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.
“Well, Tony, what’s the trouble?”
The wind kept clutching at the windows. Maratelli went over and tightened a latch. Then he pulled up a rocker to face MacBride, sat down on the edge of it, lit a twisted cheroot and took a couple of quick, nervous puffs. He stared vacantly at MacBride’s polished shoe.
Finally— “About my boy Dominick.”
“H’m.”
“You know?”
“Go on, Tony.”
“Yes... yes. Look, Cap, I’m a good guy. I’m a good wop. I got a wife and kids and business and I been elected alderman and... well, I’m a pretty good guy. I don’t want to be on no racket, and I don’t want any kind of help from any rough guys in the neighborhood. I been pestered a lot, Cap, but I ain’t gonna give in. I got a wife and kids and a good reputation and I want to keep the slate what you call pretty damn clean. Cap, I ask you to come along here tonight after I been thinking a lotta things over in my head. I need help, Cap. What’s a wop gonna do when he needs help? I dunno. But I ask you, and maybe you be my friend.”
“Sure,” said MacBride. “Get it off your chest.”
“This wop... uh... Chibbarro, you know him?”
“Sam Chibbarro?”
“Yes — yes — yes.”
“Uhuh.”
“Him.”
“What about him?”
Maratelli took a long breath. It was coming hard, and he wiped his face with his fat hand. He cleared his throat, took a drink of Chianti and cleared his throat again.
“Him. It’s about him. Him and my boy Dominick. You know my boy Dominick is only twenty-one. And... and—”
“Going around with Chibby?”
“Yes... yes. Look. This is it, and Holy Mother, if Chibby knows I talk to you—” He exhaled a vast breath and shook his head. “Look. I have lotsa trucks, Cap, being what I am a contractor. I have ten trucks, some big, some not that big. Chibby... uh... Chibby he wants my trucks for to run booze at night!”
MacBride uncrossed his legs and put both heels on the floor. He leaned forward and, putting the elbow of one arm on his knee, jack-knifed the other arm against his side. His eyes, which had a windy blue look, stared point-blank at Maratelli.
“And you?”
“Well—” Maratelli sat back and spread his hands palmwise and opened his eyes wide — “me, I say no!”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Maybe a month.”
“And Dominick. Where does he come in?”
Maratelli fell back in his chair like a deflated balloon. “That is what you call it, Cap. He is very good friends. He thinks Chibby is a great guy. He says I am the old fool.”
MacBride looked at the floor, and his eyelids came down thoughtfully; the ghost of a curl came to his wide mouth, slightly sardonic.
Maratelli was hurrying on — “Look, Cap. My Dominick is a good boy, but if he keeps friends with that dirty wop Chibbarro it is gonna be no good. I can’t stand for it, Cap. And what can I do with Dominick? He laughs at me. Puts the grease on his hair and wears the Tuxedo and goes around with Chibby like a millionaire. Dominick has done nothing bad yet, but if this Chibby— Look, Cap, whatcha think I’m gonna do?”
MacBride sat back. “Hell, Tony, I’ve had a lot of tough jobs in my day, but you hand me a lulu. It’s too bad. You’ve got my sympathy, and that’s no bologney. I’ll think it over. I’ll do the best I can.”
“Please, Cap, please. Every night Dominick goes out with Chibby. Dominick ain’t got the money, so Chibby he pays the bills. And where do they go? Ah — the Club Naples, and places like that, and women — Holy Mother, it ain’t good, Cap! My wife and my baby — I ask you, Cap, for my sake.”
“Sure, Tony.”
MacBride stood up.
Maratelli stood up, his breath whistling in his throat. “But if Chibby knows I speak to you—”
“He won’t,” clipped MacBride.
He buttoned his coat, put on his hat and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll be going.”
“Have another drink.”
“Thanks — no.”
Maratelli let him out into the street and hung in the doorway.
“Night, Cap.”
“Night, Tony.”
MacBride was already swinging away, his cigar a red eye in the wind.
II
Jockey Street was never a good street. It was the wayward offspring of a wayward neighborhood. Six blocks of it made a bee line from the white-lights district to the no-lights district, and then petered off into the river.
The way was dark after the third block, except for a solitary electric sign that winked seductively in the middle of the fourth. It projected over the sidewalk, and the winking, beckoning letters were painted green:
MacBride did not come down from the bright lights. He came up from River Road, up from the bleak, unlovely waterfront. He still walked with his hands in his pockets, and the wind blew from behind, flapping his coat around his knees.
A man in a faded red uniform with tarnished gold braid stood in front of the double doors. As MacBride drew near, the man reached back and laid his hand on the knob. He opened the door as MacBride came up, and MacBride went inside.
The ante-room was quite dim, and the sound of a jazz band was muffled. To the right was a cloak-room, and the girl came over to take Mac-Bride’s coat. But MacBride paid no attention to her. A man came forward out of the dim-lit gloom, peering hard. He wore a Tux, and he had white, doughy jowls and thin hair plastered back, and he was not so young.
“Your eyesight bad, Al?” chuckled MacBride.
“Oh... that you, Cap?”
“Yeah.”
“Cripes, I’m glad to see you, Cap!”
He grabbed MacBride’s hand and wrung it. MacBride stood still, slightly smiling, his face in shadow, and Al laughed showing a lot of uncouth teeth.
This was Al Vassilakos, a Greek who went over big with the wops and who was on speaking terms with the police. Mike Dabraccio really started the joint, a couple of years ago, but Mike talked out of turn to the old Sciarvi gang, and Sciarvi told Mike to go places. Al was instated by Sciarvi himself, and when Sciarvi got himself balled up — and subsequently shot — in a city-wide gang feud, Al carried on with the club. He’d kept clean since then, but Sam Chibbarro, called Chibby, was back, and MacBride had his doubts.
It looked as if Al was a little put out at Mac-Bride’s imperturbable calm.
“You — you looking for some guy, Cap?”
“No. Just wandering around, Al. How’s business?”
“Pretty good.”
“Mind if I sit inside?”
“Glad to have you, Cap.”
MacBride took off his overcoat and his hat and gave them to the girl. Al walked with him across the ante-room and opened a door. A flood of light and a thunder of jazz rushed out as MacBride and Al went in. Al closed the door and MacBride drifted over to a small table beside the wall and sat down. Al signaled to a waiter and motioned to MacBride.
“Snap on it, Joe. That’s Captain MacBride from Headquarters. Don’t give him none of that cheap alky.”
“Okey, boss.”
Al went over and put his hands palm-down on the table and asked, “How about a good cigar, Cap? And I’ve got some good Golden Wedding.”
“All right, Al — on both.”
“Hey, Joe! A box of Coronas and that bottle of Golden Wedding. Bring the bottle out, Joe.”
“Okey, boss.”
“Anything you want, Cap, ask me. I’ll be outside. I gotta be outside, you know.”
“Sure, Al.”
Vassilakos went out to the ante-room, but he still looked a bit worried.