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.
“If we turn up without this,” I said, “we might as well keep going.”
“That damn money!” Trixie exclaimed. “If you ever do a trick like that again, I’ll... I’ll—”
“I’ll do it for you,” I promised.
We were across the hall by then and I was trying keys in the door. The third one made it. The door swung out.
“Come on, lady,” I said. “We’re taking you out of here.”
She was on the floor by the bed, as if she’d rolled off and hadn’t moved after she landed. I had a premonition. Trixie beat me to it. She was pale and shaken as she looked up from the woman.
“Dead, Mike!” Trixie exclaimed.
“Murdered?” I said.
Trixie picked a little pill box off the floor and held it up so I could see the poison label.
“She killed herself, Mike.”
“I’d call it murder, anyway,” I said. “Hell, what a joint they’ve been running here right under the noses of all Hollywood. Let’s get out of here while the getting is good.”
I was afraid again, mostly for Trixie. What chance would she have if they caught her now? For that matter what chance had she had chained in that padded cell? At least we had a gun now, with a few cartridges left.
I lingered long enough to lock Eddy Voss in, and the woman too. If no more keys were handy, it would be a long time before anyone beat the police to them. And I wanted the police now. Jake Dennis, Larry Sweet and a squad of big-footed dicks would have looked sweeter than taffy on a stick.
I know! I hadn’t solved the murder that Lew Ryster had tossed in my lap. But I’d done something bigger. I’d smashed this whole vicious, gruesome mess wide open. That was enough work for one night.
And there was still more to do. There was Nancy Cudahy. A fool she might be. But also she was a dumb innocent kid with dollars stacking the cards against her.
What chance did she have against men like Eddy Voss, Paige and Father Orion? She’d lost her head in Hollywood, she’d taken a dizzy tumble, she’d fallen in love. Maybe love had thrown her off balance. They say a woman in love is just a woman, or something like that. I wouldn’t know.
“Hurry, Mike,” says little Trixie unsteadily.
“Hold it,” I said. “I want to see what’s in a couple of these other rooms. I’ve got a hunch.”
“You idiot!” says Trixie, half-crying. “Can’t you ever forget you’re a detective? You’re half-dead now! Please come on, Mike! I can’t have anything more happening to you!”
“What’s happening to me — and who cares?” I said as I unlocked another door and opened it.
No soap. Unoccupied.
“One more,” I said to Trixie, who was all but hanging on my bad arm to get me started.
“Mike!” Trixie wailed. “Can’t you see what this is doing to me?”
“You sound worse than a woman in love,” I cracked. “Buck up, baby. It isn’t as bad as that. I’ll get you out of here all right.”
“Oh!” says Trixie. “Why you insufferable—”
“Holy cow!” I yelped. “Now will you shut up?”
I’d turned across the padded corridor and unlocked a door on the other side. Trixie cried out in pity. I felt a little sick myself as we forgot everything else but the man who was spread-eagled and handcuffed face down on the narrow bed in the center of the room.
A leather cat-o-nine-tails hung on the wall. The man’s back was covered with bloody weals. He lay there like dead — but the sound of my voice brought his head up with a convulsive jerk and a whimpering cry of fear.
He was young, unshaven, rough-looking and powerful. He might have been a dock-worker at one time, or a sailor. His arms were tattooed. But he had starved, suffered; ribs showed plainly and his face was haggard, hollow-eyed as he stared at us.
“All right, fellow,” I said. “We’re going to take you out of here. Tell us about it later.”
He wasn’t telling anything. He was like a man who’d had fear beaten into his heart and soul and was expecting more. I’ll never forget the fearful look of his eyes as he watched me free his hands. And the unbelieving, smoldering look as his hands came free and I moved to his feet.
I saw him eyeing Trixie and the gun she was holding as I unlocked the last ankle.
“We’re detectives,” I said quickly. “We’re taking you down to Hollywood to the police. Don’t get us wrong and make a grab for that gun.”
He shuddered and seemed to relax and all but collapse as he swung his feet to the floor. He hadn’t spoken; his voice was husky and strained as he stood up.
“Police? You’re police?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Come on. We may have to fight our way out of here. They’re wise to us. Can you run? How’ll you be in a scrap?”
He flexed his arms. The muscles bulged.
“God! Can I fight?” he gulped thickly as we started to the door. “All I want is that brown devil who whipped me every day and that old man who watched and mumbled like it was church service. I’ll kill ’em both! I’ll kill ’em with my bare hands!”
My club and knife were still on the floor of the room where Father Orion lay back on the pillows breathing stertorously. I was stooping for them when our man saw old Orion and jumped at him with an animal-like cry.
Trixie gasped: “Mike, he’ll kill him!”
And he would have too. His hands had plunged through the white beard and grabbed the throat. He was shaking that bony, drugged old carcass in a frenzy when I reached him.
“The cops’ll get him!” I snapped. “Come on!”
He wouldn’t listen. He was in a frenzy. Maybe he didn’t even hear me.
“I’ll shoot him!” says little Trixie. “Come on, you big baboon! You’re making trouble for us!”
Trixie got to him where I’d have failed. He looked at her angry little face and the gun she was holding on him, and batted his hand across his eyes and laughed sheepishly.
“I shoulda counted ten first,” he mumbled, looking down at the half-strangled heap of beard and bones he had dropped. “Come on.”
That inky black passage I led them into was like a trip through a macabre nightmare. The breech-clouted brown man had had time enough to call an army. The shrine might have held twenty men by now, waiting for us at any step. And I didn’t have much fight left. I was weak, wobbly and beginning to feel light-headed.
But the door at the end was there as I’d shut it. The starlight in the silent patio was bright by comparison. And when we were outside on the terrace I sucked in the cool night air thankfully.
“If we could get an auto,” I said, “it’d be easier. Paige is in town. Might be we could get the cops back here before he returns — or meet him on the road somewhere. Or if we could find a telephone around the joint. Trixie, know where the phone is?”
“No,” says Trixie. “In the shrine there somewhere, I think. I didn’t have a chance to see much. I was looking around outside when that Eddy Voss slipped up on me. He and that gobbling mute who got away from us were looking around out there as if they expected someone to come along.”
“Paige!” the boy with us growled. “That’s the name of the fellow who got me into this! Picked me up on Pershing Square and said he had a job working around his estate. Brought me up here himself — and I was locked up before I knew what was happening.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the idea?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I thought they were all crazy — and then I thought I’d go crazy when I found what was happening to me. That old man talking to me by the hour about his dirty heathen gods, and how he’d been to India and Egypt and Tibet and Africa and learned all there was to know about everything. And how the great crystal springs of truth could only come from eternal pain and punishment. And then he’d stand there with his eyes wild and talk and yell stuff I couldn’t understand while that brown-skinned devil whipped me! Ten days I’d been there and only fed half the time — and I got the idea from things he said that there’d been others before me and if I died there’d be others after me. I was going nuts. A day or two more was about all I could have lasted. I knew I didn’t have a chance. I was just Joe Clark, on the bum and nobody even knowing I’d drifted into California. Mister, what’s all this about anyway?”