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.
Handy paused after they went through the inner doors. There, in the imitation marble entry way, he said:
“It’s too risky — six of us piling in that little sedan. Besides, we’ve used it twice today — we might get picked up. We’ll just walk down the street easy-like. I’ve got a car in a garage around the corner.”
He hesitated and the dim light from the foyer, sifting through the glass doors, made his fatty face jaundiced and shiny with moisture. He made one more plea.
“I’ll make it a grand more apiece if you’ll let me—”
This time it was Jaeger who voiced his contemptuous opinion. “I’ll string with Nyberg. It’ll be worth my grand to see you play ball.”
Handy opened the outer door without answering. Nyberg said: “Keep your hands down and walk nice, guys.”
Handy kept well in the lead, but the rest of them fanned out on the wide sidewalk. Casey cast a quick glance up and down the street and a blanket of dejection settled down upon him. His roadster was parked in the same spot, but the street was deserted. Logan had not—
Then he saw Potter.
At first there was but a blacker blotch in the shadows of that entryway across the street. Then the blotch took shape. It was Potter all right, his stringy height identified him. He was on the sidewalk now, and he was starting across the street.
Casey sucked in his breath and held it. His glance slid sidewise. Wade was about an arm’s length away, on his left, the curb side; beside, and slightly behind, walked Russo. Holding the same position — beside and a pace behind — Nyberg and Jaeger flanked Casey.
Casey had wanted to wait as long as he could in the hope that Logan might come. And if he did not come, that gun was the last resort.
He and Wade? Well, they were in it: they had to take a chance, accept the risk. But Potter, the crazy fooclass="underline" it was no affair of his. And he was married and—
“Moe!” Jaeger’s voice was soft, jerky. “There’s a guy comin’ across the street.”
“Let him come,” said Nyberg hoarsely. “If he horns in we might just as well shoot the works and—”
Then Potter, now halfway across the street, said: “Hey!”
It was absurd, that word. And Potter’s act, although he may not have known it, was suicidal. Casey inwardly cursed it as such. Yet that soft call undoubtedly gave him a second to get set, because every man but himself glanced at Potter as he spoke.
Casey leaned to the left and made a vicious backhand swipe with the flat of his hand. He caught Wade alongside the face and the force of the blow knocked him off his feet, so that he fell over against Russo, carrying him to his knees. At the same instant, Casey’s right hand reached for the gun in his back.
He forgot Wade as he spun about and his fingers found the butt of the automatic, but he was aware that somebody was fighting in the gutter. Then he had the gun free, up, and squeezed the trigger, twice, rapidly.
Nyberg’s body jerked. Beside him and two feet away a flash of orange exploded and Casey felt something slice between his ribs and his left arm.
The slug, the flash of flame, came from Jaeger’s gun. And as he fired, the fellow stepped behind Nyberg’s sagging body, intent on using it as a shield.
Casey’s finger already tensed for a third shot when he saw what he faced. He had but little time to act, and he did as impulse commanded. He ducked his head and half dived forward so that his shoulder crashed into Nyberg’s stomach.
They went down, all three of them. And Jaeger was underneath. He was cursing now and so was Casey, although he did not know it. For a moment or so the three men were a tangle of arms and legs, and as they scrambled there, Casey thought he heard the shrill scream of a siren.
Then Jaeger rolled clear, rolled clear and came to his knees. Casey’s right hand was partly pinioned by the now limp weight of Nyberg’s body. He yanked at the wrist, felt the gun come free. But his eyes had never left Jaeger, and he knew he was too late.
The fellow’s teeth flashed in some reflected ray of the street light, and the gun leveled as Casey tried to swing up his hand in time. A hundredth part of a second maybe; no longer than that. But Casey looked down the muzzle of that gun and his muscles tensed for the shock.
Somebody said: “You!”
The crash of the gun wiped out the phrase, pounded at Casey’s right ear, half deafened him. And he could not understand it because he had seen no flash from that gun muzzle.
A car roared past. Jaeger, still on his knees, began to tip over, half on his face, half on his side. When his shoulders hit the sidewalk Casey looked around. Potter was standing three feet away. His right hand was still stiffly extended — and there was a gun in it.
Casey blew out his pent-up breath and spun about on his knees. Handy was fifty yards away, racing madly for the corner, his coat-tails flying. A touring car swung into the curb beside him.
There was a shouted command, another. Handy raced on, swerving towards an entryway. The car kept pace. Then flame streaked through the night and two sharp cracks slapped down the street, reverberating from the brick walls. Handy took three more steps at breakneck speed. He stumbled; he slid forward on his face like Rabbit Maranville stealing home.
8
Captain Judson put his fists on his hips and said: “You get in the damnedest messes.”
“It took you long enough to get here,” Casey said grimly.
Logan was looking down at Nyberg. Wade sat on the curb. Potter still held the gun. He lifted his arm, stared at the automatic, dropped the arm again. He kept doing it, as though he could not believe he had used it. And all the time he was saying: “Jeeze — jeeze,” in thick, hushed tones.
There were two police cars in the street now, and overhead windows were up, and heads and shoulders in whitish nightclothes hung on the sills.
Logan said: “Looks like the only guy left is Russo.” He stared at the bullet-headed fellow who stood flanked by two plain-clothesmen. “How did we miss him?”
Casey had told what had taken place in the apartment, finished with: “Don’t ask me. I only knocked Wade into him. After that—”
“You damn’ near knocked me out,” Wade said. “I thought he was gonna let me have it. He could have easy enough. But I guess Potter—” he broke off.
Potter coughed, spoke apologetically. “They were both on the ground, but I saw this guy start to swing his gun around, so I kicked him in the head and took it away from him.” He hesitated, looked at Casey. “Then when I saw how you were fixed — well, I had to let him have it.”
“You had to do it, huh?” Casey said, and grinned wryly. “I guess it’s a break for me you felt that way about it.”
“I never shot anyone before,” Potter said. “I was afraid I’d miss. I got as close as I could.”
Logan said: “You newspaper guys do pretty well for amateurs.”
Casey looked down at Nyberg, cursed once, said: “I’m glad I got that anyway.”
An ambulance pulled into the curb. Then Casey realized that he was shivering, that he had no coat. And his side was smarting; he thought his undershirt was wet. He told Logan about it and one of the internes started to take him into the apartment house foyer.
Casey turned to Wade. “Come on, snap into it. My camera’s down in my roadster. Get busy.”
Judson watched the interne strap up Casey’s side. The wound was superficial, grazing the ribs and cutting a shallow, two-inch furrow in the flesh.
Casey glanced up at Judson and let his voice get disgusted. “What a help you turned out to be.”
Judson scowled. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Was that picture I got this afternoon a break for you?”