Notes - I’m trying to write a romance with a noir atmosphere using Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled prose in the _Mike Hammer_ novels. It also won’t wholly achieve the prompt at this point. I’ll write a few different excerpts/scenes of this (continuing the same prompt) to practice the prose, but they won’t fit together so pretty please don’t expect any mysteries getting solved.

**I, The Nobody.**

Whoever was sat here before me had left a half-empty glass of red wine on the bar, and I sipped at it while I waited. The stuff tasted like vinegar and it was about as fruitless as Corey’s efforts to catch the pretty bartender’s eye, but I couldn’t pass up a free drink. And I guess Corey couldn’t pass up ogling a girl.

I looked at him, as if to say, what am I paying you for? To his credit, he straightened up on his stool and tried to focus, before getting distracted by another girl across the bar. Four seconds. It was a new record for him. And once again, I was thinking it was a real shame he was the one with the camera or I could’ve cut him loose. My business required efficiency and good eyesight, and his eyes were always popping out of his head like a comic character.

“Now that one, for sure,” he said, “is the most gorgeous lady I ever seen.” Then he grinned at me. I didn’t grin back.

“The flash better be off this time,” is all I said.

Our mark was one unfaithful husband: Willy Miller. He was in his forties, average looking, stocky. Sort of resembling a small whale. It was easy to follow his car. Less easy to keep track of him inside, because this bar was verging on a club. I was tired of looking for him, rotating my head around again and again like a broken owl, so I’ll admit, I looked to the most gorgeous lady Corey had ever seen to entertain me for a minute.

I didn’t have to ask which one she was. She was a modern dresser, I suppose, in that I couldn’t tell if her little red number was a dress or a nightie. Her black hair was long, and the part that fell over her forehead was cut in a slight V shape like the neckline of her whatever-it-was. Her face was where it really got interesting. It was the softest face you ever saw, with the roundest eyes and the longest lashes. Her lips were painted red too, and she was fingering the bottom one. Was she real or was the bad wine getting to me? Maybe I’d wake up in a hospital any minute. Either way, I stared at her, and Corey stared too, and we probably looked like dopes.

She was gazing up at some lucky guy sitting next to her, in the same booth, like he was something special. I hadn’t noticed him at first. When I flicked my eyes across, it was none other than the whale-faced Willy Miller.

Now I was sure a hospital was incoming, but at least a laugh was coming first.

“What?” Corey said, looking at me and not getting it.

“That’s our guy,” I said.

“Where?”

“Next to the love of your life.”

Corey finally saw it and his face scrunched up like he’d sucked a lemon. I couldn’t blame him for getting a bitter feeling. Either Willy paid for that woman’s company or nature needed some serious healing. I didn’t care too much. I just wanted to get this over with.

“Can’t believe that angel’s his side piece,” Corey was muttering on repeat like a broken record. I was resting my elbows on the bar and letting my eyelids droop shut, listening to the rustling of his camera bag as he opened it.

Then I added, “And wait until they touch or kiss before you shoot,” because Corey needed to get basic instructions on the regular or else he’d screw it all up and purchase a horse or something.

“What’re you gonna do with your share of the money?” He asked.

“Alcohol,” I said.

“You’re the only guy in the world who can make alcohol sound lame, man.”

“How’s that?”

“Alcohol’s for being out with friends, you dig? In the wild. In, like… the wild, man. Not in your bed. Well, in your bed sometimes, but not, like, alone, yeah? I’m gonna buy buckets of candy, go out. You wanna go out with me?”

I didn’t bother answering that. “You got the photo yet?”

“Nah. But I think our boy’s about to make a move.”

I lifted my lids a fraction to watch the fireworks, and to make sure Corey wasn’t taking photos of the inside of his palm or something. Through the crowds of dancing morons and guys hawking their wares at girls, Willy seemed to be leaning in for a kiss, or trying to eat his dame’s face, I didn’t know. I was imagining dinner. Steaming payday-steak-dinner with salt grilled into it. Two steaks, at least. Maybe with vegetables. Probably not. Anyway, that fantasy was violently ripped away from me when the woman started pushing Willy off.

“Wasn’t she all smitten a second ago?” Corey asked from behind the camera, as Willy kept chasing the kiss and missing every hint. I wanted to scream Corey’s sentiment from the rooftops but I dragged myself off my stool and headed over there, because I’d be remiss if I didn’t. Corey followed me with the camera around his neck - he was only a few years younger than me but looking very much the awkward teenager.

I had time to mumble, “There goes that paycheck,” and then I was standing over Willy and victim’s booth. Now I was closer, I could see the row of empty champagne glasses under the table by the woman’s black stiletto heel, and those got some theories spinning in my head. I knew their eyes were on me, but I took my time bending down, selecting one of the glasses with a few dregs of bubbly stuff in it, straightening up, and tipping those dregs into my mouth. “Playing nice over here?” I asked before swallowing. I wouldn’t know, but it tasted like good champagne.

