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.
He called another number, his own office’s, held the receiver to his ear for a little while without saying anything, and replaced it on its hook.
He went to John’s Grill, asked the waiter to hurry his order of chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes, ate hurriedly, and was smoking a cigarette with his coffee when a thick-set youngish man with a plaid cap set askew above pale eyes and a tough cheery face came into the Grill and to his table.
“All set, Mr. Spade. She’s full of gas and raring to go.”
“Swell.” Spade emptied his cup and went out with the thick-set man. “Know where Ancho Avenue, or Road, or Boulevard, is in Burlingame?”
“Nope, but if she’s there we can find her.”
“Let’s do that,” Spade said as he sat beside the chauffeur in a dark Cadillac sedan. “Twenty-six is the number we want, and the sooner the better, but we don’t want to pull up at the front door.”
“Correct.”
They rode a half dozen blocks. The chauffeur said:
“Your partner got knocked off, didn’t he?”
“Uh-huh.”
The chauffeur clucked. “She’s a tough racket.”
“Well, hack-drivers don’t live forever.”
“Maybe that’s right,” the thick-set man conceded, “but, just the same, it’ll always be a surprise to me if I don’t.”
Spade stared ahead at nothing and thereafter, until the chauffeur became tired of making conversation, replied with uninterested yeses and noes.
At a drugstore in Burlingame the chauffeur learned how to reach Ancho Avenue.
Ten minutes later he stopped the car near a dark corner, turned off the lights, and waved his hand at the block ahead.
“There she is,” he said. “She ought to be on the other side, maybe the third or fourth house.”
Spade said, “Right,” and got out of the car. “Keep the engine going. We might have to leave in a hurry.”
He crossed the street and went up the other side.
Night had settled. Far ahead a lone streetlight burned. Warmer lights dotted the night on either side, where houses were spaced half a dozen to a block. A high thin moon was cold and feeble as the distant streetlight. A radio droned through the open window of a house on the other side of the street.
In front of the second house from the corner Spade halted. On one of the gateposts that were massive out of all proportion to the fence flanking them, a 2 and a 6 of pale metal caught what light there was. A square white card was nailed above them. Putting his face close to the card, Spade could see it was a FOR SALE OR RENT sign.
There was no gate between the posts. Spade went up the cement walk to the house. He stood still on the walk at the foot of the porch steps for a long moment. No sound came from the house. The house was dark except for another pale square card on its door.
Spade went up to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried to look through the glass of the door. There was no curtain to keep his gaze out, but inner darkness. He tip-toed to a window, and then to another. They, like the door, were uncurtained except by inner darkness. He tried both windows. They were locked. He tried the door. It was locked.
He left the porch and, stepping carefully over unfamiliar ground, walked through weeds around the house. The side windows were too high to be reached. The back door and the one back window he could reach were locked.
Spade went back to the gatepost, and, cupping the flame between his hands, held his lighter up to the FOR SALE OR RENT sign. It bore the printed name and address of a San Mateo real estate dealer, and a line penciled in blue: Key at 31.
Spade went back to the sedan and asked the chauffeur:
“Got a flashlight?”
“Sure.” He gave it to Spade. “Can I give you a hand at anything?”
“Maybe.” Spade got into the sedan. “We’ll ride up to number thirty-one. You can use your lights.”
Number 31 was a square gray house across the street from, but a little farther up than, 26. Lights glowed in its downstairs windows.
Spade went up on the porch and rang the bell. A dark-haired girl of fourteen or fifteen opened the door. Spade, bowing and smiling, said: “I’d like to get the key to number twenty-six.”
“I’ll call Papa,” she said, and went back into the house calling: “Papa.”
A plump red-faced man, baldheaded and heavily mustached, appeared, carrying a newspaper.
Spade said: “I’d like to get the key to twenty-six.”
The plump man looked doubtful. He said:
“The lights are not on. You couldn’t see anything.”
Spade patted his pocket. “I’ve a flashlight.”
The plump man looked more doubtful. He cleared his throat uneasily and crumpled the newspaper in his hand.
Spade showed the man one of his business cards, put it back in his pocket, and said in a low voice: “We got a tip that there might be something hidden over there.”
The plump man’s face and voice were eager.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll go over with you.”
When he came back a moment later he carried a brass key attached to a yellow and red tag. Spade beckoned to the chauffeur as they passed the sedan, and the chauffeur joined them.
“Anybody been looking at the house lately?” Spade asked.
“Not that I know of,” the plump man replied. “Nobody’s been to me for the key in a couple of months.”
The plump man marched ahead with the key until they had gone up on the porch. Then he thrust it into Spade’s hand, mumbled, “Here you are,” and stepped aside.
Spade unlocked the door and pushed it open. There was silence and darkness.
Holding the flashlight, dark, in his left hand, Spade went in. The chauffeur came close behind him, and then, at a little distance, the plump man followed them.
They searched the house from bottom to top, cautiously at first, then, finding nothing, boldly. The house was empty, unmistakably, and there was nothing to show that it had been visited in weeks.
Spade, saying, “That’s all, thanks,” and, “Good night,” left the sedan in front of the Alexandria. He went into the hotel, to the desk, where a tall young man with a dark grave face said: “Good evening, Mr. Spade.”
“Good evening.” Spade drew the young man to one end of the desk. “These Gutmans up in 12-C — are they in?”
The young man replied, “No,” darting a quick sharp glance at Spade. Then he looked away, hesitated, looked at Spade again, and murmured: “A funny thing happened a couple of hours ago. Somebody called the Emergency Hospital and told them there was a sick girl up there.”
“And there wasn’t?”
“Oh, no — there was nobody up there. They went out earlier in the evening.”
Spade said: “Well, these practical jokers have to have their fun. Thanks.”
He went to a telephone booth, called a number, and said:
“Hello... Mrs. Perine?... Is Effie there?... Yes, please... Thanks.
“Hello, angel! What’s the good word?... Fine, fine! Hold it. I’ll be out in twenty minutes... Right.”
Half an hour later Spade rang the doorbell of a two-story brick house in Seventh Avenue. Effie Perine opened the door. Her boyish face was tired and smiling.
“Hello, boss,” she said. “Enter.” Then she said in a low voice: “If Ma says anything to you, Sam, be nice to her. She’s all up in the air.”
Spade grinned reassuringly and patted her shoulder.
She put her hands on his arm. “Miss O’Shaughnessy?”
“No,” he growled. “I ran into a plant. Are you sure it was her voice?”
“Yes.”
He made an unpleasant face. “Well, it was hooey.”
She took him into a bright living-room, sighed, and slumped down on one end of a Chesterfield, smiling cheerfully up at him through her weariness.