The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “Helen,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Helen!”

  The sergeant didn’t hear him.

  Mrs. Kalvak was storming back into the kitchen. “You talk of lying!” she cried. “You … trickster!” Mrs. Kalvak’s voice rose in anger. “That was Stefan on the phone.”

  “He’s coming back, then?”

  “Sooner than you like, my fine deaf lady!”

  “Wait—”

  “You’re no country innocent, Miss Yulett. I know who you are. You’re a detective—trying to trap my man. And all the time I was sorry for you, thinking you were caught in his net!”

  Helen screamed, once. Teccard heard a thud. He lunged at the panel. “Helen! Get the door open!”

  There was no answer.

  He pointed the muzzle of Meyer’s automatic an inch from the edge of the jamb, at the lock.

  Before he could pull the trigger he felt something, like the end of a piece of pipe, jab painfully into the small of his back. A suave voice murmured: “Use my key! It will be easier.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CUPID TURNS KILLER

  HE lieutenant held the pose. A hand came around his side and relieved him of the .45.

  “Come on, Vanya! Open up!”

  The door swung wide. The girl stared, white-faced. “I didn’t know you were out here, Stefan. I heard him—trying to get in.” She held a heavy, cast-iron skillet at her side.

  “I came upstairs while he was bellowing like a bull.” Kalvak prodded Teccard between the shoulder-blades with the muzzle of the automatic. “Get inside, there.”

  Helen sprawled on the floor beside the refrigerator. Her hat lay on the floor beside her, the wide brim crushed by the fall. The sergeant’s head rested on a brown-paper shopping bag, her hair over her forehead.

  Kalvak whistled, softly. “You killed her, Vanya!”

  “She’s only stunned.” The girl lifted the skillet. “When I found she was a detective, I could have killed her.”

  “We’ve enough trouble, without having a cop-murder to worry about. Did you search her?”

  Vanya kicked the sergeant sullenly. “There’s no gun on her. What are you going to … do with them?”

  Kalvak snarled at her. “I’ll take care of them.” He dug a spool of adhesive out his pocket. “Sit down in that chair. Grab the back with your hands. Close your eyes.”

  “Hell! You’re not going to tape us, are you?”

  “You think I want you to follow us, you—!”

  Teccard saw a peculiar bulge inside the lining of Miss Yulett’s hat. He couldn’t be certain what it was—but it might be worth a gamble. “If you don’t want to fret about a cop-murder, you better call a doc for her.”

  “She’ll snap out of it, all right.”

  “Damn it! I tell you she’s dying!” Slowly and deliberately, so Kalvak couldn’t mistake his intention, Teccard moved a step closer to Helen— dropped down on one knee beside her.

  The weapon in Kalvak’s hand swiveled around to follow the lieutenant’s movement. “Leave her alone.”

  Teccard rested his weight on one hand, close to the hat brim. The other he put on Helen’s forehead. “She’s like ice—if you don’t get her to a doctor, fast—” His hand touched cold metal under the loose lining of the big hat.

  Kalvak sensed something wrong. “Keep away from that hat!”

  Teccard fired without drawing the stubby-barreled .32 out from under the hat-lining where Helen had hidden it. It was an angle shot and risky as hell—but the lieutenant knew the risk he and Helen were running, if he didn’t shoot. The bullet hit Kalvak about three inches below his belt buckle. It doubled him over and spoiled his aim with that automatic. But the heavy slug ripped across the lieutenant’s hip. It felt as if molten metal had been spilled all along the thigh. He lifted the .32—hat and all—emptied three more chambers. The first bullet missed its mark. The second one caught Kalvak under the V-cleft in his chin. The third wasn’t needed.

  Vanya sprang, caught him as he fell. She slumped on the floor, held his head in her arms, whimpering.

  Helen struggled to sit up. “You and the U.S. Cavalry, Jerry,” she mumbled.

  He helped her to stand. “I was a sap to lose you, there in the subway.”

  Helen pressed her hands on top of her head, winced. “Peter—I mean Harold—or Stefan— Gone?”

  “Thanks to your hiding that .32 in the Yulett dame’s bonnet.”

  Vanya whined, wretchedly: “I know you’re glad he’s dead. I ought to be glad, too. After all the terrible crimes he’s committed. But I’m not, I’m not.”

  The lieutenant limped over to her. “It was a good act, while it lasted, Mrs. Kalvak. But it couldn’t last forever. You can take off the disguise.”

  She stopped rocking. “You mean I knew about Stefan’s having committed murder? Yes, I knew. When it was too late to prevent them.”

  “I’ll say you knew.” He picked up Meyer’s pistol. “The one who didn’t know—for sure, anyway—was Stefan!”

  Helen said, “What?”

  The girl sat there, as if stupefied.

