Reno Noir

My first attempt at writing a story.

  I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I wish that was just a line to a Johnny Cash song, but I’ve been a bad, bad boy. Perhaps I should tell you a little more about me before you get the wrong impression. My name is Jack, Jack Waits, and I’ve been a private investigator, or private eye to use the parlance of our times for just shy of a decade now. Private eyes are never as glamorous as they are portrayed in the movies. Tiny smoke filled office, queue the beautiful rich heiress walking in to ask you to help her find a priceless family heirloom or whatever the hell it may be. Yeah, that s**t doesn’t happen. Typically I’m asked to capture pictures of some poor schmuck who’s mooching workers comp for all it’s worth. Yard work here, tennis in the park there, I turn the pictures in to the company collect my paycheck and that poor schmuck is spending his next few months receiving anal from our great judiciary system.

  Things never happen the way they do in the movies. Instead of getting the beautiful, twenty-something with a huge rack and daddy issues I get, well, daddy. Bernard McPherson uptight, rich and by my guess hasn’t been laid this side of the 21^st century. Oh, happy days!  Bernard invited me to his mansion to ask for my help. It seems his daughter, Penny, was kidnapped sometime over the weekend. The kidnappers are demanding $10 million ransom for her return. I ask him why he doesn’t just give them the money. He could probably find that in his couch cushions, for Christ’s sake. He says if he does that the kidnappers win. I just think he doesn’t want to part with the money. So that’s the reason I’m here, well that and Ole Barney has really good scotch. The kind you can’t even tell you are drinking alcohol until you get up to take a piss. Ole Barney is an alcoholic, well I mean more so than me. When you drink with an alcoholic you notice a few things. Like how they will fill your glass just so they can fill their own.  As long as you are drinking their drinking is under control. Even though, this bottomless glass of scotch means that I’m drunk at noon. Normally I’m not drunk on a weekday until 3. I ask Bernard, why me, why not just go to the police, but he is afraid of the scandal it would create. Not what it would create for his family and their turmoil, but for his business. Yeah, he’s a real class act.

  Bernard is old money. He runs The McPherson Group, which is an organization set up to help send underprivileged children to school. Sounds like Nard would be a real standup guy, hosting events, rubbing elbows with celebrities, that sort of thing. That’s where you would be wrong. He’s a prick; a prick amongst pricks. He is the type of person that if you said something that he didn’t like he would ruin you. He would ruin you financially, emotionally, any and every way he could. He would make it so your wife, your friends, your family would be afraid to even associate with you for fear of getting some of the poo on themselves from your s**t storm.

  So, here I am, asked to find a spoiled, rich celebratante from one of the richest men in the western hemisphere. What am I to do, say no? I may be dumb, but I’m not that f*****g dumb. If I tell him I think his daughter’s a whiny little twat who got what’s coming to her I could forget about ever getting another job in this city. Besides it’s not like I’m beating potential clients off with a stick. I can barely make enough to afford my s****y ½ room studio apartment. So I ask him for some more details about the kidnapping; any witnesses that kind of thing. I have to make it sound official. Bernard Says she disappeared sometime between Friday night and Sunday afternoon. She left one of the clubs downtown late Friday night to meet her boyfriend who lives about 20 minutes from downtown. She left club alone, which means there was ample opportunity to tail her and kidnap her before she reached her boyfriend’s house. Her beau or whatever they call them nowadays is a gentleman by the name of Preston.  He’s my first lead in the case. His father is the VP of some mortgage company and also comes from old money. I get to his house to ask him about last Friday night. In his living room, through the obvious cloud of pot smoke and stacked beer cans, he tells me that Penny was supposed to meet him that night. He was hosting a party for a few hundred of the most self-centered, egotistical, spoiled rich kids this side of the Mississippi. He told me that he thought that she arrived at his place around 2 AM and that she followed him up to his room. However, he also informs me that he was so hopped up on coke and booze that night he couldn’t tell me for sure if it was Penny or Mother Theresa in his room.  

Author's Note

Unfinished. Kind of a nod to the Film Noir movies of the 40's and 50's, but set in modern times. I'm looking for some honest opinions. This is my first attempt at a story. I''m not sure if this will turn into a novella, short story, or what. It's a story that just popped in my head over the last couple of days and I'm just trying to figure out if it is even worth continuing. Please let me know, how does it sound so far?

Reviews

[Kenneth The Poet]

Stunning premise, you have the style down pat. Like I'm reading Spillane (I own several of his titles and "I, The Jury" is a personal favorite). Unfinished for sure, but I think you should keep at it. I might suggest an addition of some humor here and there. Otherwise, you have a great start.

[Lily Mae]

Ah... it's great but I love the last line.. omg.. so perfect.. Keep it going it's got a great story line to it.. :) xx