Mortal Justice

Note: This is my entry into the 2021 "Hammered -- an Ode to Mickey Spillane" contest. Mike Hammer is a hard boiled private detective, and he's really different from any other characters I've ever written. This is not the charming romantic stuff I usually write. It's rude, crude and generally anti-social. It also references a rape near the end, so take care of yourselves if you have some triggers there. If you like my other stuff, you might not like this. Still, it was fun as hell to write. I hope you enjoy it, and please don't forget to vote! And comment! I love comments. Be specific to help me write better!

Mortal Justice

I tried to wash the taste of last night out of my mouth with this morning's bitter brew, but the past ain't that easy to forget. Fish and cheese don't taste good between a dame's legs any more than they do between slices of bread. I used to inspect the goods more before I brought them home to eat, but I guess somewhere along the line, I got tired of getting' slapped. Gettin' tired can make you stupid like that, and from the looks of it, this world was getting more tired by the day.

I punched off the news talking about all the stupid in the world, the only difference between the channels being how educated they sounded when describing the world's stupid. But pretty words don't make the world less stupid, they just make it taste better in the mouth... unlike my coffee.

The name's Mike Hammer. I'm a private dick... that means "detective" to anyone I don't bring home to eat. People come to me with a whole lotta problems that boil down to one simple truth: people don't want to own up to their stupid, and unowned stupid always comes back to bite you on the ass.

I walked over to my office, a cheap, dark corner of a death trap too old to care about codes, building or health. I didn't care. Lotsa things were in line to kill me a lot sooner than rat droppings and black mold. I nodded at Velda who's my secretary, and also the dame whose motives and opportunities probably put her first in the line of things that would kill me. At least I'd die with a smile on my face. She tossed me a throwaway "Hey boss," and then came at me with her deadliest weapons: a cup of her coffee and her warheads wrapped up nice in a tight sweater.

"You've got a visitor, Mike," she said, taking my coat and hat and nodding to the door to my office. Golden light shone out of the cracks all around it. "Make him pay up front, will ya? The WiFi bill was due last week," she said, handing me her cup of poison.

I snorted. "Make him pay? An Olympian... since when do they do anything they don't wanna?" I asked.

"So, make him wanna. We can't do squat without internet," she said, brushing her hip against me as she bent over to check the router again.

"I think makin' people 'wanna' is more your field of work," I said, running my hand over her ass, wrapped up all nice in a tight pencil skirt like Christmas came early. Velda slapped my hand away and pointed to the office. Time to pay the WiFi.

The Olympians were a huge family of Greeks about as old as families came... of course, when it comes to being old, it helps to be immortal. They had a slew of buildings on the west side of town all named after themselves. Always feuding with each other and then giving gifts to the little people to make things blow over. So connected and rich, some even called them gods... but, even gods have problems they can't go to the cops about. And since I'd never met a god that could own up to their stupid, I figured I'd probably be calling this one a client.

I opened the door to my office and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed the Olympian take his sandaled feet off my desk and stand up. The minor Olympians were usually good for a few bucks, mostly to check out someone they wanted to fuck, someone who was fucking around on them, or getting help for their favorite heroes to fuck up some monster children of other minor Olympians. What I didn't expect, was the Big Kahuna himself.

"I need your help, Mr. Hammer," said Mr. Zeus Fucking Almighty himself, his white robes swishing around his spray-tanned and waxed legs. Like I said, gods just can't own their stupid. "I need you to find someone," he said, his expression completely ass-fucked, and not in a good way.

"Is she really missing, or do you just wanna know where she is so you can fuck her?" I asked, sitting down and putting my feet up on my desk. It had to be a dame, I figured. These Olympians, and Mr. Z. F. Almighty himself, especially, had trouble hearing the word "no" from anyone but another god, and I wasn't about to help this guy nail another dame who got lucky enough to give him the slip once he'd decided to stick his cock into her.

"It's my daughter, Hammer," he said, towering over my desk, as thunder rumbled outside.

"You mean, the hermaphrodite born after you jacked off on her sleeping mom and then you Olympians castrated the kid, buried the cock and it grew into an almond tree, and then your castrated kid fucked their own son that was born when some dame put some of the almonds in her bra and got knocked up?"

"Not Agdistis, no," Mr. Z said, looking at me like he was figurin' on frying me up a receding hairline with some lightning.

