Here is a 953 word noir vignette involving a culture clash between a civilizado private investigator and a nihilist villain, influenced by Dashiell Hammett:
The joint was dim, smoky, the kind of dive where the cockroaches scatter when you flick on the lights. I nudged a half-filled ashtray aside and put my feet up on the desk, tilting my fedora down over my eyes. The ad in the paper had said to meet at the Red Dog at nine to discuss a job opportunity. My watch said five after. Whoever it was, they were late.
The minutes ticked by. I was about ready to write it off when the door banged open. Heavy footsteps crossed the worn wooden floor, stopped at my desk. I tipped my hat back, gave the guy the once over. Six foot two if he was an inch, shoulders like a linebacker. He had the look of an egghead - horn rim glasses, tweed jacket with patches on the elbows - but he was built like his hobby was cracking walnuts between his fingers.
"You Mickey Spillane?" His voice was like gravel in a cement mixer.
"In the flesh."
He grabbed a rickety wooden chair, the kind that tends to deposit splinters in tender regions, and lowered himself gingerly onto it. "Name's Lars. Professor Lars Jansen."
"Charmed." I pulled a crumpled pack of Luckys from my breast pocket, shook one out. "What can I do you for, Professor?"
He laced his sausage-like fingers together. "I want you to find something for me."
I flicked my lighter, touched the flame to the end of the cigarette. "That's what I do."
"It's...an item of great personal significance. A book."
"What kind of book?"
"A very old one." He shifted in his seat. "It contains certain arcane knowledge that I and I alone have the intellect to comprehend."
I blew out a stream of blue smoke. "Something tells me we ain't talking about an old copy of 'See Spot Run.'"
The corner of his mouth quirked. "You could say that."
"So where'd you see this book last?"
"I had it in my possession up until a week ago. And then..." His massive hands tightened into fists. "...it was stolen from me."
"Any idea by who?"
"Yes." He practically spit the word. "A cretinous undergraduate. Calls himself Johnny Raines. He managed to sneak into my office and take it."
"And you want me to get it back."
"Precisely."
"Any idea where I can find this Raines character?"
"I believe I know where he resides. An old warehouse on the south side of town." He fished a scrap of paper out of his jacket pocket, scribbled an address on it, and passed it to me.
I glanced at it and tucked it away. "And if I get ahold of this book -"
"You will bring it directly to me." His eyes glinted behind the cheaters like knife points. "I will compensate you for your efforts, of course. Shall we say five hundred dollars?"
I shrugged. "Works for me." I ground out my cigarette in the ashtray. "I'll be in touch, Professor."
I found the warehouse easy enough. The type of dilapidated brick heap that the city council keeps meaning to condemn but never quite gets around to. I jimmied open a side door and slipped inside.
It was dim, shafts of dusty light slanting through gaps in the walls. I picked my way through piles of old wooden crates and rusting machinery. In the back corner was an old office area, just a desk and a ratty sofa. Sprawled on the sofa was a skinny kid in jeans and a black t-shirt. He couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty. His nose was stuck in a large, leather bound book.
I crossed my arms. "Well, well. Johnny Raines, I presume."
The kid's head snapped up. He bolted to his feet, clutching the book. "Who the hell are you?"
"Name's Spillane. Your pal Professor Jansen hired me to pick up that book you borrowed from him."
The kid paled. "Oh god. He sent you?"
I nodded at the book. "Now how about you hand that over nice and easy, and we'll call it square."
His knuckles whitened on the leather binding. "No. I'm not giving this to him. Or you."
I arched an eyebrow. "Kid, I get that you're scared. But trust me, it'll be better for everyone if you just give me the merchandise." I held out a hand.
He recoiled a step, shaking his head frantically. "You don't understand. This book - the stuff in here -" His eyes were wide and wild. "It's dangerous. Evil. The professor, he wants to use it to -"
He cut off as the barrel of my .38 dug into his ribs. "Hand it over, kid."
"Please," he choked. "You have to believe me..."
My finger tightened on the trigger. Then I hesitated. Maybe it was the stark terror in his eyes, the desperate note in his voice. But something wasn't adding up here.
I lowered the gun a fraction. "All right, spill. What's the real story?"
The words tumbled out in a frantic jumble. How he'd seen the professor performing bizarre rituals, chanting strange words over occult objects and artifacts. How he'd managed to sneak into the office and steal the book, convinced that the professor was meddling with forces no man should touch.
"This book - it contains the rituals for summoning...things," he whispered, eyes brimming with tears. "Evil things. The professor told me he was going to use it to usher in a new age. An age of darkness."
He thrust the book at me with shaking hands. "See for yourself."
I glanced down at the open pages. The text was in no language I recognized, jagged runes and symbols that seemed to shift and dance before my eyes. The illustrations were worse. Monsters and shambling horrors that no mortal was meant to see.
I slammed the book shut with a shudder, shoving it back at the kid. Then I grabbed him by the scruff of his t-shirt.
"C'mon. We're going to have a little chat with the professor."
The kid sputtered. "But - but I thought you were working for him!"
I shot him a wry grin. "I find things for people. Doesn't mean I always give them what they're looking for."
As we hustled out into the night, the scrap of paper with the professor's address crumpled in my fist, a line from Hammett slipped into my thoughts: _The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter._ And that professor's patter hadn't smelled right from the start. Maybe I'd pay him a visit anyhow. Show him what happens when you try to summon things better left unnamed on my town's streets.
Do Well and Be Well.
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