“What!” Willy barked at me. I was studying the lipstick print on the glass but I imagined spit spraying from his mouth. “Who are you? What’s that boy doing with a camera?”

“We’re just checking on the lady.”

“She’s just fine!”

“Fine, is she?” I looked up at Willy’s fat face, then at the woman’s small, flushed one. She really did look scared now. Her big eyes were turning shinier than her pearl earrings, and her waist was shivering in Willy’s hand. This whole thing was odd, and the silence was getting on my nerves. “Well?” I said to the woman. “Are you?”

“He’s—” She stuttered out. “This man is— He’s not letting me leave.”

“The broad came onto me!” Willy was yelling now. “She was talking of hotel rooms so I bought her drinks all night, and now she’s playing innocent!”

“That’s not true!” She yelled back.

“Hey.” Corey coughed. “We oughta, uh, chill, maybe.” What lukewarm strength of character.

Willy took a breath and smiled at me. “I don’t want trouble, son. Just leave us be. I’ll take care of her.”

The glass was still in my hand. It was a nice glass so I placed it on the table.

And then I socked Willy in the face. Was he telling the truth about his change of heart? I don’t know. But I didn’t like him much, so the back of his skull cracked against the brick wall behind the booth seat. Then his hand released the woman’s waist, which was the desired effect. Corey pulled her into the crowd of gasping idiots and old Willy got out of the booth to fight me, which was awkward to watch. Getting out of a booth requires some sideways shuffling. But he managed to insert his knuckles into my eye before the bouncers came and pulled us apart. I was glad for him being a cheater who didn’t wear his wedding band.

After that, a particularly principled bouncer tried to hold me in a room, but I made him see sense, with money, and then he let me go. So not only did I lose out on the reward for this cursed job, but it cost me everything in my wallet. I think that made me a bad private eye or something. Maybe I could’ve tried tailing Willy another night, but I had a hunch he’d remember my face for a long time to come. I decided to cut my losses for now and catch up with Corey outside.

The woman was still with him, wearing his jacket, with her body tucked under his arm because she was too drunk to walk properly. They hadn’t gotten to the end of the street yet. I guessed we were escorting her home. That was fine because I had some questions I wanted answering.

“You’re not Willy’s regular sidepiece then,” I called, striding to walk on the other side of her. She turned her face up toward mine and I could see, up close, that some of those long eyelashes had been carefully drawn on her lower lids.

“He’s attached… to another woman?” She said in a voice that might’ve been elegant if it wasn’t so slurred. “I only met him tonight! What a horrible, horrible… horrible happening.” She looked down at her shoes, and I looked at Corey over her head.

“Her name’s Valerie Flowers,” he said, all smug about getting to hold her.

“Oh, yes!” She hiccuped, then looked at me again. “Where are my manners? I’m Valerie, and I must hear the name of my hero!”

“Payton,” I said.

“My, what a manly… masculine… man’s name.”

“It’s really more feminine,” Corey chimed in, but the girl wasn’t having it.

“I think it’s manly.”

I gave her a look. “How many drinks did you have that chump buy you?”

“Oh, that. It really wasn’t how he made it seem. I wasn’t—”

“How many?”

“I wasn’t even flirting. Well, I did touch his knee once. But only in a friendly way. Like a pat. How was I to know he’d get all scary?” She paused to flutter her eyelashes at me. The drawn-on ones didn’t flutter so it looked a little odd. I guess I didn’t seem moved because her face fell. “I don’t know how many drinks he bought me,” she huffed. “Not many.”

“I saw them under the table. Must’ve been ten champagne glasses.”

“Oh, yes, well… they’re actually called champagne flutes.”

“Why were they under the table?”

“I was… afraid the waiter might cut me off.”

I blinked at that. “Alright. So you weren’t teasing the guy for free drinks.”

“Not at all!”

“So you liked the guy.”

“No, I… I mean, yes, at first!”

“Fine.”

Corey sighed like he was embarrassed of me. I just tucked my hands into my pockets and didn’t mind the awkward pause that followed.

The walk dragged on for a while. Corey and Valerie got to chatting and I walked alongside them, thinking about how hungry I was. Then I noticed we were taking the shortcut to the apartment building Corey and I lived in, and I knew what was happening.

“Corey,” I cut into their conversation about how pretty Valerie’s dress was, “are you taking her to your place?”

Corey gave me a sheepish look. “She ain’t got nowhere else to go.”

“I don’t currently have a residence,” Valerie said.

“Isn’t there anyone we can call for you?” I asked.

“I don’t currently have attachments.”

“And,” said Corey quickly, “that’s not a bad lifestyle. Not everyone needs… you know… anything.”