"Cuz that seemed pretty fucked up," I said. "How'd that turn out?" I asked.

"Agdistis professed their love to Attis--"

"Yeah, but Aggie did it at Attis' wedding to that other chick, though, right?"

"Well, yes, and after some adjustments, they lived quite happily together," he said.

"'Some adjustments' meanin' that Attis ran off and cut off his own dick and bled to death and then you helped Aggie keep Attis' dead body nice so they could keep fucking the corpse of their son that would rather bleed to death with no cock than fuck their castrated hermaphrodite parent, and then Little Aggie practiced incestuous necrophilia happily ever after," I clarified, just to keep things on the up and up between us.

Mr. Z's eyes had gone white with electricity now, so for the sake of the WiFi, I thought I'd lay off on the chit-chat and get back to business. "So, which daughter's missing?" I asked.

"Athena, the Virgin Goddess of Wisdom... surely you have noticed her absence, of late?" he said, seeming to charge down a little bit.

"What, because any nimrod with an opinion thinks they know more than someone with a PhD, now? Nah -- that kind of stupid's been around forever. Internet's just made the stupid louder and with bigger tits. You sure she's just missing? Maybe saw that Kim Kardashian became a billionaire and jumped off a bridge...."

"My daughter is immortal, imbecile, it is impossible for her to die, much less kill herself!" he said.

"Right, right. So, have you tried clappin' your hands?"

"What?"

"Well, you said dyin' ain't her problem, so what is? You gods gotta have people believin' in you to keep goin', right? I saw in that Hook movie that the little fairy lady thing got better when the human clapped his hands, sayin' he believed in her. So, I'm askin' -- have you tried clappin' your hands? Or maybe ya need a mortal to do the clappin' for ya?" I asked.

I didn't usually lay on the charm this thick with a new client, but seein' as this was Mr. Z. F. Almighty in my office looking for someone he actually gave a crap about, rather than his latest cum dump, I knew this case was probably worth more than a WiFi payment. The fact he was still sittin' there taking this shit from me in a sticky chair in the rat-crap, black-mold part of town, dirtying up his fluorescent white robes, told me he had nowhere else to go... and that he would pay a lot to stay there.

"Ten million," I said.

"What? I haven't told you anything yet!"

"Ten million and I find your smart daughter by the end of the week," I said. "One million now, nine when you see her pretty face," I said. "If I don't find her by the end of the week, take your mil back."

*** *** ***

After hashing out what her daddy knew about Athena's disappearance, I took a trip over to the west side. The Goddess of Wisdom had been working on her latest museum so it was ready for its Grand Opening when she suddenly vanished. The museum was this huge marble pillared thing at the top of a mountain of a building in the middle of town. Hey, nobody ever said the Olympians were subtle.

The place was busy, even without being open. A crowd had drawn around a huge thing covered in a white sheet in the atrium. Probably another hunk of marble that made them look the way they wanted. Athena usually wanted to look like a dame you'd fuck if she didn't have such small tits and arms bigger than yours.

The artsy-fartsy people crawled around the place like ants, looking ready to say something that meant nothing, but made you feel pissed off and stupid anyway. Then, I saw a guy who actually looked good for something, despite being another Olympian... the god of fire, blacksmiths, metallurgy, artisans, sculptors, and a geeky mortal's best friend: Hephaestus.

I figured Hephaestus might actually talk to me, despite being a god, seeing as his mom Hera threw him out of Olympus and down a mountain after he was born because he was an ugly baby. I always thought it was stupid that she blamed him for it, because she had created Hephaestus all by herself without anyone else, so really anything ugly about him was something that came from her. Like I said, gods can't own their stupid. Anyway, baby Hephaestus was adopted by mortals and got taught some manners by people who actually had consequences for their bullshit, so he didn't quite have that usual Olympian asshole thing going. Tended to help mortals out.

"Heph..." I said, sitting down next to him in the ledge of a deep window sill as he watched the big white sheet-covered thing.

"Hammer..." he replied, still not taking his eyes from the sheet.

"Heard your sister's gone missing," I said, as two nearly naked babes came back from the other room and curled up on the floor by his sandaled feet and rubbed themselves against him like bitches in heat. They looked like all they lived for was to eat, sleep and drink cock... and their skin shimmered like gold. I'd heard he'd created some gold fembots for himself since his wife Aphrodite decided to fuck everything but him, but these golden twins were something else.