  “All right. O.K. See what that innocence stuff gets you after Patrolman Taylor identifies you as the woman who ran downstairs at Eighty-eighth Street to tell him there was a fight going on over your room. Why’d you chase over there after your husband, anyway? Because you’d read that story in the newspaper about the kid finding the Lansing girl’s bones?

  “That’d be my guess. You were up there in the room Stefan had rented as Harold Willard, so he could get his hooks into another dame,” he waved ironically toward Helen, “and you were packing up the clothes he had in the closet, or maybe just arguing with him so he wouldn’t think you knew too much about those bones under the pier. Then who should ride up on his charger but T. Chauncey Helbourne. When he heard about the disappearing dames and the dough that vanished along with them, he wanted a cut of that, too. And he went to the right place to get it.”

  ANYA laid her cheek against the bloodless one in her lap. “You do not really believe such horrible things. No one could believe them.”

  Helen was at the sink, using cold water. She held up a small camp hatchet. “Could it be this Boy Scout meat axe? Somebody’s been scouring it with steel wool.”

  “The head of it would fit the gash in my fedora just ducky,” Teccard answered. “But it didn’t kill Helbourne. It knocked him cold. He was shot after I’d had my light put out. You shot him, Mrs. Kalvak—so I’d either get blamed for bumping him myself or think Helbourne was the rat responsible for the Happiness murders.”

  “I was there at Eighty-eighth Street.” Vanya stroked the corpse’s forehead. “I did hear the fight. I told the truth to the policeman. You shot that man yourself.”

  “No cop shoots a man lying down, lady. The blood stain on Helbourne’s vest was round, with the bullet hole in the center. If he’d died on his feet—the way it would have been if he was shot in a fight—the blood stain would have been tear-shaped—with the point down. How’d you beat it out of the house? Rush your husband down to that bathroom on the second floor—have him wait there, while you murdered Helbourne without Stefan’s knowing it? And then take a powder after the patrolman ran up to the third floor?”

  The sergeant went over to pick up what was left of Miss Yulett’s hat. She picked up the brown-paper market basket at the same time. “Don’t tell me this girl cut up that Lansing woman, all by herself, Jerry!”

  “Yair. Probably did it all with her little hatchet.”

  “But why?” The sergeant held the bottom of the market bag up to the light. “If Stefan got the money out of these women, with his honeyed words … ?”

  “Stefan wheedled it out of them—and turned the cash over to Mrs. Kalvak. She’s the sort of skirt who wouldn’t mind her husband monkeying with other femmes, if it paid enough.”

  Vanya kissed the corpse on the lips. “Darling! Listen to the hideous lies they make up about me!”

  “Talk about lies, M
rs. Kalvak! You must have lied plenty to your husband. You’d probably promised to get the lovelorn out of his way after he’d garnered in the gold.” Teccard turned his back to inspect the wound on his hip. “Maybe he thought you scared them off by that ‘he’s-a-married-man—Fm-his-wife’ line. I don’t know. But I’m damned certain you thought the easy way to keep the suckers quiet was to plant them. Why you had to hack them to pieces—”

  Helen held up the market bag, by its brown-twine handle. “Recognize those brown fibers that clung to the oilcloth, Jerry? From this twine. Goes through the bottom of the bag to give it strength. She used this to carry … them … in.”

  “Yair. Yair. That’s why she had to axe them in small hunks. So she could carry the pieces out of here and down to the wharf, without being conspicuous!” He went over, hauled the girl to her feet. “Or maybe it’s you just like cutting up people. Like Agousti.”

  Vanya touched the wound in Stefan’s neck, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Stefan went to … see Agousti. I know nothing of that.”

  “Don’t, eh? Then it won’t be your prints on that stem-cutter or the doorknob downstairs, eh? You didn’t decide Agousti’d have to be shut up before he prevented your getaway, then?”

  Mrs. Kalvak looked up at him. There was murder in her eyes.

  Helen hurried to the front room. “I’m going to call the wrecking crew, to take over here.”

  “I’ve had all of this /want,” Teccard agreed. “And I’ll sure be glad when you don’t have to muck around in this kind of slop.”

  “Man works from sun to sun,” the sergeant twiddled the dial, “but woman’s work is never done. In the police department.”

  “Far as that goes,” he got out his twisters, “one cop is enough … in any one family. Don’t you think?”

  CONTRIBUTORS NOTES

  Otto Penzler is the founder of New York’s Mysterious Bookshop and The Mysterious Press. He has now edited ten annual editions of The Best American Mystery Stories. He lives in New York.

  Harlan Coben has topped bestseller charts the world over with novels such as The Innocent, Just One Look, No Second Chance, Tell No One, and Gone for Good. He is the first author ever to win all four major crime-writing awards in the USA. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.