I made an attempt at a nod. “Fine.”

I wondered if I should wipe my hands of this as we went into the building and up to the fourth floor where Corey and I lived opposite eachother. I took out my key, then leaned my shoulder against my door and looked at them. Corey was fumbling with his key and trying to keep cuddling Valerie at the same time.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” I told her. “Unless you don’t mind Lucy.”

“Lucy,” she repeated.

“Drugs. I sure wouldn’t like to sleep next to a drug addict with the hots for me.”

With her newfound fear of Corey, Valerie ended up staying in my apartment, and throwing Corey’s jacket back in his face. He gave me the stink eye as we both shut our doors, but still asked, “When are we gonna go out, man?” He asked that after every job.

“Sometime,” I said, my door half shut.

“What day?”

“Sunday. At eleven.”

“Morning or evening—?”

I slammed my door all the way shut. Corey and I got along fine but I didn’t care to spend my free time with him. I didn’t care to spend my free time with this immature girl either, but at least she’d be safe with me.

“You can stay here until you sober up,” I said as I locked the door. “But in the morning, you’ll need to…” I turned my head and saw that she was sprawled across my floorboards with her little hands ferreting around in my jazz LP collection. I yelled something like “Hey!” but less dignified, and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to make her stand up. She giggled and flopped around like a fish in my grip. I tried to grab her sides next but I hadn’t predicted how thin the material of her stupid dress-thing would be. I quickly dropped her on the couch. “Don’t touch my private things,” I said.

“You just touched mine,” she declared.

“Don’t give me lip.”

“I’ll give you lip if I feel like it.”

“You’ll shut up and try not to wake me when you vomit is what you’ll do.”

“Your tone is sharp!”

“My tone doesn’t care.”

I rummaged through my bedside cabinet for the crumpled-up air mattress I’d used for years before I could afford a bed. I managed to fish it out, but I couldn’t find the pump, so I spent a solid forty minutes blowing it up by mouth while Valerie poked around my apartment. When I’d finished, she announced that she’d claimed my bed, and then she passed out between the sheets before I could argue. I didn’t want to touch her again so I slept on the air mattress. She was definitely safe with me, because I’d gone off her.

The next morning, I woke up before she did. I picked myself up off the hard slab of air and went over to the kitchenette to make myself a coffee, to numb the hunger pangs in my belly. I was stepping around my studio apartment and I guess my foot pressed on a squeaky floorboard because my guest sat upright in bed. She looked at me and I looked back at her, and her eye makeup was smudged.

“Morning,” I said. I wagered she didn’t remember much. “We didn’t know where to take you last night—”

“Payton!” She snapped. “Would you stop stomping around? I have a headache and you’re being very rude!”

I blinked. I felt like I’d been slapped into another dimension where dogs said meow. Then I just slurped my coffee as she nestled back into the pillows.

By the afternoon I’d managed to sober her up with a little hair of the dog. There was no food in my cupboards, just a lone bottle of whiskey from a good friend. It only had a few dregs left and I felt sore watching her swallow them down. It wasn’t kindness though. I just wanted her gone.

“So, you don’t have anywhere to go?” I asked, turning the page of the newspaper. We were clumped together on the couch, which was really just a one-person armchair, searching through apartment and job listings. Her leg was overlapping mine and I found it odd that she was so willing to get cozy. I found it odder that she claimed to be a homeless woman with pearl earrings.

“I have nowhere to go,” she said, tapping her fingernails on the empty whiskey bottle. Her fingernails were painted pink.

“No money?”

“No.”

“No family at all?”

“No.”

“How’s that? Did you murder your entire family or something?”

She gave me a funny smile and perched her chin on my shoulder. She was still pale and her eyes were rimmed with black, but she was bonny. We stared at eachother for a minute before I narrowed my eyes at her.

“What?” I said.

“You’re getting a bruise here.” She touched my lower eyelid. It stung so I waved her hand off. “Quite the fighter,” she cooed, “aren’t you? A fighter in a suit and a cameraman sidekick. I’ve been wondering about that.“

“We’re private investigators,” I said. It wasn’t a secret - there was a sign on my door. Still, her eyes gleamed like this was gossip.

“Detectives?”

“We don’t detect crap, we just take photos.”

“Exciting.”

I was about to assure her our lives were miserable when Corey knocked on the front door. I knew it was Corey because he took a break from his car wash shift to eat lunch at this time, and because his knock was a stupid fluttery thing. A knock should be two raps. I never wanted to be the kind of guy to criticise someone’s knock, but Corey had turned me into that guy. It should be two raps, maybe three. It should not resemble a butterfly.

I tossed the newspaper on the coffee table and got up to unlock the door, and at the speed of light, Corey had zipped past me and planted his rump on the couch next to Valerie. He had a sandwich in his hand.

