Avert Your Gaze

The ultimate purpose of this wacky blogging exercise is to stimulate the juices in regards to novel-writing. Below is an excerpt from said novel; believe me when I say it's a very rough draft. It also might help if you've ever read any Dashiell Hammett.

The apartment was thick with stale smoke. Unmarked half-full bottles and dirtied glasses littered the beat-up table in the middle of the room. I’d have said it looked exactly like the place we’d just been, but for the reputable character slouched in a chair with a cloudy glass in his hand.

I knew everyone else around the table. Louie Burke, who tipped his head at me, Big Grant Vance, who grinned and raised his glass, and Teeny Morgan, who leered. The reputable character glanced at me before shifting his gaze to the man behind me.

“’Lo, Sullivan.”

“Nolan!” Mikey said, stepping forward. “Didn’t expect to see you. What’s tricks? You can’t be here for Teeny’s rotgut.”

“Mine’s good as yours any day,” whined Teeny.

“Sure, if don’t mind the taste. Come on Nolan, fess up. What’s a good copper like you drinking with the likes of us for?” Mikey said, grinning broadly like he’d made a good joke.

“Just catching up with old friends,” Nolan said. He nodded at me. “Who’s the new friend?”

Mikey put a hand on my back and grinned again. “This here’s Miss Katherine Trent. She’s a doll.”

I smiled like a girl’s supposed to. “Charmed, Mr. Nolan.”

“Lieutenant,” he said. “Lieutenant Nolan.”

“No kidding? Seems a visit from so important a man as a police lieutenant has made these boys forget their manners.”

“Aw, Teeny, what are you doing? Get another chair for the lady already!” Big Grant boomed, standing. “Now, Dollface, if you’re willing to risk Teeny’s hooch, what can I get for you?”

I looked at the pale liquids in the bottles on the table. “Got anything a little browner?” I smiled at Big Grant persuasively.

“Well now, I’m sure. Teeny!” he bellowed.

Teeny was dragging two chairs in from another room. “What?”

“The lady here wants some whiskey.”

Teeny whined some more, but brought out a bottle three-quarters full of rich, brown liquor. Big Grant poured me a glass while Mikey and I settled into chairs at the table.

“You been to Sheeny’s?”Louie spoke for the first time.

“Yeah, just came from there” Mikey said, slinging an arm around the back of my chair. “But Wade showed up. I thought I’d get Angel out of there before someone decided to take a pop at him.” He smiled at me.

Red Wade invited a dry agent into Arlo’s speak last week. Accident or no, he wasn’t too popular with anyone who enjoyed a strong drink right now. I checked on Nolan out of the corner of my eye but he didn’t seem to be getting too excited.

Mikey and Big Grant started in on an old argument about the dry agents stupid enough to try for Chicago. I sipped my whiskey and studied Nolan.

He wasn’t attractive. His nose was too pointy and his lips were too thin and he smelled too much like cop. He was broad enough around the shoulders to make a point in rougher company, and thick enough around the middle to prove he wasn’t lying about his rank. I put him in his early forties.

He caught me looking. “Miss Trent, you have the advantage: I don’t know what you do.”

“Call me Katherine,” I said. I always say that. They never call me Katherine. “And I don’t do anything.”

He glanced at Mikey and the rest of the group. “Seems to me you must do a lot.”

I laughed. It’s usually the best thing to do with a man when you want to change the subject. “Nothing a police lieutenant would want to hear about anyway. How do you know Mikey?”

“Me and him worked on the same project a couple years ago.” Nolan grinned. “Of course we weren’t exactly working for the same goal, but it all settled out.”

“Funny, that’s how I met Mikey too.” I indicated the other boys at the table with a tilt of my head. “So what brings you around?”

He took a sip of his drink. “Like I said, just catching up with old friends.”

“Cops don’t usually consider these gentlemen old friends.”

“I guess that makes me special.”

“I guess so.”

Mikey’s loud laugh interrupted us. “Angel, tell Burke here he ain’t going to get nothing done by ignoring pretty ladies like you.”

I smiled so my teeth showed. “It’s true, Louie. You want something done right, you need a woman to work on the details.”

Louie snorted. “I don’t know many women like you.”

“Fair enough. You want something done right, you need me to work on the details.”

Everyone laughed. I sipped my whiskey.

We had a few more drinks before Mikey decided it was time to leave. That was fine with me: I don’t like hanging out with cops; they give you a bad reputation.