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.
“She’s scared, Flash. And” — Wade hesitated, caught his lower lip between his teeth — “I think she wants me to help her out of town.”
“You’re nuts,” Casey said. He looked at the youth, read correctly the stubborn set of the jaw. He spread his hand wearily, said:
“Listen. I gotta go back to Roxbury and see Logan. Something’s up. You can go with me. And after that I’ll go and see this Henderson dame with you.”
Wade shook his head. “She told me to hurry.”
“But—” snorted Casey.
“Wait.” Wade backed towards the door and his voice was a bit thick. “She’s depending on me, says I’m the only one in town she can trust. I told her I’d come and I’m not letting her down — not even for you.”
Casey blew out his breath. Guileless as hell. And just as stubborn. Sold on the girl — or her story. He said:
“What’s her address?”
“Seven sixty-three Pratt Street.”
Casey smiled then and the smile was genuine, tinged with a certain admiration for the youth’s earnest loyalty. He said: “Okey, give it a whirl. Only watch your step and remember she works for Moe Nyberg.”
When Wade went out, Casey shrugged and picked up his camera and platecase. “I’d better take ’em,” he said half aloud. “Logan sounded tough.”
Fifteen minutes later, Casey set his camera and case on the floor in front of a door whose upper panel of frosted glass bore the inscription: Blue Grass Products, and scowled.
The transverse corridor on the third floor of the ancient and deserted looking office building was empty, ominously quiet, lighted by a single bulb at the far end. A half dozen doors, with upper panels of glass, gave on the hall, and in each case they were dark. The one in front of him was dark, and this he could not understand.
Where the hell was Logan?
Casey sucked at his upper lip, pushed his hat forward and scratched his shaggy nape. He swept the tails of his topcoat aside as he jammed his fists on his hips; then he yanked the hat brim down, said: “Nerts,” and banged his fist on the doorframe.
He waited a moment, banged again. Then, although he heard no sound, he happened to glance at the doorknob. It was turning slowly.
Doubt, chilled and gripping, reared up in his brain. He reached quickly for the platecase, but as he straightened up, prepared to retreat, the door came open a three-inch crack.
Casey froze there, an open-mouthed, wide-eyed statue. Surprise, momentary panic, riveted his gaze on that vertical strip of blackness, on the muzzle of a gun which had been thrust forward in the opening so that the dim light of the hall caught the round barrel, burnished it.
For a second or two there was no sound but the sharp suck of Casey’s breath as it caught in his lungs. Then the door swung open and a low, matter-of-fact voice said:
“Okey, Flash. Come on in.”
Casey exhaled noisily and stepped forward with sweat breaking out on his forehead. The lights of the room went on. Logan moved out of the doorway and Casey cursed, said: “Why you louse!”
He stopped in front of Logan, glared at him, and the lights of the room glistened on the thin film of moisture on his forehead.
“You louse! You scared hell out of me.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” said Logan flatly, making no apology.
“Ah—” Casey brushed his forehead, pushed back his hat. “You knew I was comin’. You called me up, didn’t you? What the hell do—”
“I knew you were coming,” said Logan holstering his gun, “but I’m hopin’ we might get some other callers.”
Something in Logan’s cold abrupt tone caught and held Casey’s interest. It was no gag, that gun business. Logan was in dead earnest. And when he got that way—
Casey glanced around. From where he stood, the office was as he remembered it; long, well furnished with a flat-topped desk, a typewriter desk, leather upholstered chairs. The doorway on the right, apparently leading to a connecting office, had been closed this afternoon. It was open now and two detectives stood in the doorway.
Casey recognized the short, stocky fellow with the red face and the heavy chain draped across his bulging vest as Sergeant Manahan. The other fellow was from Headquarters, too, but he did not know his name. He said:
“Well, what’s the act for?”
Logan took him by the arm, walked him out of the entryway so that he could get a full view of the room. Then Casey saw the man on the floor.
Between the little entryway and the cubbyhole, with its washstand and window giving on the airshaft, was a closet. The door of this was open, and the body of a man, lying on his stomach, his face cocked to one side, was half in, half out of the closet, as though he had fallen out when the door was opened.
He was well dressed, his oxford gray topcoat looked new and his shoes were polished. From what Casey could see, the fellow appeared to be about thirty-five, dark-haired, average height. Now there was a definite stiffness about the still form, and in the back a reddish blotch fused with the gray fabric of the coat.
Casey looked at Logan. “Who is he?”
“Grady. A private dick from New York.”
“Shot in the back?”
“Twice — from close range.”
“Where do I come in?” asked Casey, frowning.
“That’s what I want to know,” said Logan. “I want to know all about the horseplay you staged here this afternoon. I may be wrong. But I think this guy was in that closet — dead — when you were in this room.”
Casey’s eyes widened. He stared at Logan, said: “...!” Then he thought about the Henderson woman, and Wade, and some of the color oozed from his face.
“Then she saw it!” he wheezed huskily. “She must’ve seen it. And it was a plant. That’s why she wanted Wade.”
“Keep your pants on,” Logan said bruskly, “and start at the beginning.”
3
Lieutenant Logan, sitting on the massive, flat-topped desk at the end of the room, his arms angling out beside him, propping him up, was a well built fellow with black hair and eyes. About Casey’s age, he had a flair for clothes. His linen was immaculate, so was his police record. Right now he wore spats — and nobody said anything about them either.
“Wait a minute,” he said when Casey told him about the girl — and the telephone call which had summoned Wade. “At the beginning. How’d you get here, what’d you do — everything. I want it all.”
Casey glared at Logan for a moment, then spoke in thick jerky tones.
“I got the tip from Gerry at Headquarters. When Wade and I got downstairs Judson and Haley and their gang were just gettin’ ready to start. We went up the stairs and when they broke down the door I went in behind the cops. I got one picture, then Judson threw me out.”
Casey cursed at the thought, continued rapidly.
“I knew there was an airshaft some place around so Wade and I cut down this other hall. I figured it oughtta be about there, so we crashed in here; didn’t know what it was but took a chance.
“The Henderson dame was alone here. She gave us an argument, looked scared as hell, but Wade talked to her and—”
“The closet was closed,” Logan said.
“Yeah,” chafed Casey, “so was this other door — to the next office. And anyway I opened the window” — he pointed to the frosted glass pane in the wall of the cubbyhole — “and saw that the window across the shaft was partway open.”
He stepped towards a wide shelf which lay on iron brackets on one wall of the cubbyhole. “The dame was arguing all the time, but I found out this shelf was loose, I shoved it across the shaft and it just reached. So I took the camera and slid across. It was the men’s room.”