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.
Logan blew out his breath and let go of the unconscious gunman he had been holding for a shield. The fellow thudded down on his haunches, toppled over on his side. Logan pulled the telephone out from under the stocky man’s body and slipped the receiver into place before he spoke.
“I coulda smacked this egg before,” he said grimly. “Only I thought maybe we could learn something from the phone call.”
Casey had straightened up. Logan stepped over, took the gun away from him. He turned it over in his hands thoughtfully, and looked at Casey’s with eyes that were speculative.
“You’re handy with that thing. How’d you learn to put ’em where you want ’em?”
“In France,” said Casey absently. “I was a sergeant, and a .45 was the only gun I had. I did some practicing.”
He went across to the davenport and sat down, his mind relieved of the necessity of action, returning once more to Wade. Then the thin man stirred on the floor. Casey watched him until he sat up. He stepped towards the fellow, jerked him to his feet and jammed him back against the wall.
“What’d you do with Wade?”
The thin man’s eyes showed fear, but his lips tightened. Casey grunted, hauled off and threw a looping right that landed flat-handed against the side of the man’s head and knocked him down.
Casey pulled the fellow up again. He repeated the question and when he got no answer, repeated the dose. The fellow began to curse in a whining, yet vicious voice. Logan said: “Lay off.”
Casey knocked the man down again. The side of the face was beet-red now, but he was otherwise unmarked. “Where’s Wade?” He shook the fellow. “What’d you do with him?”
This time the answer blurted in his face.
“They took him out. Buck’n me stuck around to search the place, to see if there was anything around that might—”
“Who took him out?”
The man seemed to flinch, but his teeth bared and clenched.
“Where’d they take him? Where is he now?”
“Go to hell! I won’t—”
Casey lost his temper then. The right came over again, but this time the hand was a fist and it landed on the side of the jaw. The fellow stiffened and he was still stiff when he hit the floor. Casey started after him again, then Logan yanked him back, spun him around.
“I told you to lay off.”
“We gotta find Wade,” rasped Casey.
“Yeah. Sure. But you mark that guy all up and I’ll get blamed for it, and we won’t get a chance to work him over. It takes more than a wallop to make some guys talk.”
“Well?” Casey’s eyes got bright and glaring and his voice was thick. “What do we do, sit here and wait for something to happen?”
“You get down to the Globe and camp on the picture. I’ll be down after it inside of ten minutes — just as soon as I can get somebody to take over here.”
He picked up the telephone, barked a number. Casey, scowling, hesitant, watched Logan until the lieutenant said: “Go on get the hell out of here.”
Casey’s eyes slid to the girl in the orange dress, with the stain on the back. Then he turned quickly and left the room.
It was not until Casey reached the Globe that he remembered his camera in the rumble seat of the roadster, remembered that he had it with him all the time, and that he had taken no pictures in Alma Henderson’s apartment.
Ordinarily this would have rankled; his pride in his work would have taunted him. To have a chance like that and get no pictures. This time he did not seem to care. And it was not entirely that the affair was to be kept quiet for a while. The answer, he told himself, was that he did not give a damn whether he got exclusive pictures or not. What the hell good did it do to break your neck for pictures for a lug like Fessendon? And Blaine. In a mind that was already harassed with thoughts of Wade, there was room for further doubt and uncertainty. It wasn’t like Blaine to let even the managing editor pull a stunt like breaking that plate.
To Casey, Blaine had always been the sort of fellow who would quit a job, rather than compromise with his duty or his scruples. And quitting would entail no hardship. He was the best desk man in the city — could get a job in any office.
Casey took the photograph from his desk, studied it. Then, cursing softly, he went down to the photo-engraving room, spoke to a sturdy looking man in blue jumpers and shirt sleeves.
“This is the only print Mac. I’ve gotta turn it over to the police, so make me a cut of it, will you, just in case this gets lost?”
Mac said sure, and Casey waited while the fellow set up the print and made his negative. As he returned the picture he said:
“What size you want it?”
“Same size, I guess.”
“What’ll I do with the cut?”
“Oh—” Casey hesitated, not caring particularly what was done with it. All he wanted was to have something to fall back on, some margin of safety in case something happened to the print. Blaine or no Blaine, he was going to hang on to it, until Handy and Nyberg were rounded up, until he found Wade. “Just pull a proof and keep it on hand for me,” he finished.
5
Casey was slouched down behind his desk when Logan came in five minutes later. The lieutenant took the print, scanned it eagerly.
“It’s gonna help,” he said. “And it’s about all we got, because I couldn’t find anyone in that gambling take that remembered seeing anyone come out of that washroom.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Casey asked morosely.
“I’ve got that skinny guy outside. I’m takin’ him down to work over.”
“Well damn you, Logan, put on the pressure! He knows where Wade is — make him talk and hurry it up!”
“I’ll crack him,” Logan said resentfully. “Hang on till you hear from me.”
When the lieutenant left an office boy stuck his head in the doorway. “Hey, Flash. There’s a guy here wants to see you.”
“Tell him I’m busy,” grunted Casey.
The boy went out. But he came back a few minutes later, said: “That guy won’t go,” apologetically. “He says Wade told him to come and see you, that Wade owes him for the trip an—”
“Jeeze!” Casey’s eyes widened in sudden hope and amazement. “Get him up here!”
The taxi-driver, a beetle-browed husky, came in a moment later and immediately took the offensive.
“Somebody owes me some dough,” he barked. “I want it.”
“Maybe you’ll get it,” said Casey. “Where’s Wade?”
“I drove him to Pratt Street. He told me to wait, but he acted kinda nervous about something. He started in the house, then came back and said that if he didn’t come out in half an hour I was to come to you and tell you, that you’d pay.”
“Nervous, huh?” wheezed Casey. “Boy, am I glad I threw a little scare into him before he left.”
The driver blinked, said: “What?” and Casey snapped:
“Never mind — never mind.”
“Well,” the driver shrugged, “anyway, he came out about twenty minutes later — with a couple guys I’d seen go in before. But he didn’t come near my cab. They got in another bus. Well, it shaped up kinda screwy to me so I followed that other car. Then I came back here. I been waiting for—”
Casey blew out his breath and a tight smile pressed his lips against his teeth. “Where’d they go?”
The driver gave an address on Alson Street, and Casey said:
“Did you see ’em go in the place?”
“No. I didn’t want to stop. But I saw ’em get out of the car before I turned the next corner. Now how about my dough? It’s two-forty, waitin’ time and all.”