"Athena is my step-sister... we don't actually share a genome," he clarified.

"Right, right... you're all mommy's and she's all daddy's, I forgot about that," I said. I hadn't forgotten about it. I just wanted to get him talking. "You figure she's all right?" I asked.

Hephaestus gave a small smile as he thought about my question, "I believe the Goddess of Wisdom knows her location... and made several choices to place herself there, whether knowingly or unknowingly," he said, watching one of the golden girls crawl between his knees and reach up under his robe to rub his cock.

"Scuse me, but it kinda sounds like you know more than you're sayin', Heph," I pressed.

Golden babe #1 now had her head up under his robes and if the sounds and action in his lap were any indication, his cock was getting a nice slobbery hoovering. "I wouldn't say that I know, Hammer, because what I believe of my sister's situation is merely speculation. I love Athena too much and too well to mistake my speculation for fact... such arrogance would be an insult to the notion of wisdom."

"Seems to be a lot of that going around... mistaking speculation for fact," I said.

"And arrogance, as well, unfortunately," he agreed.

The art people were getting excited and getting closer to the sheet-covered thing. The most uptight-looking one of them started giving a speech about the things people give speeches about when they decide to show a statue to the world. Then, he pulled on a rope and the sheet dropped to the floor like a prom-date's dress.

Now, I'm no art lover, but when you give a speech and pull a sheet off something, there's supposed to be something there, right? "I don't get it..." I said, looking at a marble pedestal with nothing on it. People were going crazy looking up and pointing, talking to each other about absolutely nothing.

Hephaestus just chuckled, looking at the nothing on the pedestal, like it was an inside joke. Still, at the same time, he stared at it like a guy mooning over the girl that got away. There was no way he saw nothing. "Help me out here, Heph... I don't see anything," I said, leaning over to see if something was visible from his angle.

"That doesn't surprise me," he said.

"But you do?"

"Yes," he sighed.

"What do you see?" I asked.

"I see a woman bent over a blacksmith's bench screaming at the moment of orgasm... her partner hunched behind her thrusting so deeply that you can see his cock distending her smooth stomach... a perfect moment frozen in time," he said.

I turned my head sideways, trying to see it again. Maybe it was like one of those stupid 3D paintings that you had to cross your eyes and squint to see, but I never could. Shame, too. If that kind of stuff was in museums, they'd never go out of business.

"You mean like the time she came to you for some armor and you tried to fuck her? Why would the sculptor do that scene, though? It never happened. Athena fought you off and you ended up jizzing on the Earth. You never raped her. She was the virgin goddess of wisdom..." I said.

"No, I never raped her..." Heph agreed, a small wistful smile playing on his lips. "Sometimes wisdom is letting a girl's powerful father think what he wants to think... that his daughter cleverly fought off her rapist instead of moaning like a whore as her step-brother fucked her hard in every possible position, every chance they got," he said.

"You loved her..."

"We loved each other. Wisdom and ingenuity have long been good partners for each other. If Zeus had discovered out that we were intimate, though, she would have been forced to marry me. The world being what it is, if we had married, she would have diminished to become known only as my consort, mother to my children... and me the least of the gods. Athena was born ambitious. She wanted more than that for herself," he said, sadly.

"So, the dame you loved, loved you, but she wouldn't marry you or even let anyone know you'd been together. After all the rejection you'd gotten from the Olympians, too... that had to hurt," I said. "People've gotten themselves killed over less."

"I did not kill my step-sister, Mr. Hammer," Hephaestus said, looking over at me sad, but not angry. "I never expected her to marry me. I was happy to share what we did without expectations of more. I know how things work. That is my gift... and my curse."

"Still... you got the virgin goddess of wisdom to put out for you. How in the hell did you manage that?" I asked.

Hephaestus chuckled, "It was rather easy, actually. I simply asked her a question."

"What was it? 'Ever see a cock like this?' or maybe 'Wanna come so hard you go blind for three days?'" I laughed.

"Nothing so crude, Mr. Hammer. You need to know your audience. To know how they work. I simply asked her how she expected to be revered by mortals as the goddess of wisdom when she had absolutely no knowledge of something that motivates 90% of what they do..."

