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.
Spade blew his breath out sharply and pushed the Levantine away. Cairo sprang at him again. Tears were in Cairo’s eyes and his red lips worked angrily, forming words, but no sound came from between them. Spade laughed grimly at him, grunted, “—! You’re a darb,” and cuffed the side of his face with a big open hand, knocking Cairo over against the table.
Cairo regained his balance and sprang at Spade the third time. Spade stopped him with both palms held out on long stiff arms against his face. Cairo, failing to reach Spade’s face with his shorter arms, thumped Spade’s arms.
“Stop it,” Spade growled. “I’ll hurt you.”
Cairo cried, “Oh, you big coward!” and backed away from him.
Spade stooped to pick up Cairo’s pistol from the floor, and then the boy’s. He straightened up, holding them in his left hand, dangling them upside down by their trigger-guards from his forefinger.
Gutman had put the unconscious boy in the rocking chair, and stood looking down at him with troubled eyes in an uncertainly puckered face. Cairo was on his knees beside the chair, chafing one of the boy’s limp hands.
Spade leaned over and felt the boy’s chin with his fingers. “Nothing broken,” he said. “We’ll spread him on the sofa.” He put his right arm under the boy’s arm and around his back, put his left forearm under the boy’s knees, lifted him without apparent effort, and carried him to the sofa.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy got up quickly and Spade laid the boy there. With his right hand Spade patted the boy’s clothes, found the boy’s second pistol, added it to the others in his left hand, and turned his back on the sofa. Cairo was already sitting beside the boy’s head.
Spade clinked the pistols together in his hand and smiled cheerfully at Gutman.
“Well,” he said, “there’s our fall-guy.”
Gutman’s face was grayish and his eyes were troubled. He did not look at Spade. He looked at the floor and he did not say anything.
Spade said: “Don’t be a damned fool again. You let Cairo whisper to you, and you held the kid while I pasted him. You can’t laugh that off, and you’re likely to get yourself shot trying to.”
Gutman moved his feet uneasily on the rug and said nothing.
Spade said: “And the other angle to it is that you’ll either say yes right now or I’ll turn the falcon and the whole — damned lot of you in.”
Gutman raised his head and muttered through his teeth: “I don’t like that, sir.”
“You won’t like it,” Spade said. “Well?”
The fat man sighed and made a wry face and replied wearily: “You can have him.”
Spade said: “That’s swell.”
Chapter XIX
The Russian’s Hand
The boy lay on his back on the sofa, a small figure that was, except for its breathing, altogether corpse-like to the eye.
Joel Cairo sat beside the boy, bending over him, rubbing his cheeks and wrists, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, whispering to him, and peering anxiously down at his white, still face.
Brigid O’Shaughnessy stood in an angle made by table and wall. One of her hands was flat on the table, the other to her breast. She pinched her lower lip between her teeth and glanced furtively at Spade whenever he was not looking at her. When he looked at her she looked at Cairo and the boy.
Gutman’s face had lost its troubled cast and was becoming rosy again. He had put his hands in his trouser pockets. He stood facing Spade, watching him without curiosity.
Spade, idly jingling his handful of pistols, nodded at Cairo’s rounded back and asked Gutman: “It’ll be all right with him?”
“I don’t know,” the fat man replied. “That part of it will have to be strictly up to you, sir.”
Spade’s smile made his V-shaped chin more salient. He said: “Cairo.”
The Levantine screwed his dark, anxious face around over his shoulder.
Spade said: “Let him rest awhile. We’re going to give him to the police. We ought to get the details fixed before he comes to.”
Cairo asked bitterly: “Don’t you think you have done enough to him without that?”
Spade said: “No.”
Cairo left the sofa and went close to the fat man.
“Please don’t do this thing, Mr. Gutman,” he begged. “You must realize that—”
Spade interrupted him: “That’s settled. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Coming in, or getting out?”
Though Gutman’s smile was a little sad, even wistful in its way, he nodded his head. “I don’t like it either,” he told the Levantine, “but we can’t help ourselves now. We really can’t.”
Spade asked: “What are you doing, Cairo? In or out?”
Cairo wet his lips and turned slowly to face Spade. “Suppose,” he said, and swallowed. “Have I–Can I choose?”
“You can,” Spade assured him seriously, “but you ought to know that if your answer is out we’ll give you to the police with your boy-friend.”
“Oh, I say, Mr. Spade,” Gutman protested, “that isn’t—”
“Like hell we’ll let him walk out on us,” Spade said. “He’ll either come in or he’ll go in. We can’t have any loose ends hanging around.” He scowled at Gutman and exclaimed irritably: “—! Is this the first thing you guys ever stole? You’re a fine lot of lollipops. What are you going to do next — get down and pray?” He directed his scowl at Cairo. “Well, what’s the answer?”
“You give me no choice.” Cairo’s narrow shoulders moved in a hopeless shrug. “I come in.”
“Good.” Spade looked at Gutman and at Brigid O’Shaughnessy. “Sit down.”
The girl sat down gingerly on the end of the sofa by the unconscious boy’s feet. Gutman returned to the padded rocking-chair and Cairo to the armchair. Spade put his handful of pistols on the table and sat on the table-corner beside them. He looked at the watch on his wrist and said:
“Two o’clock. I can’t get the falcon till daylight. We’ve got plenty of time to arrange things.”
Gutman cleared his throat.
“Where is it?” he asked, and then hastily explained: “I don’t really care, sir. What I had in mind was that it would be best for all concerned if we did not get out of each other’s sight now until our business has been transacted.” He looked at the sofa, and at Spade again, sharply. “You have the envelope?”
Spade shook his head, looking at the sofa, and then at the girl. He smiled with his eyes and said: “Miss O’Shaughnessy has it.”
“Yes, I have it,” she murmured, putting a hand inside her coat. “I picked it up...”
“That’s all right,” Spade told her. “Hang on to it.” He addressed Gutman: “We won’t have to lose sight of each other. I can have the falcon brought here.”
“An excellent idea,” Gutman purred. “Then, sir, in exchange for the ten thousand dollars and Wilmer, you will give us the falcon and an hour or two of grace, so we won’t be in the city when you turn him over to the authorities.”
“You don’t have to duck,” Spade said. “It’ll be airtight.”
“That may be, sir, but nevertheless we’ll feel a lot safer well out of the city when Wilmer is being questioned by your district attorney.”
“Suit yourself,” Spade replied. “I can hold him here all day if you want.” He began to roll a cigarette. “Let’s get the details fixed. Why did he shoot Thursby? And why and how and where did he shoot Jacobi?”
Gutman smiled indulgently, shaking his head and purring: “Now, come, sir, you can’t expect that. We’ve given you the money and Wilmer. That is our part of the agreement.”
“I do expect it,” Spade said. He held his lighter to his cigarette. “A fall-guy was what I asked for, and he’s not a fall-guy unless he’s a cinch to take the fall. Well, to cinch that I’ve got to know what’s what.” He pulled his brows together. “What are you squawking about? You’re not going to be sitting so damned pretty if you leave him with an out.”