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.
He grabbed Casey, who had already shouldered his platecase, said: “The kid’ll be okey as long as the kill is covered. But that girl. We can use her.”
Pratt Street is a narrow offshoot of Massachusetts Avenue. The sidewalks are narrow and made to look more so because the apartments, seedy looking three and four-story brick structures, jammed close together, are all set right out to the edge of the legal building line.
Seven sixty-three, in the middle of the block, had but two characteristics to distinguish it from its adjoining neighbors and those across the street: its number, and the name Edgemere, painted in gilt across its single door.
The tunnel-like entryway was so dark Logan had to strike a match to inspect the name cards above the mailboxes along the right wall. “This is the place, all right,” he said. “Alma Henderson — 3-C.”
The inner door was unlocked and the air here seemed hot and stuffy after the chilled sweep of the night outside. They climbed silently, Logan in the lead, and the soft pounding of a steam radiator on the second floor paced their steps up the last flight of stairs.
Three-C was on the right, rear. Logan knocked once, turned the knob. The door was not locked and as he opened it, Casey grunted impatiently and pushed him into the lighted room. Logan took two steps and stopped short and stiff, so that Casey ran into him and heard him breathe a curse.
Casey looked over his shoulder and saw why. Alma Henderson was on the floor by a wide-open window. A crumpled heap of arms and legs and orange dress.
Casey closed the door softly, and automatically. Logan started across the room. Casey remained where he was, glanced about and became vaguely aware of a cheaply furnished living-room that tried hard to be smart.
Then, because a new indefinable sense of fear reached at his nerve ends with icy fingers, he called: “Wade!” and was instantly aware of the hollowness of his voice, and the absurdity of the act. Wade was not here. Because if he were here—
“Shot her in the back, too,” Logan said bitterly.
Casey lurched across the room. He looked down at the lifeless figure of a girl who was tall, and young, and slender — too slender, and had nice hands. Even in death her face held a youthful prettiness that makeup could not hide.
His gaze held by the discolored spot in the left side of that orange dress, Casey continued to stare at Alma Henderson. But after a moment he was not conscious of what he saw. It was a mental picture that sickened him and he put his thoughts into words.
“She saw Grady killed. She had to go, but before that they got her to spot Wade.”
“That puts the weight on your picture,” Logan said slowly. “It’s not as good as the girl, but she can’t testify.”
“Suppose Wade saw her get it?” Casey spoke as though talking to himself. “You know how that sets him up.”
“If he’s not here, he’s still alive.”
“You look around then,” Casey muttered. “I’ll stay here.”
“Sure,” said Logan, moving away. “It’s gonna be a pleasure to meet up with these guys. In the back. And it looks like she might’ve been trying to open that window.” He cursed softly. “It’s kinda screwy. It don’t look like a planned kill.”
Casey backed away a step, lifted his head and looked out the window. City lights from beyond suffused the drab sky and made a dirty blue background for the rear rooflines of houses in the next block, for spindly antennae, and a potbellied water-tower. A sound of movement behind him flicked his eyes away from the somber picture and he turned.
A man stood beside the doorway to the inner hall. A stocky man with a twisted grin on his broad, sallow face. He had a small automatic in his right hand.
Then Logan came into the room. He had his hands raised shoulder high, and he walked slowly. Behind him came a thin, hollow-chested, ratty-looking youth who held the muzzle of his gun stiffly against Logan’s back.
“Just be nice,” the stocky man said. “Both of
4
The tableau held motionless a second or two; then the thin man’s glance slid sidewise to Casey and he jabbed with his gun, spoke to Logan.
“So it’s gonna be a pleasure to meet up with us, huh?” He chuckled but his lips were sneering. “Well, the pleasure’s all yours. How do you like it?”
Casey felt a thickness in his throat and he cleared it with a grunt, said: “Where’s Wade?” ominously.
“Who’s Wade?” asked the stocky man and cocked one eyebrow in an expression of mock concern.
“You know who,” said Casey huskily and slid one foot forward across the rug.
“Hold it!” clipped the stocky man. “We know how we stand, and if you think you can crowd us, you’re nuts.”
Casey stopped with his left foot advanced. He was a good eight feet from Logan, ten feet or more from the stocky man. He’d never get that far, and he knew it. He had no weapon, and there was nothing he could get his hands on — except the vase on the gateleg table, and that was back by the wall.
The stocky man pocketed his gun, moved towards the telephone stand near the doorway to the inner hall, said: “Get him away from that phone. I’d better find out what we do with these punks.”
The thin man marched Logan forward three steps, and as they stopped Casey watched the lieutenant. The handsome face was set now, and there was a tight, pinched smile on his lips. The smooth skin at his cheekbones was stretched like a banjo head, but it was the eyes that held Casey’s gaze.
There was an intense gleam in their dark depths, and, as Casey watched, he saw one lid pull down in a slow, deliberate wink. The lid remained narrowed.
Casey knew then that Logan was going to fight for it. He weighed their chances and then forgot about that angle. He would be ready when Logan moved. He waited.
The stocky man had dialed a number and was talking in low, jerky tones.
“One of ’em’s that picture-taker; the other acts like a cop... Yeah... Yeah. Because we couldn’t get out. We didn’t lock the door, and these muggs bust in with only one knock. We couldn’t make the back door, so we ducked in the bedroom. Sure. But what do we do with ’em?”
He was silent for a moment after that: then he said: “Okey. Yeah.”
Casey did not see the fellow hang up, because his eyes were still on Logan. But he heard the click of the receiver. And at that instant, Logan acted.
His movement was a peculiar, spinning maneuver that should have been awkward, but wasn’t. The spin was catlike in its quickness, compact, and to the right.
As he moved his right fist swung down from the shoulder height, smashed on the thin man’s gun wrist. The automatic spun from the fellow’s grasp, skidded towards Casey. Then Logan completed the spin as his left came up and around in a looping hook.
Casey went into action as he heard the smack of fist on jawbone. One step brought him over the fallen automatic. As he stooped, a slanting, corner-of-the-eye picture presented the stocky man straightening from the telephone table, clawing at his pocket.
The automatic was cool in Casey’s hot fingers. As he snatched it up he went to one knee and swung his arm over. He saw the sweep of the stocky man’s gun, caught sight of the muzzle. Then the roar in his ears, the slap of recoil in his wrist told him the shot was his own.
The gun barrel that threatened him wavered, dipped. The automatic began to slide from limp fingers. Then Casey raised his eyes. The man’s mouth was open, quivering. There was a bluish hole over the one eye. He put one hand on the telephone table. The hand slipped off and he went over, crashing down with the table and the instrument under him.