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.
“Yeah. Chibby’s hiding out at 95 Hector Street with about six other guns.”
“All right, Mory. Put your coat on.”
XI
It was a big, powerful touring car that left Headquarters and droned through the dark streets. Hogan was at the wheel. Beside him sat Moriarity and MacBride. In the rear were five policemen and Kennedy. It was half-past two in the morning. The dark streets were empty, and the big car plunged from one into another, and the men in the back swayed from side to side as the car bent sharply around corners.
“This is Hector,” said Hogan.
“What’s the number?” asked MacBride.
“The numbers begin here,” said Kennedy. “That 95 should be about three blocks down.”
MacBride said, “Pull up about a block this side, Hogan.”
“Okey.”
The car slowed down and rolled along leisurely, and presently Hogan swung into the curb and applied the brake.
MacBride got out first and looked up and down the street. The policemen got out and stood around him, and their badges, fastened to the breasts of their heavy blue overcoats, flashed intermittently.
“It must be on the other side of the street,” said MacBride. “Come on.”
They crossed the street and walked along close to the houses. The houses were set back from the sidewalk and fronted by iron fences, and just behind the fences were depressions and short flights of stone steps that led down to the basement floors. The street lights were few and far between, and the windows of the houses were darkened.
MacBride was saying, “We’ll try to get in through the cellar.”
They reached number 95 and went in through the gate and crowded noiselessly down the stone steps until their heads were level with the sidewalk. There were two windows, without shades, and the windows were dirty.
“They’re supposed to be on the top story,” whispered Moriarity.
“And it’s four stories,” muttered MacBride. “Let’s try the windows.”
They tried them, but the windows were locked. MacBride stood for a moment thinking. Then — “There’s no fire-escapes in front. They must be in the rear. Let’s find a way to the rear. The next block.”
They came back to the sidewalk and walked on, took the next left turn and then turned left again into the street that paralleled Hector. Mac-Bride counted the houses.
“You might have noticed,” said Kennedy, “that 95 was the only four-storied house. The others were three.”
“It should be about here,” said MacBride.
He mounted the steps and rang the bell. After a few minutes the door opened and an old woman wearing a nightcap looked out.
“Madam,” said MacBride, “we’re from Police Headquarters. We’d like to pass through your house so that we can get to the one behind it in Hector Street.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“We’re looking for someone.”
“Well... well... all right. But waking an old woman up on these cold nights...”
“I’m very sorry, madam.”
She led them through the hall and opened a door in the rear that led into a small yard. Beyond the yard was a low board fence. Beyond the fence was the back of the four-storied house.
“Thank you, madam,” said MacBride.
“It’s all right, but with my sciatica...”
MacBride and the cops and Kennedy passed out into the yard. MacBride scaled the fence and dropped down into the other yard, and the others were close behind.
“There’s the fire-escape,” he said, and walked towards it.
He was the first to go up. Whatever may be said of him, good or bad, he never hung back in the face of impending danger. If he planned a dangerous maneuver, he likewise led the way, remarking, with ironic humor, that he carried heavy insurance.
He climbed quite noiselessly, and the men were like an endless chain behind him, a dark chain of life moving up the metal ladders. The windows they moved past were black as black slabs of slate. The skirts of their long blue coats swung about their knees as the knees rose and fell with each upward step.
MacBride went slower as he neared the top landing. He stopped and looked back down over the line of men, and right behind him was Patrolman Haviland, and behind Haviland was Patrolman Kreischer, who was getting on in years. And looking at them, MacBride felt a little proud of them.
He looked upward and climbed slowly, and Haviland came up to crowd on one side of him and Kreischer came up to crowd on the other side. They all had their guns out. MacBride had his out, too, but he reached over and took Haviland’s nightstick.
He looked at the window, and then he raised the heavy stick and smashed the glass. He struck four times, and then plunged in through the yawning aperture.
Somewhere in the darkness there was a shout. A split-second later a gun boomed and a flash of fire stabbed the darkness and a bullet slammed into the window frame. MacBride fired around the room and lunged across the floor. He heard a man scream. If he could find a door, then he could find a light-switch, he reasoned.
Someone cannoned into him, and MacBride crashed against the wall. A gun exploded so close to his face that the smoke made him choke. He ducked and sprang away and banged into another twisting body, and ducked away again. He brought up suddenly against a door and then he groped around for the light-switch. He could not find it. A body hurtled against him with such force that the captain went down.
Somebody pulled the door open, and the dim light from the hall filtered in. Two or three forms dived out through the door. MacBride leaped up and lunged towards the door and collided with another man who was trying to get out. Both went down under a rush of four policeman who had not time to recognize MacBride. MacBride disentangled himself in a hurry and heaved up as Haviland was on the point of swinging his nightstick.
“Hey!” shouted MacBride.
“Oh... you, Cap!”
Another man came barging out of the door behind a flaming gun, and one of the bullets put a hole through MacBride’s new hat but did not budge it the fraction of an inch. Kreischer fired three times, and the man threw up his hands and screamed, and the momentum of his dive carried him over the banister and crashing down to the hall below.
And in the hall below the cops who had run down were fighting with the men who had opened the door and sought to escape. Somebody in the room had found the light-switch — it turned out to be Kennedy — and the light revealed two gangsters lying dead on the floor and Kennedy mildly scratching his nose, as though he were trying to figure out why the men did not get up.
MacBride ran to the head of the stairs and saw the spurts of gunfire below. He forked the banister backward and slid down with lightninglike speed. He flew off the end and did a backward somersault, and as he was getting up Patrolman Mendelwitz toppled over him groaning and then slid to the floor like a bag of wet meal.
The fighting moved down the next stairway, and MacBride went after it, and Kreischer and Haviland came pounding down behind him. MacBride, going down the staircase, stumbled over a body, but caught hold of the banister and steadied himself. It was the body of a gangster.
MacBride looked over the banister and saw three gangsters backing towards the next landing below. He climbed over the banister, hung out a bit and then dropped. It was a fall of about fifteen feet, and MacBride landed on somebody’s shoulders and created a new panic. He saw one of the other gangsters swing towards him, and he recognized Sam Chibbarro, and Chibarro recognized him. The gunman swung his rod towards MacBride’s head, but another body sailed down from above and crashed Chibbarro to the floor. It was Kennedy, unarmed, but effective, nevertheless. The third gangster turned and ran for the head of the next staircase, and Haviland fired along the banister and got him in the side and the gangster fell against the wall and then slid down to the floor.