  Harlan Ellison is renowned in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction for his dry, cutting writing. He is the author of Rumble (Web of the City) and The Sound of a Scythe. He has won numerous awards, including two Edgars. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

  Laura Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where she now lives. She is the acclaimed author of By a Spider’s Thread, No Good Deeds, and What the Dead Know, featuring her series character, Tess Monaghan. She has won numerous awards, including an Edgar for Charm City and the Anthony Award for In Big Trouble.

  PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ‘One, Two, Three” by Paul Cain from Black Mask Magazine, May 1933. Copyright © 1933 by Pro-Disributors, Inc.; renewed 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net: www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  The Creeping Siamese” by Dashiell Hammett copyright © 1926; renewed 1953. Reprinted by permission of the Dashiell Hammett Literary Trust and The Joy Harris Literary Agency.

  Honest Money” by Erie Stanley Gardner copyright © 1932; renewed 1960. Reprinted by permission of Hobson & Hughes LLP on behalf of the Erie Stanley Garnder Trust.

  ‘Frost Rides Alone” by Horace McCoy from Black Mask Magazine, March 1930. Copyright © 1930 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1947 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Double Check” by Thomas Walsh from Black Mask Magazine, July 1933. Copyright © 1933 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Stag Party” by Charles G. Booth from Black Mask Magazine, November 1933. Copyright © 1933 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘The City of Hell!” by Leslie T. White from Black Mask Magazine, October 1935. Copyright © 1935 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1952 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Red Wind” by Raymond Chandler copyright © 1938. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Raymond Chandler.

  ‘Wise Guy” by Frederick Nebel from Black Mask Magazine, April 1930. Copyright © 1930 by Pro-Distribotrs, Inc.; renewed 1947 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@ comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Murder Picture” by George Harmon Coxe from Black Mask Magazine, January 1935. Copyright © 1935 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1952 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘The Price of a Dime” by Norbert Davis from Black Mask Magazine, April 1934. Copyright © 1934 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1951 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@ comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Chicago Confetti” by William Rollins, Jr., from Black Mask Magazine, March 1932. Copyright © 1932 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1949 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Three Kills for One” (a.k.a. “Two Murders, One Crime”) by Cornell Woolrich copyright © 1942 by Cornell Woolrich; renewed 1970 by JP Morgan Chase as Trustee for The Claire Woolrich Scholarship Fund a/w Cornell Woolrich R671100, September 8, 1977. Reprinted by permission of JP Morgan Chase Bank and The Firm on behalf of The Claire Woolrich Memorial Scholarship Fund.

  ‘The Third Murderer” by Carroll John Daly from Black Mask Magazine, June, July and August 1931. Copyright© 1931 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1948 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘The Cat Woman” by Erie Stanley Gardner from Black Mask Magazine, February 1927. Copyright © 1927 by Erie Stanley Gardner. Reprinted by permission of Hobson & Hughes LLP on behalf of the Erie Stanley Gardner Trust.

  ‘The Dilemma of the Dead Lady” by Cornell Woolrich. Copyright © 1936 by Cornell Woolrich. Originally published as “Wardrobe Trunk” in Detective Fiction Weekly, July 4, 1936. Copyright © by JP Morgan Chase Bank as Trustee for The Claire Woolrich Memorial Scholarship Fund a/w of Cornell Woolrich R 671100, June 24, 1936. Reprinted by permission of JP Morgan Chase Bank and The Firm on behalf of the Claire Woolrich Me
morial Scholarship Fund.

  ‘The Invisible Millionaire” by Leslie Charteris from Black Mask Magazine, June 1938. Copyright © 1938 by Leslie Charteris. Reprinted by permission of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents for the author.

  ‘You’ll Always Remember Me” by Steve Fisher for Black Mask Magazine, March 1938. Copyright © 1938 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1955 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.

  ‘Faith” by Dashiell Hammett. Copyright © 2006 by the Dashiell Hammett Literary Property Trust, reproduced with permission; with thanks to the Joy Harris Literary Agency.

  ‘Pastorale” by James M. Cain. Copyright © 1938 by James M. Cain; renewed 1965 by James M. Cain. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates. First published in The American Mercury, March 1938.

  ‘Finger Man” by Raymond Chandler from Black Mask Magazine, October 1934. Copyright © 1934 by Raymond Chandler. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Raymond Chandler and Ed Victor Ltd.

  ‘The Monkey Murder” by Erie Stanley Gardner from Detective Story Magazine, January 1939. Copyright © 1938 by Street & Smith; renewed 1966 by Erie Stanley Gardner. Reprinted by permission of Hughes & Hobson LLC on behalf of the Erie Stanley Gardner Trust.

  ‘Pigeon Blood” by Paul Cain from Black Mask Magazine, November 1933. Copyright © 1938 by Pro-Distributors, Inc.; renewed 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch (keithdeutsch@ comcast.net; www.blackmaskmagazine.com) proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights, and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc.