got the wrong cat by the tail. I’m running this town. I’m gonna keep on running it. Nob’dy can get to first base unless I say so. McFee—” he prodded the latter in the chest, “—I want that Shelldon file. If you don’t come across my boys’ll walk you out and leave you some place.”
The clock said one minute of twelve.
Dragging on his cigarette, McFee muttered, “Well, I dunno—”
The telephone rang.
Melrose picked it up. He did not remove his eyes from McFee, as he said, “Melrose talking.”... And then, “Yes, Joe... Yes, what’s that?... McFee— That red-head— His sidekick— But you phoned— What?... A frame-up—... You dunno...” Melrose’s violent eyes impaled McFee. The latter stood stiffly, sweat on his temples. Melrose said coldly, “I got both of ’em here— Oh, McFee’ll talk—”
Comprehendingly, Art Kline, Fred Pope and the other man crowded McFee. As Melrose rang off, he said, “Watch McFee!” and jumped toward his private room, jerked the door open. His eyes were hot when he faced around. “She musta heard — Fred, that redhead’s the Mayo woman. McFee brought her — a frame— Bring her back.”
As Fred Pope went away, Melrose said quietly, “What’s back of this Mayo woman coming here?”
“Some’dy’s been kidding you, Sam.”
“You gonna talk?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Lemme work on him a while, Boss,” Art Kline said.
It was two minutes after twelve.
McFee shook the sweat out of his eyes. Dutch Louie and His Pals were tearing a staccato jazz out of their horns. The music swelled, filled the house with crashing sound. But McFee could hear the ticking of his watch, the pounding of his heart.
“Listen to the music, Sam,” he said.
Melrose shouted, “By God, McFee, if you won’t talk my boys’ll burn it out of your toes—”
McFee struck him in the mouth. As Melrose went backwards, Kline and the other men jumped in. They milled for a minute. McFee got home four or five good ones, but he was taking a beating when the music stopped. The house became completely quiet.
A police whistle shrilled out in the cafe room.
Melrose ejaculated, “The coppers! I forgot—” And then, “I’ll fix those birds—” He checked himself, said less positively, “Art, you stay here—”
McFee cut in softly, “You can’t do it.” Melrose glared at him, dabbed a cut lip with a handkerchief. “Sam, you are in a spot. Littner and Cruikshank are out there. You didn’t s’pose I’d walk in here without having my tail covered? I told Littner to look for me.”
“Lotta good that’ll do you,” Melrose said harshly. To his men, “Take McFee down the beach — the shack. Keep him there till I come.”
Art Kline stood behind McFee. “Get going, sap,” he said, in his gummed-up voice, and shoved metal into McFee’s back.
As McFee moved towards the side door, Littner entered.
Melrose’s eyes turned white. Kline and the other man stared at him, slid their guns away. Littner looked around with his cold water eyes, rubbed his long jaw.