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.
“Thanks, Luke. It wouldn’t hurt. You can’t know too much about the birds you’re working for.”
It was twenty-one minutes past eleven by the clock over the elevator doors when Joel Cairo came in from the street. His forehead was bandaged. His clothes had the limp unfreshness of too many consecutive hours’ wear. His face was pasty, with sagging mouth and eyelids.
Spade met him in front of the desk.
“Good morning,” Spade said easily.
Cairo drew his tired body up straight, and the drooping lines of his face tightened.
“Good morning,” he responded without enthusiasm.
There was a pause.
Spade said:
“Let’s go some place where we can talk.”
Cairo raised his chin.
“Please excuse me,” he said. “Our conversations in private have not been such that I am anxious to continue them. Pardon my speaking bluntly, but it is the truth.”
“You mean last night?” Spade made an impatient gesture with head and hands. “What the hell else could I do? I thought you’d see that. If you pick a fight with her, or let her pick one with you, I’ve got to throw in with her. I don’t know where that damned bird is. You don’t. She does. How in hell are we going to get it if I don’t play along with her?”
Cairo hesitated, said dubiously:
“You’ve always, I must say, a smooth explanation ready.”
Spade scowled. “What do you want me to do? Learn to stutter? Well, we can talk over here.” He led the way to the divan. When they were seated he asked: “Dundy take you down to the hall?”
“Yes.”
“How long did he work on you?”
“Till a very little while ago, and very much against my will.” Pain and indignation were mixed in Cairo’s face and voice. “I shall certainly take the matter up with the Consulate General of Greece and with an attorney.”
“Go ahead, but it won’t get you anything. What did they get out of you?”
There was prim satisfaction in Cairo’s stiff smile.
“Not a single thing. I adhered to the course you had indicated earlier in your rooms.” His smile went away. “Though I certainly wished you had devised a more reasonable story. I felt decidedly ridiculous repeating it.”
Spade grinned mockingly.
“Sure,” he said, “but its goofiness is what made it good. You’re sure you didn’t give them anything else?”
“You may rely upon it, Mr. Spade. I did not.”
Spade drummed with his fingers on the leather seat between them.
“You’ll be hearing from Dundy again. Stay dummied up on him and you’ll be all right. Don’t worry about the story’s goofiness. A sensible one would have had us all in the cooler.” He rose to his feet. “You’ll want to sleep if you’ve been in the grease all night. See you later.”
Effie Perine was saying, “No, not yet,” into the telephone when Spade entered his outer office. She looked around at him and her lips shaped a silent word, “Iva.” He shook his head. “Yes, I’ll have him call you as soon as he comes in,” she said aloud, and replaced the receiver on its prong.
“That’s the third time she’s called up this morning,” she told Sam.
He made an impatient growling noise.
She moved her brown eyes to indicate the inner office door. “Your Miss O’Shaughnessy’s in there. She has been waiting since a few minutes after nine.”
Spade nodded as if he had expected that, and asked: “What else?”
“Sergeant Polhaus called up. He didn’t leave any message.”
“Get him for me.”
“And G. called up.”
Spade’s eyes brightened. He asked: “Who?”
“G. That’s what he said.” Her air of personal indifference to the subject was flawless. “When I told him you weren’t in he said, ‘When he comes in, will you please tell him that G., who got his message, phoned and will phone again?’ ”
Spade worked his lips together as if tasting something he liked.
“Thanks, darling,” he said. “See if you can get Tom Polhaus.”
He opened the inner door and went into his private office, pulling the door to behind him.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy, dressed as on her first visit to the office, rose from a chair beside his desk and came quickly toward him.
“Somebody has been in my apartment,” she exclaimed. “It is all upside down, every which way.”
He seemed moderately surprised.
“Anything taken?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was afraid to stay. I changed as fast as I could and came down here. Oh, Sam, you must’ve let that boy follow you there.”
Spade shook his head. “No, angel.” He took an early copy of an afternoon newspaper from his pocket, opened it, and showed her a quarter-column headed:
A young woman named Carolin Beale, who lived alone in a Sutter Street apartment, had been awakened at four that morning by the sound of somebody moving in her bedroom. She had screamed. The mover had run away. Two other women who lived alone in the same building had discovered, later in the morning, signs of the burglar’s having visited their apartments. Nothing had been taken from any of the three.
“That’s where I shook him,” Spade explained. “I went into that building and ducked out the back door. That’s why all three were women that lived alone.
“He tried the apartments that had women’s names in the vestibule register, hunting for you under a phoney name.”
“But he was watching your place when we were there,” she objected.
Spade shrugged. “Maybe he’s not alone. Maybe he went to Sutter Street after he began to think you were going to stay at my place all night. There are lots of maybes. But I didn’t lead him to the Coronet.”
She wasn’t satisfied. “But he found it, or somebody did.”
“Sure.” He frowned at her feet. “I wonder if it could have been Cairo. He wasn’t at his hotel all night, didn’t get in till a few minutes ago. He told me he had been standing up under a quiz at headquarters all night. I wonder.”
He turned, opened the door, and asked Effie Perine: “Got Tom yet?”
“He’s not in. I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
“Thanks.” Spade shut the door and faced Brigid O’Shaughnessy.
She looked at him with cloudy eyes. “You went to see Joe this morning?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“Why?” He smiled down at her. “Because, my dear, I’ve got to keep in some sort of touch with the loose ends of this dizzy affair, if I’m ever going to make heads or tails of it.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her over to his swivel chair. He kissed the tip of her nose lightly and set her down in the chair. He sat on the desk in front of her. He said: “Now we’ve got to find a new home for you, haven’t we?”
She nodded with emphasis. “I won’t go back there.”
He patted the desk beside his thighs and made a thoughtful face.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said presently. “Wait a minute.” He went into the outer office, shutting the door behind him.
Effie Perine reached for the telephone, saying: “I’ll try again.”
“Afterwards. Does your woman’s intuition still tell you she’s a Madonna or something?”
She looked sharply up at him.
“I still believe that no matter what kind of trouble she’s gotten into she’s all right, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “Are you strong enough for her to give her a lift?”
“How?”
“Could you put her up for a few days?”
“You mean at home?”
“Yes. Her joint’s been broken into. That’s the second burglary she’s had this week. It’d be better if she wasn’t by herself. It would help a lot if you could take her in.”