"Damn..." I said, awestruck. "You negged her? And she fell for that?"

"Wisdom that can withstand prickled pride is rare, indeed... and, for that matter, have you ever heard of anyone going to a virgin for wisdom?"

"Huh... you got me there. So, what do you think happened to her?"

"I think an artist captured her perfectly... and beyond that, who knows?" Hephaestus said, groaning and gasping. "Perhaps you should ask the artist about her inspiration while you have the chance. We can talk later, Hammer, I think I'll be here for a while," he gasped, his body jerking as a fevered moan and slurping noises came out of the golden babe with her head under his robe.

I left Hephaestus to his blow job and went to the art people had crowded around a person near the statue, squawking like geese to give their congratulations. I figured the person in the middle of the gaggle was the sculptor, so I got into the crowd to get my turn at the guy.

It was weird as hell, being in a crowd of people that were all talking about something that I couldn't even see. From what I could tell, they were each seeing something different, too.

"A vindication of the proudly childless! Her vacant womb giving birth to us all!"

"Oh... punish me again, Mistress!"

"It's a feminist triumph!"

I turned when I heard a snort behind me, "Feminist, my ass..." an almost-human voice sniped. "She was only a feminist as long as she was the only woman on the field." I turned to see an eight-legged, hairy black ball of oh-hell-no descend from the ceiling near my shoulder. Her eyes moved over the statue with the gleam of a cold-blooded killer enjoying a good joke.

"Sounds like you two didn't see eye to eye on things," I said.

"The bitch of it is, we did see eye to eye. Athena just didn't like the truth... and when she doesn't like the truth, she changes the story and things get ugly as hell. I'm Arachne."

"Mike Hammer, Private Detective. You're the shepherd's daughter that got in that weaving contest with her, right?"

"I am... I was," she said, "I worked hard my whole life. I was spinning wool since before I could walk. No money, no divine teachers, no special tricks... just hard fucking work. Perfection doesn't just happen. You have to care. You have to care about the smallest things and you have to do it again and again and again. Maybe a perfect weaving isn't much in this world, but it was what I had... and I earned it. You ever accomplish something hard that you're proud of and then someone else thinks they should get credit for it, Hammer?"

I thought about all the people whose asses I'd pulled outta the fire and still had to work out of a death trap office that had no WiFi unless I whored myself out to rich jerks. "Only on days ending in 'y,' kid," I responded.

"Then you know how it is. I'd just finished this piece that was so perfect it was practically alive. My fingertips hadn't had skin on them for weeks, I'd worked so hard. Then, Athena comes along wanting credit... saying that what I'd done was only possible because *she'd* given me the talent. Talent... Having talent is no better than just jerking off if you don't care and work hard, Mr. Hammer. I knew what I was supposed to say, and I also knew the truth. I told the truth. She didn't like it. Challenged me to a weaving contest and I told her some more truth. My weaving told her that she wasn't as talented as a mortal... and that because she came from a despicable family of rapists and petty bitches, she'd never care enough to work as hard as a mortal, either. She agreed. Then, she made me grotesque for it. Want some wisdom, Mr. Hammer? The truth has consequences. I'm just glad they got an artist that had the balls to show her for what she really is..."

"What do you see?" I asked, nodding up at the nothing on the pedestal.

"Mediocrity... mediocrity getting ahead of talent and hard work because it has connections and privilege and then thinking that it's entitled to praise for it. Meet the artist while you can, Mr. Hammer. The Olympians that see this truth are going to kill her before she leaves the building."

"Her?" I asked, "The artist's a girl?"

Nearby, a sultry voice purred like a waking panther, "Well, that depends, Mr. Hammer... are you still a boy?"

I'm not sayin' my soldier jumped to attention, but it hurt like hell when I pushed it back down to a socially acceptable place before I turned to shake her hand, "Last I looked I was... Ms...?" I asked, before completely forgetting my own name.

She was the kind of woman that made you lose feeling everywhere but in your cock and balls. A "fuck me" black ribbon and snake charm choker necklace, curves that made you want to hug the road, all wrapped up in a dress cut down to there. Her body was like Baskin Robbins... a million flavors I wanted to taste. The shocker: from what I could figure from the blackout wraparound glasses she wore and the delicate bamboo cane she carried, this ballsy and brilliant sculptor, this goddess of my teenage dreams, was completely blind.