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.
“That’s it, Hogan.”
“Yeah.”
The flivver drove up behind the ambulance, and MacBride got out and saw a patrolman and the patrolman saw him and saluted.
“Second floor, Cap.”
“Right.”
MacBride entered the hall door and climbed the dusty narrow staircase. On the second landing he saw light streaming out through a door, and a policeman was standing in the door. He saw MacBride and stepped aside, and MacBride went into a small living-room.
Kennedy was sitting on a chair with his feet on a table and his hands clasped behind his back. Cohen was walking back and forth taking quick drags on a cigarette.
“Hello, Cap,” he said, and jerked his head towards the next room.
But MacBride had caught sight of a doctor and a couple of uniformed patrolmen and Moriarity standing beside a bed, and there was a pulmotor working. He caught sight, too, of a girl’s legs protruding from a nightgown, and then Moriarity turned around and saw him and shrugged and came out.
“It’s Bunny Dahl,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Gas.”
“What — suicide?”
“Dunno. Ike and me stopped in a speakeasy just around on Marble Road. Kennedy was there, and we were just about to start a card game when Patrolman Cronkheiser came busting in looking for a telephone. It seems he was walking his beat down Rumford Street when a woman ran out hollering for help. She lives next door. She’d smelt gas and got up and went out in the hall, and then when she knocked on this door and got no answer she ran out and hollered and Cronkheiser came up and busted in. Bunny was laying on the floor, by one of them gas heaters — there it is.”
“How is she?”
“Pretty rotten. They want to try the pulmotor because they think she may pass out before they reach the hospital.”
MacBride went in and looked at her and then came back into the other room.
“Queer,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Kennedy. “Looks as if she got cold feet.”
MacBride said nothing for a minute, and then he said, “I got Dominick.”
Kennedy’s feet fell down from the table. “Things come in bunches, like bananas, don’t they? Where’d you get him?”
“Club Naples. He was feeling Al for some jack when I wandered in. I got Al, too. I don’t like that two-faced Greek. I’m going to get something on him yet.”
“Did he say anything?” asked Moriarity.
“No. The kid’s got spirit. He won’t squeal. But — he’ll have to. Even if we have to beat him.”
MacBride turned and looked into the other room and then he rubbed his hand slowly across his jaw. The doctor looked over his shoulder and beckoned, and MacBride came in and stood beside the bed.
“She’s trying to say something, Captain.”
“What’s she trying to say?”
“About a chap named Chibby.”
“Oh... Chibby.”
MacBride sat down on the edge of the bed and took out a pencil and an old envelope. “Bunny,” he said. “What’s it all about, Bunny?”
“Chibby... did it...”
“How?”
“He got me drunk... then he tied a rag around my mouth... so I couldn’t yell... then he held my head down by the gas stove...”
“H’m.” One side of MacBride’s mouth drew down hard. He leaned closer. “Bunny, where is he?”
“I don’t know... Al knows.”
“Why did he do this to you, Bunny?”
“Because I knew he...” Her voice trailed off.
The doctor said, “We’d better try getting her to the hospital. She hasn’t got much of a chance.”
“Okey.” MacBride stood up. He went back into the other room and said, “Ike, I want you to go to the hospital with Bunny and hang around and see if she says anything more. Mory, you come with me to Headquarters. Al is in for hell.”
He went out into the hall and down the narrow dusty stairs. Moriarity followed him, and Kennedy trailed along behind. They all climbed into the flivver, and Hogan started the motor and they drove off.
X
MacBride had removed his hat, but his overcoat was still on and his hands were in his pockets. His face was gray and hard like granite, and his eyes were like blue cold ice, and he stood with his feet spread apart and his square jaw down close to his chest.
Kennedy sat on the desk with his feet on a chair and his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely clasped. Moriarity stood with his back to the radiator and a dead cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth.
Al Vassilakos sat in the swivel-chair with the light streaming brightly into his white puffed face. It was a face that seemed to have been crudely molded out of dough. His knees were pressed together and his toes were turned in and pressed hard against the floor, and his pudgy hands gripped the arms of the swivel-chair.
MacBride said, “You know where Chibby is, Al.”
“So help me, Cap—”
“Shut up! You know where he is. I want to know where he is.”
“Uh — honest, Cap—”
“Shut up! There’s no time for stalling. You’ve been playing me for the fool and I’m sick of it. I want to know where Chibby is. I’ll give you one minute to come across.”
He took his left hand out of his pocket and crooked his arm and stared down at the watch on his wrist.
Al gripped the arms of the chair harder with his pudgy hands. His toes screwed against the floor. His white stiff shirt-front moved up and down jerkily. His lower lip, which had been caught under his teeth, flopped out and gleamed wet, and his nose wrinkled and his eyes bulged wildly. His breath was beginning to grate in his throat. His body was straining in the chair, and the chair creaked, and he was stretching his throat in his tight stiff collar, as if fighting for breath. Sweat burst out on his forehead and gleamed like globules of grease, and his whole face, that had been dead like dough, began to twitch and convulse as agitated nerve muscles raced around beneath his skin.
MacBride looked dispassionately at the watch on his wrist. Kennedy seemed interested in his hands. Morarity’s eyes were hidden behind shuttered lids, but he was staring at Al.
MacBride shoved his hand back into his pocket. “Minute’s up, Al.”
Kennedy looked up from his hands.
Al strained harder in his chair, his white face ghastly in the light that poured down upon it.
“Well, Al?...” MacBride drew his lips flat back against his teeth.
Al choked. “No-no!”
MacBride walked to the door and opened it and called, “Hey, Mike!”
He came back into the room and after a while a patrolman came in buttoning his coat.
“Mike,” said MacBride, “take this guy upstairs and put him over the hurdles. You, too, Mory.”
The policeman and Moriarity heaved Al out of the chair and dragged him out of the room. Al was blubbering and breaking at the knees.
MacBride closed the door and sat down in the swivel-chair. Kennedy lit a cigarette and shot smoke through his nostrils.
“Bunny sure got hell, didn’t she, Cap?”
“Yeah. It’s like that song about what you get for making whoopee.”
“I wonder what’s behind this. I wonder why Chibby tried to bump off the broad. Maybe he killed Barjo.”
“Maybe.”
They didn’t talk much. MacBride started a cigar and sat back in his chair, and after a while Kennedy got down from the desk and wandered about the room.
Half an hour later the door opened and Moriarity stood there. He carried his coat under his arm.
“Okey, Cap.”
“Yeah?”