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.
Lawyer Croker knew the meaning of the word fear. Sheer panic gripped him; sweat dampened his clothing in one awful rush; he went sick.
“Where are you taking me?” he screamed, struggling forward in his seat.
Forsythe grabbed him by the collar and jerked him back so hard his spine quivered.
“To your home town, Hymie; The City of Hell!”
He laughed, but Hymie Croker didn’t hear him. Hymie Croker had fainted...
Judge Alexander Z. Tweedie looked like a judge even arrayed in his pajamas. His leonine head was crowned with a silver mane which he brushed straight back. His eyes were hidden in shadowed caves, guarded by bushy brows and out front, a pair of nose glasses acted as a barricade. His skin was rugged, seamed, and he had the kind of a jaw that is popularly supposed to denote great strength of character — but which does nothing of the kind. In his younger days, Alexander Tweedie had wanted to be an actor; his father wanted him to be a lawyer. Now he was both. He made a successful politician because he was a good actor, looked the part he chose to play, and knew how to obey orders. He was an impressive judicial fraud.
At twelve-thirty at night, he sat closeted in his study with William Greeves, foreman of the Grand Jury. Greeves was a slight figure, nearly bald, who wore thick lensed glasses and suffered from an inferiority complex. His appointment to the Grand Jury had been one of the greatest surprises in his life; now he spent most of his time attempting to convince himself, as well as a rather cynical wife, that it came as a reward for his business sagacity and his civic loyalty. What made him of value to the powers-that-be was the fact that he honestly believed in himself. He was still dizzy from his sudden exaltation and was pathetically grateful to Judge Tweedie, whom he knew was responsible for the appointment.
Tweedie ran his long fingers through his showy mane and peered over his glasses into the anxious features of his guest.
“Greeves,” he boomed, “I called you here so that we could be ready to act first thing in the morning. This is... well... almost a crisis in our city. These two ex-policemen have run amuck. I know them both; hard, calloused brutes who hesitate not at all to kill.”
“Just what have they done?” William Greeves wanted to know.
“Done!” Judge Tweedie looked sad. He took off his nose-glasses and rapped on the desk between them. “They have murdered a young Italian, they have kidnaped at least three other young men and now...” he paused to let the full import of his words soak in, “... they have apparently kidnaped one of the cleverest and finest members of our bar.”
“Why?” asked Greeves.
“Retaliation! These two policemen were demoted. None of us is safe as long as they are free. It will hasten the end of this reign of terror if we act in unison.” A happy thought came to him so he added: “You or I may be next, Greeves! Think of that!”
William Greeves thought and didn’t like the image his mind conjured. “I’ll attend to it first thing in the morning,” he assured his mentor. “We’ll put through an indictment at once.” He scooped up his hat, carefully placed it on his head and offered his hand.
“Good night, Your Honor.”
Tweedie unlimbered from his chair, rose with studied dignity, and grasping the proffered hand with one of his own, he put the other hand on Greeves’ shoulder.
“It is only by putting our shoulders to the wheel together, Greeves, will we succeed in our efforts to make our city the fairest in the land.”
The foreman of the county Grand Jury nodded; he was visibly impressed. Tweedie held onto his hand and steered him to the front door.
“Good night, Greeves,” he said, and closed the door.
He smiled then and turning, started for the stairs. He was tired and anxious to return to the bed he had so recently deserted. But halfway down the hall, he heard a hesitant knock on the door. He frowned impulsively, about faced and walked back. Greeves had probably forgotten something, he decided, and by the time he folded his hand around the knob, his face was set in a benign smile.
He opened the door... and the smile died.
Captain Clyde Barnaby’s massive bulk filled the opening. Without pausing for an invitation, he pushed the jurist back into the house, entered and heeled the door shut.
“You’re invited to a party, Judge,” Barnaby leered. “You don’t need to dress, but let’s go back to your study so’s we can get some papers. We want to play some games.”
Tweedie struck an attitude. “This is an outrage, sir! I’ll have you arrested and...”
Barnaby tapped him on his inflated chest with a stubby forefinger. “Now, listen to me, you old fraud. You do as I say an’ you won’t get hurt, but one peep out of you an’ I’ll knock you colder than Little America.” He caught Tweedie by the arm, spun him around and gave him a hard push in the general direction of the study.
He turned when they got into the study. Barnaby softly closed the door, leaned against it.
“Now, Judge,” he suggested slyly, “fill up a brief-case with a lot of printed forms, writs, warrants, complaints, search-warrants, forthwith subpoenas and whatever else you have. Also don’t forget your seals, pen, and other apparatus.”
“Why this is ridiculous!” protested Tweedie, giving an excellent imitation of outraged dignity.
Barnaby sighed, fished a blackjack from the recesses of his baggy side-pocket and dangled it from his right thumb. Some of the apoplectic color went out of Tweedie’s face. He tightened the cord of his bathrobe, grabbed a brief-case from a nearby desk and began to jam it with papers. His fingers trembled so that he had trouble securing the straps.
“Now,” said Barnaby, “you’ll come with me... quietly.”
Tweedie hesitated. “And if I refuse...?”
The captain shrugged indifferently. “You go in either case; it’s merely a choice of whether you come with your eyes open or... closed.”
“May I have the opportunity to clothe myself?”
“You don’t need no more clothes,” Barnaby assured him dryly, opening the hall door. “You look funny enough the way you are.”
Something akin to a sob escaped the jurist’s lips, but he took the lead without further protest and stalked down the corridor. At a nod from the copper he opened the front door and stepped out into the night. Barnaby fell in step beside him and together they strode to the sidewalk, where a car awaited them.
Tweedie recognized Duane behind the wheel. He muttered something and stumbled into the tonneau. Half-in, he suddenly saw the slender figure huddled in a corner of the seat.
It was William Greeves.
The bitter night wind whipped Judge Tweedie’s flimsy garments, but the judge was not cold...
He was scared.
It was the strangest court proceedings ever held in the long annals of legal history! Perhaps the most amazing feature of it all was that the idea was born, not in the cunning brain of a criminal lawyer, but in the honest heads of four old harness bulls. The courtroom was in the bowels of the earth, an abandoned sewer, and the city was directly overhead. Barnaby sat in the middle of a long, improvised table. At one end sat his Honor, Judge Alexander Z. Tweedie, garbed in striped pajamas and a dark blue bathrobe; at the other end, William Greeves shivered on a small soapbox chair.
The room was more like a dungeon than a courtroom, and the crude lighting fixtures — beer-bottles and candles — sent jumpy little shadows carousing around the bat-infested ceiling. There was only one door — a sort of arch — and on either side of this stood Hallahan and Duane. Forsythe was down with the prisoners.