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.
Gutman repeated, “Well, sir, as to that,” and took a white envelope from his pocket.
Ten eyes — the boy’s now only half hidden by his lashes — looked at the envelope.
Turning the envelope over in his swollen hands, Gutman studied for a thoughtful moment its blank white front and then its back, unsealed, with the flap tucked in. He raised his head, smiled amiably, and scaled the envelope at Spade’s lap.
The envelope, though not bulky, had sufficient weight to fly true. It struck the lower part of Spade’s chest and dropped down on his thighs. He picked it up deliberately and opened it deliberately, using both hands, having taken his left arm from around the girl. The contents of the envelope were thousand-dollar bills, smooth and stiff and new. Spade took them out and counted them. There were ten of them. Spade looked up smiling. He said mildly:
“We were talking about more money than this.”
“Yes, sir, we were,” Gutman agreed, “but we were talking then. This is actual money, genuine coin of the realm, sir. With a dollar of this you can buy more than ten dollars’ worth of talk.” He shook his bulbs with silent laughter. Then the commotion stopped and he said, more seriously, yet not altogether seriously: “There are more of us to be taken care of now.” He moved his twinkling eyes and his fat head sidewise with a little jerk to indicate Cairo. “And — well, sir, in short — the situation has changed considerably.”
While Gutman talked Spade had tapped the edges of the ten bills into alignment and had returned them to their envelope, tucking the flap in over them. Now, with forearms on knees, he sat hunched forward, dangling the envelope, from a corner held tightly by finger and thumb, down between his legs. His reply to the fat man’s words was careless:
“Sure. You’re together now, but I’ve got the falcon.”
Joel Cairo spoke. Ugly white hands grasping the arms of his chair, he leaned forward and said primly, in his high-pitched thin voice:
“I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to remind you, Mr. Spade, that, though you may have the falcon, yet we certainly have you.”
Spade grinned.
“I’m trying to not let that worry me,” he said. He sat up straight, put the envelope aside — on the end of the sofa — and addressed Gutman: “We’ll come back to the money later. There’s another thing that’s got to be taken care of. We’ve got to have a fall-guy.”
The fat man frowned without comprehension, but before he could speak Spade was explaining:
“The police have got to have a victim, somebody they can stick for those three murders. We—”
Cairo, speaking in a brittle, excited voice, interrupted him:
“Two — only two — murders, Mr. Spade. Thursby undoubtedly killed your partner.”
“All right, two,” Spade growled. “What difference does that make? The point is, we’ve got to feed the police some—”
Now Gutman broke in, smiling complacently, talking with good-humored assurance:
“Well, sir, from what I’ve seen and heard of you, I don’t think we’ll have to bother ourselves about that. We can leave the handling of the police to you, all right. You won’t need any of our help.”
“If that’s what you think,” Spade said, “you haven’t seen or heard enough.”
Gutman’s good humor was undisturbed. He remonstrated:
“Now, come, Mr. Spade, you can’t expect us to believe at this late date that you are the least bit afraid of the police, or that you are not quite able to handle—”
Spade snorted with his throat and nose. He bent forward, resting forearms on knees again, and interrupted Gutman irritably:
“I’m not a damned bit afraid of them, and I know how to handle them. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The way to handle them is to toss them a victim, somebody they can hang the works on.”
“Well, sir, I grant you that that’s one way of doing it, but—”
“ ‘But’ hell!” Spade said. “It’s the only way.” His eyes were hot and earnest under a reddening forehead. The bruise on his temple was liver-colored. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been through it all before, and I expect to go through it again. At one time or another I’ve had to tell everybody from the Supreme Court down to go to hell, and I’ve got away with it. I got away with it because I never let myself forget that a day of reckoning was coming. I never forget that when the day of reckoning comes I want to be all set to march into headquarters, pushing a victim in front of me, saying: ‘Here, you chumps, here’s your criminal.’ As long as I can do that I can put my thumb to my nose and wiggle my fingers at all the laws in the book. The first time I can’t do it my name’s Mud. There hasn’t been a first time yet. This isn’t going to be it. That’s flat.”
Gutman’s eyes flickered, and their sleekness became dubious, but he held his other features in their bulbous pink smiling complacent cast, and there was nothing of uneasiness in his voice. He said:
“That’s a system that’s got a lot to recommend it, sir, by Gad it has. And if it was anyway at all possible this time I’d be the first to say: ‘Stick to it by all means, sir.’ But this just happens to be a case where it’s not practical. That’s the way it is with the best of systems. There comes a time when you’ve got to make exceptions, and a wise man just goes ahead and makes them. Well, sir, that’s just the way it is in this case, and I don’t mind telling you that I think you’re being very well paid for making an exception. Now maybe it will be a little more trouble to you than if you had your victim to hand over to the police, but” — he laughed and spread his hands — “you’re not a man that’s afraid of a little bit of trouble. You know how to manage things, and you know you’ll manage to land on your feet in the end, no matter what happens.” He pursed his lips, partly closing one eye. “And maybe it might be that we could add a little something more to what’s in that envelope.”
Spade’s eyes had lost their warmth. His face was dull and lumpy.
“We’ll talk about the money later,” he said in a low consciously patient tone. “We’re talking about the police now, or I am, and I know what I’m talking about. This is my city and my game. I could manage to land on my feet — sure, this time, but the next time I tried to put over a fast one they’d stop me so quick I’d swallow my teeth. Hell with that. You birds’ll be in New York, or Constantinople, or someplace else. I’m in business here.”
“But surely,” Gutman began, “you can—”
“I can’t,” Spade said earnestly. “I won’t. I mean it.” He sat up straight. A pleasant smile illuminated his face, erasing its dull lumpishness. He spoke rapidly, in an agreeable, persuasive tone: “Listen to me, Gutman. I’m telling you what’s best for both of us. If we don’t give the police a fall-guy it’s ten to one they’ll get news of the falcon sooner or later. Then you’ll have to duck for cover with it, no matter where you are, and that’s not going to help you make your fortune off it. Give them a fall-guy, and they’ll stop right there.”
“Well, sir, that’s just the point,” Gutman replied, and still only in his eyes was uneasiness faintly apparent. “Will they stop right there? Or won’t your fall-guy be a fresh clue that as likely as not will lead them straight to the falcon? And, on the other hand, wouldn’t you say that they were stopped right now, and that the best thing for us to do is to leave well enough alone?”
A forked vein began to swell in Spade’s forehead.
“—! You don’t know what it’s all about either,” he said in a restrained tone. “They’re not asleep, Gutman. They’re lying low, waiting. Try to get that. I’m in it up to my neck, and they know it. That’s all right as long as I do something when the time comes. But it won’t be all right if I don’t.” His voice became persuasive again. “Listen, Gutman, we’ve absolutely got to give them a victim. There’s no way out of it. Let’s give them the punk.” He nodded pleasantly at the boy in the doorway. “He actually did shoot both of them — Thursby and Jacobi — didn’t he? Anyway, he’s made to order for the part. Let’s pin the necessary evidence on him and turn him over to them.”