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.
