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 police chauffeur nodded without turning his head. He shifted into second, depressed the accelerator and caromed diagonally across the intersection. The siren gave one throaty snarl as he rammed the sedan over to the curb.
The other driver made no attempt to elude detention. He braked sharply to avoid a crash and thrust his head out the window.
“Hey, what’s the idea...?” he began, stopping when he saw Barnaby swing out of the police car, gun in hand.
Duane followed and threw a beam from his flash into the closed car. There were two men in the rear seat.
Barnaby yanked open the rear door. “File out,” he ordered curtly, gesturing with his gun.
The pair in the back seat hesitated, then the larger of the two, a big blond man, grinned insolently, tilted his hat to a rakish angle and climbed to the street. His companion, a stocky fellow, followed scowling.
“You, too,” Barnaby growled at the driver, and that worthy grudgingly complied.
The big man yawned. “What is this, Cap, a pinch?”
Barnaby caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Keep your mouth shut, Ritter,” he barked. “We’ll start off with a frisk.” He ran practiced hands over the man’s body and found a snub-nosed .38 in a shoulder harness.
“I gotta license to pack that rod,” Ritter offered, by way of explanation. “Don’t get ideas, copper.”
Duane searched the other pair. “Clean!” he reported disappointedly.
Barnaby inclined his head towards the tonneau. “Frisk the heap,” he growled, keeping his eyes on the big man. “An’ who are these muggs?” he demanded of the latter, indicating the two other hoods.
Ritter grinned. “I suppose you got a warrant to search our car, Cap?” He ignored the question.
Barnaby’s eyes glowed. “I don’t need a warrant to frisk a load of rats.”
Ritter shrugged. “No? Then maybe they changed the Constitution since lunch time. My mouthpiece told me then...”
Duane came running around the back of the sedan. He had a sawed-off shot-gun in his hands.
“The car was clean,” he snapped, “but I found this in the gutter. They must have heaved it out when we stopped ’em.”
Ritter smiled maliciously. “You’ll have a hell of a time proving...”
Barnaby hit him alongside the jaw, knocking him over the left-front fender. “You damned...!”
Duane caught his arm. “Easy, Cap, easy!” Lowering his voice, he added, “We ain’t got a thing on ’em!”
The man came up massaging his jaw. “That’ll cost you your job, flatfoot!”
Barnaby shook his arm free of Duane and started another swing, but Ritter stumbled hastily out of range. The captain flexed his fingers and backed up a stride. “All right,” he rasped. “Pile in!” He waved them into the squad car with his gun.
The trio climbed into the rear seat. Barnaby ordered the police chauffeur to drive the sedan while Duane piloted the official car. Then he took his place in the front, sitting sidewise so he could cover the cargo of hoods in the rear.
Ritter made one more prophecy. “You can’t lock us up in this town, flatfoot!”
He was right. They had barely reached Central Station when a criminal lawyer named Hymie Croker magically appeared armed with writs of habeas corpus. The three guns swaggered from the station, free, and from the shadow of the sergeant’s desk, Captain Barnaby and Sergeant Duane watched in sullen silence.
When they had gone, Duane commented: “It’s sure a swell system, Skipper. Not much like it was twenty years ago, when my old man was chief.”
“Mike Duane was a man,” Barnaby snarled through clenched teeth. “He’d have fired us if we’d brought those hoods in without first beatin’ ’em so they couldn’t walk. We haven’t got a chief no more, we got a puppet. To hell with it, I’m goin’ to bed!” He turned, slapped open the swinging doors and barged out into the night.
A court appearance in the morning and a lengthy conference with a deputy prosecutor after that kept Captain Barnaby away from Headquarters until late the following afternoon. When he finally strode into the station, the desk sergeant flagged him.
“Chief Grogan wants to see you, Captain. He left orders to shoot you right up the moment you came in.”
Barnaby bobbed his rugged head, turned and tramped up the stairs to Grogan’s office on the second floor. He was admitted at once.
Chief of Police Grogan squatted behind a desk, his broad back to the windows. His full, moon-shaped face was an apoplectic purple and his heavy jowls welled over the tight collar band of his tunic as though it strangled him. He had a small, querulous mouth that was permanently puckered as though he was just about to whistle. What hair he had left was gray and he wore it plastered sidewise across his pate in a vain attempt at deception. His thick hands toyed with an onyx lighter.
“You wanted to see me?” Barnaby asked.
Grogan nodded sourly. “Sit down,” he commanded; and as Barnaby complied, he rose to his feet and began to pace the stuffy office. He made two complete circuits, then jerked to a stop and glared down at the Captain.
“What in hell kind of a cop are you?” he roared. “I understand you stopped a carload of citizens last night without a damn’ bit of evidence, beat up one of the men for no good reason and then didn’t have enough facts even to lock them up!”
Barnaby’s eyes narrowed.
“You understand wrong,” he retorted dryly. “I stopped a sedan of professional hoods for a frisk. A rat named Ritter, an ace gunman of Coxy Swarm’s, got tough, so I slapped him. Ritter had a gun...”
“... for which he has a permit,” cut in Grogan. “By what authority did you search that machine?”
What little warmth remained in Barnaby’s eyes faded abruptly. “By what right, you ask? D’you know what happened down there last evenin’? A child was cut down by a mob of killers! They was tryin’ to knock off another hood an’ this kid of three took it instead.”
Grogan made a disgusted motion with his big hand. “A wop kid!”
“He lived an’ breathed,” Barnaby said slowly. “He died because we coppers tolerate a lot of rats in this town.”
The Chiefs mouth shrank. “Captain Barnaby,” he rasped, “you’re relieved of your command immediately. You are suspended for ten days, after which you will report in uniform to night patrol duty in a suburban precinct.”
Barnaby ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “I see. I rate this demotion because...”
“Because of conduct unbecoming an officer of the law; because you violated the laws you are sworn to uphold; because you have a vicious temper and beat up citizens; because...”
Barnaby stood up, lifted a restraining hand. There was fire glowing in the caverns under his shaggy brows.
“Grogan, you’re a blustering dummy. You mouth a lot of words but you’re tryin’ this act because Coxy Swarm ordered to you to get rid of me. Ritter told me this was comin’.”
The Chief swelled his chest. “Wait a minute, Captain Barn...”
The older copper interrupted him. “Shut up! You can take your crooked graft-eaten force an’ go straight to hell with it.” With an explosive oath, he swiveled and stalked out of the room.
He went down to the street and began to walk. Sweat stood out on his corrugated forehead; sweat of rage. Then as time passed and his temper cooled, he began to realize the cold truth.
He had quit!
Quit! That meant he wasn’t a copper anymore! Or did it? Twenty years — no, it was longer than that; it was twenty-six years next June that he came to the Department. Hell, he’d headed the Homicide Squad for nearly a decade. He spread his big hands before him — with battered knuckles, calloused palms. His quizzical eyes stole to his heavy feet. Not a copper...? That was a laugh!