“Afternoon,” she said, giving him a cute smile I didn’t expect. “I’m sorry if I was rude last night. So what if you take a few little drugs? You’re a sweet drug user.”

“Hey, Angel.” He was grinning at her, his mouth full of sandwich mush. “I’m just happy you remember me. Makin’ my heart soar. You remember my name too?”

“Oh… yes! Um… yes… Carl!”

“Ouch,” I said. “She remembered mine.”

Corey’s grin died and he glared at me. “You deserve that shiner, traitor. Oh, n’ there’s an envelope under your door.“

I looked down and there it was, half tucked under my door but slightly too thick. I needed to invest in a mail slot so the clients could fit more cash in their letters. I picked it up, tore the envelope open, and five twenty-dollar-bills fell out. The cash upfront was nice. I wish I could say something interesting was written, but my eyes skimmed down an ordinary note about a cheating spouse and needing a photo.

“Business stuff,” I said and they both looked at me. “The usual.”

Corey grinned again. “Nice!”

“Dull equates to nice for you?”

“Dull equates to easy money, man.”

“So,” Valerie said, “this business of yours is a living?”

“Not just a livin’, honey,” garbled Corey, “but a lifestyle. And a good one. We just chill out, take photos, and make money.” He took a bite of sandwich. No way did he buy that sandwich with his own money. That was made by his sweet mother who still believed he was worth feeding. His parents lived only a few streets away, so he got taken care of. Meanwhile my stomach groaned day in, day out.

“Did you just,” Valerie said, her voice slipping into breathiness, “call me honey?” She looked up at Corey. “I’ve never been called honey before.”

“Oh, um.”

“I quite liked it, from you. Perhaps I’ll say it now. Honey, may I have a nibble of your sandwich there?”

Corey had brown skin but I knew he was blushing like a little kid as he handed her the sandwich. And I knew what was coming. She crammed the whole thing down her gullet, swallowed, and didn’t thank him. It wasn’t often I smiled, but watching that, I was suppressing one.

Then the phone started ringing and ruining my mood. I let it go to voicemail, because it was either another dull client or my mother telling me to visit her. The voice that rang through my apartment was unfamiliar, male, and teary, meaning another dull client. There were a bunch of ums and uhs before he got to the point.

“Uh, hello, I was told this is the number of Payton Pearce and Corey Holiday. I, um, I need a detective to, um, investigate a suspicious death. The cops called it natural causes and stopped investigating, but I know she was murdered…”

Corey waved his hand dismissively.

“…so if you’re available, please come to my house and I’ll show you where she died.” Then he said an address, and said he’d pay five hundred dollars upfront, and if we found a murderer, another five hundred dollars. Corey snickered when he heard the pay.

“That’s killer,” he said. “Get it? Killer. Like, cool.”

“Carl, don’t be distasteful!” Valerie scolded him.

“I was just tryna’ make light of it!”

“Well, don’t speak so crudely when you meet with the man.”

“Angel, we ain’t takin’ that gig.”

“I am,” I said, and stepped over to the phone.

“What!” Corey practically yowled. “You wanna get wrapped up in a murder? Let’s just take the easy job in the letter!”

“You take that one, I’ll take this one. Not like I’ll need the camera to investigate anyway.”

I picked up the phone, called the guy back and said I was on my way. I was wearing the shirt and pants I slept in so I went to the bathroom to put my suit on. My suit was a cheap thing and it felt like wearing a cereal box, but it made me look halfway professional. I was shoving my leg into the too-small pants when my eye caught Valerie in the mirror, just standing behind me. She could’ve been my sleep paralysis demon’s sister, and I paused for a second before continuing to wrestle with the pants.

“I’m coming,” she said.

“I’m sure,” I said back.

“I’m going with you on the job. I’ll be your assistant. I need a job and it’s destiny that we found one another.”

I finally got both legs in. Then I pulled on the jacket, didn’t bother to button it, and threw on the tie. “Not a chance,” I said, and stepped toward the bathroom door. She grabbed the doorframe and blocked it. Her face was all screwed up.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for you!”

“Look, Valerie, I’m sure Corey will let you tag along with him.”

“I don’t want to go with him, I want to go with you, Payton! Please!”

I ducked swiftly under her arm, and she yelped like me refusing to be captured was offensive. “Please!” She said and scuttled after me. “You know I’ll just follow you anyway!”

“Follow me all you want, I’m not cutting you in.”

“That’s fine! We’ll call it a trial run!”

I halted halfway to the front door and looked at her. She’d proven she was competent, and maybe she’d even be useful with her sweet-as-sugar-shtick, but not with her makeup smudged and her hair unbrushed.

“Clean yourself up and make it quick,” I said, “you look like a raccoon leaving a club.”

And her top lip curled.

So there it was.